We live in a time when not being truthful can be really harmful. Which makes Chelsea Sedoti’s new novel It Came From The Sky (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook) — in which two guys fake an alien invasion — seem all the more relevant. In the following email interview, Sedoti discusses what inspired and influenced this story, as well as why old adults might enjoy this young adult novel.
While zombies are all over the place these days, their stories are often hijacked by those pesky humans who won’t stand still long enough to be eaten. But that’s not the case with Alice James’ Grave Secrets (paperback, Kindle), the first book of The Lavington Windsor Mysteries series. In the following email interview about it, James discusses what inspired and influenced this comedic horror-adjacent fantasy tale about necromancers, vampires, and yes, the living impaired.
In her post-apocalyptic viral outbreak sci-fi series Road To Nowhere, author Meg Elison wrote about something we all hope never happens. It’s a similar approach she’s taken for her but decidedly un-sci-fi novel Find Layla (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), a real-world tale of bullying and extreme poverty. In the following email interview, Elison wrote about what inspired and influenced this sadly all-too-true tale.
Regrets, I’ve had a few. But none of them involve not going on a magical adventure when I was eleven. Maybe when I was six, seven tops, not eleven. But not taking the road not taken is exactly what Zach regrets in Erin Morgenstern’s magical fantasy novel The Starless Sea (paperback Kindle, audiobook). With the book newly released in paperback, I spoke with Erin via email about what inspired and influenced this story, and some of it, I must warn you, got a little cute.
Unless you really want to make movies yourself, going to film school is expensive, time consuming, and, at times, rather technical. But in his numerous making-of books, writer J.W. Rinzler has made it sound like making movies is, well, expensive, time consuming, rather technical, but also really fun to read about. In the following email interview, Rinzler discusses his newest, The Making Of Aliens (hardcover), about James Cameron’s 1986 sci-fi sequel, as well as All Up (hardcover, Kindle), his new historical UFO novel.
Like in a lot of video games, the co-operative “Escape” mode in last year’s Gears 5 added some colorful characters to the sci-fi shooting series. Now players of that game, and “Escape” mode, can learn more about those characters in Gears Of War: Hivebusters (paperback, Kindle), which collects the five-issue miniseries (and which also, in the first edition, comes with a code for the “Mechanic Mac” character skin and a Hivebusters banner). In the following email interview, Weibe explains what went into writing this comic, including how his work on the game itself influenced its story.
In Ted Hughes’ classic 1968 novel The Iron Giant, and the equally classic 1999 animated movie it inspired, a young boy has a giant robot for a best friend. But in her new novel The Mother Code (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), writer Carole Stivers takes a different approach to this protector / protectee relationship by making the mecha a mommy. In the following email interview, Stivers explains what inspired and influenced this sci-fi novel, including how her advanced degrees helped shape this story.
Having already put us through a deadly flu outbreak in his novel The Extinction Agenda, writer Michael Laurence is now setting a psychotic nerve agent-lover against us in the sequel, The Annihilation Protocol (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook). In the following email interview about it, Laurence discusses how these stories connect and where his hero might go next…assuming the dogs don’t get in the way.
With The Memory Of Souls (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), writer Jenn Lyons has reached the halfway point of her epic fantasy pentalogy, A Chorus Of Dragons. In the following email interview, she discusses what inspired and influenced this third part of five, and what she’s thinking of calling the last two parts.