DAVID LEE SUMMERS, Author - Interview

In June, Hadrosaur Productions published A KEPLER’S DOZEN: Thirteen Stories About Distant Worlds That Really Exist, a science fiction anthology co-edited by Steve B. Howell and David Lee Summers.  In this first of two interviews, I talk to David Lee Summers about the anthology and a little bit about his other writing.

David Lee Summers is the author of seven novels and over sixty published short stories. His writing spans a wide range of the imaginative from science fiction to fantasy to horror. Novels include a wild west steampunk adventure (OWLDANCE) and VAMPIRES OF THE SCARLET ORDER, in which vampire mercenaries fight evil. David edits the quarterly SF/F magazine TALES OF THE TALISMAN, and has also served as editors for the anthologies SPACE PIRATES and SPACE HORRORS. When not writing, David operates telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory.

ANTHONY: Let’s talk about A KEPLER’S DOZEN first. What inspired the anthology?

DAVID: Steve Howell and I have been friends since I returned to Kitt Peak National Observatory a little over five years ago.  I was one of the Observing Assistants for the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope and he was the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope scientist.  Over the years, Steve learned about my interest in writing, and even picked up one of the anthologies I was in.  A couple of years ago, Steve left the National Optical Astronomy Observatory to work for NASA as the project scientist for the Kepler Space Mission.  The Kepler space telescope has done a remarkable job finding planets around stars.  Looking at the Kepler web site as I type this, I see over 3000 planet candidates and 136 confirmed planets.  As someone who grew up and went through college and grad school only knowing about the planets in our own solar system, this is absolutely remarkable, but there’s a real danger of all these planets just becoming statistics.  So, Steve’s idea was to assemble an anthology that showcased some of these planets and imagined what it would be like to see these worlds up close.  It becomes a way to visualize the wide variety of planets the Kepler telescope has discovered.

ANTHONY: Was there an open call for submissions or was it invite-only? Might we see “Another Kepler’s Dozen” in the future?

DAVID: A Kepler’s Dozen was invite-only.  We did that because we wanted each story to feature a unique planet and this allowed each author the opportunity to ask questions about the planet they chose.  That said, one of the stories came in during the last reading period for Tales of the Talisman Magazine.  I thought it was a great match for the anthology.  Steve agreed and we invited the author to make a few minor revisions and we included it.  Since we assigned the planets for A Kepler’s Dozen, more exoplanets have been found in the so-called habitable zones of their stars.  This is the area where you might conceivably find life as we know it.  So, yes, we’d like to do a follow-up anthology.  I’d like to make this one at least semi-open.  Perhaps there would be a way to sign up and select from a list of available planets (still over 120 to choose from!).

ANTHONY: How did you split editorial duties with you co-editor, Steve B. Howell?

DAVID: We both read for overall story.  If there was something about the story we didn’t like, we discussed it and came up with a solution to propose to the author.  From there, I read for the more in-depth grammar and spelling issues and he read to make sure the planets were portrayed as accurately as possible given what’s known.  He allowed some leeway on that since, in fact, very little is known about all these worlds.

ANTHONY: Steve is a project scientist for the Kepler mission, correct?  What unique perspective did he bring to the project?

DAVID: That’s right, Steve is Kepler’s project scientist.  Of course he had a good handle on the most up-to-date information available from the Kepler telescope.  Beyond that, he brought a real sense of fun to this project.  It was clear he was delighted about people imagining what these planets might be like.  One thing both science and science fiction share are people asking “what if” questions.  What’s more, scientists thrive on challenges to conventional wisdom.  So, he clearly liked it when authors challenged a picture he might have about the planets.  In fact, in his own contribution to the anthology, Steve suggested that there could be a subtext hidden in the planet data that hasn’t been seen yet.

ANTHONY: The Kepler mission hit a big snag last month with the failure of a second “reaction wheel” (out of four on the craft), affecting the telescope’s ability to remain focused on fixed points. What effect will project termination (if repairs aren’t possible) have on the search for habitable planets outside of our system? Is a second, improved Kepler mission a possibility?

DAVID: In fact, there was another mission in the works before Kepler’s problems started.  It’s called TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and it’s tentatively scheduled for launch in 2017.  My understanding is that while Kepler focused on one region of the sky, picked because of a large number of sun-like stars, TESS will focus on nearby stars, so we’ll learn more about stars we might visit in the near future.  Also, I gather there’s a good chance Kepler will continue to operate.  The reaction wheel problem just means that it won’t be very likely to detect Earth-sized planets, but it will continue to collect data and monitor Jupiter-sized planets.

What’s more, there are actually a lot of ground-based exoplanet surveys such as the HAT survey being conducted in Arizona and Hawaii by a group of Hungarian Astronomers.  HAT stands for Hungarian-made Astronomical Telescopes.  There are also ongoing searches at the 1.5-meter telescope at Arizona’s Whipple Observatory and at observatories in South America.  So, despite Kepler’s problems, the hunt for exoplanets is far from over.

ANTHONY: A neat feature of the book is that the introduction to each story includes data collected during the Kepler mission. How much guidance was given to the authors in terms of choosing the stars/planets to be used in their stories?

DAVID: As a starting point, the authors were sent to the Kepler Mission website at http://kepler.nasa.gov and allowed to browse for a planet that captured their imagination.  In some cases, the authors came back and had questions about details of the system for Steve.  In other cases, authors asked about planets that would fit a certain set of criteria they had in mind for a story.  Steve and I worked with them to find planets that would work in their stories.  Sometimes a story idea had to be modified slightly, but with so many planets to choose from, modifications were actually pretty slight.  Of course, Steve read the stories for accuracy and again made some suggestions, but those tended to be slight and only had minor impact on the stories being told.

ANTHONY: Tell us about your own story in the book, “Hot Pursuit.”

DAVID: “Hot Pursuit” tells the story of a band of space pirates who are hired to help transport stolen technology back to Earth.  The technology’s creators kill the agent and want to do the same to the pirates who get away with the stolen goods.  The pirates take refuge near a so-called hot Jupiter called Kepler-17b.  This planet orbits its sun every one and a half days.  Keep in mind that Mercury orbits our sun every 88 days.  What’s more, the star Kepler-17 is an active star, meaning it has flares and starspots.  This is good for the pirates because being near this star and planet makes them undetectable.  The problem is, they can’t stay for long or else they will burn up.

ANTHONY: How does this story tie in with your short stories in the SPACE PIRATES, SPACE HORRORS and SPACE BATTLES anthologies from Flying Pen Press?

DAVID: “Hot Pursuit” features Captain Ellison Firebrandt and the crew of the Legacy, who are also featured in the Full-Throttle Space-Tales anthologies Space Pirates, Space Sirens, Space Tramps, and Space Battles.  Chronologically, this story takes place immediately after the one in Space Sirens.  My story in Space Horrors is, so far, the only one I’ve written for the Full-Throttle Space Tales series that does not feature the crew of the Legacy.  That one is a vampire story set aboard a Bussard Ramjet, an idea that came to me while spending an evening in Robert Bussard’s Santa Fe home.

ANTHONY: What projects are you working on currently?

DAVID: Currently I’m wrapping up work on my second wild west steampunk adventure, Lightning Wolves.  It’s a sequel to my novel Owl Dance.  In the new story, Russians have invaded the Pacific Northwest in 1877 and are advancing into California.  New weapons have proven ineffective or dangerously unstable and the one man who can help has disappeared into Apache Country, hunting ghosts.  A healer and a former sheriff lead a band into the heart of the invasion to determine what makes the Russian forces so unstoppable while a young inventor thinks outside the box to create a new kind of weapon.

ANTHONY: And my usual closing question: What is your favorite book, and what would you say to someone who hasn’t read it to convince them that they should?

DAVID: This is a tough question because there are so many books I love!  So, let me narrow it down and pick my favorite anthology.  It’s called A Very Large Array and it’s a collection of stories by New Mexico science fiction and fantasy authors.  It was released in 1987, edited by Melinda M. Snodgrass and contains stories by Roger Zelazny, Jack Williamson, Stephen R. Donaldson and Fred Saberhagen.  This is the anthology that introduced me to Suzy McKee Charnas and George R.R. Martin.  If the names in this anthology haven’t convinced you to read it, then let me just say that what makes it wonderful is that it collects an amazing range of science fiction and fantasy writers from the early greats to contemporary masters.  There’s hard sci fi, horror, and fantasy.  It is one of the most compact windows into the universe of speculative fiction.

You can follow David on Twitter @davidleesummers. His blog is located at davidleesummers.com. You can order print copies of A KEPLER’S DOZEN directly from Hadrosaur Productions, or find the ebooks on Smashwords.  You can also find stories by both David Lee Summers and myself in FULL-THROTTLE SPACE TALES VOLUME 6: SPACE BATTLES.

CURA TE IPSUM, Kickstarter Campaign - Interview

I’ve interviewed my friend Neal Bailey a number of times here on “Rambling On,” discussing the progress of CURA TE IPSUM, the fantastic “can one man save himself across the Multiverse” webcomic written by Neal and drawn by the incomparable Dexter Wee. About a month ago, Neal started a Kickstarter to publish a print version of Year Two of the webcomic, with lots of awesome perks for backers … and I promptly dropped the ball in regards to having him on here again to promote it. There’s still four days left and the campaign is going strong, so better late than never, right?

ANTHONY: Hi Neal! So, what’s new and exciting in the world of CURA TE IPSUM?

NEAL: Hey, Anthony! Honestly, that probably depends on your perspective. For the readers, we’re going into a section of story that’s going to be decidedly exciting. A big paradigm shift in the next few months, and the beginnings of the origin of the Dark Everett.

