As someone who’s been writing for many years, iconic horror and weird fiction author Lisa Tuttle’s influences are pretty well ingrained at this point. But that doesn’t mean she’s not still affected by other writers. In the following email interview about her new short story collection, Riding The Nightmare (hardcover, paperback, Kindle), Tuttle explains how several of these stories were written in response to other people’s tales.
Having written a four book series (the Nanshe Chronicles series), a six book series (the Bulari Saga series), and From Earth And Bone, the first installment of the new Ramos Sisters series, writer Jessie Kwak is going in a completely different direction — or dimension, as the case may be — with her new book, a sci-fi novelette called After The Tide (paperback, Kindle). In the following email interview, Kwak discusses what inspired and influenced this short story.
In eSpec Books’ Systema Paradoxa series, writers tell stories about different cryptids that exist in myths and legends and maybe your backyard. But unlike some of them, the cryptids in Ken Schrader’s contribution, Crimson Whisper (paperback, Kindle), are not the monsters they might seem to be. I’ll let Schrader explain in the following email interview.
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.