This week I am delighted to have a slice of cake with author Mike Van Horn.
Mike and his wife live in Marin County north of San Francisco in a house surrounded by trees and vegetable gardens. They have two daughters and three grandkids.
What kind of books do you write?
I write quirky, light-hearted stories about a pop singer who rescues an alien and hijacks its spaceship from the government. These are tales with a strong female protagonist, non-hostile aliens, wry humor, and plausible impossibilities.
“The spaceship crashed on my hillside. It’s on my property, so it’s mine,” she asserts. The government says “No way,” and drags it away to study its advanced technologies. When Selena discovers the spaceship is repairing itself, she has it fly itself into space.
What should she do with a self-repairing spaceship and an AI “magic wand?” Hand them over and get back to singing? Or gallivant into space? What if the alien doesn’t even want to return home? She flees for her life across the galaxy, gets marooned in deep space and is doomed until she’s rescued by very non-human aliens. Here’s a song she sang to herself:
I am unmoored.
I am adrift on the vastness of space.
Like a boat, lines cast free from the shore,
freed of land’s embrace.
Slowly drifting out to sea,
no rudder, no compass, no map, no haste.
Across the vasty void.
Forever to infinity.
Can you describe your writing why?
Stories just flow from my imagination. It took years for me to start writing them down. I’ve written dozens of non-fiction books for small business. During all those years, my fiction was back-burnered. A few years ago I saw that if I was ever going to get these stories done in this lifetime, I’d better get on it. Since then I’ve written my trilogy and sketched out several other books.
Share with us your favourite passage from the book you enjoyed writing the most
This is from near the beginning of Book 1, Aliens Crashed in My Back Yard. My heroine, Selena, has just decided to nurse the surviving alien back to health. She stays with her overnight in the crashed spaceship.
I lay there in the dark talking to her. I asked her questions. Where are you from? Why did you come here? What happened? What was your life like? How old are you? I got no response, of course. Wasn’t sure she was still alive.
I told her my entire life story. I confessed many things that I’d never revealed to anyone else. Including myself.
How I was strong and self-assured on the outside, but inside? Not so much. How I’d come to the road less traveled, but had stayed on the freeway.
How I had dumped the only guy I’d ever truly loved because of my stupid music career, and all my tours. How I often studied myself in the mirror, standing sideways, wondering if I should bother trying to keep myself slim and in shape, or whether I should let it all go and enjoy my cheeseburgers. How I knew I could never go for Clay, even though I knew he had a big crush on me, and he’d be a damn good catch for an aging chick like me.
How I’d never even tried to publish the songs that were the most important to me because I didn’t think they were marketable, and instead churned out all these maudlin ballads. Which of course made me a shitload of money, and allowed me to buy my dream property here on the coast, psychically as far as possible from La La Land. But which left me with this empty hole here near the core of my being.
I began to hum this one melody I’d written years before, and had never performed in public. It was my internal anthem—the music for my secret self.
My alien companion, lying in the dark covered by a horse blanket, in a tiny, squeaky voice, hummed along with me.
Tell us about your latest project
My WIP is Alien Invasion: There Goes the Neighborhood. Book 4 in the trilogy.
“Day 1 of the alien invasion. Is Earth ready for the onslaught? In cities across the world, first contact crews are ready with fingers poised above their instruments—cash registers.”
What if the aliens are not hostile, but tourists and traders? Why would they come to Earth? What would they want from us? What would they buy? What would we want from them? Would we catch terrible diseases from them? They’re not out to conquer us—that’s the last thing they want. Even so, they could be very disruptive to our world.
I like this story. Here’s why:
- The subject. Writing against an overused trope of hostile alien invasions
- My alien, who communicates by singing, and looks like a bird
- Continuing my characters from the three earlier books in the series
- Light-hearted, wry humor, kick-ass heroine
Here’s the opening:
“I was sitting on my deck on a beautiful warm evening, just strumming Gibb and watching the Moon and stars out over the Pacific Ocean, when a call came in from across the cosmos.”
Not published yet, so I don’t have a link, but if you let me know on my website, I’ll tell you when it’s available.
What is your favourite cake?
Devil’s food chocolate with dark chocolate frosting. With a scoop of ice cream. Numm numm!
You can connect with Mike here:
Join me next week when I will be having a slice of cake with Jim Webster.
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Claire Buss is a multi-genre author and poet, completely addicted to cake. Find out more about her books on her website clairebuss.co.uk. Join the discussion in her Facebook group Buss's Book Stop. Never miss out on future posts by following me.
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