As a scientist, it’s not surprising that writer Premee Mohammed would write a story about an apocalypse that’s both environmental and biological in nature.
It’s also not surprising that, as she admits in the following email interview about her post-apocalyptic sci-fi novella The Annual Migration Of Clouds (paperback, Kindle), she sometimes found her writer’s instincts running up against her scientific ones.
People have long speculated how a third World War might start and play out. But in the alt-history military sci-fi short story anthology Weird World War III, we got to see what might happen if things got, well, you know. With this collection newly available in mass market paperback (it was originally released as a trade paperback and on Kindle last year), I decided to get weird with its editor, Sean Patrick Hazlett, for the following email interview.
In the twenty years since she released her hard sci-fi novel In The Company Of Others, Julie E. Czerneda has written more than a dozen novels, novellas, and short stories. But in the following email interview about the 20th Anniversary Edition of In The Company Of Others (paperback), she not only discusses what originally inspired and influenced this story, but how it influenced what came afterwards as well.
While surrealism works well in such visual mediums as painting and film, it’s a bit trickier to pull off in print, especially prose. But if anyone can pull it off, it’s writer Lavie Tidhar, who — in the following email interview — describes his new sci-fi / fantasy / what-have-you mash-up novel The Escapement (paperback, Kindle) in terms art critics might appreciate.
Usually when you ask the writer of an epic fantasy novel who influenced their tale, they’ll mention J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, and other people with a bunch of initials in their name. But in the following email interview with writer Mike Brooks, author of the epic fantasy novel The Splinter King (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) — which is the second book in The God-King Chronicles trilogy after The Black Coast — he doesn’t cite a person but a place…and not one from another fantasy novel, either.
The phrase “witch hunt” is used a lot these days, often by people who don’t understand that it only applies if the people being hunted aren’t actually witches (or, in the case of the current mis-users, actually criminals, bigots, or just generally bad people). But what if the Salem Witch Trials actually did involve real witches? Such is the idea behind Brom’s new illustrated horror-infused fantasy novel Slewfoot (hardcover, Kindle), which he both wrote and drew. In the following email interview, Brom explains what inspired and influenced this story, as well as why it comes fully visualized.
At a time when people refuse to believe in science, facts, reason, or the experts, a new book by science writer Mary Roach is just what her fans need right now. Especially since her newest, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks The Law (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook) seems like it could be her funniest one yet. But as she explains in the following interview, while Fuzz has her usual mix of information, insight, and humorous observations, it’s not like watching videos of bear stealing food.
While reading fiction can take you places you might never imagine, the same can also be true of writing it, professionally-speaking. Take author E. Lockhart, whose work as a novelist led her to write Whistle: A New Gotham City Hero (paperback, Kindle), in which she not only introduces a new superhero, but — in a case of turnabout being fair play — also introduces a super sidekick with literary roots of her own.