Unnatural Nature

Hi, I'm Pippa Jay, author of scifi and supernatural stories to engage your emotions.

Coming from and working in a scientific area, I do try to base at least some of my writing on actual or at least theoretical science to give it some realism. 

For example, my blue-skinned hero, Keir. Did you know there was actually an entire family of blue-skinned people in Kentucky? The discolouration was caused by a blood disorder that gave their skin a bluish tinge. Or that a condition called argyrosis, caused by over-exposure to silver compounds, can turn you literally blue? Or you can look back into the history of Britain and the Celtic people known by the Romans as Picts (literally 'painted ones'), who coloured their skin blue with a natural dye called woad. Blue skin, based in fact. 

The beaches of my tropical planet Metraxi are famously pink (the photo above is actually of a local beach coloured by the sunset - a fortuitous fluke of conditions and timing!) due to being composed mostly of native corals. Here on Earth, we have white sand beaches also due to coral, but much less glamorously caused by parrot fish eating and pooping out the coral they eat as colourless calcium carbonate! Or the black beaches of Tenerife (basalt from the volcano) or Iceland's magnetite sands (I'm really hoping to visit the famous diamond beach there where chunks of ice shimmer on the black sand). 

The palace on Metraxi visited by my characters is also built of coral. As here, artificial reefs can be started often by sinking man made structures no longer wanted - oil rigs, tanks, concrete building blocks - to help regenerate those destroyed. But on Metraxi, the sunken structures are raised again and the coral carved to make a grand and unique building for their queen.  

So there are certainly enough oddities in nature to create alien worlds and creatures without much of a stretch. Our world is an amazing place with endless variety, and now my children are older and our mortgage paid off, we're hoping to see a bit more of it.