Tameri Etherton’s book Sunset She Fights is part of the SFWA Fantastic Beasts storybundle. You can find Tameri on the web or Facebook. If you want to do your part for charity and get some ass-kicking books for the price you choose, check out the Fantastic Beasts storybundle. Make sure you check the box for charity! Q: Rainne feels a wonderful mix of powerful hero and mystery wrapped together. How did you make her? A: Thank you! My hope for Rainne was that she could be an anti-heroine even though she absolutely has hero qualities. She’s intelligent, kind, and nurturing, but also carries with her a deeply rooted rage that shows itself in some wild ways. I wanted to explore what it is to love yourself, ogress and all. We all have qualities we wish we didn’t have, or were Read More …

Vale Nagle’s book Eyrie is part of the SFWA Fantastic Beasts storybundle. You can find Vale on the web, @kvalenagle, or Facebook. If you want to do your part for charity and get some ass-kicking books for the price you choose, check out the Fantastic Beasts storybundle. Make sure you check the box for charity! Q: Pulmonary embolism is a thing I used in a book as a throwaway line, but you’ve *been* there. Who’s fault was it? A: Oh gosh, that’s a good question. In one sense, the fault for the first embolism was mine. I’d driven to Florida from Colorado, then driven back, and any time you’re doing a long distance card ride, you’re at risk for an embolism. So let that be the first lesson to everyone—if you’re going to be in a car or sitting down Read More …

Scott Huggins’ book All Things Huge & Hideous is part of the SFWA Fantastic Beasts storybundle. You can find Scott on the web. If you want to do your part for charity and get some ass-kicking books for the price you choose, check out the Fantastic Beasts storybundle. Make sure you check the box for charity! Q: Did you, or did you not, get your dragon inspiration from raising cats? A: I did not get the dragon inspiration directly from raising cats, but I suppose it helped. Q: How much veterinary research did you do when writing All Things? Did you get inspiration from nature or a line of cocaine? A: I have to give a HUGE amount of credit on this to my wife, Katie, who is a veterinarian. I have bothered her with an amazing number of stupid Read More …

Dr. Hayley Macfarlane’s book Prince of Foxes is part of the SFWA Fantastic Beasts storybundle. You can find Hayley on the web, @HLMacfarlane, Insta, or the Bub. If you want to do your part for charity and get some ass-kicking books for the price you choose, check out the Fantastic Beasts storybundle. Make sure you check the box for charity! Q: OMG Scotland. Do you have photos of Nessie? A: No, I don’t have photos of Nessie haha. I grew up on the south-eastern shore of Loch Lomond, and Nessie is, of course, in Loch Ness. In a horrendous turn of events I’ve never been to Loch Ness before – I don’t drive and it’s difficult to get up there using public transport. One day, though… From an interesting creature standpoint, there’s an island on Loch Lomond full of wallabies. Read More …

Douglas Smith’s book The Wolf at the End of the World is part of the SFWA Fantastic Beasts storybundle. You can find Douglas on the web, or @smithwritr. If you want to do your part for charity and get some ass-kicking books for the price you choose, check out the Fantastic Beasts storybundle. Make sure you check the box for charity! Q: You’ve gone all over the genre playground in your career … what made you write Wolf at the End of the World? A: When I started, the first three short stories I wrote were urban fantasy tales in my Heroka universe, the name I gave my shapehifter species. My first story of those three, “Spirit Dance,” ended up being the first story I ever sold. After those initial stories, I wrote across a lot of genres–science fiction, horror, high Read More …

Dustin Porta is an author/illustrator whose book Whalemoon is part of the SFWA Fantastic Beasts storybundle. You can find Dustin on the web, @dustinmporta, or Facebook. If you want to do your part for charity and get some ass-kicking books for the price you choose, check out the Fantastic Beasts storybundle. Make sure you check the box for charity! Q: You seem to be one of those disgusting creatives who’s good at both writing and art. Did you get into art from writing, the other way, or … what? A: It’s weird because the art and the writing don’t overlap. The come from very different headspaces. Art has always been social: group classes in gradeschool, working all night in the pottery studio at college, running printing presses together. When I had my own workshop, we’d have late night parties, people Read More …

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors of America are doing another storybundle. You set the price and donate to their charity. You can read all about it on their blog right over here. To celebrate this level of awesomeness, I’m interviewing a bunch of the contributing authors right here this week/end. We’ve got (all in NZ dates, so you US folk should delete a day): Dustin Porta (May 28) Douglas Smith (May 29) Dr. Hayley Macfarlane (May 30) Scott Huggins (May 31) Vale Nagle (June 1), and Tameri Etherton (June 2). It’ll be awesome. Check ’em out, and also the bundle (make sure you check the box for charity!), because times are hard.

Janna is a German writer sitting in Wellington, unable to decide on just one fantastical subgenre. She writes in German and English, publishing modern fairy tale retellings and Buffy-esque Urban Fantasy, while also venturing out into reality for some contemporary slice-of-life stories. [ Web | FB | Twitter | Insta | Pinterest ] Q: You’re a high-performing hobbyist, which either means you’ve got a multicore brain or you’re hitting the Ritalin hard. How did you get into … circus arts? Like, the world needs to hear this story. A: I’ll go with the multicore brain. I mean, no one looked at my brain yet, so it might as well be true. In any way it does feel like I have some sort of superpower, which is being able to complete tasks almost twice as fast as everyone else, which in Read More …

Depending on the weather and the alignment with The Void, AJ Fitzwater is 1000 tiny unicorns in a blazer, velociraptors peddling furiously inside a three piece suit, a dragon in a meat suit, or a capybara in Ten’s trenchcoat. They write from their secret lair in Christchurch, New Zealand. Their ability to word was well moulded by the Clarion workshop in 2014, and has been celebrated by two Sir Julius Vogel Awards. You’ll find their stories in venues of repute such as Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer Magazine, Giganotosaurus, and GlitterShip. The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper from Queen of Swords Press will be out April 6, and No Man’s Land from Paper Road Press June 8. @AJFitzwater. Q: You and I share a love for Fury Road, because Furiosa, right? But I want to dig a little deeper into Read More …