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  6. Did you interview any real fighter pilots while working on Skyward?

Did you interview any real fighter pilots while working on Skyward?

The pilots were a HUGE help. The biggest issue I had, which was really hard to get through my skull, was the different ways that G-forces interacted with the human body.

I knew the basics, and had flight suits operating correctly and was watching for people pulling too many Gs. But the fighter pilots kept explaining things like “eyes out” and how it wasn’t just number of Gs, it was the direction they were pulling. It wasn’t until I called one of them and had a lengthy conversation that it started to click with me.

From there, some of the direct feelings of pulling Gs–feeling like your skin is sliding off your body, or that you’ve aged a hundred years–I got from them.
As always with a sf/f book, one of my goals is to walk the line between realism and fiction. I tried to make the battles feel real enough to not kick an actual pilot out of the story, but at the same time, I specifically gave the fighters technology that we don’t have, in order to spice up how the combat would work.

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