Face Time: Cheryl Campbell — sci-fi and fantasy writer

Cheryl Campbell, nurse-turned-IT-consultant-turned-writer. Bridget Crosby photo

Cheryl Campbell never planned to become an author.

For 10 years, she worked as an emergency room and ICU nurse in Bar Harbor, Bangor and elsewhere. She switched to hospital system IT. Then became a traveling IT consultant.

But she had always loved science fiction and was part of a fan fiction community. And traveling presented a lot of downtime — time she used for writing. Campbell called it her “airport sweet spot.”

“I literally was the only person at the gate whenever they said, ‘OK, your flight’s delayed by three hours,’ I was like, ‘Oh, thank God!’ I just got three hours of writing time I didn’t plan on having,” she said.

Campbell self-published her initial five-book fantasy series. The first book of her new sci-fi trilogy, “Echoes of War,” was published last month by SparkPress, an independent, hybrid press.

After months of traveling — in England for a while, in Freeport, Portland and Leeds for a while — she’s settled down in Augusta. The first draft of the second book in her trilogy is done. The third is halfway there.

Name: Cheryl Campbell

Age: 45

Town: Augusta

Job: Health care information technology consultant and author

What got you interested in writing? I have always enjoyed telling stories and making people laugh. As a teen, I wrote a few things here and there and always threw them away or deleted them. I didn’t start writing regularly until I joined an online writing group several years ago that did “Star Trek” fan fiction.

How long have you been writing? The fan fic writing started around 1997, but it was a hobby. Nothing more. I didn’t realize writing was much more than that to me until around 2014. I think it was after my second fantasy book was complete that it clicked that I needed to write.

Why sci-fi and fantasy? I come by fandom of these two genres naturally. My mother was a huge “Star Trek” fan, so I grew up watching that show with her and still enjoy watching any of the new movies with her when they release. When she was alive, my grandmother was a voracious reader and devoured anything in those genres.

Where do your ideas come from? I like to keep my mind open and watch for ideas to come from anywhere. Sometimes ideas have sparked from songs or being in certain places. Sometimes I have actual dreams at night where I’m watching a movie play out. A dream is exactly how “Echoes of War” came to exist — a snippet of a movie in a dream turned into a trilogy. The five-book “Burnt Mountain” fantasy series started with a few lyrics from a song.

Does your nursing experience ever come in handy for stories? (I picture one of your characters MacGyvering a nebulizer or treating a laser wound…): Absolutely! When I injure one of my characters as part of the story, I try to keep it realistic for how they would feel during and after, and what the treatment would involve. Plus, with futuristic science fiction, I get to create what I’d like to see developed in the future for medicine. Nothing drives me crazier than books or movies getting the medical details wrong for the sake of drama, so I like to keep things accurate within the looser realms of fiction.

What was your first series about? The “Burnt Mountain” series (young adult) spans the course of a few years and begins with 13-year-old Rio Kaiser discovering a hidden world beneath a mountain in rural Maine. Once in this other world, it protects itself by making fears come to life in a deadly manner. When she is trapped there, she realizes that escape is impossible until she figures out a way to manipulate the magic system — the same way her mother had done before Rio was born. Ultimately, Rio and her family are drawn into deeper conflict within the world where she and her family make rich friendships and many enemies.

Looking back, what do you think of your first book? For me, not having a clue what I was doing, I think it turned out pretty well. As I continued through the “Burnt Mountain” series, I did go back and rework “The Monster Within” (volume 1) to release it as a second edition (2017, I think). I made classic new author mistakes in the first edition: passive voice, frequent point-of-view shifts, formatting errors, etc. I reworked the story to fix those things, explain the magic system a little better, and hired an editor. The story itself didn’t change; I just cleaned it up to be more professional.

What’s your latest book about? “Echoes of War” is the first book in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi trilogy. The story follows Dani, a mid-20s woman living as a scavenger on the fringes of society in Maine. She believes she is just another war-displaced civilian until she learns she is an Echo — a member of a nearly immortal alien race. Dani, along with human and other Echo civilian survivors, avoids the Wardens, a splinter group of genocidal Echoes who started a decades-long, human-hunting war against anyone resisting their rule on Earth. Dani begins to understand the importance of a partnership between the military and civilians, and she leaves her life in the shadows to play her part in the effort to re-take Maine from the Wardens.

What’s your favorite part in “Echoes of War”? During the big battle scene of the climax, there is a point where things are going so wrong, and Dani is running from things exploding around her. When she stops to take cover, she’s hoping nothing else falls out of the sky to drop on her. She knows she’s on the verge of pure panic, so she’s desperately trying to keep it together (aren’t we all!). The presence of her friends helps her begin to calm down. In that moment of terror, though she’s an alien, she has a very human response to fear and love.

Advice for aspiring writers? Don’t ignore those idea sparks. If it captures your interest, it’s worth pursuing. There’s a reason the universe gave you that idea. It’s OK to feel nervous, scared and unsure. Run with it anyway.

If you could meet one author, who would it be? OK, had to laugh here. In August, I went to WorldCon in Dublin, and I got to meet one of my favorite authors, Martha Wells. I got so starstruck I completely clammed up, couldn’t say what I wanted to say, and managed only a few words. I felt ridiculous, but it was still a funny experience. Once I got back to the States, I wrote her a card to thank her for sharing her work with the world — which is what I wanted to tell her originally. So while I have met my favorite author, I’d like a do-over.

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