Author Interview: Peter Clines

Today I am interviewing Peter Clines, author of the new science-fiction, time-travel novel, Paradox Bound.

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DJ: Hi Peter! Thanks for agreeing to do this interview!

For readers who aren’t familiar with you, could you tell us a little about yourself?

Peter Clines: Hey.  Most everything about me is pretty boring and cliche. Sorry.  I’m from a really old New England family.  After college I moved to California, one of those out of nowhere decisions that freaked out my family a bit.  I did concert and theater work for a little bit, and that led to the film industry where I worked as a crewperson for years.  Then I got out and wrote about the film industry for a few years.  And now I just write.

I mean, there was a lot of writing before then.  I’ve been trying to do this since I was ten or eleven.  But that’s when fiction became my full time occupation.

DJ: What is Paradox Bound about?

Peter: Paradox Bound is about a young man, Eli Teague, who’s never gone anywhere or done anything, until he takes the plunge and tries to help this mysterious woman who keeps showing up in his little town every few years.  And this gets him drawn into a sort of cross-country treasure hunt.  So it’s kind of a time travel/road trip/adventure novel with some creepy edges on it.  Hopefully.

DJ: What were some of your influences for Paradox Bound?

Peter: There were a couple.  The thing that started me first thinking of it was re-reading Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and wondering what an American version of that very-London story would be like. There were also some classic sci-fi roadtrip stories I remembered, like Roger Zelazny’s Roadmarks and Alan Dean Foster’s To The Vanishing Point.  And there was some movie when I was young about a time-traveling car…

Author Interview: Bob Nash

Today I am interviewing Bobby Nash, author of the new mystery-thriller, Snow Drive, third book in the Snow series.

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DJ: Hey Bobby! Thanks for agreeing to do this interview!

For readers who aren’t familiar with you, could you tell us a little about yourself?

Bobby Nash: My pleasure, DJ. Thanks for having me. I have been a published author since 1992 of comic books and my first novel came out in 2005. I have been writing steadily since then. I write novels, comic books, short stories, graphic novels, and a screenplay here and there. You can see my full list of work at www.bobbynash.com. My latest release is Snow Drive, the third book in the Snow series.

DJ: What is Snow Drive and then the Snow series about?

Bobby: Snow Drive is the third book in the Snow series. These books follow the adventures of Abraham Snow, a former undercover operative whose identity was uncovered and he was shot and left for dead on an airstrip in South America. Now retired, thanks to the gunshot would a half inch from his heart, Snow reconnects with his family and gets involved with the family business, Snow Security Consulting. While working off the books on his last case, Snow steps in to help out his family and gets in hot water.

So far, three Snow books have been release.

Snow Falls: After a near fatal encounter while deep undercover in South America, Abraham Snow retires from his work as a government operative, moving in with his grandfather during his recuperation. Once there, however, Abraham realizes that his grandfather has an ulterior motive: He wants Abraham to join the family business, Snow Security Consulting. Abraham, however, soon learns that working with his family can be just as treacherous as deep cover work – especially when caught in the crossfire between his father and grandfather. But when an assassination plot against a visiting dignitary puts the entire family at risk, Abraham must use all of his talents and contacts to keep them safe.

Snow Storm: Snow’s former partner, Samson Brooks, a retired agent turned p.i., arrives in Atlanta with a problem. He’s gotten into some trouble with some bad people and needs Snow’s help to get out of it. When college student, Katie Masters is kidnapped, snow and his friends leap back into action to rescue her before the Atlanta underworld erupts into all-out war.

Snow Drive: Abraham Snow’s career ended with a single shot, but now he’s back behind the wheel and looking for a saboteur. The Chambers Stock Car Racing team hires Snow Security Consulting to get to keep their people and equipment safe and to get to the bottom of whoever is trying to put them out of business and why. Archer Snow volunteers Abraham Snow and Big John Salmon as part of the pit crew. Can they keep the team’s young hothead out of trouble long enough to stop the saboteur before the next race? Meanwhile, an old enemy sets her sights on Snow when a bounty is placed on his head.

