Sometimes, a story in which people are caught in a catastrophic nature-based calamity is meant simply to entertain.
But sometimes those stories are meant to be cautionary tales with (hopefully) preventative messages. Which is where we find Kate Risse’s new climate fiction novel Inland (paperback, Kindle, audiobook).
In the following email interview about it, Risse not only discusses what inspired and influenced this story, but also why she set it when she did.
There’s been a lot of novels lately that are putting different spins on classic stories. There’s Madeline Miller’s Circe, a retelling of The Odyssey from the perspective of the titular sorceress, while Jennifer Saint’s Ariadne, puts a new spin of the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.
But in Michael J. DeLuca’s surrealist fantasy noir novel The Jaguar Mask (paperback, Kindle), he’s not so much putting a different spin on a Mayan myth as he is imagining what that mythical figure would be up to these days.
In the following email interview, DeLuca discusses where he got the idea for The Jaguar Mask, as well as what influenced how he told this story.
In most trilogies, the Big Bad is usually defeated in the third and final installment, while its impact is often left as an afterthought.
But in Megan E. O’Keefe’s The Devoured Worlds series, the central antagonist was [SPOILER ALERT] beaten in the second book, The Fractured Dark, which meant she could really delve into what happened next in the last book, The Bound Worlds (paperback, Kindle, audiobook).
In the following email interview, O’Keefe explains why she altered the trilogy formula, as well as what else inspired and influenced this horror- and dystopian-infused sci-fi space opera story.
Since 1923, the iconic science fiction / fantasy / horror magazine Weird Tales has presented stories that, as their own website puts it, are “so bizarre and far out, no one else would publish them.”
Well, now they’re doing the same thing with novels, starting with Jonathan Maberry’s deep space cosmic horror novel NecroTek (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook).
In the following email interview, Maberry discusses how this book came to be, what inspired and influenced it, as well as his plans for The NecroTek Series.