For me, what’s exciting is winding toward the middle of Year Five (I write… in the FUTURE) and finishing up this Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style novella I’m doing for the Kickstarter. It’s a lot of fun.

Also… HARDBACKS! We will have hardbacks, it looks like, thanks to this wonderful Kickstarter thing. 

ANTHONY: What made you feel now was the right time to run a Kickstarter for CURA?

NEAL: Honestly, going to cons and watching other independent comics make use of it with no ill effects. I used to write for the internet, and if I learned one thing writing for the internet, it was that if you do a thing and ask for money for it, you get nastygrams from people, for some reason. At least, you used to. That has changed now. As the medium grows, people start to understand if they don’t support a thing, it goes away, which sucks.
I was going to do one big Kickstarter, at the end of Cura, and try and recoup something, anything of the tens of thousands of dollars I’ve thrown into it. I saw Kickstarter as a trigger you could pull once, a fundraising tool to get a thing recognition and a printing.

Then I printed my own trades a few times, and realized I couldn’t continue to do it on my own. I debated options. Going two days a week (which would lead to pay reduction for Dex, which I didn’t want to do). Going to companies (I already have, and a few big ones passed on Cura). That’s when I started asking my other friends doing webcomics and they indicated that the model for Kickstarter has shifted. You’re not a fink for doing one once a year, it’s more of a situation like Kickstarter is a Previews for the indie world. People who like indie comics come, see things that need regular support, order it, and keep it going.

I realized I can do Year Two, and if the people like it, then it wouldn’t be the only hurrah. There is a matrix and community of people who will support a thing that you’re earnestly passionate about. That is quite a reassurance for a struggling writer, and I said to myself, what’s the worst that could happen, you fail? Then you just don’t produce the book, you keep making Cura, you don’t go into more debt, win-win. It’s really quite amazing.

ANTHONY: With only four days to go, you’re very possibly going to double your original goal. What are some of the perks backers can get if they sign on before the campaign ends?

NEAL: We’ve had two stretch goals so far, the first one is better paper, which I REALLY wanted to get for folks, and the hardbacks, which people REALLY wanted to get from me. I got a lot of messages asking for them. If we reach the $7,500 mark (and we’re darn close as of this writing) folks will have a hardback option.
The stretch goals after that are pure perks for folks. I’m going to set a new stretch goal the minute we hit that $7,500, if we’re that fortunate, but to be honest, I have been so overwhelmed by the outpouring of support that I’ve been floored. Anything after where we are now is just a way to make the book better… it’s already happening! Isn’t that fantastic?

The biggest perk that people will have if we do double our goal, outside of any material thing, is the secure knowledge that it’s setting up Cura for at least another solid year, and guaranteeing that trades will continue to be worthwhile and fought for. There isn’t much squeak between the costs and the pledges, but whatever squeak there is will go right back into the book and the comic. I went bankrupt five years ago throwing my own cash into my work, and I’m so incredibly glad that I have a support net here now to help keep this book going. It makes me redouble my efforts and believe even more in what we’re doing, as shallow as that might sound. It’s amazing what a little validation will do. My life is forever changed.

I’m going to try and manage some postcards and paper dolls, bookmarks, whatever I can manage to throw in as a bonus, depending on the final tally. This is really about the people who made this happen, and I want to reward them as much as I can for their good faith.

ANTHONY: You’re creating a “Choose Your Own Dimension” adventure for backers, right? Tell us about that.

NEAL: I used to collect all of the Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid, and when I was in elementary I was fortunate enough to have a writer of those style of books come to the school and explain the process. Since then it’s fascinated me.

Once I started doing Cura, early on, I realized that it would lend itself extraordinarily well to a Choose Your Own Adventure style narrative, and I started to write one, but I stopped, for several reasons. Firstly, I wanted to make it a comic, which I hadn’t seen before outside of a book that slips my mind, the title, but it was amazing. I am embarrassed that I don’t recall. That had issues, because Dex is busy, and asking him to do a hundred page comic while he’s already doing Cura and other stuff wouldn’t work. The story is narrative enough and a handful.

I set it aside. I kept thinking about it, but I set it aside, and in the meanwhile fleshed out all of the characters I’d already outlined. Then the Kickstarter came, and Greg Rucka suggested, when I solicited his advice on my Kickstarter, that I ought to do a Choose Your Own Adventure. Recalling my earlier idea, it sounded like it might make a great novella, and so here I am, writing it. It’ll feature almost every member of Cura and Nosce that we’ve seen so far, and some other characters we may never see. You’re every Charlie, and some of the choices you can make are pretty hairy.

I did make one change to the basic formula. As morality tales, CYOA novels seem to reward good behavior and punish bad behavior. I like a more chaotic view of nature and nurture. Sometimes if you do the right thing, bad things still happen, and sometimes when you do a bad thing, there are no consequences. But sometimes it’s as you might expect, and I hope to keep people jumping.

Either way the dang thing is 15,000 words and climbing, so it’s not a minor perk, I hope. 

ANTHONY: I see this question a lot regarding Kickstarters: you’ve hit your funding goal, and passed it — why should I back it?

NEAL: That goes a bit to what I mentioned before, in my earlier answer. First off, the more books I can order, the longer Cura is supported, in multiple respects. I can go to cons and get physical books into the hands of people who have never seen it, which helps the readership, which feeds the book. I can offset the cost of paying Dex, because I believe in paying my artist even when I can’t afford it (and God, have I been stretched thin the last five years). Most importantly, however, every purchase is a vote of confidence that says this book is a thing worth fighting for outside of my own mind, which is critical. It will make my work better, which will in turn feed what I turn out, which will in turn reward those who buy even when the initial goal is met.

Also, another important factor is that the initial goal is the bare minimum to get the project done, the books alone, and anything after that is where things start to be about extra for keeping the wheels turning. Plus, y’know, perks! Stretch goals. There’s good for everyone if we can keep going.

I can unconditionally guarantee that not a penny beyond the goal will go to anything beyond Cura. Hell, if we made a hundred thousand dollars, after Cura was colored, made into a short film, got an app, got Dex a Syntique, or whatever the heck else could benefit Cura, I’d still take cash from my own wallet and put it into making the comic more.

I am a strange duck, in that I never wrote for profit (shhh, don’t tell editors). I write for love of the characters in the hopes that profit may come, that I may write for love of the characters, on and on and on. If I have a dry room and a pen, I’m good. The cash is all about the book, and always will be. If I needed money for my own fun or amusement, I’d go back to day labor moving cabinets with stoners.

i09.com described Cura as “an emotional crisis on infinite earths.”

ANTHONY: Dexter’s art continues to amaze and astound. Is he creating any special new art for certain pledge levels?

NEAL: Yes! We have just added a new “commission” level at the two hundred dollar pledge. He will make a custom tailored commission. Speaking as a guy who has several hanging in his own house, I can honestly say they’re quite a centerpiece for a geek like me. Plus you get the hardbacks and all the other goodies.

ANTHONY: How about for the book itself?

NEAL: We have an eight-page backup introducing an all-female group of Charlenes who will figure prominently in Year Four and Five. There’s a Filipina, several steampunk inspired designs, a black female Hank (Henrietta), and a few members that will likely surprise you. Let’s just say Mrs. Arntzen doesn’t always die.

The backup has been a lot of hard work while producing the regular pages, but it’s absolutely worth it, and probably one of the best arguments to get the trade or the PDFs.

ANTHONY: The print collections cover Year One and Two, but the webcomic is well into Year Three now.  Has anyone come to CURA from reading the print editions first?  Do you find a different reaction to the story (or characters, or pacing) between print-first readers and web-first readers?  Or even a difference in reaction for people reading it in print after reading it as each page first appears online?

NEAL: Absolutely, in answer to both questions. People have come to print first through cons, and there is a huge reaction when people read it day-to-day as opposed to in a big stream, both in print and digitally.

The comic is written with a very known sense that days are passing between pages. The comic leaps a bit, and I have wrestled with it quite a bit. Some people are annoyed by it, but some love it. I stand by it, in that it is supposed to bring that feeling of jumping around in space and time that these characters are going through. That said, the story is becoming more and more linear as it moves on, perhaps as I learn, perhaps as the ending becomes more and more clear.

Either way, thankfully, I haven’t received any email from anyone calling it a pile of turds. The readership, to a man and woman, have all been incredibly kind and respectful and awesome.

ANTHONY: What is it about the story of Charlie Everett that resonates so well with fans?

NEAL: I’ve been told it’s the fact that he’s optimistic, and also the tension of whether or not he will become the Dark Everett, but I don’t want to speak for the audience and put words in their mouth. Maybe that’s just the things I’ve heard that I want to be true, and for other people it’s that he’s dreamy, or they love tweed, or hey, shout out to the guidance counselors out there who need representation!

That is my tongue firmly in cheek, for the record.

I can speak for myself. Charlie resonates for me because I wanted to write from the age of twelve, twenty long years ago now, and everywhere I went it was like that Dewey Cox movie, a parade of family encouraging me to have a fallback, get a job, stop being such a lazy waste. A relative said, I quote, that I contribute in no meaningful way to my family, doing what I do.

I disagree. And Charlie didn’t. Charlie thought people like that were right for so long, and he cast it off, and even better, he did it for himself. He found hope, he found courage, and through that power. That’s what I see in him, and that’s what makes me love him.

ANTHONY: What glimpse can you give us into the near future for the CURA cast?

NEAL: I’ll be cryptic, and maybe a little scary. A latin demon. Origins. The smell of the person you love the most. Power beyond reckoning in the hands of a madman. The explanation of that moon. Junior’s origin. The House of Cindy. God, now I’m getting creeped out. Soon!

