When it comes to putting together their first short story collections, some writers start out with a theme or a plan and stick to it. Then there’s writers like Izzy Wasserstein, who, in assembling hers, All The Hometowns You Can’t Stay Away From (paperback), found that a theme emerged anyway.
In the following email interview, Wasserstein discusses what inspired and influenced these stories, and why she ran with the emergent theme as opposed to running away from it.
Often when a writer assembles their first collection of short stories, they do so by picking the best ones, or the best of their recent ones, or maybe ones that fit a theme or fall into the same genre. But in the following email interview about her first short story collection, Where You Linger & Other Stories (paperback, Kindle), writer Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam explains that the “theme” of sorts she started out with was geographical in nature.
One of the many downsides of the current Covid-19 pandemic is how it kept us apart from the people we love. But it was a disconnect some people countered in different ways: playing online games together, Zoom-based book clubs, and — in the case of writers and editors James Chambers, Carol Gyzander, and their friends who are writers — putting together Even In The Grave (paperback, Kindle), an anthology of ghost stories. In the following email interview, Chambers and Gyzander discuss the depth and breadth of this collection, as well as how it came together.
As anyone who’s read one of my previous author interviews will tell you, I always end by asking for a recommendation. And often the recommendation I’m asking for is from a writer’s own oeuvre. “If someone enjoys this new book of yours, which of your older ones would you recommend they read next.” Well, apparently iconic science fiction writer Edward M. Lerner has gotten this question so much that he decided to answer it once and for all by assembling a collection of his sci-fi short stories called The Best Of Edward M. Lerner (hardcover, paperback, Kindle). In the following email interview, Mr. Lerner discusses what went into assembling this collection, along with, well, you know…
There are a number of former soldiers who write military science fiction, and there are a number of anthologies that collect military science fiction. But in the following email interview with Stephen Lawson, the editor of Robosoldiers (paperback, Kindle), he notes that this anthology of military science fiction short stories not only has former soldiers as contributors, but that he specifically asked them to focus on their military specialties when coming up with their ideas.
In another reality, Chelsea Vowel wrote her Master’s thesis on Métis identity, and left her thoughts about how non-Indigenous people justify claiming their and her identity to academia. But in the following email interview, she explains why the version of her in our reality instead decided to do in the genre of speculative fiction, and in the form of the short story collection called Buffalo Is The New Buffalo (paperback, Kindle).
For her first collection of short stories, Maria, Maria And Other Stories (hardcover, Kindle), writer Marytza K. Rubio not only reworked some of her favorites, making them extra special, but she also included some parts for you to color. But while she makes this collection sound rather magical in the following email interview about it, you might want to hold off calling any of these stories “magical realism.”
While some writers assemble short story collections around a theme, or connected with a framing device, most just pull together their latest and greatest…and then often find that a theme has emerged all on its own. Which is basically what happened to writer Kameron Hurley when she assembled Future Artifacts (paperback, audiobook), her second short story collection after 2019’s Meet Me In The Future. Well…except for the “latest” part.
With the cover declaring it, “A short story collection of nightmares, dreams, desires & visions of the Chicana experience,” you might think you have all the information you need about V. Castro’s new short story collection, Mestiza Blood (hardcover, paperback, Kindle). But as you’ll learn from the following email interview with Castro, there’s more to this collection than you might expect.