It’s always interesting when an author takes inspiration from their work life in writing their stories.
Which is one reason why I got excited when, in the following email interview, author Mark Salzwedel explained that his new sci-fi space opera novel The Lever (paperback, Kindle) came out of his experiences working as a hypnotherapist and doing “research on genetic factors in sexual and gender orientation.”
With The Veiled Masters (paperback, Kindle), author Tim Pratt is once again exploring and expanding the sci-fi space opera universe of the tabletop strategy game Twilight Imperium he previously visited in his novels The Fractured Void and The Necropolis Empire.
In the following email interview about Masters, Pratt discusses what influenced this espionage-infused story and how it connects to both the game and his previous Imperium novels.
With Artifact Space (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), writer Miles Cameron is kicking off a sci-fi space opera series called Arcana Imperii.
But while, in the following email interview, he cites other sci-fi space opera stories as influences, this writer of historical fiction confesses he couldn’t help but get historical in these books as well.
They say you should never meet your heroes. It’s a lesson that Uma, the engineer of the science space ship Gallion, learns the hard way in Ren Hutchings’ new sci-fi space opera novel Under Fortunate Stars (paperback, hardcover, Kindle, audiobook). In the following email interview, Hutchings discusses what inspired and influenced this epic story.
While every Alien and Aliens novel is, of course, connected to the movies, comics, and games, David Barnett’s Alien: Colony War (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) is in the unique position of being the first in a loosely-connected mini-series that will also include Alien: Inferno’s Fall by Phillipa Ballantine and Clara Carija, and Mary SanGiovanni’s Alien: Enemy Of My Enemy. In the following email interview, Barnett discusses what inspired and influenced this military sci-fi space opera novel.
As someone who loves zombies almost as much as he loves sci-fi, I of course love stories about zombies… in… SPAAAAAACE!!
It’s why I’m excited for the remake of Dead Space, it’s why I can’t wait for the animated show Marvel Zombies, and why I was excited to do the following email interview with writer Tim Waggoner about his novel Zombicide: Invader: Planet Havoc (paperback, Kindle), a military sci-fi horror story based on the space zombies board game Zombicide: Invader.
With Resilient (hardcover, paperback, Kindle) writer Allen Stroud is continuing the military sci-fi space opera saga The Fractal Series that he started with 2020’s Fearless. But as he explains in the following email interview, Resilient is as much an expansion as it is a continuation.
Usually when we talk about sci-fi space opera / space fantasy stories, there’s aliens, spaceships, politcal intruige, maybe some weird food. But in the following email interview about his sci-fi space opera / space fantasy novel The Circus Infinite (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), writer Khan Wong instead talks about crimebosses, acrobats, and Oliver Twist.
With Space Corps (paperback, Kindle), writer Ian Schwartz is kicking off a trilogy of the same name. But as we discuss in the following email interview about it — in which he details what inspired and influenced both this military sci-fi space opera and this series — fans won’t have to wait long to find out how Schwartz is ending this threesome.