Like other writers, Temi Oh has been fascinated by a myth. Specifically, the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. But unlike other writers who have chosen to put their own spin on a myth, Oh (as she says in the following email interview), “… also wanted to write a book that was informed by my background in neuroscience.” The result is More Perfect (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), a sci-fi retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice.
Despite what the title might suggest, Honey Watson’s Lessons In Birdwatching (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) is not an instruction manual. And despite what the novel’s set-up might suggest, it’s not just a sci-fi novel.
As Watson herself says in the following email interview, “Birdwatching is a science-fiction story that doesn’t care that it ought to be.” As for what else it is, and isn’t, and what else Watson has to say about it, well, this interview won’t read itself…
Having read nearly all of the novels based on the Halo games, and having interviewed many of the people who’ve written them, I’ve always thought of these books (and the games, and the comics…) as sci-fi space opera stories. But in the following email interview with Troy Denning, the author of seven Halo novels — including the newest, Halo: Outcasts (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) — he explains why these books (and games, and comics…) are more hard science fiction and space marine stories than anything operatic.
Like any technology, YouTube can be a source of great joy or great evil; it depends on who’s wielding it. Which is why, like any technology, someone has written a horror story about it. Or, in this case, “someones,” since the story in question — a domestic drama / horror novel called The Handyman Method (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) — has two authors: Nick Cutter (The Deep, The Troop) and Andrew F. Sullivan (The Marigold). In the following email interview, Messrs. Cutter and Sullivan talk about what inspired and influenced this story, as well as how they came to write this together.
The British Museum houses a great many treasures, things that some people would like to steal. (Or steal back as the case may be.) But in his new fantasy novel Shigidi And The Brass Head Of Obalufon (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), writer Wole Talabi doesn’t present the perfect heist, he presents a fantastic one (get it?). In the following email interview, Talabi discusses what inspired and influenced this novel, as well as why it had to be the titular artifact that might get heisted.
When we think of the things that artificial intelligence might do one day, we usually think of self-driving cars, robot maids, and, uh, world domination. But in Aimee Ogden’s noir-adjacent sci-fi mystery novella Emergent Properties (paperback, Kindle), the main character is an A.I. who works as a journalist. In the following email interview, Ogden discusses what inspired and influenced this plausibly futuristic story.
Back in 2021, when the world was young, Jenn Northington co-edited a short story anthology called Sword Stone Table: Old Legends, New Voices, in which contemporary writers put their own spin on the legends of King Arthur and the Knights Of The Round Table. But in her new anthology, Fit For The Gods: Greek Mythology Reimagined (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), Northington and co-editor S. Zainab Williams have gone one step further, assembling a collection of gender-bent, queered, race-bent, and inclusive versions of those classic Greek tales. In the following email interview, Jenn and S. discuss why they took this approach, how this collection came together, and what influence Jenn’s work on Sword had on Gods…and S.
Note: All answers are from both Jenn and S. unless otherwise indicated.
While everyone was saddened by the images that came out of Puerto Rico after Hurricane María made landfall in 2017, writer E.G. Condé was among those who felt it personally, since some of those images included ones of his grandmother’s home. But as horrified as he may have been, as he explains in the following email interview, it also oddly inspired him to write an eco, cli-fi, sci-fi, Taínofuturistic novella called Sordidez (paperback, Kindle).
California is known for sun and fun. But for writer Tim Pratt, it’s also where he conjured an ancient evil. Well, an ancient evil in a story, that is.
Which is just one of the things you’ll learn in the following email interview we did about Pratt’s new supernatural adventure novel, Arkham Horror: The Ravening Deep (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), which is connected to fantasy Flight’s H.P. Lovecraft-inspired card game, Arkham Horror.