How did the wife and husband writing duo, Ann and Terry Birdgenaw, end up writing a parallel science fiction middle-grade chapter book (part of Ann’s series Black Hole Radio) and speculative fiction trilogy (Terry’s The Antunite Chronicles)?
How it began
Ann wrote the first book in a series of chapter books that feature two geeky, space-obsessed pre-teen boys, Hawk and Matt. In this first book, Hawk, named after Stephen Hawking, and Matt create a space club, with a clubhouse in a shed attached to Hawk’s parents’ garage, and the two travel to a far-away planet through a wormhole created by an old radio that draws them into the garage.
What would you do if you had a clock radio that eerily keeps beeping after removing the batteries?
The inspiration for the concept for Ann’s book series entitled Black Hole Radio began mysteriously enough. Ann’s children’s great uncle on their father’s side had passed away, and some of his belongings ended up in our garage when his apartment was emptied. The garage, like usual, was full of much junk—bicycles, furniture, boxes, skateboards—anything but cars. And in one of those boxes, an unknown one, came a faint beeping sound, at the same time every day. The box was buried and hard to reach, behind a bunch of junk. This was partly because of the pack-rat tendencies of all family members and the growing collection of inherited belongings of not only the deceased uncle but also those of Ann’s parents, who had also passed away not long before.
Where is that beeping coming from?
The beeping continued daily for weeks, often missed because we only heard it when we entered the garage. However, as our second overflow fridge, an extra pantry, and a freezer lived there, trips to the garage were not infrequent. Everyone in our family of five noticed and asked about the beeping sound. One day, while the radio was beeping and when Ann could no longer tolerate the annoyance or mystery, she waded her way to the back of the pile and located the guilty box. She dug through it and found a small beeping clock radio. To end the annoyance, she found the alarm setting and turned it off, or at least thought she had.
Why is it still beeping?
When Ann entered the garage a few days later, she again heard a beeping sound from the now identified box. She immediately pulled out the radio and realized she probably just turned off the alarm but hadn’t unset it, so she did. Some days later, Ann entered the garage, and once again, she heard the familiar beeping sound. So, back to the box, she went. This time she opened the back and pulled the batteries out of the radio, thinking this would do the trick. But days later when she discovered the radio was still beeping, she threw up her hands and gave in. The alarm must mean something—and she conceived the idea for Black Hole Radio. Ann now embraced the beeping and moved the radio to the shelf next to the computer to inspire her to keep writing, and there it stayed for months until we assume that a second smaller reserve battery finally died. Yet the beeping had an eerie lingering effect since, by then, the third book in the series was already underway, and the radio’s memory lives on.
What’s funnier, PIG or BUG?
Ann flew through writing the first book with Terry helping a little, editing, and providing plotlines and dialogue ideas. Then, when stalling a little on the second book, Terry jumped in again to help with the plot. Ann wasn’t quite sure what the aliens would be like on Bilaluna, the moon of the planet Poo-ponic, where the action would occur. She thought they would be cyborg animals but couldn’t decide what species. Ann also wanted their names to be acronyms and thought of using the acronym PIG but couldn’t come up with appropriate words to construct the acronym. Later she mentioned to Terry that she might switch PIG to BUG but still didn’t have the acronym words.
Why not a whole colony of different BUGs?
The word BUG sparked some ideas from Terry, and he first suggested ANTs, from the words allied noble tripods. When Ann still wanted to go with BUGs, Terry then suggested bipedal unibodied gomers for the acronym. Ann liked it but preferred golems to gomers, and thus BUGs became the first aliens on Bilaluna. Later, Ann decided that ANTs would be in the story and agreed with Terry’s idea to add other cyborg insects, including BEEs (bi-winged essence extractors), FLYs (flap levitating yeomen), RoAChs (robotic armored champions), WoRMs (wriggling rock movers), and WoBBs (wood-boring buddies). The story developed further with a plotline in which the cyborgs on Bilaluna were refugees from the dead planet Poo-ponic, and the chapter book would be in the new genre of climate fiction. Friend Celeste would join the space club and be a central character, along with Hawk and Matt, helping solve the environmental crisis, which extended to a slowly dying Bilaluna.
Two books are better than one! Or is it four books?
As Terry helped create these characters, he felt more invested in the story and tried to give Ann more and more plot ideas. Realizing that Terry’s ideas were too complex for young children, Ann suggested he write the backstory about small insects creating the insect cyborgs and how they eventually destroyed Poo-ponic, forcing refugees to colonize Bilaluna. Terry accepted Ann’s suggestion and ran with it, writing a detailed novella aimed at young adults. Terry’s inspiration was to write an allegorical speculative fiction with Animal Farm as a model and to spoof capitalism and the current American political system with these insectoid characters. In time, the novella became a novel, and the novel became a trilogy aimed at young adults (Antuna’s Story), young adults/adults (The Rise and Fall of Antocracy), and adults (Antunite’s Unite) readers. Together they form The Antunite Chronicles, an allegory for our time, a thrillogy for all ages! Terry’s trilogy is coming soon; Ann’s Black Hole Radio: Bilaluna is already available anywhere you buy your books.