We’ve all heard the cliche about how real life is stranger than fiction. But if it’s true, where does that put fiction that’s based on real life? It’s a question I pondered, to no avail, after interviewing writer Andrew Hilleman about his new novel World, Chase Me Down (paperback, digital), a fascinating and fictionalized account of a kidnapping that took place in 1900.
Tag: Author Interviews
While science fiction is often set in the future or some other version of our world, these stories are often really about issues from our time, from our reality. Sure, the original Star Trek was set in space…the final frontier, but it still explored contemporary problems from our world, including racism and the cost of war. It’s a tradition being continued by writer Joe M McDermott with his new military sci-fi novel, The Fortress At The End Of Time (paperback, digital), a book, he explains below, came from something he saw his family going through.
Two years ago, when I sat down to read Nick Cutter’s second novel, The Deep, I thought it was going to be a weird little sci-fi tale. It ended up being one of my favorite books of that year, one that kept me awake deep into the night so I could read the last hundred pages and figure out what the hell was going on (that I was also really freaked out and couldn’t sleep had nothing to do with it, no, no, no). With Cutter now releasing his third book, Little Heaven (hardcover, digital), I had to ask him what it was all about so I could plan my sleep schedule accordingly.
Yes, it’s a cliche, but sometimes it’s true that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Take the novels of writer James A Moore. Though he got his start writing such horror stories as Blood Red and Under The Overtree, he’s since expanded into the fantasy realm, first with his Seven Forges novels, and now with his new Tides Of War trilogy, which he just kicked off with his new novel The Last Sacrifice (paperback, digital). Though in talking to him about this dark fantasy novel, it’s clear he’s not just swapped one genre for another.
When done right, a novel creates a vivid world that jumps off the pages. But in their fantasy novel Between Worlds (hardcover, digital), writer Skip Brittenham and artists Brian Haberlin, Jay Anacleto, and Doug Siros don’t just do this with words and full color illustrations. The thirteen images in the book actually interact with a free app for iOS and Android, turning the cover and the illustrations into 3D images you can interact with, as well as use for magic training so you can learn to battle Monga. It’s rather trippy how well it works. Though as I learned when I spoke to Skip and Brian about the book, the illustrations, and the interactivity, call the latter two elements an augmentation of the former isn’t quite right.
According to cliché, you’re not supposed to count your chickens before they hatch. It’s something someone should’ve told actor Rajiv Surendra (Mean Girls), who so identified with the lead character in Yann Martel’s novel Life Of Pi that he thought it was his destiny to play that part in Ang Lee’s movie adaptation. Unfortunately, no one told Lee, who cast someone else. But as Surendra has apparently learned from another cliché, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Which is what he’s done with his new memoir The Elephants In My Backyard (hardcover, digital). Though as he admitted in the following interview, it actually wasn’t his idea to make lemonade.
One of the ironies of our social media-obsessed/broadcast everything culture is that most people actually lead rather dull lives. “Birth, School, Work, Death” as The Godfathers used to sing. But that’s not true for Dan Ryckert, a game journalist for Giant Bomb, published author and memoirist, wrestling manager, “two-time Guinness World Record holder,” and all-around character (something, as a fellow game journalist, I can attest to). Which is why I was interested in talking to him about his latest memoir, The Dumbest Kid In Gifted Class (digital; paperback forthcoming), a collection of true tales from what has clearly been an odd life.
In novels about aliens making first contact with humanity, usually one of two things happen. First, the aliens enslave humanity, and we fight back. Or, the aliens become our friends and we still fight back because sometimes humans can be real dicks. But in Rick Wilber’s new novel, Alien Morning (hardcover, paperback), he puts this trope for a tailspin by including some alien-on-alien violence, alien economic policies, and a new kind of social media that carry it all out.
In America, most of the movies, novels, and comics about the Vietnam War are told from the perspective of the American soldiers. But in his autobiographical graphic novel Such A Lovely Little War: Saigon 1961-63 (paperback, digital), writer and artist Marcelino Truong explores what it was like for the local Vietnamese people during the two years when President Kennedy escalated the U.S.’s involvement in the conflict.