Book 4 is scheduled for this fall/winter. It’s called Snow Trapped: After the shocking reveal at the end of SNOW DRIVE, the investigation into Miguel Ortega and Daniella Cordoza heats up, Abraham Snow calls in a favor from his former handler, Elizabeth Walker. She has agreed to share information on Ortega and Cordoza and to deal with the hired guns after the bounty placed on Snow’s head. A team of hired mercenaries break into a U.S. government information storage and retrieval blacksite hidden in an average office building. They enter the building through the lobby restaurant. They say timing is everything. Unfortunately, for the mercenary team, they picked the same building where Walker and Snow are meeting and they don’t take kindly to having their reunion interrupted.

You can keep up with the Snow series at https://ben-books.blogspot.com/p/snow.html

Author Interview: James Webster

Today I am interviewing James Webster, author of Heroine Chic, a new collection of sci-fi and fantasy short fiction on the theme of ‘Heroines’.

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DJ: Hey James! Thanks for agreeing to do this interview!

For readers who aren’t familiar with you, could you tell us a little about yourself?

James Webster: Hi! So, I’m James (my friends call me Webster), and I write weird little stories about monsters. And angels. And gods. And vampires. And witches. And spaceships. They’re usually stories about love and resistance and hope. And makeouts. There are often makeouts.

Um. Basically, I write micro/flash fictions that use speculative concepts as metaphors for everyday issues. That’s my jam. You can find them on my tumblr here.

Oh, and in the rest of my time I am: a slam-winning poet; a LARPer; a theatre marketer. All that stuff.

DJ: What is Heroine Chic about?

James: So, Heroine Chic is a collection for 52 of my microfictions, themed around the concept of ‘Heroines’. So, these stories all have female or non-binary protagonists – and the idea is to try and celebrate the heroine’s place in sci-fi and fantasy genres. There’s stories about queens, generals, thieves, gods – plus a few poems and some reworkings of myths and legends too.

Theme-wise: a lot of it is about resistance. It’s about me listening to the experiences of women and femme folks in real life and about paying attention to portrayals of heroines in fiction, and about putting a spotlight on the way they carve out space in an uneven world.

But it’s also about taking experiences that are universal and that everyone can relate to and using speculative fiction to illuminate the joy and wonder of those things. So it’s also, in a big way, about love. Not necessarily in a romantic way, but love as a transformative power and as a thing you find at the core of hardship. A thing you feel for folks when you truly see them. So I guess it’s also a bit about empathy.

Author Interview: Mark A. Latham

Today I am interviewing Mark A. Latham, author of the new Victorian SF novel, The Legion Prophecy, third book in The Apollonian Case Files.

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DJ: Hey Mark! Thanks for agreeing to do this interview!

For readers who aren’t familiar with you, could you tell us a little about yourself?

Mark: Thanks very much for having me. I’m a nineteenth-century-obsessed book nerd from Staffordshire, UK, and writer primarily of science fiction and Sherlock Holmes pastiche. Before that some people might know me from my time in the tabletop wargames industry – I was editor of Games Workshop’s White Dwarf magazine for a few years. I still do a sideline in games design now, working mainly on licensed products like Batman and The Walking Dead. I’ve been editing a Harry Potter game recently, which is seriously cool. But my main job is writing, which I’ve been doing full-time since Titan published the Lazarus Gate. I mention the previous jobs for two reasons: firstly, the discipline I gained from being a magazine editor has proved invaluable in managing my writing workload. Secondly, everything I’ve ever worked on in my adult career has been in some way related to sci-fi, fantasy and horror, which is a lifelong passion.

DJ: What is The Legion Prophecy and then The Apollonian Case Files about?

Mark: The actual Legion Prophecy of the title is actually a massive spoiler, so I won’t give away what it actually is, except to say that it was set up in book one, and is essentially the payoff I think a lot of readers have been waiting for. I like to horrify my readers and torture my characters a bit though, so don’t expect roses and birdsong on the way.

The casefiles are the records of the Order of Apollo, which is a secret agency based in the Apollonian Club, one of London’s exclusive gentlemen’s clubs. The Apollonian is fictional, but the idea came to me when I was reading the history of Athenaeum and the Reform clubs. With their exclusivity and secrecy, as well as high-ranking members of government within their membership, it seemed like the perfect recruiting ground for spies. The Order of Apollo basically recruits agents of the Crown, with a remit to investigate and combat threats beyond the capabilities of the Army or Special Branch – esoteric threats, in this case, from a parallel universe called the Otherside.

