Jeff Strand is one of those rare writers who can gleefully combine comedy with horror and the macabre. Some reviewers even say his stuff defies classification. For me personally, writers who find their niche and pull it off with flying colors are an inspiration. The downside is that big-ticket mainstream publishing does not see enough dollar signs to give writers like Jeff Strand the credit he deserves. At least not until recently. Jeff just signed a mass market book deal with Leisure Horror for his book Pressure, due out in June 2009. One of the sweetest spots in reading isContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #20 – Jeff Strand

Maryann Miller is one of those writers who labors for sheer love of the craft. It’s evident that she pursues a variety of creative outlets, while keeping the day job, as so many authors are forced to do. I first encountered her through our publisher, Five Star Publishing. We also share the experience of having a number of things not quite work out, but yet we struggled through it and persevere. There’s a lesson in there for struggling newbies. Just keep doing it. You’ll get better. Opportunities will appear. And your creative efforts will be rewarded.

Christopher Moore is one of those rare authors who writes what is essentially genre fiction but still manages to maintain a prominent place on mainstream fiction bookshelves. He is perhaps best known for his book You Suck: A Love Story, a vampire story that mixes humor, sex, and gore into a unique dish. After numerous NYT bestsellers, he has secured his place on those bookstore shelves, but still finds time to do answer fan mail and do interviews. He took time out from his European book tour to talk about his life as an author.

Occasionally, one encounters a short story that really strikes a chord, provokes thought, and evokes emotion. Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s story “Elites” did that for me when I heard it on Escape Pod a couple of months back. But that story is just the tip of this author’s creative iceberg. Kristine Kathryn Rusch is a long-time pro, with novel and short story credits that go on for miles not only under her own name but also under three successful pen names. She’s up for a Hugo Award this year for her novella, “Recovering Apollo 8,” which appeared in Asimov’s Science FictionContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #16 – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Pat Kapera has been a familiar figure around the gaming industry for some years. His biggest splash to date has been the Spycraft Role-Playing Game, a high-tech, James Bond-meets-Man from U.N.C.L.E-meets-Mission: Impossible espionage game. He has also worked on some of the most prominent licensed properties in the hobby gaming industry, including the Battlestar Galactica RPG. The hobby gaming market is a HUGE potential market for fledgling writers, as a many of the game companies are actively looking for talented, creative writers who love the industry. It’s a great place to get some experience and writing credits. The downside isContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #15 – Pat Kapera

As a fellow resident of Nebraska (how few of us there are), I first encountered Robert Reed some years ago at a local science-fiction convention in the early days of his writing career. He has built an extensive and award-winning body of work as a science-fiction author, primarily along hard-SF lines. In spite of a tremendously busy writing schedule, he still finds time to attend and support the local cons. If there’s a magazine that publishes science-fiction, it’s a good bet you’ll find Robert Reed stories.

I first became aware of Dru Pagliassotti when I had my first short story publication in The Harrow, a monthly online journal for horror and dark fantasy. She’s been the editor at that fine publication for some years. Her name is so distinctive that I recognized it immediately when I saw her first novel, Clockwork Heart, on the shelf in Border’s. The book has been called steampunk, urban fantasy, fantasy romance. By all accounts, it’s hard to classify, but it’s getting good reviews. She’s also one of the editors of two horror anthologies, Fear of the Unknown and Midnight Lullabies.Continue readingAuthor Interview Series #12 – Dru Pagliassotti

Award-winning Kevin J. Anderson kicked his writing career into high gear working on some of the biggest properties in the SF field, Star Wars, the X-Files, and Dune, which are probably the places most people have seen his books. I first encountered his work in the Star Wars Jedi Academy trilogy. But he created an impressive body of original work both before and after those series, and in recent years, he has branched out into film production and comics. And with all that work in hand, soaring among the stratosphere of SF-dom, he still took the time to answer aContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #11 – Kevin J. Anderson

I must admit that I hadn’t heard of Michael Mehas before we discussed doing an interview, but I had heard of the legal case in which he was involved–the story of Jesse James Hollywood, the youngest person ever to make the FBI’s Most Wanted list, who now sits on death row for his crimes. The story of this young man formed the basis for Michael Mehas’s book Stolen Boy, and for the feature film Alpha Dog. It’s a story of suburban middle-class kids gone bad, descending into a world of drugs and sex and ultimately murder. Michael made the transitionContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #10 – Michael Mehas

This week in the author interview series we meet Daniel Arenson. Like many writers out there, he’s made that quantum jump to published novelist, but only very recently. With a number of poems and short fiction sales, his first novel Firefly Island has been released in library edition hardcover by Five Star Publishing. One of the things that I find most interesting about this interview series is how certain elements are held in common by all the authors, while at the same time varying in numerous ways. I’ll leave it to you to figure out what those are, but sufficeContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #9 – Daniel Arenson