Author Spotlight - Aline Boucher Kaplan

Aline, thank you for joining us. Can you tell us about who you are and also about your writing: for example, what genres and themes do you write in and about, and is there anything that has influenced your choices?
Aline Boucher Kaplan is the author of two science fiction novels (Khyren and World Spirits) published by Baen Books and short stories that have appeared in anthologies published in the U.S. and Ireland (and now Australia). Her articles have also appeared on the Atlas Obscura website. She has been an active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America since 1988 and is a long-term member of the Spacecrafts science/fantasy writers’ group.
As a tour guide in Boston, Aline leads architectural and historical walking tours, ghost tours, and historical bus tours. She lectures on Boston history and has been mentioned in the Boston Globe and interviewed on WBUR radio. Aline has also appeared on Chronicle TV, an award-winning television show featuring stories of New England. She writes and edits The Next Phase Blog, a social commentary blog that appears multiple times a week at aknextphase.com.
Aline’s other interests include travel, movies, reading, gardening, riding fast rollercoasters and cooking. She is a graduate of Northeastern University in Boston, MA, and lives in Hudson, MA, USA with her husband.

Publications
I have been a fan of science fiction since I was a teenager, and I’m an Aquarius, so writing about the future came naturally to me. While I have always wanted to be a writer, I had to pay the bills, which meant a career in marketing for high tech companies in America. Now I’m retired and can put more attention into writing.
I wrote “Frostfire" after asking myself what a planetary ecosystem would be like if the dead had to rise in order to continue the cycle of life. (See? There’s the science fiction.) The rising of the dead is very orderly and very necessary, even if some of the bereaved have a big problem with it. “Frostfire” has no corpses trying to eat brains. They’re just looking to get warm.
I wrote my first novel after reading a series by a male author and thinking that I could do better than that. So, I did, writing by hand after my kids went to bed because I didn’t have a computer of my own. Laptops had not yet been invented.

Thanks Aline for sharing a bit about yourself. With all that time now to write, we'll be looking forward to seeing what you come up with next.

You can find more of Aline's work here:
Khyren – a novel published by Baen Books
World Spirits – a novel published by Baen Books
These, plus published short stories, are listed on:
Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/Aline-Boucher-Kaplan/e/B07GL16HCG
And, The Next Phase Blog: aknextphase.com

​Aline's story "Frostfire" appears in Trickster's Treats 4: Coming, Buried or Not! , a charity anthology in support of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.