ANTHONY: And a twist on my usual closing question: What is Charlie Everett’s favorite book, and what would he say to convince someone who hasn’t read it to convince them that they should?

NEAL: Charlie’s favorite book is Richard III, and he would say that one should read it because even though this man, Richard, in attempting to find his way, becomes a terrible villain because of how he is perceived, he also says one of the most important things any human being ever has in history:

“Shall I live in hope?”

Charlie does, and you should too.

You can follow Neal and Dex on Twitter @nealbailey  @dexterwee. You can find the comic CURA TE IPSUM on the web. But most importantly, you can find the final days of the Kickstarter campaign and donate by CLICKING RIGHT HERE.  If you decide to back, please leave a note here letting me know you did so.

MIKE CROTEAU, Author - Interview

One of my favorite independent publishers is Meteor House, who specialize in works related to the great Philip Jose Farmer. Meteor House is one of the prime motivators (along with Titans Books’ reprint line) behind the resurgence of interest in Farmer’s work in general and in Farmer’s Wold-Newton Family work in particular. I had a chance to sit down with Mike Croteau, the founder of Meteor House, to talk about the imprint, its goals, and of course about Phil Farmer.

Anthony: How long has Meteor House been in existence as a publisher?

MIKE: Meteor House launched in 2010. After publishing the fanzine Farmerphile: The Magazine of  Philip José Farmer from 2005 to 2009, it felt like the right time to take the next step, to start a company and publish some books.

ANTHONY: Where does the company name come from?

MIKE: The “Meteor” in question refers to the Wold Newton Meteorite which crashed in Wold Newton England in 1795. This historical event plays a significant role in many of Philip José Farmer’s works.

ANTHONY: The focus of your efforts is clearly on the great Philip JoséFarmer. How much of an influence has his work been on you personally?

MIKE: To really get this answer, you need to pick up Titan Books’ brand-new reprint ofThe Wind Whales of Ishmael. I was honored to be invited to write the foreword to that edition, and in it I take about 1,700 words to answer that question! I will say that between maintaining Farmer’s official website, Facebook page, Meteor House, my book collecting, selling books from his estate for his heirs, rereading his books and still trying to read a lot of the books that influenced him…it’s safe to say that Philip José Farmer is my full-time hobby.

ANTHONY: You started with plans for annual Words of Philip Jose Farmer anthologies. Tell us a bit about the focus of the series and the kinds of writing readers can expect.

MIKE: Each issue of the  fanzine Farmerphile, which I mentioned above, contained never-before-seen material by Farmer himself (stories, articles, speeches, letters, excerpts), all culled from his “Magic Filing Cabinet,” so named because every time it is searched a new discovery is made. Each issue also contained tributes to Farmer and critiques of his work, by his fans and his fellow science fiction writers. Everyone who contributed to Farmerphile really did it for the love of Phil—because the only payment was two contributor copies! The money from sales went to cover printing and postage expenses, while the lion’s share went to Phil himself (thus making it worth his while to let us continually search through his files).

With The Worlds of Philip Jose Farmer anthologies, we shifted gears a bit. Since Phil was no longer with us (he passed away in February 2009) it was no longer about writing tributes to him that he would get to read. While each volume still contains stories, articles, speeches, letters, excerpts, interviews, tributes, critiques, all by or about Farmer, we also obtained permission from his estate to allow writers to create new licensed fiction using his creations. So we are able to publish new stories about some of his most popular characters and worlds, like Greatheart Silver, John Gribardsun, Roger Two Hawks, the World of Tiers, Khokarsa, members of the Wold Newton Family, and many others.

ANTHONY: When will the next Worlds of PJF volume be out, and what authors/focus can we expect?

MIKE: The first three volumes in the series were all released each year at FarmerCon, our annual gathering of Farmer’s fans (now being held in conjunction with PulpFest). This year, however, volume 4 is being delayed because Meteor House is releasing two other books at FarmerCon this summer. The first is a joint venture we’re doing with Altus Press to reprint Farmer’s biography of the Man of Bronze, Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life. Altus Press is publishing the ebook and trade paperback edition, while we’re publishing the deluxe hardcover edition, which is full of bonus material.

The second book we’re releasing is the second in our series of original signed limited edition novellas: The Scarlet Jaguar by Win Scott Eckert. Win is one of the foremost experts on Farmer and his Wold Newton Family, as well as the Wold Newton Universe that Win helped expand from Farmer’s original concept. This story is a sequel to the novel The Evil in Pemberley House, which Farmer and Eckert co-wrote and was published in 2009.

So, to finally answer…wait, what was your question? Oh yeah, the next Worlds of PJF book. As soon as we get back from FarmerCon we’ll kick into high gear to get that out well in time for Christmas. The book is actually pretty far along, except there is more material than can be used, so we’re in the process of culling that down. But there is still so much work to do on the other two books we’re bringing out we’re focusing our energies on those first.

Each book in the Worlds of PJF series has a theme. Volume 1 was subtitled “Protean Dimensions” and it focused Farmer’s near utter disregard of literary boundaries. The second volume, “Of Dust and Soul,” looked at Farmer’s interest in the softer sciences like philosophy, psychology, and theology, among other things. The third volume, “Portraits of a Trickster,” focused on the trickster nature of many of Phil’s characters, as well as his own.

I actually don’t want to say too much about the next book yet except to say that it will focus on, of all things, Farmer the science fiction writer. That is, a science fiction writer in the “classic” sense, one who wrote about space exploration, the far future, alien invasions, and the like. But I am excited to announce that it will have a foreword by Robert Silverberg!

ANTHONY: I’m a big Silverberg fan, so that’s doubly exciting for me! How has Meteor House grown since you started? And where do you see the company going in the near future?

MIKE: In 2010 we published one book, The Worlds of PJF 1. In 2011, we also published just one book, The Worlds of PJF Volume 2. We started slow as we made the adjustment from fanzines to books, which turned out to be a bigger adjustment than expected.

In 2012 we published two books, The Worlds of PJF Volume 3, and our first signed limited edition novella, Exiles of Kho by Christopher Paul Cary. Chris was the coauthor, with Farmer, of The Song of Kwasin, the third and concluding novel in Farmer’s Khoharsa series (begun in the mid-1970s with Hadon of Ancient Opar and Flight to Opar). Exiles of Kho is an origin story about that world, and it is currently out of print.

So here we are in 2013 and we will be publishing four books. The first, due out in June, is our first non-Farmer title (although he is mentioned in the book), The Abnormalities of Stringent Strange by Rhys Hughes. Rhys is a brilliant writer who is hard to classify, although I guess surrealism is probably the one word that does the best job to describe his works. Stringent Strange starts off as a 1930s-style aviation pulp, then turns into a time-travel science fiction novel, then gets rather surrealistic, and then it gets weird. This book is currently only available as a signed limited edition, and it is nearly sold out.

Then, of course, we have the three books already mentioned. The hardcover edition of Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (full of bonus materials), The Scarlet Jaguar, and TheWorlds of PJF 4.

Other than The Worlds of PJF 5, and another signed limited edition novella, or two, we don’t have nearly as much planned for 2014. But I’m fairly sure that will change.

ANTHONY: As a small independent publisher, what challenges do you face in promoting your books, and how are you working to overcome those challenges?

MIKE: Having maintained a website about Farmer since 1996 (and his official site since 2001), there was a built-in audience for the Worlds of PJF series, but not enough of one to sell out an edition of 500 copies. We do a lot of social media, of course. To date we haven’t spent a lot of money on marketing, except for the money we put into hosting FarmerCon at PulpFest. We’re very proud of our books, from the artwork and design, to the contents, to the editing, layout, copyediting, etc. We believe we put out books that are just as good as any publisher of any size, so word of mouth is important to us. It’s a good sign that a small percentage of our customers who only buy one of our books.

Win Eckert carries on Farmer’s legacy

ANTHONY: Why does Farmer’s work still speak so strongly to readers after all these years? What has prompted the resurgence in interest that seems to be occurring?

MIKE: That is hard to answer. The seeming resurgence might just be due to the state of publishing these days. Most of the great authors from the early days of science fiction, even the biggest names, are going out of print to make room on the shelves for all the current writers. I suppose this is natural. So when someone like Titan Books decides to reissue a dozen Farmer titles, it seems like he’s “coming back.” Then again, other than the Riverworld series, Farmer has mostly been published by smaller presses (Subterranean Press, Monkey Brain, Ramble House, Meteor House, Overlook Press, Bison Books, Creation Oneiros, IDW, Baen, etc.) over the last decade or so. So his books are staying in print, but for the most part they are through specialty publishers and you have to buy them online.The Titan reprints I mentioned above are different, since they have major distribution and we haven’t seen anyone print this many Farmer titles since Ace in the 1970s.

As for his resurgence, I think some of it has to do with his fanbase and the big following of his Wold Newton theory. I believe it was the idea of marketing many of Farmer’s books as “Wold Newton Novels” that got Titan Books interested in reprinting Farmer in the first place. And guys like Danny Adams, Win Scott Eckert, and Christopher Paul Carey completing some of Farmer’s unfinished works, and giving readers “new” Farmer, has kept the interest level up.

But to answer your question as to why his works speak so strongly to readers, to me the most remarkable thing about Farmer is that his knowledge was very broad, and in many places very deep. So he put so much into each book. If you ever come across something in one of his books, a random fact about a place he created, like the natives not having any generic words in their language, and you think, “that was a throwaway he probably made up on the spot,” you’re wrong. If he goes into detail about something, he’s done the research. Farmer is one of those writers who, no matter how many times you reread one of his books, you always discover something new.

