It’s hardly surprising that many fantasy writers have played Dungeons & Dragons. Or that D&D has influenced their fantasy stories.
But in the following email interview with author Holly Searcy, she talks about how her high fantasy novel The Shiver Tree (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) wasn’t just written by a D&D player who was influenced by the role-playing adventure game. It actually started out as the backstory to her D&D character.
When fantasy writers talk about the things that influenced their work, they often mention other fantasy stories: The Lord Of The Rings, Game Of Thrones, Harry Potter, and so on.
But in the following email interview about The Legacy Of Arniston House (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), the fourth book in his urban fantasy series Edinburgh Nights, author T.L. Huchu says this novel also takes influence from a video game-inspired TV show of the bloody battle persuasion.
Originally written as an online comic, Purpah’s Suitor Armor is jumping to print with a collection called Suitor Armor, Volume 1 (hardcover, paperback).
In the following email interview, the author and artist talks about what originally inspired this fantasy with romance tale, as well as their plans for Volume 2.
It’s been said that an army travels on their stomach.
But in his new military sci-fi novel Shrouded Loyalties (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), writer Reese Hogan gives us an army that travels on their stomach…through a parallel dimension infested with monsters.
In the following email interview, Hogan discusses what inspired and influenced this story.
It used to be that if someone was murdered in a house, no one would want to live there. And for some people, that’s still true.
But for others, being the site of a gruesome murder is a selling point. Or at least a reason to attend the open house.
It’s the decision to embrace or deny its murderous past that the town on Rainier has to grapple with in author Shelley Burr’s noir murder mystery thriller Murder Town (paperback, Kindle, audiobook). And a decision that the residents have to grapple with further when someone turns up dead.
In the following email interview, Burr discusses what inspired and influenced this murderous story.
We all know the line: “Space…the final frontier.” But with all due respect to Kirk and crew, Star Trek wasn’t about people colonizing other worlds. Sure, they sometimes looked in on them, dropped off supplies, but it was never about how those colonizers got to their new homes.
But that is what you get in the sci-fi space Western short story anthology Last Train Outta Kepler-283c (paperback, Kindle), which, according to editor David Book, features stories “…about colonists, from miners to law keepers to gunslingers, and everything in between.”
In the following email interview, Boop explains how this book and this series — which also includes 2021’s Gunfight On Europa Station and 2023’s High Noon On Proxima B — came to be, and how he finds the stories to fill them.
Over the last fifteen years, author Seb Doubinsky has written ten stand-alone novels in his dystopian noir and more series, the City-States Cycle, including the newest, the sci-fi and espionage-infused The Sum Of All Things (paperback, Kindle).
But while he went into writing The Sum thinking it would also be the end of the story, it seems this series has different ideas.
In the following email interview, Doubinsky talks about why The Sum was going to be the end of the City-States Cycle, why it’s not, and how thinking it would be influenced how he wrote it.
With careers that have included stints working for and with NASA, it’s safe to assume that authors Les Johnson and Travis S. Taylor are no dummies.
Though you could probably also glean that from reading the novels they’ve written, most notably 2021’s hard sci-fi thriller Saving Proxima.
Now the duo have completed a sequel to that sci-fi story, Crisis At Proxima (hardcover, Kindle), which is the second book in a trilogy they call Orion’s Arm.
In the following email interview, Johnson — speaking for himself and Taylor — discusses what inspired and influenced this second story, including how they rectify conflicts between science fact and science fiction.
We all have dreams, some grander than others. I wanted to be Jimmy Page but, alas, that job was taken.
For Pee Wee, one of the main characters in Tracy Cross’ historical fiction horror novella Rootwork, the dream is to be, as Cross puts it, “…the greatest conjure woman ever.”
It’s a dream Pee Wee continues to pursue in Cross’ new novella, A Gathering Of Weapons (paperback, Kindle).
In the following email interview, Cross discusses what inspired and influenced this second installment, as well as her plans to conclude Pee Wee’s quest.