Dr. Megan McAllister was already a pretty unusual human - NASA astronaut, professional astronomer, polymath - when she encountered the man in the black suit that night in west Texas. What Division One Agent Echo didn't know, when he recruited her to the Agency, was that she was even more special. But he'd find out, soon enough. ~ The Division One series: Alpha and Omega A Small Medium At Large A Very UnCONventional Christmas Tour de Force Trojan Horse Texas Rangers Definition and Alignment Phantoms Head Games ~ An Interview with Stephanie Osborn How long did it take you to write this book? I wrote some of the original stories a couple decades back, but didn't know what to do with them. When someone suggested I think about publishing 'em, they weren't much more than short stories. First I had to transfer them off floppy disks, and edit them until I could stand to read 'em without cringing. Then I had to make them coherent, novel-sized stories. I think this book has taken the longest, because I was trying to figure out where I wanted the overall series to go. Maybe 3 months, to take it from around 30,000 words up to about 125,000. How much of the plot do you have in your head when you start? I'm a pantser, but that doesn't mean I don't have a structure in my head. I have to have the major plot points, to include who are the protagonists, antagonists, and nature of the conflict, before I can write a word. I have to and "see and " the conflict and u0026 the scenes in my head before I can describe them. So I guess the answer is, it all has to be in my head before I can start. You're a scientist, but you use warp drive, blasters, and artificial gravity. I look at what would be a useful and logical development, then look at cutting edge research to devise a reasonable rational extension of that research resulting in those items. "Alcubierre drive" is the technical term for and "warp drive, and " the concept that the ship generates an enclosed wave function around itself. This is because there's no limit on a wave function's speed. and "Blasters and " are just a good shorthand; in the first book of the series, the full name is and "Proto-cyclotron blaster. and " It's a particle beam weapon. I assume a powerful, efficient, and very compact power supply, but if you have an entire galactic civilization to work with, somebody would have figured that out. And I postulate that a manipulatable Higgs field can result in lots of nice gadgetry, like artificial gravity, tractor beams, shaped force fields, pressor beams, and more. So just because it's a science fiction buzzword doesn't mean I haven't applied my scientific knowledge and background to make it something more than that. Where does your writing fit into science fiction writ large? My overall style and subject matter is favorably compared to Robert A. Heinlein, E. E. and "Doc and " Smith, and u0026 Arthur Conan Doyle, all of whom were definite influences when I was growing up. Other influences that sometimes come out are people like Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and u0026 H. G. Wells, and even William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and u0026 Charles Dickens. More recent influences include Lois McMaster Bujold and Travis S. Taylor. How much of your inspiration comes from your background at NASA? I've read and watched SF since I was a kid. I went into the space program because of two things: Star Trek, and the Apollo One fire. I looked at the former, and thought, 'That's where we could end up.