And he was into so many things which people are still discovering are cool, like pulp heroes, and alternate universe/timelines, writing fiction about real people, or trying to prove someone you thought was fictional was in fact a real living person, and other outside-the-box thinking.

ANTHONY: And my usual closing question: What is your favorite book and what would you say to someone who hasn’t read it in order to convince them that they should?

MIKE: Let’s see, you started this interview on a Tuesday, but I started typing this on a Thursday, and now it’s Saturday, so…which answer should I give? I have a hard time picking my favorite Farmer title, or in most cases my favorite from any author. It often depends on the person I’m recommending the book to. But since it’s Saturday, I’ll go with today’s answer: The Maker of Universes. This is the first book in the World of Tiers series and introduces Kickaha (aka Paul Janus Finnegan, note the initials), who although an ancillary character in the first book, by the third book takes over as the focus of the series. If you’re not familiar with Kickaha, think Tarzan, but without the Victorian restraint that Edgar Rice Burroughs gave him. Even if The Maker of Universes isn’t always my favorite book, Kickaha will always be my favorite of Farmer’s characters.

You can learn more about Meteor House at their site.

You can still pre-order the re-issue of Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life and the new Pat Wildman novella The Scarlet Jaguar.

WILLIAM MIEKLE, Author - Interview

William Miekle is a Scottish author who works largely in the horror, dark fantasy and urban fantasy realms. He recently launched an anthology project similar to the one I’ll be putting out later this year, where the profits will go towards cancer research. My own project is a mix of genres and authors, while William’s is straight-up horror with stories provided by some of the biggest names in the business. So I thought now was a good time to chat with an author I seem to share a lot of common interests with.

ANTHONY: The Unspoken is an anthology intended to raise funds for cancer research. How did the project come about?

WILLIAM: Cancer is a monster. I can’t fight it. But as a writer and as an editor there is something I can do. I rallied up some friends, and friends of friends, and asked them for some stories. They responded brilliantly. We’ve put them together in a wee book. And now it’s out there, earning money for cancer charities. I’m very proud of everyone involved.

ANTHONY: What’s your personal connection to cancer?

WILLIAM: My Dad has cancer. More than one kind in fact. He’s fighting hard, but cancer is a devious bugger. It hides, it lurks, and it pounces when you think it’s down and defeated.

It has been a presence in my life for as long as I can remember. I first came across it in the late Sixties. My Gran’s brother came back to town to die with his family. I was fascinated by this man, so thin as to be almost skeletal, wound in clothes that were many sizes too large for his frame, his skin so thin that I could see his blood moving… not pumping, for it had long since stopped moving enough to keep him alive long. He rarely spoke, just sat by the fire as if trying to soak up heat, his eyes frequently wet from tears, not of sadness, but of pain. He lasted for months in that condition until it finally took him and I knew then that cancer was a monster.

Since then it has taken others, both friends and family, a young mother with two pre-teen children, a cousin who was like a big brother to me, and a girl I never got to know for she was taken before her twentieth birthday. Other family members are still fighting. There’s my Dad, who meets it all with a good humour that is humbling, and my godmother who has battled bowel cancer into remission twice.

ANTHONY: Why call the anthology “The Unspoken?”

WILLIAM: There is a taboo in talking about cancer, and death. I remember it well as a child, watching my mum and aunts whisper, taking care that we, the children, were kept distanced from it, kept away from the horror, as if in fear it might somehow be contagious. Couple that with the reticence many people feel when talking about things that affect their bodies and there is definitely a lot left Unspoken.

ANTHONY: What authors are involved in the anthology, and did their personal experiences with cancer influence the stories they chose to tell?

WILLIAM: The lineup is stunning.

Ramsey Campbell – Introduction

Tim Lebbon – Just Breathe

Simon Kurt Unsworth – Photographs of Boden

Steven Savile & Steve Lockley – The Last Gift

John Shirley – Where the Market’s Hottest

Anna Taborska – Underbelly

Stephen James Price – Pages of Promises

Scott Nicholson – Heal Thyself

Stephen Laws – Harbinger

William Meikle – The Unfinished Basement

Nancy Kilpatrick – Alien Love

David Riley – A Girl, a Toad and a Cask

Barbie Wilde – Polyp

Johnny Mains – The Cure

Guy N Smith – The Big One

Pete Crowther – Cankerman

Steve Duffy – X for Henrietta

Gary McMahon – Bitter Soup

Cover art by Simon Marshall Jones

I know from private correspondence that each one has been touched in some way by cancer, whether it be personal, family or friends, but I’ll let their stories speak for them – the rest is a private matter for them to speak about if they wish to.

ANTHONY:  Tell us about your story in the anthology.

WILLIAM: The Unfinished Basement is a cancer metaphor story – there’s several in the collection.

I write about monsters, and have been doing so for a long span of years. Just recently I’ve started thinking more about why and taking a harder look at my motivations. A look back at several recent things I’ve done was revealing. THE INVASION features an alien invasion that comes in the form of an organism from space that eats anything in its path, transforming it into something different and unnatural. My short story THE COLOUR THAT CAME TO CHISWICK features a colour out of space that gets into beer and, when consumed, eats the drinker away from the inside out. THE UNFI|N|ISHED BASEMENT features gross body changes and loss of identity, and even my current work in progress, ostensibly just a little creature feature disaster story, features genetic modification leading to crawling chaos. I may not have been consciously aware of it, but it’s obvious to me now that the Big C has been on my mind.

ANTHONY: You write short stories and novels. Does your writing process change at all from one format to the other?

WILLIAM: To me it’s all just writing. The story itself dictates its own length. The end format is just another method for me to deliver the story. I’ve been published in all lengths, in print, ebook, audio, and on film and I’ve read stories at storytelling evenings in a variety of bars. I’m sure when the time comes for media to get delivered straight into people’s brains that I’ll be ready with something to publish that way too.

ANTHONY: You also are known for writing stories with characters like Doyle’s Professor Challenger and Sherlock Holmes, Lovecraft’s Cthulu mythos and Thomas Carnacki. What draws you to these classic (and somewhat public domain) characters over and over again?

WILLIAM: Nowadays there is a plethora of detectives in both book and film who may seem to use the trappings of crime solvers, but get involved in the supernatural. William Hjortsberg’s Falling Angel (the book that led to the movie Angel Heart) is a fine example, an expert blending of gumshoe and deviltry that is one of my favorite books. Likewise, in the movies, we have cops facing a demon in Denzel Washington’s Fallen that plays like a police procedural taken to a very dark place.

My interest goes further back to the “gentleman detective” era where we have seekers of truth in Blackwood’s John Silence, Sherlock Holmes and William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki, and, mixed in with that, a deep love of the American PI books and movies of the ’40s and ’50s.

I’ve written numerous stories set in the late Victorian / Early Edwardian era, for Sherlock Holmes, Carnacki, and Professor Challenger. I was raised on Doyle, Wells and Robert Louis Stevenson and I love that historical period they covered in their work. It’s also the time period I’ve come to prefer for my own writing and I can see me settling in there for a long time to come.

ANTHONY: You also have your own continuing series, like The Midnight Files. Tell us a little bit about them.

WILLIAM: I read widely, both in the crime and horror genres, but my crime fiction in particular keeps returning to older, pulpier, bases.

My series character, Glasgow PI Derek Adams, is a Bogart and Chandler fan, and it is the movies and Americana of the ’40s that I find a lot of my inspiration for him, rather than in the modern procedural.

That, and the old city, are the two main drivers for the Midnight Eye stories.

When I was a lad, back in the early 1960s, we lived in a town 20 miles south of Glasgow, and it was an adventure to the big city when I went with my family on shopping trips. Back then the city was a Victorian giant going slowly to seed.

It is often said that the British Empire was built in Glasgow on the banks of the river Clyde. Back when I was young, the shipyards were still going strong, and the city centre itself still held on to some of its past glories.

It was a warren of tall sandstone buildings and narrow streets, with Edwardian trams still running through them. The big stores still had pneumatic delivery systems for billing, every man wore a hat, collar and tie, and steam trains ran into grand vaulted railway stations filled with smoke.

To a young boy from the sticks it seemed like a grand place. It was only later that I learned about the knife gangs that terrorized the dance halls, and the serial killer, Bible John, who frequented the same dance floors, quoting scripture as he lured teenage girls to a violent end.

Fast forward fifteen years, and I was at University in the city, and getting an education into the real heart of the place. I learned about bars, and religious divides. Glasgow is split along tribal royalties. Back in the Victorian era, shiploads of Irishmen came to Glasgow for work. The protestants went to one side of the city, the catholics to the other. There they set up homes… and football teams.

Now these teams are the biggest sporting giants in Scotland, two behemoths that attract bigots like bees to honey. As a student I soon learned how to avoid giving away my religion in bars, and which ones to stay out of on match days.

Also by the time I was a student, a lot of the tall sandstone buildings had been pulled down to make way for tower blocks. Back then they were the new shiny future, taking the people out of the Victorian ghettos and into the present day.

Fast forward to the present day and there are all new ghettos. The tower blocks are ruled by drug gangs and pimps. Meanwhile there have been many attempts to gentrify the city centre, with designer shops being built in old warehouses, with docklands developments building expensive apartments where sailors used to get services from hard faced girls, and with shiny, trendy bars full of glossy expensively dressed bankers.

And underneath it all, the old Glasgow still lies, slumbering, a dreaming god waiting for the stars to be right again.

Derek Adams, The Midnight Eye, knows the ways of the old city. And, if truth be told, he prefers them to the new.

