When writing a trilogy, it’s easy to forget that the middle book needs to add something to the story, not just the thing that connects the beginning of the end.
It’s something writer Marina Lostetter clearly thought about while writing her fantasy with a dash of horror novel The Cage Of Dark Hours (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), the middle piece of The Five Penalties trilogy…or the following email interview about it.
One of the great things about science fiction is that you can use to explore issues that mean a lot to you. It’s what writer Al Hess did in his cyberpunk / decopunk / gay romance / cozy post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel World Running Down (paperback, Kindle). In the following email interview, Hess discusses what inspired and influenced this meaningful story.
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” And sometimes an equally epic story begins with a single image. Take Jean Louise’s fantasy novel Waking Fire (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook). In the following email interview, she discusses what inspired and influenced this story — the first in a duology — including the single image that began this journey.
With Meru (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) writer S.B. Divya is launching a new sci-fi space opera series called The Alloy Era. In the following email interview, Divya discusses what inspired and influenced this series, as well as why the Era series will be more like Ian M. Banks’ Culture novels than a multi-book saga or the ongoing adventures of a single hero.
If you’ve ever watched a reality show about ghosts, you’ve probably muttered to yourself, “That’s so fake.” But what if they weren’t; what if the ghost someone was hunting…was real. Even cooler, what if you learned that through journal entries, transcripts, and other forms of written expresion. That’s what writer Craig DiLouie set out to do in his new ghost story horror novel Episode Thirteen (paperback, Kindle, audiobook). In the following email interview, DiLouie discusses what inspired and influenced both this scary story and how he chose to tell it.
Sometimes called the Abominable Snowman, occasionally mistaken for Bigfoot, and still suing the makers of coolers for copyright infringement, the yeti is a simian-like humanoid who lives in the mountains of Asia.
Well, usually.
In Aaron Rosenberg’s comedic urban fantasy novel Yeti Left Home (paperback, Kindle), he lives in the wilderness of Minnesota until he’s forced to move to the Twin Cities.
In the following email interview, Rosenberg discusses what inspired and influenced this furry fish out of water story.
To some, Shakespeare and science fiction must seem like strange bedfellows. And yet, they’ve come together on more than one occasion: from Isaac Asimov’s classic story “The Immortal Bard” (available in The Complete Stories, Vol. 1) to the movies Forbidden Planet and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. The latest of which is Hamlet, Prince Of Robots (hardcover, Kindle), a retelling of Shakespeare’s titular play by writer M. Darusha Wehm. In the following email interview, Wehm discusses what prompted them to write this tale, as well as who — aside from The Bard — influenced it.
During the Covid pandemic, a lot of people felt trapped at home, even though they could leave to, say, go to the supermarket. But imagine if you couldn’t leave? Or worse, if you needed to leave but couldn’t? That, writer C.J. Tudor says in the following email interview, was “…the final piece of the puzzle” in cracking her new thriller The Drift (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook). Or, as she calls it, her new chiller.