There’s a line about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions. It’s a good way to describe the situation that the people in Sharon Shinn’s new novel The Shuddering City (paperback, Kindle) find themselves in, thanks to a well-meaning god. In the following email interview about it, Shinn discusses what inspired and influenced this romantically-tinged fantasy tale.
For the latest novella in their ongoing Systema Paradoxa series about cryptids, eSpec Books have enlisted author Sean Patrick Hazlett to write Hell’s Well (paperback, Kindle). Which, as you’ll quickly realize from reading the following email interview he and I did about this science fiction / borderline cosmic horror story, may have been a mistake…for him.
Stories about space ships getting lost in space are as old as, well, stories about space ships going into space. And yet, there’s still interesting versions of those stories left to tell. In the following email interview with author Julie E. Czerneda, she discusses what inspired and influenced her hard sci-fi novel To Each This World (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), in which, interestingly, some space ships go into space, and some space ships get lost in space.
When it comes to horror stories, we all have tropes we hate. But with the new short story anthology It Was All A Dream: An Anthology Of Bad Horror Tropes Done Right (hardcover, paperback, Kindle), editor Brandon Applegate gave writers the opportunity to explore and redeem their least favorite, and in creative ways. In the following email interview, Applegate discusses how this collection came together, as well as how some of the contributors turned some well-worn ideas into fresh horrors.
With The Quarrygate Gambit (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), writer Marshall Ryan Maresca is presenting the fourth book in his epic urban fantasy series The Streets Of Maradaine…which is also the fifteenth book in The Maradaine Saga…and also the third book of phase two of The Maradaine Saga…
Yeah, it’s confusing to me, too. Good thing Maresca was willing to clear it up — while discussing what inspired and influenced Quarrygate — in the following email interview.
Lavie Tidhar’s new sci-fi novel Neom (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) is set in the same fictional universe as his 2016 novel Central Station and a number of his short stories. Though as he explains in the following email interview, when it comes to enjoying — and understanding — Neom, Central Station is not required reading.
With Nightwatch Over Windscar (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), writer K. Eason isn’t just ending The Weep duology she launched with 2021’s Nightwatch On The Hinterlands, she’s also ending the saga she originally started with her previous duology, The Thorne Chronicles: 2019’s How Rory Thorne Destroyed The Multiverse and 2020’s How The Multiverse Got Its Revenge. In the following email interview, Eason discusses what inspired and influenced this space fantasy horror novel, and why it’s the end of the story.