Some Thoughts with … K. Pimpinella

Welcome to my favourite section of the blog, talking with the authors. Today, we have K. Pimpinella with us, author of the Time Ranger series, paramedic and whose debut is Nexus Point.

Let’s dive in!

1.- What made you decide on the self publishing route?

Timing really. My book was ready to go. I had a trad publisher interested, but they were just starting up and weren’t ready to receive books yet, so I just went ahead and self-published. It had nothing to do with ‘losing creativity’ or anything

2.- I’m really interested in the Time Ranger thingy and most important, how would you define the Nexus Point?

I’ve always been interested in time travel, a sort of fish out of the water type character, so the ‘time’ part of Time Ranger was kind of a given. As for the ‘Ranger’ part, well, I’m an ex-Canadian Army Ranger; Trooper with Queen’s York Rangers. So the two kinds of went together. And, Time Ranger has a cool ring to it, lol. As for defining Nexus Point, as a book, I define it as escapism. As for the Nexus Point Actual that is used in the book, it’s a star-like structure located 0.2 AU beyond our galaxy’s main asteroid belt, and far from Jupiter’s gravitational pull. It’s capable of facilitating the process of time travel.

3.-Why you choose the historical moments to show in the book?

Actually, the JFK mission came by accident. It had only been a sort of ‘throw away line’, until my developmental editor said he loved the idea and so I expanded on it. The main mission in France, was very specifically chosen since I knew a lot about that time, and I’m a big fan of the ‘Musketeers’, so that time was always the first choice.

4.-Sawyer is a Spawn, can you tell me more about this?

A Spawn is a genetically enhanced human made from either a human egg or sperm that is mixed with the genetically enhanced egg or sperm which they purchase. Commander Sawyer was created when his father purchased an enhanced egg, but without giving away too many spoilers, there is more to his enhancements than Sawyer was ever aware of. I’m very interested in the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing that is going on today and wanted to utilize it in the story. Which is where these ‘further’ enhancements of Sawyer come into play. Technically, there are no limitations to CRISPR-Cas9, and I really wanted to expand on that, and where it could go right, or wrong. The use of Spawn in the Time Ranger series is expanded upon in later books.

5.-Military Scifi is an interesting genre, what made you decide to write about it?

Write what you know? I’m ex-military, and I studied space sciences at university. Also, my developmental editor is an ex-American Ranger and Green Beret of 28 years. It’s also what I like to read and watch. Typically, I’m more into soft-military, which is closer to Star Trek, than hard military which would be closer to Michael Mammay, or Starship Troopers. Mil-SciFi typically encapsulates action, thriller, and adventure sub-genres as well. It can go anywhere from even romance to horror.

6.- What can we expect of K. Pimpinella in the future?

More Time Rangers! Nexus Point is book one. Burning Man, which is book two, is coming soon. The entire 4 book series is planned out and ready to go! Aside from that, I’ve started working on a stand-alone book, which of course is sci-fi, but not military, and will involve aliens. As for appearances, I will be at Windsor ComiCon in October.