With The Last Days Of Hong Kong (paperback, Kindle), writer G.D. Penman is concluding the Witch Of Empire trilogy they started in 2017 with The Year Of The Knife, and continued in 2020 with The Wounded Ones. In the following email interview, Penman discusses what influenced this noir hardboiled detective urban fantasy mystery, how it connects to the second installment, as well as why you should never leave your cats alone. Ever. Not even for a minute.
If things continue the way they have been, we will one day be living in underwater homes. Which also means someone will be murdered in their underwater home. And when that happens, someone may say, “This reminds me of Midnight, Water City.”
In the following email interview about that novel, author Chris McKinney discusses this noir sci-fi novel (which is now available in hardcover, paperback, Kindle, and audiobook).
I don’t know what it is, but robots just seem like they’d make great detectives in noir sci-fi stories. For proof of this, you have to go no further than The Qubit Zirconium (paperback, Kindle), M. Darusha Wehm’s comedic buddy cop noir mystery science fantasy space opera. In the following email interview about it, Wehm discusses what inspired and influenced this robotic heist caper, as well as how it connects to the sci-fi board game KeyForge.
The term “cryptid” refers to a creature that people believe are real, even though there’s no proof that they do. But while Bigfoot and The Loch Ness Monster are two of the more famous cryptids, they’re not the only ones. In John L. French’s new novella When The Moon Shines (paperback, Kindle), he tells a horror-flavored crime story that involves the snallygaster, a cryptid from Maryland. In the following email interview, French not only discusses what inspired and influenced this story, but also how the book is the first in a series of cryptid-centric stories called System Paradoxa that will be initially (but not exclusively) be available in The Cryptid Crate, a new monthly subscription box that, on a quarterly basis (January, April, July, October), will feature exclusive items made just for that box.
They say that crime doesn’t take a vacation. And while this may be bad for Detective Salvi Brentt of the San Francisco Police Department in the near-future word of Amanda Bridgeman’s Salvation Series, it is good for people who enjoyed her noir sci-fi crime novel The Subjugate, since it’s why there’s a sequel, The Sensation (paperback, Kindle). In the following email interview, Bridgeman discusses both this series and this sequel, and her plans going forward to keep San Fran full of crime.
In many noir science fiction stories, the “noir” part is largely limited to how the world is described. But in their noir sci-fi novel Second Chance Angel (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), co-authors Griffin Barber and Kacey Ezell are instead telling a noir story in a sci-fi world. In the following email interview about, Barber and Ezell discuss what inspired and influenced this dark tale.
Originally published in 2003, under the name Polvo, Yoss’ comedic sci-fi noir detective novel Red Dust (paperback, Kindle) is finally coming to the English-speaking part of the world, courtesy of Restless Books. In the following email interview — which had Spanish translation help from Jenna Tang — the Cuban-born author discusses what inspired and influenced this novel, as well as the new English language version of Miguel Collazo’s The Journey (Kindle), another classic of Cuban science fiction, for which Yoss wrote a new intro.
In a lot of novels that mix elements of noir crime with urban fantasy, the former takes a cue from the latter and depicts the urban aspects as being like the 1930s or ’40s.
But in last year’s Titanshade, the first book of his noir urban fantasy series, The Carter Archives, writer Dan Stout instead set his dark fantasy crime story in a world more like the 1970s. Now he’s continuing that series with Titan’s Day (hardcover, Kindle), which he discusses in the following email interview.
With the word “Vulcan” in the title, and a circular upright structure on the cover, you might think Robert Mitchell Evans’ Vulcan’s Forge (hardcover, Kindle) is going to be a sci-fi space opera story about some rather logical people who teleport to different worlds. But as he explains in the following email, not only is this sci-fi novel not a space opera story, and not connected to Star Trek or Stargate, but it actually has more in common with some dark detective novels and movies.