He’s turned up in three novels so far, THE AMULET, THE SIRENS and THE SKIN GAME, all out now in ebook at all the usual online stores and in shiny new paperback editions from Seven Realms Publishing in 2013.( All three books will also be appearing in Portuguese language editions in 2013/14.) The Amulet is available in audiobook at Audible.com, and there’s also a film company looking for funding to bring him to life, several short stories, and an anthology appearance in the forthcoming CTHULHU 2012 anthology from Mythos Books.

Derek has developed a life of his own, and I’m along for the ride.

ANTHONY: The e-book of The Unspoken has been available for a short while now. What’s the response to the book been like from readers?

WILLIAM: Slower than I hoped actually. Anyone who has read it has been very positive, but sales are sluggish. I’m hoping interviews like this one will help raise the profile.

ANTHONY: When will the print version of the anthology be available?

WILLIAM: It should be along later this year, funds permitting.

ANTHONY: Where does the money raised by the anthology go?

WILLIAM: The money is going to The Beatson Cancer Research Institute, an organization who have done a lot of tireless work in helping sufferers for many years – including my dad.

The US Kindle edition is available on Amazon: The Unspoken. And if you’re interested, here’s the link for Amazon UK.

You can learn more about the Beatson Cancer Research Institute by visiting their website.

You can also learn more about William’s writing on his website, and follow him on Twitter.

FAITH HUNTER, Author - Interview

Tonight it’s my pleasure to welcome author Faith Hunter to Ramble On with me about her writing.

Faith Hunter is the fantasy author of the Jane Yellowrock vampire hunter series and a long time professional fiction writer. Including her other pen name, Gwen Hunter, she has over 25+ published books in 28 countries around the world. Her latest addition to the Jane Yellowrock series, Blood Trade, was released by Penguin/ROC on April 2nd, 2013. She is an original creator of and regular contributor to MagicalWords.net, an industry blog for sci-fi and fantasy writers. You can find out more about Faith at her home on the web, FaithHunter.net, or visit her official Facebook page to connect with her and other fantasy fiction fans.

How and where did you “meet” Jane Yellowrock?

FAITH: I was sitting with [fellow urban fantasy author] Kim Harrison and we were exploring the idea of new books and series and I bounced this new voice off of her. Then I read the first Temple Grandin book and I was hooked on the animal brain as opposed to the human brain versions. And I began to remember the old Tarzan movies. You know, “Me Tarzan. You Jane.” And between the two events, Jane was born, with her Beast inside her.

Jane is a skinwalker, and of Cherokee heritage. How much research into Indian culture and mythos did you do?

FAITH: I am still researching! There are many different Cherokee tales of the dark beings in life, from the liver eater to the stone finger, from Skinwalkers to witches. Most of the worst dark creatures are depicted as evil beings who kill and eat humans. But the oldest, pre-Christian, pre-white man Cherokee stories tell of skinwalkers being the protectors and warriors, and that is who and what I wanted Jane to be. I started with the good stories and built my world and character around them, with evil stories as warnings of her possible future.

Jane’s a Christian and unashamed of that, yet not preachy or confrontational about her faith. Has that been a problem for readers?

FAITH: My answer to this question has changed in the last weeks. Angry people, wounded people, un-self-confident people are always going to find something in a character (or in her writer) to hate. Some of them will become verbal bullies, who use the internet to hurt others. So yes, I’ve been blasted about religion by people who hate Christianity, even though Jane is non-confrontational, nonjudgmental, non-preachy. She is searching for her past & her Cherokee spirituality, and trying to find ways to become whole, much like many in the Eastern Cherokee band has done. I think her religion (both Christian and her Cherokee spirituality) is one reason the publisher didn’t think the series would sell well. I was told that, “No one thought these books would sell.” (rolls eyes) But actually sales are still climbing, and I get fan mail thanking me for making Jane searching, fallible, spiritually open to new experiences.

Describe a typical day of writing, for us. And, are you a planner or pantser?

FAITH: Last question first. I am an outliner, for sure. I call it OOPS – Organic Outline ProcesS. (LOL) But what I outline are only plot points. What happens inside the character in the book, that is always such a surprise! And that surprise factor is why I keep writing.

My day is pretty mundane. Up at 8-ish. Take the dogs out. Email and PR work get the juices going. Then I rewrite previous day’s pages. Around 1 or 2, I’ll eat Brunch. Yes, I know it isn’t really brunch by that time, but when you don’t have an appetite until 1 or 2 p.m., it’s a “whatever-meal”. So I call it brunch. Then I start writing (if I haven’t yet). I usually write about 8 hours total. Supper at 8-ish. TV and dogs and hubby get attention after that. These days I’m in bed by 11 at the latest, so I can get more sleep. Except when I’m on the water, kayaking, on the road with the Hubby and rescued Pomeranians, Tommy and Tuffy, RV-ing. Then the schedule goes all to heck and back!

What is next on your schedule? Anything else we should keep our eyes open for?

FAITH: I have KICKING IT, an anthology I’m editing (and writing a story in) with Kalayna Price. Then the JANE YELLOWROCK COMPANION that I’m writing with Carol Malcom, both which come out this year! BLACK ARTS in Jan 2014. The ROGUE MAGE, the rpg, is out now, and the MONSTERS part will be out soon! I also plan 3 shorts into the world of Thorn St. Croix, probably as an e-book.

ROSEANNE RIVERS, Author - Interview

I’m happy today to be part of the blog tour for author Rosanne Rivers, whose YA dystopian novel AFTER THE FEAR is now available.

Rosanne lives in Birmingham, UK and considers it one of her favourite cities, second only to Rome. She delights in writing for children and young adults and hopes to bring readers to an unfamiliar yet alluring setting. Rosanne was inspired to write when she read the Harry Potter books, and at age fourteen, she wrote romance fanfiction on just about every pairing you could dream up from the HP series. She currently lives with her partner and two bunny rabbits and is working on a fantasy YA with a twist.

ANTHONY: What was the inspiration for AFTER THE FEAR?

ROSANNE: In After the Fear, everyone is born with a personal debt to the government. This was inspired by the huge deficit the UK, and quite a few other countries, have at the moment. I wondered how we would pay this off, and whether our grandchildren will still be paying for our mistakes in years to come. The new world came quite naturally after this; I have always wondered how there was so much money in live, public spectacles such as music gigs and football matches, and so I created a world in which the new government pays our country’s debt by providing huge ‘shows’. These shows revert back to the oldest forms of entertainment – public executions.

ANTHONY: How did you develop the world that Sola lives in? Is it an extrapolation from where we are now as a society?

ROSANNE: Definitely. Every aspect of the world is either a more extreme version of where we are now, or taken from patterns which have occurred in the past. For example, from seeing where Facebook was heading (tagging you into locations, recognising your face in pictures, tagging other people in your statuses etc), I knew I wanted to explore a society in which social networking was mandatory, and everyone, everywhere knew where you were ALL the time. This social networking site became ‘Debtbook’ in After the Fear. The ‘trigger cameras’ are a version of CCTV cameras here in the UK which activate upon hearing certain words. Even the Demonstrations could be seen as an extreme form of the way certain criminals are sensationalised in the media. Yet aside from all the politics, it’s a fun read too!

ANTHONY: What is the significance of the book’s title?

ROSANNE: ‘The Fear’ could be interpreted as the fear Sola feels in the Stadium, which compels her to kill others for her own safety. After that fear has gone, she can no longer justify her actions, so in a way she revels in it. It’s also about the fear which forces the cities to stay away from each other and the hidden fear of the Shepherds. So the title gives some hope for the future, because when all that fear is gone, Sola may live in a better world!

ANTHONY: The YA speculative fiction market has exploded over the past few years, and it’s hard now to say that teen fiction is “not about anything meaningful.” Some of the things you touch on in ATF were once the province of preachy memoirs like GO ASK ALICE, but now are almost an expected part of YA spec fic. Any thoughts on why this shift has occurred?

ROSANNE: I think teen fiction was always about something meaningful, whether it was tackling more personal issues such as bullying or not fitting in, to more widespread issues like where the world is heading, poverty and corruption. Spec fic might have exploded recently because of the way technology is becoming so readily integrated into our lives. Some see it as a time of change, and whenever the world shifts, people begin to speculate about the future. What better way to do that than with fiction?

AFTER THE FEAR

ANTHONY: With a plethora of dystopian YA fiction out there, what should prospective readers know about AFTER THE FEAR that sets it apart or makes it something they should move to the top of their reading queues?

ROSANNE: I guess what sets it apart is that it isn’t about a society which is on the cusp of a revolution or some huge change; it’s exploring how life continues for those everyday people who are ruled by tyrannical governments or leaders. It’s about how you would really react in that situation, and how when you’re trying desperately to survive you ignore the bigger questions you should be asking. I think After the Fearcan be read and interpreted in so many different ways, and hopefully that’s what readers will enjoy!

ANTHONY: What’s your writing process like?

ROSANNE: It’s very mixed! I usually spend about a year with an idea in my head, mulling it over and adding notes to a word document every now and then. Then I jot down a semi-coherent plot totally full of holes and with only about 4 characters. I usually write the first chapter at this point, although this is likely to be scrapped later on! I’ll sketch out some of the faces of my characters and stick them on my wall too so they’re looking down at me, telling me I MUST write about them. After all this, once I’ve written the first 5000 words that I’m happy with, I’ll probably write around 1000 words a day until the first draft is finished. Then I rejoice before the editing process begins…

ANTHONY: What’s next for you?

