Heirs of Novaun Series Dominion Over the Earth Series Book Lists Literary Speeches and Essays Plays and Programs Misc. Short Works

I grew up in Topeka, Kansas, the eldest of four children. When I was two years old, my parents joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I've been a committed member all my life. When I was little, my mother liked to read to me. She read the same stories to me so many times that I memorized them. I would then "read" them to my grandmother; she was so impressed! I liked to play imaginary games too. When I was really little, my sisters and I played "Tarzan." I, of course, was Jane, and I made my younger sister be Tarzan. My littlest sister was Cheetah, the monkey. By the time I was five years old, I had a boyfriend--Peter Pan. In those games I was Wendy, and again, I made my younger sister be the boy. (Sorry, Terri!) My mother became concerned with all of the imaginary games I played (and the invisible friends I had) and asked the pediatrician about it. He told her not to worry, that I just had a vivid imagination and would probably grow up and be a writer for television! I knew I wanted to be "an author" when I was in third grade. That same year I wrote my first fantasy story. It contained all the elements of a great fairy tale--a magical shoe, an old castle in Sweden, and a "wicked old witch on her throne" whom the heroine's mother killed with a cup of Coke containing crushed aspirin. In sixth grade I discovered Star Trek and was hooked immediately. That same year I wrote a Star Trek play that actually made it to the stage of my elementary school. I, of course, played my favorite character Chekov. (Chekov had never had such a large part in a Star Trek production!) Before the year was over, I saw Planet of the Apes, with Charlton Heston, on television and was totally blown away. If you'll remember, Heston's character named his female friend "Nova." I liked the word so well that I expanded it to "Novan" and voila! I had the name of the planet that would become the focus of my first novel, ESCAPE!! To the Unknown, written at age thirteen. I rewrote that original novel many times during junior high and high school and used pieces of it for school assignments. I discovered The Lord of the Rings in junior high school, and when Star Wars came out, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. As these two works became rooted in my subconscious and began overflowing into my novel, something more substantial began happening. Once I started high school, I began studying the scriptures in depth. This not only increased my understanding of spiritual things, it led to a fascination with the development of modern Israel. While I was refining pieces of my novel for creative writing assignments, I was writing about Israel in many of my essays. At the end of my junior year of high school, in fact, I wrote a thirty-nine-page research paper about the Six-Day War of 1967. In learning about Jewish Zionism and in studying scriptural prophecies of the Last Days, a New Jerusalem-based Zionism began blossoming within me. I have no doubt that this study laid the foundation for the Zion-centered novels I write today. By the time I got to Brigham Young University at age eighteen, I thought I was a pretty phenomenal writer. One of the first classes I took, in fact, was Creative Writing. Since I was a freshman, I wasn't supposed to be taking this class at all, but I knew I would excel in it. Was I ever wrong! By some miracle I got a B+, but I came out of it with an acute sense of my weaknesses as a writer and realized that I had much, much more to learn. During my second semester at BYU, I met a returned missionary from Utah, Steve Padilla, at my 4:00 a.m. custodial job at the Harris Fine Arts Center and married him in the Salt Lake Temple that summer. Contrary to all of my plans, the only degree I obtained at BYU was my "M.R.S." (He was worth it!) Steve graduated a month after we had our first child, and we moved to Maryland. Somewhere along the line, Steve decided that I needed to read some "real" science fiction and gave me Dune, by Frank Herbert. That novel opened up the world of great science fiction to me, and I sampled many more stories and novels as the years went by. Steve also encouraged me to read the classics, and once I began doing so in earnest, I realized that the writing weaknesses I had discovered in that BYU creative writing class were rooted in the fact that I hadn't read enough quality fiction. Upgrading my reading material in this way was the single most important thing I did to improve my writing. During those initial three years in Maryland, Steve and I had another child, and I wrote the novel The Double-Edged Choice, which was based, in part, on the novel I had written as a teenager. I also met Cari Clark, and she became my second real fan as well as my editor. (My first fan was my sister Lori.) With Cari's help, my work gained polish and elegance. I didn't finish the second novel in the Heirs of Novaun quartet, Twin Witness to Betrayal, for another three years. During that time, Steve and I and our little family moved to California for a new job and had two more children. We returned to Maryland in 1989, shortly after our fourth child was born. I finished the final two books in the Heirs of Novaun quartet, Travail of a Traitor and Bond with a Terrorist, in the early 1990s. Once the quartet was complete, I began researching the markets and approaching publishers. From the beginning, I had a difficult time determining where in the publishing arena my novels fit. They felt too religious to be acceptable as genre science fiction, and yet they seemed too unconventional to be of interest to religious publishers. I finally decided that they were more religious fiction than science fiction and began pursuing that route. Although I did receive a couple of encouraging letters from editors, I quickly began realizing that my novels really were different and that they didn't fit anywhere. I had no choice, at that point, but to either remove the religious element and submit to mainstream publishers or to wait for a suitable publishing opportunity to open up in the religious arena. Steve suggested that I put my books on the Internet. He saw the potential of the Internet for reaching readers all over the world and believed it would be the medium of choice for writers in the future. I was uncomfortable with that path, however, and since I didn't think I could remove the religious element from the novels without destroying them, I decided to put them on the shelf and wait for a traditional opportunity to open up. As the 1990s progressed, I had two more babies, began developing new story ideas, and worked on several literary projects for the women's group of my church. In 1998, I compiled a list of wholesome literature, which propelled me to the Internet to look up references. Finally I was online! In 1999 I had my seventh child. Once I resumed my routine after the birth of my baby, I knew that it was time to begin another novel. I had already written extensive plans for a time-travel trilogy, which I was itching to begin writing, but the "man-eating paradise planet" idea was calling to me also, so strongly, in fact, that I couldn't resist it. I had also been, for many years, toying with the idea of writing more about Greg and Francesca Pierce, minor characters in Heirs of Novaun. I got the idea to combine the story of the Pierce family with the Eden concept, Zarr's rise to power on Earth, and speculation on end-of-the-world prophecy fulfillment, and the Dominion Over the Earth series was born. In the beginning, I intended Fall to Eden to be short, about 80,000 words. I wanted it to be the novel that would make me a published author. As I was writing it, however, so many intriguing ideas found their way into the plot (including the Sara-and-Ben love story) that I knew it would end up being about twice as long as I had planned. I realized that even if I did find a publisher, I would either be required to cut the novel to a more saleable length or I would end up with a printed book that would be extremely expensive for my readers. Since I will rarely spend more than a couple of dollars on a book myself and am, at heart, more a librarian than a bookseller, I didn't like that possibility. Not only that, but I love reading long, complex novels. I knew there were plenty of readers like me, and that they would like Fall to Eden better as a 180,000-word novel than as an 80,000-word one. By the summer of 2000, I began seriously considering publishing my work online and bypassing the traditional publishers altogether. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. I would have complete control over my work, and I could target several different audiences simultaneously and easily connect with readers, something that, considering my many family and church responsibilities, would be difficult, if not impossible, for me to do through traditional methods such as book signings and speaking engagements. Best of all, I could make my novels as long and complex as I wished since it would cost nothing to either my readers or me. Once I made the decision, Steve established our domain. Now, in 2003, with the completion of Fall to Eden and the launching of my web site Novaun Novels, I am seeing the fruition of a lifetime's worth of work. Unless otherwise expressly stated, all original material created by Katherine Padilla and included on this web page is licensed under a Creative Commons License.