Mary Turzillo’s forthcoming works draw on Ray Bradbury, kittens and chocolate

Originally, author and poet Mary Turzillo’s forthcoming science fiction novel about Mars was titled Onward to Mars. Then she changed the title to The Making of Martians, then Mars or Bust, then Why They Went to Mars, then Heart’s Journey, and then Mars Quest. At the moment, the novel is titled Isidis Rising. But in a recent entry in her LiveJournal, Turzillo calls it The Novel from Hell, even though it draws inspiration from a heavenly quote by Ray Bradbury.

Turzillo also reveals in a LiveJournal entry that Space and Time magazine just purchased her short story "Chocolate Kittens from Mars." It will be published sometime in 2009.

A retired professor, Dr. Mary A. Turzillo is now a full-time writer. In 2000, her story “Mars Is No Place for Children” won a Nebula Award for best novelette. Her novel An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl was serialized in Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine in 2004. More recently, her novelette “Zora and the Land Ethic Nomads,” which is set on Mars, was published in The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction (2007). And, this past summer, her poem “Cats Can Colonize Mars” was published in the journal Star*Line. Turzillo is married to scientist and fellow science fiction author Geoffrey A. Landis.