Author Spotlight: Naomi Novik
“Vici” shows the seeds of various aspects of the relationship between dragons and humans that we see initially in Britain and other European nations in His Majesty’s Dragon.
T.J. McIntyre
T.J. McIntyre writes from a busy household in rural Alabama. His poems and short stories have been featured in numerous publications including recent appearances in Moon Milk Review, M-Brane SF, The Red Penny Papers, and Tales of the Talisman. His debut poetry collection, Isotropes: A Collection of Speculative Haibun, was released in 2010 by Philistine Press. In addition to writing poetry and short fiction, he writes a monthly column for the Apex Books Blog and regularly contributes to Skull Salad Reviews.
Author Spotlight: Nike Sulway
You can’t hope to get a whole person on the page—other people are always the biggest mystery, the great unknowable in life—but you can sometimes get down in words that thing that makes them strange and alluring.
Author Spotlight: Lavie Tidhar
In a way, of course, I’m appropriating everything. I’m borrowing this very American mode—the Western—and Niven’s magic system, and I’m setting it in a sort of Victorian-era China dealing with foreign incursions.
Author Spotlight: K.M. Ferebee
I don’t believe that pain is something extrinsic to goodness. I believe there can be goodness in suffering, but that this does not mean suffering itself is good.
Author Spotlight: Charles De Lint
I’d argue that’s the basis for all good fantasy stories: Ground the reader in the familiar so that when you do bring more improbable elements on stage, they’re more readily accepted.
Author Spotlight: Nadia Bulkin
I think monsters serve as a means of social control, representative of both unsavory behaviors and unsavory punishments. Then there’s also the need we have for an “other” to define ourselves against.
Artist Spotlight: Bram Leech
I am a big fan of fantasy movies and animated feature films. Tim Burton and Hiyao Miyazaki’s movies are some of my favorites.
Author Spotlight: James Alan Gardner
Ultimately, I realized I was writing a story about three people who are trapped in different versions of hell: the three damnations in the title. None of the three has the strength of character to break free.
Author Spotlight: Megan Arkenberg
As the story went through revisions, I reworked some of the lessons (and sometimes changed them back again!) to be sillier and less predictable. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was tempting to fall back on “true love conquers all.”
Michael Swanwick: Author Spotlight
The problem Donna, Russ, and Piggy have is that they live in a world which is, so far as they can tell, entirely devoid of magic. Also, they’re adolescents, which amounts to the same thing.