There have been many novels in which someone has forged a friendship with an animal. Jack London’s classic Call Of The Wild comes to mind. But in her fantasy novella Untethered Sky (hardcover, Kindle), writer Fonda Lee takes the nature companionship genre into a different realm by having the befriended animal be a mythical creature. In the following email interview about it, Lee discusses why she went this route, as well as what classic nature novels inspired this story.
Usually, the only time we think a moth is dangerous is when we buy a new sweater. Or we have that dream in which we’re Godzilla. But in Jane Hennigan’s self-published 2021 dystopian post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel Moths, moths aren’t just a threat to comfy clothing and giant lizards, they’re a threat to men everywhere. With a new and slightly reworked version of Moths being released in paperback, Kindle, audiobook, I spoke with Hennigan about what originally inspired and influenced this novel, as well as her plans to continue this story.
There’s been a number of novels that have retold or put a different spin on the legends of King Arthur and the Knights Of The Round Table. And there’s been plenty of stories about supernatural and paranormal detectives. But forgive my ignorance if I’m wrong, but I believe that Jes Battis’ urban fantasy mystery novel The Winter Knight (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) is the first time anyone’s done both, and more, in the same story. In the following email interview, Battis discusses what inspired and influenced his modern medieval mystery.
Read enough murder mysteries, or watch any cop shows or movies, and you’ll inevitably hear a police officer say that the victim, “Never saw it coming.” But what if no one ever saw it coming because they were blinded by the murderer? This is the idea behind Thomas Mullen’s new novel Blind Spots (hardcover, paperback, Kindle, audiobook), in which something caused people all over the world to go blind, and while they’ve since compensated with cybernetic implants, a murdererous hacker is now taking advantage of these devices. In the following email interview with Mullen, he discusses what inspired and influenced this cyberpunk sci-fi noir mystery thriller.
Okay, stay with me. With Escape Orbit (paperback, Kindle), writer Patrick Chiles is presenting the sequel to his 2020 sci-fi novel Frozen Orbit. But he’s also presenting the second installment of a trilogy, which is also the sixth book in a series that started with 2012’s Perigee, then continued with 2015’s Farside and 2022 sci-fi technothriller Frontier…except that the Orbit trilogy are only loosely connected to those other books, and are more straight sci-fi. But don’t worry, in the following email interview about Escape Orbit, we talk about his dogs.
In eSpec Book’s Systema Paradoxa series, different writers have told stories about a wide variety of cryptids. But while I’ve interviewed many of these authors — including, but not limited to, Sean Patrick Hazlett, Mary Fan, and Keith R.A. DeCandido — few seem as tailor made for this series as writer Jorie Rao who admits that “Cryptids are a special interest of mine” in the following email interview about her urban fantasy novella Out For Blood (paperback, Kindle).
There’s a quip people make when they haven’t heard from someone in a while: “You don’t call, you don’t write…”
But imagine if wasn’t a someone, but an entire colony, in deep space, really far from Earth, who were the ones not calling, not writing… Which is the set-up for Paradise-1 (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), David Wellington’s new sci-fi horror novel, and the first book of his Red Space series.
In the following email interview, Wellington discusses what inspired and influenced this story, including how, like the titular colony, it was something of a group effort.
For some readers, the fun of a murder mystery is figuring out who did it. Sorry, whodunnit. But in the following email interview with writer Joan Tierney about her Northeastern Gothic murder mystery novella The Killing Grounds (paperback, Kindle), she admits to turning this whodunnit on its head…and does something similar with the setting.
