Interview with Constance Fay, Author of the Uncharted Hearts Series
Hi SFF readers! How many of you love sci-fi tech, fast-paced action, and a healthy dose of romance to go along with it? If that sounds like you, you’re going to love Constance Fay’s Uncharted Hearts series, which follows the adventures of a ragtag crew of spacefaring mercenaries who will take any job they can get, and who each find love in the process. Chaos, the third book in the series, releases March 11th, and I’m so excited that I already have it locked down on preorder!
I’m equally excited to chat with Constance today. Not only do I adore her books, but as Constance is one of those rare sci-fi romance authors who has managed to break out in the traditional publishing scene with a debut in this genre published by Bramble/Tor, I’m curious to get her take on how sci-fi romance fits into the current romantasy-saturated market.
But first, let’s talk about Constance’s hilarious, heart-pounding books!
Amy: Constance, I’ve been following your Uncharted Hearts series since the first book, and I love that while each novel continues our adventures with the same crew in the same universe, each book also gives readers a glimpse of this fun sci-fi world through a different character’s eyes.
When I saw the character reveal for Chaos, featuring Caro and her man, I almost squealed out loud! Without giving anything away, what can you tell fans about Caro and how she meets her match in Chaos?
Constance: Caro, as you have probably already realized, is a very different sort of hero than Temper and Cyn. She’s not a particularly physical force. Her talents are more on the intellectual side. She’s been around some stuff and, more importantly, she’s done some stuff that she isn’t proud of.
Art work by Chocological
When we start this book, Caro sees an opportunity for redemption, and she jumps on it. While trying to right her past wrongs, she meets a man called Leviathan who is all caught up in them. After that, it’s an age-old story. Girl tries to kill boy (poorly). Boy tries to kill girl (well). Love follows!
Amy: One of the reasons I’m so excited to dive back into Uncharted Hearts is that I love the wit and humour you bring to these epic sci-fi scenarios. I started laughing in the first chapter of Calamity, and the fun didn’t stop as I read through Fiasco!
I laughed especially hard when bounty hunter Cynbelline brings her love interest Micah to her backwater hometown and hilarity ensues as her grandma checks out Micah’s butt and the village fortune teller predicts the couple will have an ever-increasing number of children.
But it’s not just the hilarious scenarios that make your stories so fun, it’s the characters’ humorous narration and inner thoughts that really make me laugh out loud. Snark and voice are so hard to do well and you hit just the right notes. What’s your secret?
Constance: I’m so glad you enjoy the humor! It’s a tricky thing because humor is very subjective, and one person’s snark is another’s cruelty. I think part of what helps with my stories is that we’re deep inside the heads of the narrators so that we can see that outward-projected snark is sometimes coming from a place of defensiveness or uncertainty. We can also see all their inward-directed snark which can help balance things. On top of that, it’s something that I really enjoy writing.
Stepping outside this genre and into media in general, we’ve reached a weird place where often for a story to be deemed important, it must also be bleak and humorless. Maybe it came from awards shows separating comedies and dramas. I believe that humor belongs in all stories, even tragedies, because it’s one of those things that makes a world feel real. In real life, humor happens all the time and it can help balance other story elements. I am passionate about goofiness!
As far as funny moments from Chaos, one of my favorites involves physics jokes and a hot spring. Mostly because I got to bounce around physics innuendo with a group of friends from school (see the dedication) and that was a lot of fun.
Amy: Now, these books are science fiction novels, with cool tech and action-packed plots to satisfy any sci-fi afficionado, but they’re also love stories with plenty of heart and steam. We’ve all seen the massive success of romantasy in recent years. Yet sci-fi romance has been sort of sitting on the back burner, still a very niche and mostly indie pocket in the book market as a whole.
It's hard to compete with romantasy, but I’ve talked with several book-worlders lately who feel that romantasy readers are being swamped with too much of the same thing, and are starting to look for something fresh and different. What’s your take on sci-fi romance and its place in the market in relation to romantasy? Will it appeal to the same readers?
Constance: This is a tricky one. I think that sci-fi romance absolutely will appeal to romantasy readers—with a big caveat. I can’t count the number of people who’ve come up to me at events, asked about my books, and then winced and said “oh, I don’t read science fiction.” The reasons are pretty predictable. They have previous experience with an older style of the genre which features a lot of white men spending ten pages telling you how their spaceship works and then saving a green woman who seems to have somehow lost her clothes.
I could argue that that older style exists in fantasy as well, just replace the word “spaceship” with “magic system.”
What romantasy has done so well is re-brand fantasy to make it accessible to new readers to the genre. It also followed on the coat tails of Game of Thrones’ immense popularity so people who might originally have said “dragons are silly” were primed to have more open minds. That’s what sci-fi romance needs. We need the big breakout that opens the door and then we need to improve our own marketing to let people know that whatever niche or tropes they like in romantasy probably occur in sci-fi too. If you like monster romance, there’s alien romance. If you like epic fantasy romance, there is space opera romance. If you like paranormal romance, there’s dystopian or science fantasy. If you like LGBTQ romantasy, there is LGBTQ sci-fi romance.
