Though it started a bit slow, Star Wars Outlaws (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC) was one of last year’s better games.
And now the third-person action / adventure game is getting even better (though only slightly) thanks to A Pirate’s Fortune, an add-on for Outlaws that gives our gal Kay Vess more to do.
Five years ago, author Matt Dinniman launched his science fiction / fantasy / LitRPG series Dungeon Crawler Carl when he self-published the titular first novel…and quickly caught the attention of fans of LitRPG stories. Which, in turn, caught the attention of Ace Books, who started reprinting these novels in 2024.
With the sixth book, The Eye Of The Bedlam Bride, newly available from Ace in hardcover — just weeks after reissuing the fourth [The Gate Of The Feral Gods] and fifth [The Butcher’s Masquerade] — I spoke to Dinniman via email to talk about both this series and Bedlam Bride.
While some writers hate equating their stories with specific genres, author Valkyrie Loughcrewe is taking a different approach by classifying their new novella Puppet’s Banquet (paperback, Kindle) with their own genre: “diseased Gothic.”
To find out what they mean, and what inspired and influenced this story, check out the following email interview.
In the first Avengers movie, Nick Fury asks a member of the Security Council, “You ever been in a war, councilman? In a fire fight? Did you feel an overabundance of control?” It’s a line that kept repeating in my head as I played — or maybe survived is a better word — DOOM: The Dark Ages (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC), a ridiculously frantic but also ridiculously fun horror- and fantasy-infused science fiction first-person shooter.
And while yes, you can say the same about 2016’s DOOM and 2020’s DOOM Eternal (and the best Call Of Duty games, the Gears Of War series, the Halo games…), there are things about DOOM: The Dark Ages that make it especially unhinged and, well, out of control.
On her website, Sylvie Cathrall identifies herself as a “romantic fantasy author.”
But while the two novels that comprise her Sunken Archive duology are romantic and fantastical — and other things — the central relationships in them are not between lovers, but two sets of siblings.
And no, these stories don’t get all Game Of Thrones-y.
In the following email interview about the second book, A Letter From The Lonesome Shore (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), Cathrall talks about what inspired and influenced this novel, as well as how it completes the story she started in the first, A Letter To The Luminous Deep.
Given what’s going on with the world, you might think this would be a bad time to offer sanctuary to a stranger, even if they have a child with them.
But that’s exactly what Charlie does in Christopher Golden’s new folk horror thriller novel The Night Birds (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook).
And yeah, it ends up being a bad time. It’s a horror novel; not a warm and fuzzy novel.
In the following email interview, Golden discusses what inspired and influenced this horror story.
For the last three years, fans of steampunk culture have gathered just north of Baltimore, Maryland, for The Tell-Tale Steampunk Festival, which has panel discussions, authors, and something called “Tea Dueling.”
The gathering also comes with a short story anthology from the good people at eSpec Books.
In the following email interview, eSpec’s Danielle Ackley-McPhail, who edits these anthologies, talks about what went into this year’s volume, An Assembly Of Monsters (paperback, Kindle).
After writing ten books in her Provincetown Mysteries series, author Jeannette de Beauvoir is going international with a new series, the Abbie Bradford Mysteries, which she’s kicking off with The Everest Enigma (paperback, Kindle).
In the following email interview, de Beauvoir talks about what inspired and influenced both this new novel and this new series.