In her ongoing series The Singing Hills Cycle, author Nghi Vo has sent the Cleric Chih on some engaging, and often cozy, fantasy adventures.
But as Vo explains in the following email interview about the newest novella in this series, The Bridges Of High Hill (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), this time around, Chih is kind of screwed.
Having a character be a liar is a common tactic in stories.
But Johanna van Veen explains in the following email interview about her new novel My Darling Dreadful Thing (paperback, Kindle), this sapphic Gothic horror / historical fiction story really came together when she decided that a character wasn’t lying…
When working on a story, writers will sometimes figure out the character’s back story as a way of determining what that character will do, and why.
Though in the following email interview with author Tim Akers about The Eccentrics (paperback, Kindle), the third book of his urban fantasy series Knight Watch, he explains that the idea for this book, and the one that preceded it, Valhellions, were actually conceived of us as the backstories for the series’ titular first installment.
In the following email interview about her novel The Last Phi Hunter (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), writer Salinee Goldenberg discusses why this is more of a dark fantasy story than a silkpunk one…but then adds, “Sadly, I didn’t realize dark fantasy was used a lot to describe kinda toxic romance with fantasy elements. Oops.”
In the following email interview about her new novel The Sins On Their Bones (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), writer Laura R. Samotin talks about how not seeing someone like her in fantasy stories led her to write this queer, Jewish, dark fantasy novel with a heavy romantic subplot, which is the first of a two-parter.
If you’ve ever eaten Mexican food or Italian food or, really, more than one dish from any country or region’s dinner menu, you know that people can use the same or similar ingredients but end up with something very different.
Which brings me to Simon R. Green’s Jekyll & Hyde Inc. series, in which monsters fight aliens. Which would seem to occupy a similar territory as Green’s Ishmael Jones novels, in which an alien fights monsters.
But as Green explains in the following email interview about Hyde & Seek (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), the second book after 2021’s Jekyll & Hyde Inc., it’s not just who’s on which side that’s different in this sci-fi / fantasy / horror / mystery mash-up.
With Zombicide: Black Plague: City Of The Undead (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), writer C.L. Werner is concluding his series of medieval fantasy novels inspired by the zombie board game Zombicide: Black Plague.
In the following email interview, Werner discusses what inspired and influenced this supernaturally scary story, as well as why it’s the end of this saga.
We’ve all done dumb things in the pursuit of love.
But what’s terrible in real life can often be good in fantasy. Or, in the case of author Samantha Mills and her new novel The Wings Upon Her Back (paperback, Kindle), secondary world fantasy / science fantasy.
In the following email interview, Mills discusses the kind of trauma that inspired Back, as well as the things that influenced this story.
When we think of fairies, we typically think of someone like Tinkerbell, some little sprite who’s friendly but maybe a little feisty as well.
But in his new novel of magical realism, The Miraculous Life Of Rupert Rocket (paperback, Kindle), writer Mark Salzwedel has instead opted for a fairy of the Irish isles, who are known for being financially motivated.
In the following email interview, Salzwedel discusses what inspired and influenced this story, as well as why he had the fairies be Irish as opposed to from some other magical land.