The Brigade Welcomes Aboard Laurel Kriegler!!!!

Please tell us a little about yourself

Well, where do I start. I'm a born and bred South African who has spend a total of just over 5.5 years living in the UK, and I just love it here. I am first of all a reader - I permanently had my nose in a book as a kid - but over the last five years or so, I have taken to writing down some of the ideas in my head. Creative writing endeavours while in school always ran into complete dead ends. Being from an artistic family, I have spent many years frustrated at the fact that I did not see myself as an artistic person.

My first writing venture proper was a poem, back in 2004, which I am still chuffed about to this day, as it was the first poem that I could honestly classify as such! Frustration drove that project. Late 2006 was when I first tried to put a story together. I knew very little about writing; I just needed to get the words and images down onto paper. Work took over, however, and for a few years I didn't write. The last year, however, saw me complete the first draft of a novel (which is currently more novella-length), and the first draft of a novella (which is currently short-story length!).

We’d love to hear more about your work

Book, or stories? There are WAY too many here. My first writing project has the working title "Forgotten". It will, one day, hopefully be a novel-length story when I gather the guts to chop it up and rewrite it. It is about a woman, Taneya, who wakes up on Earth in the far future, to find that she is in a seemingly idyllic civilisation. But all is not as it seems to be (to adopt a cliche). As already mentioned, I have three novella-length-to-be stories that I'm writing. They are each very separate from one another. Two of them are based on dreams that I've had in the last year. The third is set in the Anders Universe, and will go together with a trilogy (working title: Hope) that I am currently in the process of planning.

What is your favorite SF book or movie?

You ask difficult-to-answer questions!! There are absolutely tonnes of books and movies that I could list here! So I'll be quick about this and try to ignore the pain (and the clamouring to be mentioned coming from said books and movies). In books, I really like The Snow Queen Cycle, by Joan D. Vinge. In movies, I absolutely love Gattacca. This is qualified by the shouts in my head from all the others not mentioned!

Favorite mode of fictional travel?

It's got to be Star Trek's transporter. If only ....!

We share your desire for that if only, Laurel and again, welcome aboard!