In the following email interview with author Jacob Holo about his new sci-fi action / adventure novel Freelancers Of Neptune (hardcover, Kindle), he admits coming up with the idea for this space story when he was supposed to be watching his 6.
Category: Books
Writers of fantasy stories are often inspired and influenced by, well, other fantasy stories.
But in the following email interview, author Lynn Buchanan says she was inspired to write her fairy tale-esque adventure fantasy story The Dollmakers (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) by a painting, and influenced in how she wrote it by watching a certain Japanese animation studio’s iconic movies.
It’s not an understatement to say that the 2017 top-down medieval adventure video game 9th Dawn (a.k.a. 9th Dawn: Classic – Clunky Controls Edition) is a cult game. Try googling it; I dare you.
But people who loved that game are in for a treat as it’s not only getting an updated edition this week called 9th Dawn: Remake, it’s also getting a prequel novel called 9th Dawn: The Book Of Nameless, which is available as a PDF in a bundle with the game, and will be released individually as an eBook later this year, and as a limited edition print edition in 2025.
In the following email interview, The Book Of Nameless author L.R. Gaunt discusses what inspired and influenced this prequel novel, while discussing how exactly it connects to the new version of the game.
There’s such a thing as being too clever. Which is what I might’ve said to Cloaked Press editor Andrew M. Ferrell when I realized their series of fantasy short story anthologies, Fall Into Fantasy, usually come out in September, while the companion series, Spring Into SciFi, are typically released…well, you know. Took me a moment, too.
That is, until I read through the following email interview he and I did about Fall Into Fantasy 2024 (paperback, Kindle), in which Ferrell made a point of saying, “…this is a passion for me. I don’t choose my authors based on their marketability or only look for bigger names. … This is an anthology for fantasy lovers curated by a lover of fantasy.”
Given what’s going on with the Israel-Hamas War, and how some people have reacted to it, it would be understandable if the editor of a short story anthology by Palestinian writers said something about how their collection shows that Palestinians are people, too.
But in the following email interview about Thyme Travellers: An Anthology Of Palestinian Speculative Fiction (paperback, Kindle), editor Sonia Sulaiman says that while it features “…writers who identify as Palestinian in the diaspora,” she notes that, “…none of these stories are meant to ‘humanize’ us. We’re already human.”
It’s both a great and terrible time to be an immigrant, no matter what country you’re emigrating to. But it is in great and terrible times that we often get the best art.
In Teresa Wong’s new collection of cartoons, All Our Ordinary Stories (paperback, Kindle), she presents stories about “…my life growing up as a child of Chinese-Canadian immigrants.”
In the following email interview, Wong talks about what inspired and influenced this memoir, as well as whether she’s shown it to her parents yet.
We all deal in grief in our own ways. Some people retreat into themselves, others find solace in a bottle, still others turn to their friends and loved ones for solace.
For cartoonist Sarah Leavitt, the death of her longtime partner Donimo — who had chronic health issues, and chose to end her suffering in April of 2020 — her way of dealing was to write and draw the comics she’s now collected as Something, Not Nothing: A Story Of Grief And Love (paperback, Kindle).
In the following email interview, Leavitt explains what she wrote about in these comics, why she decided to release them for all to see, and whether doing all of this helped her deal with her grief.
They say the third time’s the charm.
But that isn’t the case for the characters in Rumor Has It (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), the third book in author Cat Rambo’s Disco Space Opera series.
As Rambo explains in the following email interview about this hopepunk- and military fantasy-infused science fiction space opera story, “things there don’t go as smoothly as they hoped.”