Games don’t exist in a vacuum. If you make games, the games you make will be influenced by the games you’ve played. The trick is to put your own unique spin on things.
It’s what the good people at Compulsion Games have done with their third-person action game South Of Midnight (Xbox Series X|S, PC), which is like Shadow Of The Tomb Raider…but only if Lara Croft was a Jedi who lived in a Southern Gothic world of magical realism.
So, y’know, not all that Tomb Raider-y after all.
When we think of The Grim Reaper, we usually think of a man in a hooded cloak with a scythe and no sense of humor.
But in author Maxie Dara’s novel A Grim Reaper’s Guide To Catching A Killer (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) — which she calls a “cozy mystery against a magical realism backdrop” — there’s more than one soul catcher, and one of them is named Kathy. Yeah.
In the following email interview, Dara talks about what inspired and influenced this novel, as well as the series it kicks off, the S.C.Y.T.H.E. Mystery Series.
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.
These are serious times. And in serious times, it’s important to take things seriously. Well, when they’re things that should be taken seriously, that is. When it’s a book about unicorns and aliens, well… In the following email interview, writer Keith Rosson seriously answers my questions about his sci-fi / cosmic horror / magically realistic novel, Road Seven (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), which has both a very serious-looking unicorn and a very serious-looking space ship right on the cover.
While Jessica Reisman has been writing short stories for decades, she’s only now having them collected in a handy, take-home package, The Arcana Of Maps & Other Stories (paperback, Kindle). In the following email interview, Reisman talks about what inspired and influenced these stories, as well as how they relate to her novels.
