I can still remember the moment when I was a kid and I picked this book up from my Dad’s bookcase – Catseye was the first ever science fiction book I read. I loved it (although I thought it was too short and I always wished there’d been a sequel.) Of course after this, I tracked down every single book by Andre Norton I could find,  even the Young Adult and the romances.

I still have most of them. She was my gateway into science fiction. I loved the glimpses of romance that popped up in a few of her books, wished there was more and that no doubt helped inspire me to write science fiction romance. I devoured her Witch World series and a lot of other books by many other excellent people. And of course I still read SF.

Over at the USA Today Happily Ever After blog we’re running a special column where I asked some of my fellow authors in the SF&F romance community which book was their first foray into the wonders of science fiction and/or fantasy. I got a lot of fascinating answers, not a few of which were also favorite books of mine.

While I’m on the topic of Andre Norton, thought I’d share the vintage covers of a few of my most favorites:

I read and reread Catseye so often the binding fell apart! I loved her recurring themes of telepathy (especially with animals), time travel, alternate worlds, galactic empires that had risen and fallen long before we arrived on the scene…just the endless possibilities she opened up for me. Her ability to ask “What if…” and then spin a great tale inspired my imagination!

We’re going to run a second column next week over at USA Today/HEA with the rest of the “first SF reads” stories, so please stay tuned…