In his Magicians trilogy, writer Lev Grossman put his own spin on the portal fantasy genre.
And now, with his new epic fantasy novel The Bright Sword (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), Grossman is doing the same — albeit in a very different way — to the legends of King Arthur and the Knights Of The Round Table.
In the following email interview, Grossman discusses what inspired and influenced this story, as well as why it’s about Arty and not some other King.
Plenty of people have written stories in which someone tries to stop World War II by using a time machine.
But in his time travel sci-fi adventure novel To Turn The Tide (hardcover, Kindle), author S.M. Stirling is instead trying to stop World War III, and other terrible things…and thinks sending a college professor and some students back to the time of the Roman Empire is how to do it.
In the following email interview, Stirling talks about what inspired and influenced this novel, as well as his plans for further adventures in the To Make The Darkness Light series.
Most of the time when someone says “suggestions welcome,” they don’t mean it; they’re just being nice.
But apparently the good people at Baen Books are open to your ideas…sort of.
You see, when someone recently suggested they reprint an out-of-print anthology of science fiction short stories about power armor, they decided to instead put together one of their own.
In the following email interview, co-editor David Afsharirad discusses Tomorrow’s Troopers (paperback, Kindle), which collects classic sci-fi and military sci-fi power armor stories by Brandon Sanderson and Ethan Skarstedt, Joe Haldeman, and Harry Harrison, among others, including how he and co-editor Hank Davis (who had to bow out of this interview because of computer problems) picked what stories to include, what subgenres are represented…and whether the person whose suggestion inspired this book got a free copy.
There are a lot of things mercenaries can do when they retire: start their own private military companies; train other mercenaries; ride off into the sunset…
But in Cat Rambo’s sci-fi space opera novel You Sexy Thing, some retired mercs started their own restaurant…only to still get into trouble of the mercenary kind.
Now they’re getting into even more trouble in Devil’s Gun, the second book in Rambo’s Disco Space Opera series. With that book newly released in paperback — and a third, Rumor Has It, coming September 24th — I spoke to Rambo about what inspired and influenced this second story, and this series.
At first, it might seem odd, or just cheeky, that Rae Armantrout has named her new poetry collection Go Figure (hardcover, paperback, Kindle).
But when you get to the point in the following email interview where she explains how she wrote these poems after she started hanging out with some 7-year-old girls…
Not everything fits into a neat little package. Take the story Wen Spencer wanted to tell in her urban fantasy novel Harbinger, which was the sixth book of The Elfhome Series. Despite her best efforts, the story she was trying to tell in Harbinger couldn’t physically fit into one book, so she split off the second half, which has just been released as Storm Furies (hardcover, Kindle).
In the following email interview, Spencer talks about what inspired and influenced Storm Furies, as well as how the split came about, and how she originally wanted to call this second book Harbinger Book Two.
Sometimes, a story in which people are caught in a catastrophic nature-based calamity is meant simply to entertain.
But sometimes those stories are meant to be cautionary tales with (hopefully) preventative messages. Which is where we find Kate Risse’s new climate fiction novel Inland (paperback, Kindle, audiobook).
In the following email interview about it, Risse not only discusses what inspired and influenced this story, but also why she set it when she did.
There’s been a lot of novels lately that are putting different spins on classic stories. There’s Madeline Miller’s Circe, a retelling of The Odyssey from the perspective of the titular sorceress, while Jennifer Saint’s Ariadne, puts a new spin of the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.
But in Michael J. DeLuca’s surrealist fantasy noir novel The Jaguar Mask (paperback, Kindle), he’s not so much putting a different spin on a Mayan myth as he is imagining what that mythical figure would be up to these days.
In the following email interview, DeLuca discusses where he got the idea for The Jaguar Mask, as well as what influenced how he told this story.
While DC and Marvel did it first, Star Trek was an early pioneer when it came to having a shared universe. For instance, when Star Trek: Deep Space Nine launched in 1993, it did so with an appearance from Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Captain Picard, while the latter show’s Worf joined the former station’s staff in DS9‘s fourth season.
Now the connections between TNG and DS9 are being strengthened by Dayton Ward’s new Star Trek novel Star Trek: The Next Generation: Pliable Truths (paperback, Kindle, audiobook).
In the following email interview, Ward explains how this crossover novel came together, as well as why it doesn’t also connect with a certain Captain’s late-in-life adventures.