Category: Author Interviews

A series of interviews with established authors about writing as a life and as a career.

Author Interview Series #58 – Gail Carriger

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I hadn’t been sitting at the bar in the Fairmont Hotel at the World Fantasy Convention, nursing a Bombay Sapphire and tonic, when this dame slides onto the stool next to me.  But a second glance proved this to be no dame, but a lady looking as if she had stepped out of a 1940s noir film. I wondered if she was packing heat in that little clutch. Wearing a vintage ensemble complete with white gloves, Gail Carriger made a striking first impression, and the conversation quickly went interesting places, her book that just came out, her career as anContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #58 – Gail Carriger

Author Interview Series #57 – James Van Pelt

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At the Mass Book Signing at the World Fantasy Convention on the Eve of Halloween, I had the good fortune to share a table with James Van Pelt.  He’s been selling short stories for 20 years, with nearly a hundred published to date, including appearances in Asimov’s, Analog, and Year’s Best Science Fiction, and being nominated for the Nebula in 2004. We discussed writing as a career and how even well-established authors experience bolts of fan-ness in the presence of so many other accomplished professionals.  Jim maintains a teaching career as well, and the speculative fiction community can applaud himContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #57 – James Van Pelt

Author Interview Series #56 – David Drake

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Major conventions like the World Science Fiction Convention and the World Fantasy Convention are the still the best way to meet authors whose work you’ve known and respected for a long time. At World Fantasy two weeks ago, yours truly had the great fortune to meet at least a metric ton of such folks, so herewith is the first of many interviews with other World Fantasy attendees.  I first encountered David Drake’s work back in the 1980s with his military science fiction Hammer’s Slammers series, plus reading Ranks of Bronze, a book about Roman Legionnaires taken to serve as interstellarContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #56 – David Drake

Author Interview Series #55 – Chloe Neill

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Continuing a tradition of encountering really interesting people at conventions, I met author Chloe Neill this summer at OSFest, the Omaha Science Fiction Education Society’s annual sci-fi convention.  Although she’s not a katana-wielding vampire badass like the main character in her Chicagoland Vampire series, she perhaps could be with some training.  Neill grew up in Arkansas (maintains a touch of the accent) and now makes her home in Nebraska, where she recently launched her pro writing career with her first novel Some Girls Bite, out this year from Penguin.  She managed to wrangle us some interview time in the midstContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #55 – Chloe Neill

Author Interview Series #54 – Jeanne Cavelos

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This week I have the distinct pleasure of interviewing a person who has had a tremendous impact on me (and hopefully my writing career!), Jeanne Cavelos.  Jeanne is a former senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell, and these days is the brains and (most of) the brawn behind one of the premier writing workshops for genre fiction, the Odyssey Writing Workshop.  In addition to Odyssey, she also teaches fiction writing at St. Anselm College in Manchester, NH.  One doesn’t have to look very hard to find praises being sung for the quality of the Odyssey experience, and that is dueContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #54 – Jeanne Cavelos

Author Interview Series #53 – Paolo Bacigalupi

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Paolo Bacigalupi is relative newcomer to the science fiction writing genre, but his work has already made waves, won the Theodore Sturgeon Award and the Locus Awards for Best Collection and Best Novelette for Pump Six. His work has appeared in two of the three biggest science fiction markets, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. His short fiction collection Pump Six was released early last year from Night Shade Books.  Yours truly ran into him at Readercon in Boston in August, 2009, where he was participating in a panel on YA fiction. His shortContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #53 – Paolo Bacigalupi

Author Interview Series #52 – Patricia Bray

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If you ever have the chance to meet Patricia Bray in person, one of your first thoughts will be, “Wow, here is a woman with some energy.” Patricia Bray was a guest lecturer at the Odyssey Writing Workshop this year, which is where yours truly met her.  With verve, humor, and enthusiasm, she offered an excellent discussion of Heroes and Sidekicks in fiction, how to do it, and how not to do it.  In her Sword of Change series, the viewpoint character is the sidekick, not the main character of the story, which leads to some interesting storytelling dynamics andContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #52 – Patricia Bray

Author Interview Series #51 – Marcus Pelegrimas

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Yes, we’re baaaaack.  It’s a been a hiatus, I know, but this summer has been devoted to craft, connections, and career building.  After a tremendous experience at the Odyssey Writing Workshop, I came home fresh and motivated to attend OSFest 2, the Omaha Science Fiction Education Society’s second annual science fiction convention, whereat I was pleased to meet Marcus Pelegrimas, a fellow Omaha-based author, whose novel series Skinners has just debuted from EOS Books. We participated in a panel for writers on avoiding the biggest mistakes that novice writers make, and the panel went extremely well, even generating compliments afterContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #51 – Marcus Pelegrimas

So what’s going on?

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It’s going to be a busy summer.  In addition to promoting Heart of the Ronin and working on graduate school, I’m taking six weeks to attend the Odyssey Writers Workshop, starting next week. It’s going to be a great experience focusing so intensely on writing over the summer. In case you don’t know, Odyssey is a science fiction/fantasy/horror workshop for professional writers and writers on the verge of going pro. This year, two of the guest teachers at Odyssey will be Carrie Vaughn and Jack Ketchum, both of whom have been interviewed right here at Blogging the Muse, so I’mContinue readingSo what’s going on?

Author Interview Series #50 – Amber Benson

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Marking a milestone here on Blogging the Muse, our Fiftieth Author Interview (ta daaaahh!), we have a very special treat, at least for me. See, I’ve been a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer for quite some time (still some of the best TV writing anytime, anywhere), so when I heard that Amber Benson–the actor who played the good witch Tara on Buffy, also a ground-breaking role as Willow’s love interest–had just published a new mass-market urban fantasy novel, Death’s Daughter, I didn’t waste any time contacting her PR firm. Of course, I was delighted when she agreed to beContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #50 – Amber Benson

Author Interview Series #49 – Giles Kristian

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Giles Kristian has led an “unconventional life.” Ex-rock’n’roll-star with the boy band Upside Down, he has sung for H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, performed with Eric Clapton, Shirley Bassey, the Back Street Boys, and Meatloaf.  As a copywriter, he has worked for marketing and ad agencies. As a model, he’s appeared on posters and TV for Panasonic, Canon, and Magnum Ice Cream. He has even played semi-pro soccer.  With that kind of a wildly varied past, he sounds a lot like a writer, too. His debut novel Raven: Blood Eye was released this February by Transworld Publishing, a division ofContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #49 – Giles Kristian

Author Interview Series #48 – Janni Lee Simner

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Janni Lee Simner’s Young Adult novel, Bones of Faerie, was released this January by Random House, but she’s been writing and selling short stories for readers of all ages for some time, with over thirty publications in pro markets, including Realms of Fantasy and The Year’s Best Science Fiction, and anthologies such as Chicks in Chainmail, and the short fiction podcasts Pseudopod and Escapepod. In other existences, she was born on a pirate ship, caravaned across the Sahara, and perused the stacks of the Library of Alexandria for priceless nuggets of forgotten lore.