Writer David Edison isn’t alone in being influenced by video games. Or Frank Herbert’s Dune. Or Tori Amos. Or anime. But being influenced by all of them…at the same time… In the following email interview, Edison talks about how these influences coalesced into the sci-fi space opera / epic fantasy mash-up that is his second novel, Sandymancer (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook).
In Nghi Vo’s Singing Hills Cycle, a historian cleric named Chih wanders a magical fantasy world strongly influenced by Southeast Asian history.
But in Mammoths At The Gates (hardcover, Kindle, aduiobook), Chih’s feet are taking them back home for the first time in years, only to find that not everything is as they left it. In the following email interview, Vo discusses what inspired and influenced this new novella.
Like Frank L. Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz, C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles Of Narnia series, and Lewis Carrol’s Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Jane Lindskold’s Over Where novels have someone going on an adventure that starts with a single step…through a portal. Though unlike other portal fantasy stories, Lindskold’s has one major difference, as she explains in the following email interview about the third Over Where novel, House Of Rough Diamonds (paperback, Kindle).
When you write a story about a hero named Hanuvar, and set it in the ancient past, you might as well just give him an elephant and a map to the Alps as well.
But I didn’t say stop. Especially not after doing the following email interview with writer Howard Andrew Jones about his sword & sorcery fantasy novel Lord Of A Shattered Land (paperback, hardcover, Kindle), the first installment of a five book series called The Chronicles Of Hanuvar.
In it, he not only discusses what inspired and influenced this epic tale, but also why you won’t have to wait long for the next installment.
What was it that Michael Corleone said in The Godfather, Part III? “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”
It’s a sentiment that Emiko Soong can relate to in Ebony Gate (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), a new urban fantasy novel by writers Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle.
To find out what Emiko was out of, and is now back in, and why — and, y’know, what inspired and influenced this story — check out the following email interview with Julia and Ken.
Sometimes it seems like every fantasy novel is set in modern times, the renaissance, or medieval times, and in places that resemble America or Europe. But in his new historical fantasy novel The Judas Blossom (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), the first book in a trilogy called The Nightingale And The Falcon, writer Stephen Aryan is telling an adventure set in the relatively unexplored realm of 13th century Persia. In the following email interview, Aryan discusses why he set it then, and there, and what else inspired and influenced this story.
With Savage Crowns (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), writer Matt Wallace is concluding the Savage Rebellion trilogy, which he calls “…a self-aware epic fantasy” series. In the following email interview, Wallace discusses what inspired and influenced this final chapter, as well as why, despite the humor and satire in all three books, “I wouldn’t call any of them comedies.”
As I’ve mentioned many times before, and will again, Arthur C. Clarke famously said in his book Profiles Of The Future: An Inquiry Into The Limits Of The Possible that, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” But in Gregory Frost’s sci-fi-infused epic fantasy story Rhymer (hardcover, Kindle) — or is it a fantasy-flavored sci-fi story? — it’s an advanced race that is mistaken for magic creatures. Which is just one of the oddities at work in this story, a fictional take on a real-life prophet who’s Scotland’s answer to Nostradamus. In the following email interview, Frost discusses what inspired and influenced this genre-mashing story, and how it’s the first of three.