Meanwhile, in Aus

Most of the settings in Aberrant Selected are set in the fictional land of Aus, Australia in a parallel Universe. I decided several years ago to set all of my fiction in this fictional land because it is both very close and very far. It is very close in that I have complete control over its landscape, but very far in that it shares some of the same unbending rules as Australia; the speed of light, for instance, is the same in both Aus and Australia. But the central reason I have chosen this setting is that in case there are any errors in the text, be it scientific, logical, historical, etc, then the seeming error can be explained away as a property of this fictional land.
     That being said, there is very little description of this fictional landscape, preferring instead to concentrate on the emotional landscapes of the characters in the stories. And what descriptions of places there are tend to be located to inner city Sydney where I lived during most of my twenties (am currently in my forties.) Some of these inner city suburbs are spelled slightly differently from the real locations. And speaking of 'emotional landscapes,' my characters are also very, very rarely physically described. This is for the simple reason that I have always found character descriptions intrusive, tending to quickly read over them. One of the things I don't like about Dickens is his tendency to describe his characters right down to the size of their pores. Very annoying. This sparsity of description does not seem to have impacted on the quality of my tales for the common refrain from reviewers for my published novel, This Mirror in Me, is that the characterisation is excellent and all of the characters are well drawn. You can read the reviews on the Amazon site.
     Lastly, I plan to continue setting my fiction in Aus, both for the fact that it can explain away any textual errors, and as a response to the real Australia. I very much enjoy living here and this, I hope, is expressed in my tales. It also provides a high element of certainty and familiarity to my literature.  Vive la difference!