Interviews

Shannon Chakraborty: Navigating the Creative Voyage

February 27th, 2023

Author photo: Melissa C. Beckman Shannon Chakraborty swept readers away with her debut novel, The City of Brass, book one in The Daevabad Trilogy. The immersive details, steeped in historical fact and lore were breathtaking. Over the course of three books and a short story collection, fans fell deeply in love with her world, her characters, and her writing.

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Stephen Graham Jones on Trilogies, Deaths, Slashers, and Dog Nipples

February 24th, 2023

Author photo via Wikipedia Commons Stephen Graham Jones is a literary superstar. He's also a nice guy who's been doing this thing for a long time, so a lot of us celebrate his success. You know, because for anyone who's been a SGJ fan from the beginning, seeing the world finally giving him the props he deserves is an absolute pleasure.

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Joseph G. Peterson: “I Write Very Close to the Place Where I Dream”

February 23rd, 2023

Image via University of Iowa Press What does it mean to be “one of the Windy City’s best kept secrets?” Maybe the more important question is how does it feel? Or what is it like to create acclaimed work despite, or in spite of, such a descriptor? This description is in reference to Chicago author Joseph G. Peterson.

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Standing on the Threshold: An Interview with editor Amy Scholder

February 16th, 2023

Photo via Wikipedia Commons Editors. Who are these enigmatic figures within the literary landscape, skulking on the threshold between writers and readers? Writers regard them with a mix of reverence and resentment. A good editor has the power to lift writing to the next level — but writers hate to think their innate talents need external help.

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Sci-Fi New Wave Legend Michael Butterworth: Warning Is What I Do

February 6th, 2023

Photo by Sara Jane Inkster As an essential part of the 60s British New Wave Sci-Fi movement, Michael Butterworth's earliest work helped define this "new writing" in the groundbreaking New Worlds Magazine, taken over in 1964 by Michael Moorcock to foster this pivotal sea change. After many of these short pieces would be compiled in his collection Butterworth, he'd author his first novel, My Servant The Wind, before writing the Hawklords series of fantasy paperbacks based on the rock group Hawkwind.

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Jason Rekulak on Finding the Hidden

January 26th, 2023

Author photo by Courtney Apple  Jason Rekulak is no stranger to out of the box ideas. As editor of Quirk Books, he has successfully merged the unexpected into the mainstream time and time again. So, it should come as no surprise that his second novel, Hidden Pictures, does the same. Inside is a horror story about a recovering addict trying to save a little boy from a ghost. But the unexpected comes in the drawings and how effectively they work to maximize the creepy factor to a terrifying degree.

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Rebecca van Laer on Writerly Identity and Re-Encountering Your Own Writing

January 4th, 2023

Photo via author website Rebecca van Laer’s hybrid novella, How to Adjust to the Dark, begins with former poet Charlotte reading through the poems she wrote in her 20s and reflecting on her coming-of-age as a person and a writer. It’s a fascinating project of literary self-criticism that sees Charlotte analyze how each poem came to be, what it was trying to say, and what it actually ended up saying, finally reading between the lines of her own character development.

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Whatever Happened to Scott Bradfield? and Other Troubling Questions About Publishing, Big And Small

December 19th, 2022

Photo by James Nullick  Scott Bradfield has been the pea under the mattress of polite American literature for the past thirty-odd years. October 1989. I’m nineteen and living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, working on a useless bachelor’s degree. I find myself downtown, where I have walked to get away from campus. I push through the glass doors of a long-defunct chain bookstore, in a bad mood, expecting to find the usual garbage romances.

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Better the Devil You Know: Ross Jeffrey on Religious Horror

December 9th, 2022

Religious horror has been a popular genre for centuries, exploring the dark and often terrifying aspects of belief and its practices. From The Exorcist to Salem's Lot, these stories continue to captivate audiences and leave them wondering what lies beneath the surface. Ross Jeffery is a celebrated author of dark fiction who is well respected in the community. It was an absolute pleasure discussing horror in its various forms with him, as well as the potential of religious horror to engage and challenge our understanding of faith.

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Erika T. Wurth on "White Horse," Process, and Genre

December 7th, 2022

Photo via author website Erika T. Wurth’s stunning novel, White Horse, is captivating the country— and for good reason. Tucked within the pages of that hypnotic, smoky cover is prose that bites and a protagonist that bites harder. Once this novel has its teeth in you, it refuses to let go. I was delighted to sit down and talk to Erika about her writing process, her thoughts on craft, and what advice she’d give to new writers.

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