ROSANNE: I’m currently writing a YA fantasy novel centred around an all-female organised crime gang. Think Game of Thrones meets Sons of Anarchy. During this time I’ll also be adding notes to the ‘After the Fear -possible sequel’ document on my comp…

ANTHONY: And my usual closing question: What is your favorite book, and what would you say to someone who hasn’t read it to convince them that they should?

ROSANNE: My favourite book is probably Poison Study by Maria V Snyder. It’s fast paced, has a fantastic heroine and a seriously cool love interest (who I kind of have a massive crush on).

You can find out more about Rosanne’s projects on her website, Facebook, Pinterest, Goodreads, and by following her on Twitter @cityjuliet.

ALSO, you can enter to win a free copy of AFTER THE FEAR through the Rafflecopter Giveaway. Don’t miss out on a chance to win stuff!

SEANAN McGUIRE, MIDNIGHT BLUE-LIGHT SPECIAL - Interview

MIDNIGHT BLUE-LIGHT SPECIAL, the second novel in Seanan McGuire’s INCRYPTID series, launched today. I’ve read the first chapters and the book gets off to a rollickin’ start — no surprise for any adventure featuring Verity Price nor for any book coming from Seanan’s pen. As always, I’m honored to have Seanan stop by and spend a few minutes answering questions.

ANTHONY:  Let’s start out with an easy one: where does MIDNIGHT BLUE-LIGHT SPECIAL pick up in relation to the previous book, DISCOUNT ARMAGEDDON?  Can new readers jump right in with this volume, or do they need to read the books in order?

SEANAN: It’s always best to read things in order.  I try to provide enough information to let new readers find their way in without feeling shut out,  but the introductions all happened in the first book.  MIDNIGHT BLUE-LIGHT SPECIAL picks up a few months after the events of DISCOUNT ARMAGEDDON, and focuses on the same central cast.

ANTHONY: What interesting new Cryptids are we introduced to this time around?

SEANAN: Hey, now.  That would be telling.

ANTHONY: You can’t blame a guy for trying! Has your approach to writing Verity changed at all now that she has a full novel behind her?

SEANAN: Nope!  If there’s something tall, she’ll try to jump off it; if there’s something that needs to be shot, she’ll shoot it; if there’s a dance floor available, she’ll be on it.  She’s matured as a character–I feel like that’s inevitable–and she’ll continue to grow and learn, but the core of Verity Price remains the same, which means that writing her is fun and familiar.

ANTHONY: You’ve also written a number of short stories about the Healy-Price clan, three of which detail how Jonathan Healy and Frances Brown met in 1928. Will the Jonathan-Fran stories get collected in print form at some point?

SEANAN: I hope so?  Honestly, that’s not something that’s easily within my control.  If the main series keeps selling well, I’ll hopefully be able to convince DAW that we should do a collection of the Jonathan and Fran stories.  I’ll have to write enough to make a volume first, so…

ANTHONY: I’ll keep my fingers crossed, as I really enjoyed those stories. There’s also so much more family history to explore — Alex and Enid Healy leaving The Covenant and the generation between Jonathan & Fran and Verity and her siblings, for two examples — so I have to ask: will we be seeing other stories that fill in the InCryptid backstory any time soon?

SEANAN: Yes, but.  I tend to give those stories away for free, to say “thank you” to my fans for reading, and that means that they have to come after paying work.  I eventually want to work all the way through Jonathan and Fran to Alice and Thomas, because Alice and Thomas are really the relationship that defined the current generation.  It’s going to take me a while to get there, since again, I can’t always drop everything for another InCryptid short.  I feel like it’s going to add a lot of depth to the later books in the series, though, so I keep pressing forward.

ANTHONY: Of all the holidays celebrated by the Aeslin  Mice, what is your favorite?

SEANAN: It varies, but I’m very fond of the Sacred Rite of What the Hell is That Thing, I Don’t Know, We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Gun.

ANTHONY: The last time we chatted, I asked about your favorite book and you discussed IT and 2012 being the latest in Pennywise The Clown’s cycle. Now that 2012 is over — was Pennywise’s latest rampage everything you hoped it would be?

SEANAN: It was, it really, really was.  I went to Maine and spent time with Cat Valente, whom I adore, and we tramped all over Bangor, and it was glorious.  I’m so glad I’m a geek.

ANTHONY: Oh, I wish I could have been along on that trip! Finally, any other upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?

SEANAN: Right now, I’m working on the eighth Toby Daye book and the third InCryptid book.  Coming out in the next year, I have MIDNIGHT BLUE-LIGHT SPECIAL–naturally–as well as the seventh Toby book, CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, which I’m very proud of.  There’s a new Mira Grant coming up, PARASITE, which doesn’t have a release day yet.  And then there’s VELVETEEN VS. THE MULTI-VERSE, which wraps up the first Velveteen vs. cycle.  It’s going to be a busy year!

You can keep up with Seanan’s news, learn more about the InCryptid universe, and find two of the InCryptid stories referenced above by visiting Seanan’s website, and you can also follow her on Twitter @seananmcguire.

DAMIEN WALTERS GRINTALIS, Author - Interview

I first became familiar with author Damien Walters Grintalis through Twitter, and shortly thereafter through backing the Kickstarter for the second issue of Fireside magazine (for which backing, Damien “tuckerized” me into her wonderful short story “Scarred”), and when we finally met in person at last year’s Readercon, we hit it off famously. Damien is an active member of both the Horror Writers Association and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). She’s a staff writer at BooklifeNow and an associate editor at Electric Velocipede. In addition to her short stories (which include recent  appearances in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Electric Velocipede, Penumbra and Arcane magazines), her first novel, INK,  has been out since early December. INK is about a recently divorced man who meets a really sketchy tattoo artist in a bar … which sounds like the set-up for a joke, but things take a much darker turn when the new tattoo takes on a life of its own.

ANTHONY: INK has been out for a few months now. How has the reaction been?

DAMIEN: So far, the reception has been overwhelmingly positive and readers seem to like it. I’d assumed release day would come and go without a peep and that if anyone read it, they would hate. A normal debut author mindset, I’d like to think.

ANTHONY: Why are tattoos such a staple of genre fiction, and specifically of horror fiction?

DAMIEN: I know tattoos are a recurring staple in Urban Fantasy but when it comes to horror, I was only aware of Bradbury’s “The Illustrated Man” and thought a living tattoo was an unexplored facet of the genre. I’ve since heard about another book and an episode from the Tales from the Crypt TV show so it’s obviously been explored before, but I’d like to think it hasn’t been done to death yet.

ANTHONY: If you encountered Sailor, unaware of who he was was, what would your tattoo be?

DAMIEN: I have a penchant for text tattoos, so it would be the line “Something wicked this way comes”. Given Sailor’s ink game, I wonder if the letters would emerge and wrap themselves around my neck or force their way down my throat? Shakespeare was brilliant, but I’d rather read his words than choke on them.

ANTHONY: In INK, Jason’s ex-wife is particularly snobbish about horror fiction. Most bookstore chains don’t even have a “horror” section any more.  Of all the genres, why does horror seem to have more of a stigma attached to writing/reading it? 

DAMIEN: I suspect it has to do with the glut of horror fiction published in the 80s. There were a lot of great books published, but there was also a great amount of dreck and, unfortunately, the genre was left with the reputation of the latter. I do think horror is shaking the last traces of that stigma, though.

ANTHONY: What was your writing process like for INK?  And how has it changed as you’ve worked on other novels? 

DAMIEN: I wrote INK mostly at night, cranking out 2,000 words or more in each session. I write during the day now and my progress is a bit slower, although I attribute that to taking more care with my words than the schedule change.

ANTHONY: You also write a lot of short stories (including what is for obvious reasons my personal favorite, “Scarred”). Does your writing process differ from novels to short stories?

DAMIEN: Slightly, yes. With novels, I usually see a character in my head doing or saying something (In INK’s case, I saw Sailor walking.), and sometimes I know right away the why and how and what; sometimes they linger for a bit until they reveal their story. With short fiction, I often have a handful of lines pop out that define the basic concept and spin the story from there. Sometimes the concept remains the same throughout; sometimes it spins off in a different direction.

ANTHONY: I was lucky enough to be “tuckerized” into “Scarred” by you as part of a Kickstarter perk for Fireside Issue 2, long before we finally met in person.  What sort of pressure is involved in tuckerizing someone as a lead character into a story when they know they’re being tuckerized (as opposed to doing it as a surprise for the person)?  And did that affect the writing and editing of the story at all?

DAMIEN: After the first draft was complete, the only real pressure was “Will Anthony like this story?” But when I was writing that first draft, I didn’t think about it. The story grew from the first line and your character simply slipped into place.

ANTHONY: Back to INK. There was a Mercedes Benz commercial during the Super Bowl after which you tweeted, and I paraphrase, “He’s perfect for Sailor.” (Awesome commercial, by the way!) With Willem DaFoe as Sailor, who else would you cast in a film version of INK?

DAMIEN: I never thought of anyone specific as Sailor before I saw that commercial and, in truth, my image of Sailor isn’t quite Willem Dafoe, but he does come close. I see all the characters very clearly in my head and they look like regular, non-celebrity people to me, so it’s hard to say who I’d cast. Maybe Jake Gyllenhaal and Kate Hudson for Jason and Mitch, but they’re both far more glamorous and attractive than the Jason and Mitch I envision.

ANTHONY: You’re very effective at stringing out the tension in INK — the reader is aware of what’s going on long before Jason is, but even so we don’t get to see one of the “monsters” of the piece in “full light” until near the end. Why is this such a staple of horror fiction and film, and why is it so hard to do effectively?

