Jaye Wells is one of those authors who, finally, after years of resisting the pull that had been built into her from birth, succumbed to the creative instinct and launched herself into fiction writing well into adulthood. Just like so many of us who choose this path, for her the need to string words together in some semblance of entertaining order is strong, and she does it with a compelling new urban fantasy character, Sabina Kane, and a ballsy sense of humor. As she describes in her blog, “How did you cultivate such a wicked sense of humor?  I madeContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #47 – Jaye Wells

Author of eighteen novels and two short story collections, Janny Wurts has been around fantasy literature for a long time, from her best-selling Empire series, co-written with Raymond Feist to two fantasy series of her own, The War of Light and Shadow and The Cycle of Fire. But she is also an accomplished artist and painter, and that is where yours truly first encountered her talent, on book covers and in fantasy art collections.  All that, and she’s also a musician, formally trained in the highland bagpipes, among other instruments.  How much more creative could one person be?

Over the course of this interview series, I have been pleased to include authors from across the English speaking world, the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, and New Zealand, even various islands in the Caribbean.  For this installment, I am pleased to offer an interview with our first Australian author, Karen Miller. Like so many authors who finally make it into that special realm of The Working Author Who Gets Paid Regularly, Karen has a personal history that includes numerous previous lives.  Her works include Star Wars and Stargate SG-1 novelizations, plus her own Kingmaker, Kingbreaker series, plus a secret pseudonymContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #45 – Karen Miller

So what does it take to be a freelance writer in the gaming industry?  Drive. Plus a deep love and commitment to the game in question.  Beginning writers and creative BFA/MFA graduates often agonize over a few hundred words at a time, unsuspecting that what it takes to succeed as a freelance writer often requires the production of tens of thousands of words at a shot, often in a ridiculously short window. Shawn Carman has produced vast quantities of game text, short fiction, continuing story lines, game rules, adventure scenarios, and more, with a cumulative word count into the multipleContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #44 – Shawn Carman

In accordance with what Jay Lake says below about his typical choice of attire, when we met he was wearing a shirt that looked like it was on fire. Definitely makes one stand out in a crowd of authors, particularly at World Con when authors are so thick on the ground. Since that time, I have put one of Jay Lake’s books in my two-foot tall stack of Books to be Read, and I hear comments on the Net and in Podosphere to the effect that, “This guy is pretty freakin’ good.”  He made a splash when his work startedContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #43 – Jay Lake

Some years ago, a friend shoved a trilogy of books called The Deed of Paksennarion, by Elizabeth Moon, into my hands. It had a great main character named, of course, Paksennarion.  Since that time, I’ve watched Elizabeth Moon’s books explode across bookstore shelves, and she has since branched off into space opera and hard SF, winning a Nebula Award for her book The Speed of Dark. I also happen to know that she sings in a really big choir and was stressing about getting it just right when I contacted her about this interview. Getting it just right is somethingContinue readingAuthor Interview Series #39 – Elizabeth Moon