AD: I would say that the setting for Tomorrow's Gambit is quite a bleak idea of a future - would you agree or disagree with that?

AC: I definitely agree that the world, at face value, is bleak. It's a world that exists in our worst-case scenarios, and it's a world created by extreme measures taken in desperation, and it's a world bathed in the blood of millions who were sacrificed in the name of peace and the continuance of the human race. I think part of the bleakness is the lurking knowledge that, while it's an unlikely scenario, it's not impossible at all.

Still, I think the final result is the best of realism. Humanity has a long history of falling prey to disease, disaster, and dogma. And, yet, in the middle of every era of despair, there are people who wake up and find themselves, who illustrate some of the best of what humanity has to offer. I feel that people make a mistake in thinking of those people as exceptions; I feel that the potential to stand up and say 'no', the potential for love and for hope, is in everyone. I think this world and the men in it show that no matter how far down a wrong path humanity walks, it's never too late to turn around and strike out in a new direction. Where there's life, there's hope.

AD: Where did Tomorrow's Gambit's world come from? Was there a single point of inspiration or a coming together of many ideas?

AC: The world came rather quickly out of a random comment I heard that violence would only stop when all the violent people were gone. My mind immediately jumped into trying to work out what would inspire or force such a radical attempt at peace, how it would be carried out, and what the consequences would be. I have a long and colourful history of running off with very random ideas, usually to everyone's amusement. The image of the trucks and the bodies was almost instantaneous and I actually wrote the first of this story in a writing workshop in about 1999, but I really didn't like the characters that much and I put it in a file with my other stalled concepts.

It took me until last year to find Carson and Luka, and then the story was completely theirs. Once I met them, I knew exactly where they were and what their world was like. It really was like meeting them; I lay down to go to sleep one night and they wandered – looking somewhat sheepish – into my head and introduced themselves. I got up the next morning, put everything else on hold, and started writing.

AD: Does the idea of the 'artificial family' of the military unit and other similar groupings have an appeal for you, or was this story a bit of a break from your usual setting?

AC: The 'artificial family' is definitely a consistent theme in my writing. Many of my characters are entrenched in a military/police system but find themselves as philosophical odds with the paradigm in which they function. Possibly more important to my writing than the idea of the family as created within an institution is the 'family of choice' formed by necessity or intimacy. One doesn't have to find 'family' within a martial structure, but people do, consistently. I feel there's a natural yearning in most humans to bond and to belong.

I find that stepping outside a traditional family structure allows me to explore the true reasons, outside of social pressure, that people bond with one another and the strength of those bonds. I have a great deal of suspicion of socially dictated roles and family structures. I've found myself, too often, to be the exception to the rule, and so I like to explore other exceptions like me in my writing and see how they make the best of their circumstances, how they make themselves a family and a home with what they're allowed and what they can steal.

AD: Where do your sympathies lie in Tomorrow's Gambit? If you can pick favourites, that is. I felt really strongly for Luka, carrying that knowledge on his own for so long.

AC: I love Luka. I was so tempted to make this all about him, but found that Carson was a better observer and in the real position of power. Luka is a very sympathetic character and I hope to explore him further some time. He's a very innocent person on one level, and he has that because Carson's been between him and the world for so long. Having to handle something so huge alone was terribly hard on him. I also felt very deeply for Rudi, because I understand how hard it is to escape one's training. I knew the minute he came into the story, from the first words out of his mouth, that he was going to be important to it, in his own way, and I was right. A good deal of my sympathies are with him in this story.

I relate most to Carson, and maybe that's why he doesn't get a lot of my sympathy. He has an exceptionally hard decision to make and I love him for his dawning idealism, his new-found passion for life, for his commitment to fairness and justice, and for his loyalty to his men. I think he did exactly what he had to do; you don't get a lot of applause for that in life. What I am is proud of him, really.

AD: What about you? Leader or follower? Easy life or strong feelings?

AC: Leader, definitely. I think too fast and feel too strongly to follow well, though I am willing to turn the reins over once in a while when I get tired. While I am definitely a leader-type, I love to work with people. The satisfaction of sharing a victory with people I enjoy and respect is probably better than succeeding on my own. I also just appreciate the sense of communion that comes from being in the same yoke as someone else. That probably plays back into my choice to write more about people in some kind of structured institution.

Life for me has been fairly hard, but I try not to concentrate on that at all. I consider myself very lucky just to be able to write. At one point in the past I lost the use of my hands as well as my short-term memory and found myself confined to bed, and unable to write or to remember my characters. Recovering from that and finding myself able to keep writing and to keep a connection to my characters makes my past and present troubles seem small. When I get frustrated, I remind myself that I can walk and write and remember. Then, even the most maddening setbacks shrink down to their proper proportion in the grand scheme of things. And, when that doesn't work, well, that's what friends are for.

AD: And what's next? What are you working on at the moment?

AC: At the moment, I am experiencing the joys of redrafting (I'm only being a little sarcastic here, I promise) the first novel of a series I'm writing with my writing partner, dear friend, and navigator, Dianne Fox. We're really excited about it and hope to be able to share it with people soon. The whole process of developing the world and series has been an amazing learning process. I also am completely pleased with our characters, a pair of young rebel mages with nothing to lose, who want nothing to do with each other, at least until they learn to depend on each other.

Dianne and I are also working on a light novella together, a fun bit of candy set in outer space, no less. Total indulgence, because everyone could use a hot engineer and even hotter archaeologist who each packed a really fun toy-box to take with them into the great beyond. It doesn't get much more fun than that.

On my own, I'm finishing the first draft of a new novella that I'm exceptionally happy with, and will love forever if only it won't turn into a novel. I may be out of luck. I never should have read that article about face transplants. I'm so banned from CNN! It's a set in a futuristic feudal society and focuses on the twists and turns of palace politics, the trials of trying to be someone else, and the sometimes-painful relationships between fathers and sons. And, of course, there's a great deal of romance in there, amidst the strands of the tangled web the characters weave.