When you refer to yourself as a “cheerful Goth,” you probably like to keep people guessing.
Which seems to be what writer Angela Sylvaine is doing in her first collection of short stories, The Dead Spot: Stories Of Lost Girls (paperback, Kindle).
In the following email interview, Sylvaine discusses how this collection came together, as well as what inspired and influenced the stories in it.
Like many of the authors who’ve penned installments of eSpec Book’s Systema Paradoxa series, Bjorn Hasseler chose to tell the story of a cryptid near and dear to his heart…er, home.
Though as he explains in the following email interview about his contribution, Hidden Fury (paperback, Kindle), it was also strongly influenced by something else he sees at home…on his TV.
While virtual reality doesn’t count as reality, yet, it someday might.
Which brings me to Keith Anthony Baird’s new dystopian / cyberpunk science fiction / urban fantasy novella SIN:THETICA (paperback, Kindle), in which a bounty hunter has to hunt his bounty in VR.
In the following email interview, Baird discusses what inspired and influenced this story.
With Cath Laura’s new romantic cosmic horror novel Call Of Cthulhu: Secrets & Sacrifices (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), the good people at Aconynte Books are kicking off a new series, one connected to Chaosium’s table-top role-playing game Call Of Cthulhu.
In the following email interview, Lauria discusses what inspired and influenced this story, as well as how it connects to the game.
In her ongoing series The Singing Hills Cycle, author Nghi Vo has sent the Cleric Chih on some engaging, and often cozy, fantasy adventures.
But as Vo explains in the following email interview about the newest novella in this series, The Bridges Of High Hill (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), this time around, Chih is kind of screwed.
Having a character be a liar is a common tactic in stories.
But Johanna van Veen explains in the following email interview about her new novel My Darling Dreadful Thing (paperback, Kindle), this sapphic Gothic horror / historical fiction story really came together when she decided that a character wasn’t lying…
Back in the day, when I wrote poems, it was always as a catharsis, a way of dealing with something.
Which is what drew me to The Blue Mimes (paperback, Kindle), the new poetry collection by Sara Daniele Rivera, in which she’s dealing with something as well.
In the following email interview, Rivera discusses that something, as well as what influenced how she wrote them.
When working on a story, writers will sometimes figure out the character’s back story as a way of determining what that character will do, and why.
Though in the following email interview with author Tim Akers about The Eccentrics (paperback, Kindle), the third book of his urban fantasy series Knight Watch, he explains that the idea for this book, and the one that preceded it, Valhellions, were actually conceived of us as the backstories for the series’ titular first installment.
In the following email interview about her novel The Last Phi Hunter (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), writer Salinee Goldenberg discusses why this is more of a dark fantasy story than a silkpunk one…but then adds, “Sadly, I didn’t realize dark fantasy was used a lot to describe kinda toxic romance with fantasy elements. Oops.”