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

I first became aware of the name Jack Ketchum whilst reading On Writing Horror, a collection of essays and articles by everyone who’s anyone in the horror genre. (Previous interviewees Joe Lansdale and Richard Dansky also have essays in this book.) Jack’s essay, “Splat Goes the Hero: Visceral Horror” was one of those that opened my eyes to what good horror fiction is. It’s not just splattering viscera; it’s making the reader care whether a character’s viscera is about to be splattered. Writing good horror is about having the guts to look the blackness square in the face, and forcingContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #8 – Jack Ketchum