Interviews

10 Questions with John Rector

August 20th, 2013

I first became aware of John Rector in 2009 when Brian Lindenmuth of Spinetingler Magazine ran a series of interviews titled, Conversations with the Bookless, on the now defunct website, BSCReview.

Read Interview →

10 Questions With 'Countdown City' Author Ben H. Winters

August 6th, 2013

If there was an asteroid hurtling toward Earth, what would you do?  If you're Detective Hank Palace, the protagonist of Ben H. Winters' novels The Last Policeman and Countdown City, you don't stop doing your job just because the apocalypse is nigh.  Winters has a pretty deep bibliography—he wrote Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and Android Karenina, as well as two books in the young adult Ms. Finkleman series, and Bedbugs, a horror novel.

Read Interview →

10 Questions with NEEDLE Editor and LitReactor Instructor Steve Weddle

July 25th, 2013

A while back, I got an idea for a LitReactor workshop: Bring in the editor of a literary magazine and have them walk students through the submission process. It got backburnered, as things do. I was reminded of the idea when I saw the announcement for Steve Weddle's debut novel, Country Hardball.

Read Interview →

10 Questions with Bizarro Legend and LitReactor Instructor John Skipp

July 19th, 2013

Meet horror/bizarro fiction legend and award-winning editor John Skipp.

Read Interview →

10 Questions with 'League of Somebodies' Author and LitReactor Instructor Samuel Sattin

July 17th, 2013

Fight Song author and LitReactor instructor Joshua Mohr called Samuel Sattin's debut novel, League of Somebodies, "a whirling force that blends the family saga, superhero lore, and a coming of age story to a frothy cocktail. Imagine The Godfather remixed with Chabon's classic Kavalier and Clay." Publishers Weekly called it a "hilarious satire on manliness and superhero culture."  Not faint praise. Here's the gist: 

Read Interview →

10 Questions with Tom Piccirilli

July 9th, 2013

I'm not going to call Tom Piccirilli underrated—underpaid, definitely, under-appreciated, perhaps—but at this stage in his career, the label of underrated doesn't comfortably fit the Colorado novelist or his emotionally intense creations. Over the last twenty years, Picciirilli has written in virtually every genre with the exception of hard sci-fi, but in the last decade, his voice has come to full maturity within crime fiction.

Read Interview →

5 Questions with LitReactor instructor Joseph Nassise; eBook Coding Class Starts Monday

July 5th, 2013

Digital self-publising. Everyone's talking about it. Here's your chance to learn how to do it.  Joseph Nassise is the author of more than a dozen novels. He has written for both the comic and role-playing game industries, and also served two terms as president of the Horror Writers Association, the world's largest organization of professional horror and dark fantasy writers.

Read Interview →

Chuck Klosterman Returns

July 2nd, 2013

Chuck Klosterman has kept busy since we last spoke in 2011. He continues his work with the arts and culture blog, Grantland.com, and has added another item to his already long resume: replacing Ariel Kaminer as the New York Times magazine's The Ethicist.

Read Interview →

10 Questions with John Mantooth

June 4th, 2013

Debut novels are a dime a dozen; I hate to say it, but it’s a cold hard fact. With the sheer number of books being produced by the big 5, small presses, micro presses, and no presses on a daily basis, it’s near impossible for a first time storyteller to gain any sort of attention for a project they’ve slaved over their entire lives, which is a shame. But it is what it is, and I’m more than guilty of passing over a debut author because one of my standard bearers has a new novel coming out the same day.

Read Interview →

The Stud Book: An Interview with Monica Drake

May 17th, 2013

Funny thing about The Stud Book by Monica Drake: You know how some people turn their noses up at genre fiction? I'm a genre guy, and I tend to scoff at literary fiction, shrugging it off as stories about melancholy families in the suburbs. And at first blush, The Stud Book is exactly that: Melancholy families in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon. But it's so much more—moving, whip-smart, beautifully written, sad and hopeful in equal parts. And funny. Damn, is this book funny.

Read Interview →