For nearly fifteen years, writer Jonathan Maberry has put former detective Joe Ledger in increasingly more dangerous situations, originally as an agent of the Department of Military Sciences, and now as a member of Rogue Team International. Which is where we find him in his newest adventure, Cave 13 (paperback, Kindle, audiobook). In the following email interview, Maberry discusses what inspired and influenced this thriller.
Like a lot of people, Kemi Ashing-Giwa picked up a new habit during the pandemic: drinking tea. But unlike people who took up baking bread or working out or playing Animal Crossing, Ashing-Giwa translated her newfound love into a novel, a sci-fi space opera story called The Splinter In The Sky (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook) that — in the following email interview — she calls a, “spy thriller in space.”
The path for literary adaptions usually goes book to movie or book to TV show, or maybe book to movie to video game. Unless, of course, you’re Willie Block and Jake Emanuel, the co-authors of the post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller mystery The Edge Of Sleep, which went from podcast to TV show to novel (available in hardcover, Kindle, or audiobook). In the following email interview, Willie and Jake discuss what originally inspired and influenced this story, and how the print edition of this story is different from the one you already heard or saw.
While there are a lot of characters in fiction with unusual physical abilities, ones with unconventional cognitive skills are less common, if you discount such mental superheroes as Professor X. Think Adrian Monk, the obsessive-compulsive detective from the TV show Monk. Or, more relevant to the topic at hand, Mike Brink, the Savant Syndrome suffering puzzle master in Danielle Trussoni’s new The Puzzle Master (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook). In the following email interview about it, Trussoni discusses what inspired and influenced this brainy thriller.
Like science fiction and fantasy, horror can sometimes incorporate elements of social commentary. See the end of the original Night Of The Living Dead. Or you can read Eric LaRocca’s supernatural horror thriller Everything The Darkness Eats (paperback, Kindle, audiobook). In the following email interview, LaRocca discusses what inspired and influenced this scary story.
While a lot of people are concerned with global warming, and rightfully so, there’s only so much we can do as individuals. But don’t say that to Christian Sparrow, the time traveling (and, hopefully, history-altering) main character in John Patrick’s new novel Time Bomb (paperback, Kindle). In the following email interview, Patrick discusses what inspired and influenced this romantically-tinged sci-fi slipstream thriller.
While we often think about how real world tragedies can inspire fictional stories, fictional stories about real world tragedies can also bring said tragedies to light. Like how the TV show Watchman highlighted the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. It’s what writer Nick Medina hopes to accomplish with his first novel, Sisters Of The Lost Nation (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), a mythological horror thriller inspired by and centered around the disproportionate number of indigenous women and girls who go missing every year. In the following email interview, Medina discusses how this issue inspired and influenced this novel.
Read enough murder mysteries, or watch any cop shows or movies, and you’ll inevitably hear a police officer say that the victim, “Never saw it coming.” But what if no one ever saw it coming because they were blinded by the murderer? This is the idea behind Thomas Mullen’s new novel Blind Spots (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), in which something caused people all over the world to go blind, and while they’ve since compensated with cybernetic implants, a murdererous hacker is now taking advantage of these devices. In the following email interview with Mullen, he discusses what inspired and influenced this cyberpunk sci-fi noir mystery thriller.
It may seem counterintuitive, but distraction can, for some people, be an important part of the creative process. Trent Reznor of nine inch nails once told me he had an arcade in his studio so he could clear his head when he got stuck. But in the following email interview with author Tim Akers about his new novel, a high fantasy / hard magic thriller called Wraithbound (paperback, Kindle), he explains that when he got stuck writing it, his distraction of choice was to write another book.