Jeannie Warner
Has Something To Say

Jeannie Warner spent her formative years in Colorado, Canada, and Southern California, and is not afraid to abandon even the most luxurious domestic environs for an opportunity to travel almost anywhere. She has a useless degree in musicology, a checkered career in computer security, and aspirations of world domination.

Make sure to check out the audio of Arkham k-12 Science Fair written by Jeannie Warner.


Jeannie WarnerYour bio says you have a degree in musicology. What are some aspects music plays in your writing?
Sometimes stories start as music or lyrics. Poetry is at the heart of music, and it can kindle something that grows into more words because the rhymes aren’t big enough to contain them. Also writing often has a soundtrack.

Our sound engineer likes hearing you say that; he composes the backing music for all our episodes. Soundtracks are important! 

You also speak about a checkered career in computer security. What is the future of computer security with regards to AI?
Oh dear. The most promising aspects of AI are in Natural Language Processing and LangSec – but there isn’t really true AI. I don’t 100% believe in an actual singularity of consciousness or creation, although the aleatoric music created by computers is interesting (if not easy listening.)

And then there are days when this happens at workHow are the aspirations of world domination going?
Brilliantly. I have a foothold on four continents so far, and there’s a customs agent at the airport who has joined my church.

You write Victorian fiction as well as speculative fiction. What are some of the differences, and some of the similarities?
Victorian/alternative history asks what if X had happened, or was true. It’s the heart of a lot of steampunk just as much Jules Verne and Mary Shelley were parents of Sci Fi. Speculative fiction imagines causes for what might be happening now or in the future, imagining patterns and causality from current events.

2017 Young Explorer's Adventure GuideMad Scientist Journal’s next project is a science fiction anthology for women written by women. What are some differences women bring to science fiction writing?
Funny you should ask. I wrote stories for 3 of the 4 recent Young Explorer’s Guides out there, which is speculative Sci Fi for middle age readers, and the stories are all encouraged to have girls or different races or both in them as protagonists. Kate Elliott wrote a brilliant essay titled “Omniscient Breasts” which I encourage everyone to read. The truth I found in her essay guided my thoughts and words from vague objections into specific criticisms; in my opinion, many men who have written female protagonists have not actually captured a female point of view accurately, nor do they consider a female gaze in the reader.

Who is your favorite author and why?
Today? (Because it changes.) I love Elizabeth Moon and Robin McKinley and Nancy Kress, mixed with Guy Gavriel Kay and Patrick McLean or Jonathan Howard.

What is a writing project you’d like to take on?
Write Sherlock episodes. Also have a story in the sequel of Shadows over Baker Street.
Seriously, I’d settle for an agent and publisher liking my somewhat unlikeable female heroine in my thriller novel. 🙂


Find out more about Jeannie Warner

Jeannie’s writing credits include blogs of random musings and warning on the topics of IT Security, an unpublished body of Victorian fiction, a great many poems of dubious quality and content, publications in Tightbeam Speculative Fiction magazine as well as anthologies here on Amazon, two short self-published stories, as well as a collection of snarky notes to a former upstairs neighbor. She currently lives in Northern California.

Jeannie enjoys hockey, fencing, making music, dancing, and believes strongly that yes is more fun than no. Feel free to buy her a dark and stormy whenever you see her.

Webpage: Jeannie Warner or some of her random thoughts can be found here, or read some of her other writings at Three Oaks-on-Wear.

Follow her on Twitter

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Has Something To Say”

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