We’ve all wondered what it would be like if we could change shape like Odo in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine or Loki in the Marvel movies. But in the following email interview with author Suzan Palumbo about her new short story collection, Skin Thief (paperback), she confesses that her writing so much about “…queer women who were shapeshifters…” made her think she might be, “…working out some unresolved issues.”
When talking about whether the idea for a book is good or not, we usually lay all the blame at the feet of the writer. But like movies, cakes, and cars, books aren’t just made by one person. It’s something I thought about while doing the following email interview with writer Premee Mohamed about her first short story collection, No One Will Come Back For Us And Other Stories (paperback, Kindle), in which she credits the book’s editor and publisher with making it good as well as possible.
Six years ago, the staff of Apex Magazine chronicled their finest fictional moments in the anthology The Best of Apex Magazine: Volume 1. But in the new book, Apex Magazine 2021 (paperback, Kindle), they’ve taken a different approach by collecting all of the original sci-fi, fantasy, and horror stories they published in the titular year. In the following email interview, 2021 co-editor Lesley Conner discusses the decisions that went into making this anthology.
While abuse can take many forms, one commonality is that it can help if you share your feelings with someone who has suffered similarly. It’s what draws together the two participants of Martha Anne Toll’s dark fantasy romance novel Three Muses (paperback, Kindle, audiobook). In the following email interview, Toll discusses what inspired and influenced this novel, as well as why you shouldn’t let the genres listed limit your expectations of this story.
When the show Lucifer premiered on Fox, some complained that the titular demon was too suave and good looking. As if Satan would try to seduce people to the dark side by looking like a fat slob on laundry day. But while J.P. Jackson’s dark LGBTQ+ urban fantasy novella Devil’s Due (paperback, Kindle) is also about a good looking demon, and is influenced by Lucifer, in the following email interview, Jackson say his story owes more to a different supernatural show.
Don’t you hate it when you get hired to be the enforcer for the ruler of a corrupt city-state, but the new job requires you to have magic that’s flesh binding, and will thus kill you if you do anything wrong? Yeah, me too. But while this makes me glad I’m not Ig, the main character in Clay Harmon’s new dark fantasy novel Flames Of Mira (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), it does, as they say, make for good readin’. And not just of the following email interview Clay and I did about Mira.