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I must confess I’ve never been much of a science fiction lover. The plot, characters, and settings always came off as too cold and clinical, and I never could stay interested enough to finish a whole sci-fi book—until I read The Garrison: Lockdown by Vijaya Schartz. In it, Ms. Schartz combines warm, three-dimensional characters with an unusual location and warp-speed action.
Born at home in the suburbs of Paris two days after Christmas, Vijaya Schartz rushed into this life and kept going without slowing down. She practiced yoga in India, surfed in Hawaii, and gained a black belt in Aikido—a self-defense Japanese Martial Art. In her late teens, she was a gymnast on the French National Team. At one point, she painted and exhibited her paintings, but she hasn’t touched a brush in years. She also loves to jump out of planes and free fall just for the thrill of it.
When I asked her what her strangest or recurring dream was, this was her reply:
“My most memorable dreams are premonitory. As far as I remember, it started at age six, when I was recovering from an accident in a health care summer camp. I dreamt of a little girl who came to join us in the dorm. In the morning, I told my roommates her name, described her short black hair, plaid skirt, white shirt, and red sweater, told them she carried a guitar and picked the empty bed in the far corner. The dorm was almost empty, as it was off season. That same day, the girl showed up. I had her name right, the clothes, the guitar. She looked exactly like in my dream, and she took the bed in the far corner. My friends accused me of seeing the files in the office, which would in any case only account for the name. Their doubt hurt me, but I didn’t think much of the incident. To me, it was just cool.
“Later in life, other dreams warned me of momentous life changes or traumatic events, like the death my 26-year-old best friend in France while I lived in India (I received the news by mail three weeks after the dream), and the death of my husband’s ex-wife in a car accident, just a few years ago. I woke up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, with the dream, and I woke my husband. The next morning we received the call. She’d died on an icy road in another state, at the exact time I woke up, accounting for the time difference. Do I believe our minds are linked to some universal source of knowledge? You bet I do.
“Other dreams seem to come from parallel universes, dreams of post apocalyptic surroundings, of my role in that different society. These are the dreams I often use as the start or the basis for a story.”
Give you the chills? It certainly did this interviewer.
On Writing in Ms. Schartz’s Own Words:
Which music groups/artists blast from your CD player while you write?
It all depends on what I write. While writing Ashes for the Elephant God, set in India, I listened to Ravi Shankar. It helped me bring back my memories of India. While writing the Archangel series, since my hero was a country boy, I listened to country music—and not just while I wrote, but in my car as well, to immerse myself in the mood created by the songs. Hard rock is the kind of music I associate with my sci-fi action romances—fast-paced, lots of drums. The video trailer of Anaz-voohri is a testimony of that, although I found this music too loud to listen to while writing. I write medieval fantasy on the side, and for those, I listen to Celtic Lady, or ancient religious chant in Latin from old Christian monasteries, like Chant from the Benedictine monks of Santo Domingo de Silos, or Vision, the music of Hildegard Von Bingen. Preferably the music of the exact time period. Music can carry me through time.
What or who inspires you to write?
Dreams, mainly, but also a picture, the line of a poem, a song, an article in the paper on some archeological discovery, a UFO sighting, a scientific discovery, or a new step in space exploration. I’m currently fascinated by the scientific claim of the existence of parallel universes by Steven Hawkins. It’s not just sci-fi anymore. It’s actual science. Science also recently demonstrated the existence of God. They call it the cosmological force, and it’s a trinity. How cool is that?
Why did you begin writing?
I started writing poetry at age six for no apparent reason. I never stopped writing. From essays to poetry and journals. Then, at eighteen, I started a book on how to run a country. At eighteen, I had all the answers. My boyfriend was older, a journalist of Greek descent. I showed him my first chapters. When he told me someone had already written that book, I couldn’t believe it. So I asked who. “Plato,” he answered, “in 380 BC, and the book is The Republic.” I went to the library, read The Republic, and decided the world didn’t need another book on how to run a country. So I kept to my poetry and journals. I read mysteries in those days, and I often thought I could write one, but I never tried.
Then life interfered. My adventurous nature pushed me to explore exotic places. Traveling was in my blood. I finally settled down in Arizona and decided I had stories to tell, and it was time to write a book. By then, I had discovered science-fiction, fantasy, and romance, and I wanted to blend these genres to make my own brand of stories.
Which author inspires you?
One of the authors who inspired me to keep writing was Diana Gabaldon. I met her at a Desert Dreams writers’ conference in Phoenix when I started writing, in the mid-nineties, and I fell in love with her Outlander series. She mixed elements of romance, history, and supernatural time travel. She was the first author to do this successfully, and that’s what I wanted to do: mix genres. In my case it was sci-fi and romance.
What do you find most rewarding about writing?
There is no equal thrill to holding your first book in your hands—with its new paper smell, its shiny cover—and to press it against your heart. But even now, each time I read the galley or the final edited copy of my latest book, just before publication, after a few months’ delay, I feel a thrill. It’s so much better than I remembered. Sometimes I surprise myself and wonder, Did I really write that? I think the state in which we write is an exalted state, and I often surprise myself with what I laid on the page.
Triskelion Publishing closed its doors in June, so we’ll have to wait until this talented author finds a new home for her books. I dare say it won’t take long, because any editor who reads a manuscript turned in by Vijaya Schartz is guaranteed to be hooked.
Right now, she’s working on a parallel universe story, tentatively titled Captive, and she’s also working on her medieval fantasy series, The Curse of the Lost Isle.
Ms. Schartz has been a truly fascinating interviewee, and I know you’re going to want to learn more. Be sure to visit her site at VijayaSchartz.com to find out when her next novel is due for release.
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