DAMIEN: What we can’t see is so much more effective, more powerful, than what we can. Think of the movie Alien. You see bits and pieces of the creature throughout, but it’s not until the end that you see it in its entirety. If Ridley Scott had chosen to reveal it early on, the movie would definitely have lost some of the nail-biting tension.

Is it hard to do? I’m not sure. As you mentioned, in INK, the reader knows what’s going on before the character does and I worried that technique would spoil the story for some readers. But given who Sailor is, I couldn’t find a way to effectively hide that fact without it coming across as trite. Instead, I put his card on the table up front and chose to keep the griffin under wraps for as long as I could, hoping that knowing it was there but not seeing it would keep a reader engaged.

ANTHONY: Well, it worked for me! What else do you have coming up, and where can people find it?

DAMIEN: I have short fiction forthcoming in Interzone, Lightspeed, Apex Magazine, Shock Totem, and Daily Science Fiction, and my agent and I are working on the final edits to my next novel.

ANTHONY: And my usual closing question:  What is your favorite book, and what would you say to someone who hasn’t read it to convince them that they should?

DAMIEN: I have quite a few favorites, but I think I’ll spotlight one that many people (in my experience from talking about books with friends) haven’t heard of: I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman. It’s a brilliant, dark dystopian book. If you’re the type of reader who wants everything explained and everything tied up with a neat bow, it will frustrate you and quite possibly piss you off, but it’s haunting in a very, very good way.

You can follow Damien on Twitter @DWGrintalis, check out her website for the latest publication news, check out INK (and Damien) on Goodreads, and purchase INK as an ebook or in print.

Bryan Thomas Schmidt, Author - Interview

Today, I welcome my old friend Bryan Thomas Schmidt back to the site. Every so often, Brian and I like to catch up on his latest editorial and authorial goings-on. He’s recently successfully funded a Kickstarter and has another on-going right now, both for anthologies of science fiction short stories. So, without further ado … my latest chat with BTS:

ANTHONY: Welcome back, Bryan. Good to chat with you again.

BRYAN: Thanks, Anthony. Always good to be here.

ANTHONY: Congrats on finishing Beyond The Sun. That was your first Kickstarter success story and from the Table Of Contents, I think it’s going to be well received. Of course, I admit I’m biased, since I have a story in there, but Robert Silverberg, Nancy Kress, Mike Resnick, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Cat Rambo, Jennifer Brozek, and many more recognizable names are a part of it. I feel lucky to be included.

BRYAN: Me, too. It really came together in an amazing, blessed way, and the stories are far above what I expected. Tons of variety on the theme of colonial science fiction stories, and just top notch writers. I’m grateful.

ANTHONY: Was the success of Beyond The Sun part of the impetus for your present Kickstarter Raygun Chronicles?

BRYAN: In part. Every Day Fiction wanted to work with me. And being a small press, they were throwing around ideas to fund this. They really want to pay writers pro rates, and they also wanted to take it to the next level of writers. Plus, they had some great writers they’ve been working with who deserve a better audience. With my experience and contacts, I was able to recruit some top name talent to the project to appear alongside this developing talent, which will ensure greater interest in the project than we would have had without it.

ANTHONY: For sure, with names like Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Mike Resnick, A.C. Crispin, Allen Steele, Seanan McGuire, Brenda Cooper, Robin Wayne Bailey and Sarah A. Hoyt, who could resist?

BRYAN: I know, they are great choices. That’s three Star Trek writers (Smith, Rusch, Crispin), two Star Wars writers (Crispin, Rusch) and five others with experience and demonstrative skill in space opera. Resnick has the Starship space opera series from PYR, Allen Steele has written several, including Apollo’s Outcast, his latest, a YA in a definite Heinlein vein, and Hoyt’s Darkship novels from Baen. Seanan and I met at a Con last year, and I’ve heard her wax on about her love of Firefly, so that’s what I pitched her. “How’d you like a chance to write a story with the Firefly feel?” She jumped on it. Crispin, Resnick and Cooper actually had trunk stories that were perfect. Everyone was very quick to jump aboard when asked.

ANTHONY: You have reprints as well as new stories, correct?

BRYAN: Yes, we have picked some reprints from a defunct space opera zine called Ray Gun Revival, which EDP funded. There were a lot of old school stories with larger-than-life characters and that older feel, but still contemporary, and a few with diverse takes and I thought they deserved a bigger audience and would make a great remembrance as well for RGR fans, so EDF suggested we combine the two and add some new stories  and Raygun Chronicles was born.

ANTHONY: Tell us about the Kickstarter. How’s it going?

BRYAN: Well, we’re almost half funded with 9 days to go. We launched in January and end March 7th, so we need $500 each day for the next 9 days to fund. If we don’t fund, it doesn’t happen. It’s tough because Kickstarters often start slow and drag until you reach a certain level. Then, if it’s a success, people pile on. Projects which fund 50% tend to be more likely to get 100%, so we’re hoping the next 9 days will be exciting, but it’s hard. No matter how you spread the word, people often think “I’ll do it tomorrow” or it gets buried in posts. With all the people who love pulp fiction out there, I know we have an audience. The challenge is to find it. We had a PR firm signed up before we launched, but right after we launched, they backed out, which was a big blow, because we hadn’t planned a huge PR campaign on our own. They were handling it. With all we have going on, including one of the publisher’s first son being born in the midst of this, we’ve really had to scramble. But it’s paying off. Last week was our best week since the launch. We got $900 in new pledges and had our best day ever with over $500 coming in. So that’s the big hurdle. Now we need some slightly smaller big days to make it happen.

ANTHONY: This is your third anthology project as editor, correct?

BRYAN: Yes, I edited Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales 6 for Flying Pen Press last year, and then Beyond The Sun, but in addition to Raygun Chronicles, I have an anthology of military fantasy, Shattered Shields, I’m coediting for Baen Books with Jennifer Brozek, and a YA reprint anthology I’m packaging as well. I have 9 more ideas in development.

ANTHONY: So you enjoy editing anthologies? Why?

BRYAN: Yeah. Anthologies allow me to create a concept and play with other writers, including my own writing heroes like Rusch, Silverberg and Resnick. I also get to help and encourage writers in developing their stories and pay them decent money to do it. And since I love doing that, it’s become part of how I make my living, and it’s a blessing to do what you love, you know?

ANTHONY: For sure. So tell us a bit about some of the Raygun Chronicles stories.

Bryan: Well, as far as the new stories go, Peter J. Wacks has written us a story called “Space Opera” which has a conductor conducting an orchestra as a historical battle replays. It’s actually quite well executed and unique. Brenda Cooper’s “Holly Defiant” about a writer who discovers a talented singer and fears she’s about to be kidnapped by slavers and sets out to save her, finding surprising connections to her (the writer’s) past. That’s just the new ones I’ve seen. Some will be written once we fund. As far as reprints, both Milo James Foreman and TM Hunter have series about classic-style space opera heroes named Captain Quasar and Aston West, and these tales are full of action, humor and satire and a lot of fun. We also have a bit of all-American fun with humans tracking down a UFO in Lou Antonelli’s “The Silver Dollar Saucer,” A.M. Stickel’s Star Trekinspired “To The Shores of Triple, Lee!”, another of Mike Resnick’s great and funny Catastrophe Baker tales, and a never before released short from AC Crispin which is excerpted but expanded from her fantastic space opera novel Starbridge about three travelers fighting to survive and find oxygen to continue their journey, who discover a new sentient life form.

ANTHONY: Sounds great. How can we help?

BRYAN: Well, for as little as $5, you can get the ebook of the entire anthology when it’s published. For $25 you get both print and ebook. There are hardbacks available for as little as $40 and also t-shirts, exclusive bookmarks, story critiques and more. We tried to offer something for everyone at various income levels. We even have a trip to OryCon for the book launch at the highest level. All you have to do is go to the Kickstarter and select your level to preorder the book, and we’ll do the rest. It’ll be in your hands in November.

For those curious about the type of book Bryan puts together, you can find the announcement of the Table of Contents for BEYOND THE SUN at sfsignal.com.  You can also find the TOC for his first anthology, SPACE BATTLES, on sfsignal.com as well. You can follow Bryan on Twitter @BryanThomasS, sign on to his Facebook Author page, and visit his website, where he also posts transcripts of the weekly Science Fiction / Fantasy Writers Chat #sffwrtcht that he hosts on Twitter every Wednesday night at 9pm Eastern.

SABRINA VOURVOULIAS, AUTHOR - Interview

I met Sabrina Vourvoulias through the weekly Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Chat (#sffwrtcht) on Twitter a bit more than a year ago. We clicked right away, sharing a sense of humor and a near-fatal dislike of outlining (which eventually led, with several other folks, to the formation of The League of Extraordinary Pantsers). We finally met in person at last year’s Readercon, just about the time the uncorrected proofs of her novel INK were available. We’ll be meeting up at Readercon again this July, and from the conversation below, it looks like there will be reading, writing, and … dancing??

INK is a novel set in the near future, in an America where immigrants (South/Central American in particular), whether they are legal citizens or not, are being “inked” as a method of population control and tracking. The novel follows a diverse set of characters as their lives are undone and remade, politically, socially, scientifically and magically, by these events.

ANTHONY:  Sabrina, thanks for taking some time to chat. INK has been out for several months now. How has the reaction been?

SABRINA: It has been so positive. The vast majority of readers who’ve left comments on Amazon, Goodreads and Librarything have had lovely things to say, and I’ve been absolutely blown away by some of the attention it has garnered. That a review of it would appear in the Los Angeles Review of Books, for example, when I’m a first time novelist from a small press … I’m very, very gratified.

