What’s A “Gate” Series? by Jane Toombs

Have you ever realized some action you completed was unwise? Or someplace you’d gone to or some situation you’d gotten involved in was unwise? I believe it’s happened to most of us, and maybe some of us wound up in some kind of danger.

How about feeling unwanted? I guess maybe we all did at some time and place in our lives. As I recall, it’s not a pleasant feeling. But most of us didn’t believe we were in any danger because of it--and if we were lucky no worse off.

When I first conceived the idea for my Underworld Series where either the hero or heroine, or both, fall or pass through a gate into an alternate world, I was creating something I’d always wanted to write--gate stories.
This came from my love of fantasy and reading “Gate” books by many of the well-known names in this genre.
It’s a great what-if beginning. Because what if you were in a familiar spot and suddenly stepped off into nothingness? Not to crash to your death, but to be transported to an alien alternate world, where you were doomed to remain?

In Unwise, the reader is taken to an alternate world that has a known gate to the Underworld that everyone steers clear of. Princess Lelani is taken into the Underworld by one of those very rare guides who can take you and bring you back But what happens to her there is most unwise. When he brings her back to her world, what has happened to her affects her entire life.

In Unwanted the story begins on Earth, which is also an alternate world among the others connected by these shifting gates. The heroine’s car crashes over a cliff in the Sierras. She‘s thrown free , but instead of dying, she passes through a gate into another world. On Earth, having red hair and green eyes like she does, is no big deal. But on the world she falls into females with these attributes are regarded as evil witches and killed on sight. She’s about as unwanted as you can get.

Both these books are out now from Eternal Press with buy links at my website: www.JaneToombs.com

I’ve just about completed the synopsis for Uncanny, the third book. Here I begin in an alternate word with a most unusual young woman and am toying with the idea of having her end up on Earth, through a gate. Of course she finds Earth completely alien to her.

So far the books in my Underworld Series have been completely different from each other and fun to write. Hope I can keep it that way. The danger in any series is that authors may begin to repeat similar situations over and over, which turns off readers, So far I’m okay with the first three, but I need to careful not to be so unwise as to repeat plots or readers will begin rejecting my stories as unwanted and that’s not a canny situation to get into.

Jane