Summary: From the extinguished HomeWorld, the Settlers traveled across the stars to NewWorld with hopes of starting over again. In the war-torn nation of Illyria, Maya just wants to grow vegetables and live in peace. But she has a dark secret she can never reveal, especially to her beloved Yuri.
Introduction: For my novella, “One Day in the Life of Alexa,” I studied the horrific 1990s wars in the Balkans, as well as the history leading up to those conflicts. I was struck by the adage, “The more things change, the more they remain the same,” and the tragic effects on the lives of ordinary people.
The story’s title, “Illyria, My Love” was inspired by Hiroshima, Mon Amour, an hallucinogenic 1959 film directed by Alain Resnais that flips through (and mixes up) two characters’ pasts, presents, and futures. Interesting, though at times very slow-going.
Regarding print fiction, “Illyria, My Love” is in the vein of Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow and the classic story by Fritz Leiber, “The Man Who Never Grew Young”. Both of those stories are told from the viewpoint of a man.
I wanted a woman’s viewpoint, so this is one woman’s tragedy, told through the ironic lens of backwards-in-time.
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