ANTHONY: What was the initial impetus for INK?

SABRINA: I had been interviewing and hearing stories from undocumented immigrants for a number of years when I ran across a small newspaper article tucked into the back pages of a Spanish-language newspaper. It was about an undocumented immigrant who worked with a landscaping company in the suburbs of New York who had been “given a ride” by a couple of guys on the way home from work one day. Except instead of taking him home they took him over the border with Connecticut and dumped him there without money, cell phone or any identification and warned him to stay out of their state. According to the article he wasn’t the first undocumented immigrant to experience this kind of “border dumping.” It was horrifying and fascinating enough to kick my imagination into overtime.

What if it was over an international border? I thought. And how bad would the tensions that already exist between immigrant and non-immigrant have to become to make it likely, or viable?

The other manifestations of the dystopia came about the same way — I looked at what has already has been happening, or has happened in the past, and nudged it over the edge.

ANTHONY: INK is set in the near-future, which makes it frightenginly real despite the magical elements that appear. How realistic, or perhaps I should ask how possible/probable, do think the socio-political events of the novel are?

SABRINA: Possible, but I hope not probable. On the other hand, some of what I describe is only one or two steps removed from what has been (or is being) proposed in some omnibus immigration bills in some states. And other things — the forcible sterilizations, for example, were part of U.S. programs in Puerto Rico and Peru as recently as the 1970s.

ANTHONY: Although INK is essentially near-future dystopian fiction, it’s also very much in the realm of magical realism. What’s your definition of magical realism, and how does it differ from, say, “urban fantasy?”

SABRINA: One of the foundational Latin American writers of magical realism called the genre lo real maravilloso,  the marvelous reality, and so it is. For me it is about creating a world that reads true to our own and imbuing it with a type of magic that isn’t a learned system but something much more organic. Some manifestations of the magic in INK are culturally grounded, others are elemental, and still others are devotional or vocational.

Magic realism similar to urban fantasy, though without quite so many tropes. I always think of UF as requiring the setting to be as much a protagonist as the characters. Because I needed my characters to move — by choice or by force — to different locations, and because the feeling of being uprooted had to be a big part of things, I couldn’t afford to make either Hastings or Smithville as important as they would have had to be if INK were urban fantasy.

ANTHONY: The magic in INK works on a very personal/character-centric level. I wanted to ask about that choice. How did you decide which characters would have/recognize their personal magic, and why doesn’t magic seem to be more wide-spread in this world?

Character is what interests me most. I start and end everything with character.

Magic is tied intrinsically to “noticing” in my book. So Del’s magic is all about noticing what others wouldn’t in his woods. That “seeing what others don’t” becomes a dialogue and a knowing. All of the magicks in the book follow this same pattern, even Mari’s. So I created situations in which it is clear that while some people see, others don’t. Maybe they don’t want to. Or they see but deny.

Obviously, this applies as much to justice as it does to magic. In fact, the two have been tied together often in fiction, though more frequently in the sense of retribution being exacted magically (an aspect which doesn’t interest me in the least).

Meche, Mari, Del, Abbie, Chato, Chema and Remi all have magic of some kind in INK, and I have to say I’m glad it’s not more characters than that!

ANTHONY: There is a lot of Guatamalan folklore woven into the book. What, if any, liberties did you take in incorporating that folklore into the world of the novel?

SABRINA: The nahuales are a living belief — though probably not as widespread as it was at one time. The stories about them I remember are more like anecdotes. There was this girl named Margarita who was maybe four or five years older than me who told me that one of her relatives, whose nahual was a raccoon, woke up one morning with the injuries his nahual had incurred the night before. This always impressed me. I hate magic that is all-powerful and unassailable because it’s fundamentally boring. The really intriguing stuff always lives in the flaws.

I took liberties: imagining what it might be like to have a nahual, and what it might be like to be one, and then playing with the symbiosis.

ANTHONY: Thinking about the book months after reading it, it occurs to me that what I remember the most is the relationships. I feel like you took the macro (societal upheaval) and worked it at the micro (character) level, which made it all the more effective. The relationships also seem to be largely triangular: Del/Cassie/Meche, Abie/John/Tono … even the Finn/Mari relationship is essentially a triangle, with the third point alternately being the newspaper, the government and eventually the baby.  Was this geometric pattern a conscious decision and if so how did it affect the plot development?

SABRINA: Well, yes. Everything I write is really focused on our interactions and connection to each other individually or as groups and communities. Everything else is secondary.

Hah! I hadn’t even noticed the triangles. But it is interesting… I like threes. You put three elements in an arrangement on your mantel, or in the composition of a painting, and suddenly it becomes more aesthetically pleasing and more dynamic. It creates a lovely sort of tension, but at the same time there is a stability to it. It doesn’t teeter.

Look, romantic triangles are the stuff of a million books and even more lives. But none of the ones in my book are “Oh, the spark is gone, I’m bored of you” or “I just can’t decide between the werewolf and the vampire” type of triangles. The Del/Meche/Cassie one is on some level a triangle formed by the tensions between belief and disbelief. Or, on a more mundane level, lives sealed off from the cares of the world and those busted open by them.

Abbie/Toño/John are a triangle formed by socio-economic class and racial/ethnic expectations. But it’s funny, because that triangle could also be Abbie/Toño/Neto, in which case it is a triangle fraught with the tension of remembered versus actual.

In the last instance, I think you’ve got the triangulator (!) of Mari’s and Finn’s relationship wrong. It isn’t Finn’s job or their son that forms that third angle, but something much stranger: home. Mari’s really is the immigrant’s story over and over: have a home, leave a home, make a new home. Step and repeat.

So, what do you sacrifice when you stake a claim, put down roots, say no to yet another border crossing? For Mari the choice to not cross finally into Canada exacts a huge cost. And yet, when you see her with her son and the other character’s children later, you know she’s ultimately found a literal home (and a figurative one in her stories).

ANTHONY: You’ve said the main characters of INK are not based on real people, but your personal experiences growing up in Guatemala influenced the tone of the book and some of the choices the characters make, right?

SABRINA: Indeed. Growing up under a repressive government makes you wary and suspicious. It took me a long time to learn to trust — and I’m still painfully aware of those moments when our government takes away civil liberties, or tries to institute policy that controls the flow of information in the name of curbing piracy on the web, for example. All of that feeling — paranoia, wariness, mistrust — underpins the dystopic society I’ve created in INK.

The state of emergency, the civil patrols, the guns on the street and the siege-mentality and routine in the novel — all of that comes from my experiences living in a country at war with itself.

But there is much that is positive in this book that is informed by my life in Guatemala and my life here, as well. My understanding of community and the ways groups of people stand up to much greater powers, for one. The way networks of support are built for another.

But it is not only my experience that informs INK. It is the lives of the undocumented immigrants I know. And the people I know who live in towns like Smithville. And practically every young reporter at the small newsrooms I’ve worked in.

What informs a novel — or a life — is a menjurje, as we say in Central America. A mess of ingredients all macerated together until they cohere into something else: bitter medicine, enlivening draught, a soup that sustains.

ANTHONY: Since we’re both members of the League of Extraordinary Pantsers, I have to ask what the process for writing INK was like, and how (if at all) it differed from your other fiction.

SABRINA: I write a lot on a weekly basis — newspaper op-eds, columns, blogs — and yet I am such a slow fiction writer. I was more obsessive about my novel than I usually am with my short stories, but that’s really the only qualitative difference in how I write. In both forms I start with characters and perhaps only an inkling of what I’ll be putting them through. But as the characters reveal themselves (sometimes in quite astonishing ways) their trajectory through the novel or story changes too. So I don’t write to hit markers. Truthfully, I’m a slow writer because I enjoy the process of writing too much to want to zip through it. And the regimentation of X number of hours a day or Y number of words per week makes me want to run howling into the night.

You know I dance when I write, don’t you? I’m an utter writing hedonist — has somebody claimed that term yet? — if not, it’s mine. 

ANTHONY: I love that about you. Haha. “Now is the time in writing when we dance!” We should have a “Dance-While-You-Write-A-Thon” at the next Readercon! Your other fiction is largely short stories. Are they the same sort of science fiction / magical realism mix, or do you veer into other genres?

SABRINA:  I write everything. No genre is safe. And given my temperament, nothing is sacrosanct.

ANTHONY: What do you have coming up in the near (or not-so) future?

SABRINA: My story “Ember” appears in the Crossed Genres anthology Menial: Skilled Labor in Science Fiction which was just released in January. One of my short stories, “Collateral Memory” will be appearing in Strange Horizons in either June or July (don’t know yet), and my story “Paper Trail” will be appearing in a long-delayed issue of Greatest Uncommon Denominator magazine. A poem will be appearing in an upcoming issue of Bull Spec magazine, and a couple of short stories have been requested for anticipated anthologies.

But mostly I’m working on a collection of interconnected stories about monsters that cross the borders with us when we immigrate to a new country. It might turn into a novel … or not. Undoubtedly it’ll have lots of voices because I get bored with just one point of view. Typical Gemini.

ANTHONY: I’m looking forward to that set of stories. Now my usual closing question: What is your favorite book, and what would you say to someone who hasn’t read it to convince them that they should?

SABRINA: That’s a cruel question, I have to say. One favorite? One? Well, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of my all time favorites. It’s a generational saga rife with magic, history, social commentary and incredibly vivid imagery.

And it has a fantastic first line: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” Tell me, how can anyone resist a book that opens like that?

You can follow Sabrina on Twitter as @followthelede. INK has its’ own website. And of course you can find updates on Sabrina’s writing and other great stuff on her blog.