An Interview with James Flanagan

James Flanagan is an author of speculative fiction with short fiction publications in Macrame Literary Journal, SciFiShorts, Literally Stories, and EverydayFiction, among others. His debut sci-fi novel, GENEFIRE, won several awards and is garnering excellent reviews. By day he is an academic scientist with a Ph.D. in cancer genetics, working at Imperial College London. You can find more of his work at jimiflanwrites.com.

Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

I think I have been writing fiction since a young age, and vaguely recall being part of a “writers club” at high school with a very supportive English Teacher. I started writing with more vigor in 2009, coincidentally around the same time I was recovering from knee surgery. I discovered a few excellent writing competitions that helped get the creative juices flowing and have been hooked on those ever since. As for inspiration or influence, I have been an avid reader of science fiction since a young age and have many authors that I could draw on, the earliest would be Arthur C Clarke up to more recent inspiring stories like Andy Weir with The Martian, or Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem series. These days it’s my friends in the writing groups that I am a member of that inspire me to keep writing (looking at you 11:59).

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

I have a PhD in cancer genetics and currently work as an academic scientist at Imperial College London. I started my PhD in 1998, finishing in 2002, and have been working as an academic ever since, so that is 22 years, and have published a little over 100 research papers in that time.

Something readers wouldn’t know is that I’m a lapsed snowboarder. I spent 2.5 years living in Toronto. By the age of 27 I had never seen snow (grew up in Brisbane), so felt it was worth the adventure to live somewhere cold. I learned snowboarding thanks to the North Toronto Ski Club, and a few trips to Whistler. But, alas age has caught up with me and I don’t think my knees could cope anymore.

Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

It wasn’t called GENEFIRE until very late in the process. It had another very long-winded name before that. I had a Zoom meeting with an excellent editor who had done a detailed developmental edit for me and we were discussing all of the suggested changes. One of them was the title. “Too long, and sounds like a legal text that no one wants to read” was the feedback. I happened to be sharing my screen and the editor could see all of the ideas I had been spit-balling for alternatives and he spotted the word “Genefire?” and immediately shouted it out. “That’s it!” It represents a very important plot point in the book, is short and catchy, and I have to admit, he was right.

How did it feel when you first saw your book cover? Or when you first held your book in your hands?

I worked with a talented artist/designer called Natalia Junqueira who helped design the cover. I provided the words from the book that I wanted the cover to represent and Natalia started developing concepts until she hit on the one you see on the cover. I love it. When I first held a copy in my hands it was great. It’s my debut novel, so it’s a bit like your first child.

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

I have no idea. “Classic Rock” for the year 2050? By then classic rock will probably mean Taylor Swift so maybe we could ask her to come up with a song or two for the soundtrack. The Rolling Stones might still be playing, so something new from them would be good too. A moody Vangelis soundtrack for the parts in the ISS would make the space scenes come alive.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from reading your book? How do you envision your perfect reader?

The main theme of the book is about unintended consequences of genetic engineering and imagining the big disaster that might happen when it goes wrong. One of the main plot points that readers might not know but will learn by reading the book, is that we can actually write messages in DNA, which is a concept that has fascinated me for years. (Easter Egg hunters – I published a scientific review in 2007 when I hid some DNA writing in an image.) There is also a bit of a literary conceit in the novel that becomes apparent at the end (no spoilers), and hope the readers will pick up on that. The perfect reader is someone who loves near-future hard sci-fi and is willing to throw themselves into an adventure.

What was the most rewarding/meaningful part of publishing your book?

Seeing it all come together and actually hitting the publish button on Amazon and going live was a nice moment. That was pretty exciting to see, but over the months after that, it started to pick up a few awards and started to gain lots of really nice positive reviews on Amazon, and although they say “don’t read your reviews (but secretly do),” some of the reviews just put such a big smile on my face. So finding out that people read it, and really enjoyed it is something special.

What new writing projects are you currently working on? Or, other projects that are not writing?

I have been busy publishing lots of short stories that I have written over the years. Readers can find links to those on my website if interested. I am also knee-deep in drafting the next book in the series, currently called GENEFIRE 2, so hopefully that will come out in the near future… The other main project I am working on is marketing, which is a big challenge for indie authors.

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