On the surface, L.R. Lam’s new epic fantasy / high fantasy / romantasy novel Dragonfall (hardcover, Kindle) seems like it’s all about that hot human-on-dragon action. And it is.
But as she explains in the following email interview, it’s also about false gods hating those who put them on their pedestals.
Two years after releasing his sixth collection of short stories, Shoggoths In Traffic And Other Stories, writer Tobias Buckell is back with his seventh, Zen And The Art Of Starship Maintenance And Other Stories (paperback, Kindle, audiobook). Which might seem quick to some people (and not quick enough to others). But as Buckell explains in the following email interview about Zen, “With hundreds of short stories I’ve published, I’m just trying to get them bundled so readers who want them in one place can get them that way.”
In 2014, writer Christine Norris put a steampunk spin on the classic fairy tale “Cinderella” for her novel A Curse Of Ash And Iron (paperback, Kindle). Now, nearly a decade later, the book is coming back into print, and with a new publisher (eSpec Books). In honor of this, I conducted the following email interview with Norris to find out about how this story originally came to be.
With Spring’s Arcana (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), writer Lilith Saintcrow is kicking off a fantasy duology called The Dead God’s Heart, which she’ll conclude August 8th with the release of The Salt-Black Tree.
In the following email interview, Saintcrow discusses what inspired and influenced this first half, and why it’s a story that had to be told in two.
Like the movies, games, and TV shows, the novels about Spider-Man, Iron Man, and their super friends that are published by Aconyte Books are usually based on, and often connected to, Marvel Comic’s, well, comics. But sometimes the connection isn’t so direct. Take Stuart Moore’s new novel Marvel: Crisis Protocol: Into The Dark Dimension (paperback, Kindle), which is the second he’s written about the comic-inspired miniatures game Marvel: Crisis Protocol. In the following email interview, Moore discusses how this story connects to the games, the comics, and to Carrie Harris’ Marvel: Crisis Protocol novel, Shadow Avengers.
There are a lot of themes around which editors have constructed anthologies of science fiction short stories. Some are the best of a certain year or subgenre, some deal with a common idea, while still others are geographically- or identity based.
But for The Ross 248 Project (paperback, Kindle), co-editors Les Johnson and Ken Roy not only chose a subgenre, and a thematic connection, but all of the stories also share a fictional world. In the following email interview, Les and Ken discuss how this anthology came together.
Set a scary story on a space ship and I’m going to immediately think of Alien and Dead Space. And while I’m not always right in my assumptions, I was when it came to Ness Brown’s sci-fi horror novella The Scourge Between Stars (paperback, Kindle, audiobook).
In the following email interview, Brown discusses what inspired and influenced this scary story…aside from the obvious.
Six years after launching the urban fantasy duology the Unseen World with 2017’s An Unkindness Of Magicians, writer Kat Howard is completing the saga with her new novel, A Sleight Of Shadows (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook). In the following email interview, Howard discusses what inspired and influenced this second half, as well as why it’s the end of the story.
While plenty of people have issues with gentrification and the tearing down of small buildings to make much larger ones, you don’t hear as much about cities themselves getting bigger. Maybe because some of them physically can’t — I’m looking at you, Manhattan — or maybe because it happens so gradually that people don’t have time to notice. But if they could…they might find solace (or maybe ideas) in Phoebe Wagner’s new solarpunk sci-fi novella When We Hold Each Other Up (paperback, Kindle). In the following email interview, Wagner discusses what inspired and influenced this cozy sci-fi story.