Sleep is essential for a happy and healthy life.
But try telling that to Bill Bowers, who’s put together a collection of classic horror stories he calls Tales Of Horror: Terrifying Stories To Keep You Awake Past Midnight (paperback, Kindle).
Though as he explains in the following email interview, his objective with Tales was not to ruin your day…or your night.
As a child of suburbia myself, I agree with author Gwendolyn Kiste who — in the following email interview about her new novel The Haunting Of Velkwood (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook) — says, “There’s something so strange and haunted about suburbia.”
But that’s not all she has to say about this horror novel, which has, “…a few doses of other genres thrown in for good measure.”
Don’t you hate it when you’re wrongly convicted and sent to space prison, only to have your escape plans altered by zombies?
While this has happened to most of us, it can still be interesting to read how other people handled this predicament.
Which brings me to author S.A. Sidor, who, in the following email interview about his new zombie-infested space prison novel Zombicide Invader: Death System (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), explains what inspired and influenced this sci-fi horror story, as well as how it connects to both the titular board game and the other novels its inspired.
You can’t have a story these days, in any medium, that’s about a pandemic without someone assuming it’s all about Covid.
But while Sunny Moraine does say Covid was the “immediate inspiration” for the short story they turned into their horror novella Your Shadow Half Remains (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), in the following email interview, they explain how it’s more about things they’ve been writing about for years.
In many haunted house stories, characters who get a good look at the house in question are often surprised it’s haunted…but really? I mean, it’s dark and foreboding and covered in spider webs, what do you expect?
But in the following email interview with author Christopher Golden about his haunted house novel The House Of Last Resort (paperback, hardcover, Kindle), he makes it sound as if it takes place in a very nice house, one that couldn’t possibly he haunted…or have spiders.
As you can tell from the full title, Joel McKay’s first collection of short stories, It Came From The Trees And Other Violent Aberrations (paperback, Kindle), is obviously a collection of warm and fuzzy fairy tales for little kids.
And if you believe that, I have a very nice bridge in Brooklyn available for a low, low price.
In the following email interview, McKay discusses what went into this story collection, which includes a science fiction thriller, a grimdark fantasy story, and a Lovecraftian adventure tale.
Edward Willett is clearly a lazy person. Sure, he’s a writer, runs Shadowpaw Press, and hosts The Worldshapers podcast. But what has he done lately?
Well, the answer to that is Shapers Of Worlds Volume IV (hardcover, paperback, Kindle), an anthology of science fiction and fantasy short stories by writers who’ve appeared on The Worldshapers.
In the following email interview, Willett discusses how this series got started, and what went into this fourth volume.
Of the many fears looming over our heads these days (and man, it seems like there’s a lot), none seems to loom as large, but also so abstractly, as the potential military conflict with China.
But for people who can’t wait — and who want it to be, well, weird — there’s the new alternative history / military science fiction anthology Weird World War: China (paperback, Kindle), the follow-up to 2020’s Weird World War III and 2022’s Weird World War IV.
In the following email interview, Weird World War: China editor Sean Patrick Hazlett discusses what went into assembling this short story collection.
There are no set rules when it comes to geographically based short story anthologies. Some editors impose strict guidelines; others take a broader approach. But while their reasoning can be as varied as the selections in their collections, they often have to do with the realities of publishing: page count, budgets, and so on.
But in the following email interview with Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, co-editor of The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2022 (paperback, Kindle), he explains why he and his co-editors Eugen Bacon and Milton Davis favored a broader approach, and not just in terms of the geography but also the genres and formats as well: “Because unity is what I believe Africans need most.”