Usually when fantasy writers discuss their influences, they mention J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, R.A. Salvatore — y’know, the usual.
But in the following email interview with writer W.A. Simpsons about her post-modern / second world high fantasy novel Tinderbox (hardcover, paperback, Kindle), the person she cites — rather ironically — is someone who didn’t use his initials.
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.
In their new fantasy novella The Bruising Of Qilwa (paperback, Kindle), writer Naseem Jamnia introduces us to the queernormative, Persian-inspired secondary world of Firuz-e Jafari, a nonbinary refugee healer. But as they explain in the following email interview about it, while Qilwa may be your introduction to this fictional space, it’s not the first story they’ve told from there.
With Primeval Fire (hardcover, paperback, Kindle, audiobook), writer C.T. Rwizi is concluding the science fantasy trilogy he began in 2020 with Scarlet Odyssey and continued a year later with Requiem Moon. In the following email interview, he discusses what inspired and influenced this series, and why he doesn’t think they qualify as Afrofuturism or Africanfuturism.
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.
A.C. Wise is not the first author to put her own spin on J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan stories, and she won’t be the last. But as she explains in the following email interview about Hooked (paperback, Kindle), the companion to her previous Peter Pan novel Wendy, Darling, this sequel / prequel / sidequel does have one thing the rest never will: A.C.’s unique perspective.
Whenever a writer creates a fictional universe in which to set multiple stories, those stories are usually connected. But as writer A.G. Slatter says in the following email interview about her horror-infused Gothic fantasy fairy tale Path Of Thorns (paperback, Kindle), while this story takes place geographically near some of her other books, the shared space is often their only connection.
While there have been stories about people traveling back in time for love, usually the connection is a specific person or the traveler’s home or, uh, a mailbox. But in the following email interview, writer Andrea Faye Christians explains why her romantic historical fantasy novel Suspension (paperback) is more about a bridge to the past.
