And now for something…slightly different. Speculative literature comes in many varieties. Questions of “what if?”, “what was that?”, and “how could this be?” are posed and answered across varying mediums and forms…
Forty years ago, Craven introduced the world to Freddy Krueger with the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. You probably know the gist of it, whether you’ve seen it or not. Freddy Krueger (played by now-horror legend Robert Englund)…
Well, someone had to do it eventually. Some author featured in this column Your Favorite Author’s Favorite Author had to go and pick one of the biggest (if not THE biggest names in literature) as the author they wanted to chat with me about at length. But who would be mad enough to do such a thing?
L. Marie Wood is a Golden Stake Award- and two-time Bookfest Award-winning, Ignyte Award and two-time Bram Stoker Award® nominated author. She is also a MICO Award-winning screenwriter, a Rhysling nominated poet, and accomplished essayist. She is also the Vice President of the Horror Writers Association, founder of the Speculative Fiction Academy, an English/Creative Writing professor, and a horror scholar…
This month, it was my absolute pleasure to speak with author Stephen Graham Jones. He’s the New York Times bestselling author of some thirty novels and collections…
This month’s “Your Favorite Author’s Favorite Author” is the first time one of my interviewees has selected a still-living author as their favorite. It was an absolute honor to chat with Paula D. Ashe about one of horror’s living legends, a master of many forms of media, Clive Barker…
To round out the month of June, I got to chat with a modern queen of horror about one of the genre’s most legendary authors, one who truly broke new ground in the genre just as surely (heh) as she laid the groundwork for much of what we know and love in contemporary horror fiction…
This month, I had the pleasure with speaking with an author who’s received acclaim in literary and genre circles, demonstrating that crossover is possible between the worlds without the integrity of one being sacrificed for the other…
The family tree of literature, especially speculative fiction, is a vast and many-branched one. With this interview series, I hope to speak with some of the top names—both established and upcoming—in the speculative fiction genres about the authors who have made an impact on them, whether as readers, writers, or both…
The Melon Head Mayhem author tells us why he decided to become a writer, what happened after he started reading Stephen King, and why expanding a short story into a Killer VHS novella was one of the best decisions he ever made…
When you sign with an indie publisher, you get a lot of benefits that traditionally published authors may have to give up. Input into cover design, for example, as well as the opportunity to experiment with different types of marketing and promotion…
Some people judge books by their covers. I like to judge a book by its first three paragraphs. The opening sentences of a story tell you a lot about the experience you’re likely to have with the book—and since many readers turn to books to find specific experiences, skillful writers often use their first paragraphs to let their readers know exactly what kind of experience to expect…
I email other writers a lot—and, believe it or not, most of them write back. I could drop some of the names that are now saved in my contacts list, many of which you may have heard of, but that would be both inappropriate and indiscreet…
Rip ‘em apart and steal what you learn! If you want to become a better writer, you have to know how stories work—and if you want to write like your favorite authors, you have to know how their stories work…