On a simpler note, I think we also need a better name than “sci-fi romance.” That’s not very sexy. We haven’t found one that works yet. Romanta-sci is too derivative (and a little confusing when it’s said out loud). Sci-mance is fine but not exciting. My personal joke-favorite is science-friction, but that obviously doesn’t work for the wider genre which can include YA and closed-door romances.
The genres do have so much in common that I think many romantasy readers would really enjoy a lot of the great sci-fi romance that’s being written now, whether it’s for younger audiences like Jill Tew’s dystopian sci-fi romance, or very adult hijinks like Kimberly Lemming’s new book. Also, a lot of popular fantasy/paranormal romance authors already have science fiction series to serve as gateways (Kim Harrison, Jennifer Estep, Ann Aguirre, Ilona Andrews, and of course the great Nalini Singh are all examples).
Amy: I also think romantasy readers will be surprised how engaging sci-fi romance’s similarities to the real world can be. It allows us to envision what a future might look like for real women just like us.
In your books, for example, I love the way you portray women characters in powerful roles I usually see men play in romance novels—the sexy space captain, the bounty hunter, the ships’ engineer. You do such a great job showing that women can be powerful while not shying away from the characters’ vulnerabilities and their desire to be loved. Was this a conscious decision? And do you find it difficult to create male characters strong enough to play counterpoint to these strong female protagonists?
Constance: This was absolutely a conscious choice. Even in a lot of modern-day romances, I find that the “cool” character is usually the male romantic interest. While I think it’s great for a guy to be strong and funny and charismatic, it makes me sad when the female character ends up as a cypher (obviously, this isn’t true of all current stories, but it is a trend I see a lot of). I wanted my female characters to get to be the big damn heroes. This is their story. Their love interests are also strong and brave, but Temper, Cyn, and now Caro are the ones driving their own stories.
It’s not difficult to have male characters who are strong enough to play counterpoint, but it does involve a perspective shift because they are all men who are willing to have a partner rather than have a damsel. It also helps to illustrate that a woman being strong doesn’t mean a man has to be weaker, or that he needs to try to do something crazy to out-power her. They’re just real (imaginary) people trying to do their jobs.
Amy: Marketing strategies and female empowerment aside, I think in the end we’re all here first and foremost because we love a good romance. So I have to bring it back to that, and there’s a question I’ve been dying to ask you ever since I read the acknowledgements section of your first book.
Parents and smut.
While your novels are well plotted and contain a ton of depth and humour, they’re also pretty steamy. Is it true that your parents are the ones who encouraged you to “write smut” and that they were your first readers? If so, what’s that dynamic like?
Constance: Haha, oh gosh, my mom will kill me. It’s true, though! I had written for years with no real success and my mother, who is a very smart woman, knew that the romance market was huge. Both of my parents come from an artistic background. Both are also avid readers. While they are always kind, they will also absolutely tell me what they think about a story and my mother has a PhD in theater so she knows all about how a story should be told! Because of that, they weren’t my first readers. I wanted it more polished before it got to them. They did read it before it went to my publisher.
I was for-sure nervous. We are not the “talk about sex” family. We don’t swear in front of each other. And then I gave them a book with about seven f-bombs in the first chapter and explicit sex scenes. But thankfully, they liked it! Two of my aunts have also been so supportive. It’s really lovely how space-smut can bring a family together!
Amy: I’m sure all this talk of engaging characters, hilarious narration and steamy goodness will have readers scrambling to get their hands on your books. So, for readers new to the series, what’s your take on reading order? Do you consider Uncharted Hearts a standalone series where readers can jump straight into the third book? And if not, where’s the best starting point, and how can new fans get ahold of your books?
Constance: I think the preferred reading order is the order of publication, Calamity, Fiasco, and Chaos. All of them have stand-alone stories so if you deviate from that it will be fine, but the series also has a larger overarching plot that would be best experienced in order. My books can be found (or ordered) from your local indie bookstore, from Barnes & Noble, from Amazon, or whatever platform you prefer. Links to the amazon order pages can be found on my website.
Amy: Thanks again for chatting with me, Constance. And one last question: for diehard fans who’ve already read the series and have Chaos locked in on preorder, are you at liberty to let us know whether Uncharted Hearts is now a completed trilogy, or whether you have plans to return to give Itzel a happy ending? If not, what are your future writing plans? And how can we best keep in touch?
Constance: Thanks so much, this has been a pleasure! Right now, Uncharted Hearts is a trilogy. I do have plans for Itzel (and a title in mind—Havoc), but that all depends on things like sales and series popularity. I’d love to give her her own story. I’m currently working on something new—maybe more to come on that in the future.
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Amy lives in British Columbia, Canada. Her sci-fi romance debut A Symphony of Starlight mixes elements of cyberpunk and rockstar romance to bring you an action-packed adventure that received 4 1/2 Stars from the Paranormal Romance Guild. A Symphony of Starlight is currently available to read FREE on Kindle Unlimited.
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