The first two books sort of set up this mythos – The Lazarus Gate was set in 1890, and introduced my hero, John Hardwick, who gets recruited by the club, manipulated at every turn, and ends up fighting threats he’s really not equipped to deal with. The second book, The Iscariot Sanction, was a bit of a curveball I think – it was a prequel, set in the Otherside, and ten years earlier. I like to make things difficult for myself! This was the story of how the Othersiders came to be bad, and is more of an action-driven tale rather than the investigative mystery of book one. It introduces the key threats: the Riftborn, who’re these Cthulhu-esque, world-eating demons, and the vampires.

Fast forward to the Legion Prophecy, and we’re back with John Hardwick, who is now a very bitter and twisted man, moulded by the things he’s seen, and the dark things he’s  done in the name of Queen and country. He has to reconcile that pretty quickly, because the latest threat is a very personal and very deadly one.

Author Interview: Amanda Carlson

Today I am interviewing Amanda Carlson, author of the new science-fiction novel, Danger’s Halo, first book in the Holly Danger series.

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DJ: Hey Amanda! Thanks for agreeing to do this interview!

For readers who aren’t familiar with you, could you tell us a little about yourself?

Amanda Carlson: Hi there, so happy to be here! For those who don’t know me, I’ve been writing Fantasy for about seven years now. I’m the author of the Jessica McClain series, which is urban fantasy, and the newer Phoebe Meadows series, which is contemporary fantasy based in Norse Mythology. My favorite part of writing is the world building, which drew me to fantasy in the first place. Before I started writing fiction, I wrote humorous essays about my three kids. Not quite sure how that morphed into writing about futuristic worlds, but here I am! I live in the Midwest with a husband and three kids, who are all very supportive.

DJ: What is Danger’s Halo about?

Amanda: In a nutshell, Danger’s Halo is a futuristic premise, still set in this world, with a kickass lead. As with all my books, Danger’s Halo started out with a scene playing out in my mind. And, honestly, if it goes on for long enough my brain knows I’ll write it. I’m predictable like that. That scene became the opening scene in the book. I felt the world, saw what it was like, knew the character. It was Earth 153 years into the future, but with a twist. A major event happened at the 93 year mark that changed things forever. Danger’s Halo picks up that world and explores it 62 years after disaster struck. It was so fun to navigate the characters and the scenery of this place.

DJ: What were some of your influences for Danger’s Halo and the Holly Danger series?

Amanda: Before writhing Danger’s Halo, I’d mostly read and written fantasy, as stated above. Sci-fi was something brand new—a different place under the wide umbrella of Sci-fi/fantasy. I think the state of the world we’re in right now was my biggest influence. How would people react in a world so unforgiving? Would they give up? Or keep going? The human nature aspect was completely intriguing. In the end, I was happy that my sci-fi background had been relegated to movies. I wanted this story to be fresh and new. I think I achieved that!

Author Interview: Brad Abraham

Today I am interviewing Brad Abraham, author of the new fantasy novel, Magicians Impossible.

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DJ: Hey Brad! Thanks for agreeing to do this interview!

Brad Abraham: Thanks for having me!

DJ: For readers who aren’t familiar with you, could you tell us a little about yourself?

Brad: I’m a screenwriter, a journalist, a comic book creator, and now a novelist. Writing is something I kind of fell into, though not by accident. Growing up I wanted to be a filmmaker – a movie director, specifically – and on graduating high school I went to Film School to learn how to do just that. But I found the writing process was the part of filmmaking I enjoyed the most; I enjoyed creating the world and populating it with interesting people much more than trying to execute it on screen. In my senior year I wrote and directed one film, but wrote or co-wrote several others, and following film school, I struggled as a screenwriter for several years before breaking “in”. I was quite successful at it too, but I wanted to branch out into other areas of creative writing and that’s where Magicians Impossible was born.

DJ: What is Magicians Impossible about?

Brad: Magicians Impossible is the story of Jason Bishop, a 30 year-old bartender who, following the apparent suicide of his father, discovers that his dad was in fact a magic-wielding secret agent in the employ of the Invisible Hand; an ancient order of Mages who use magic in the service of defending the world against agents of darkness and chaos who call themselves the Golden Dawn. It turns out Jason’s father Daniel was murdered by the Golden Dawn, and now they’re coming for Jason. The only way to survive: join the Invisible Hand, learn the skills of a Mage, and join the battle against the Golden Dawn. But what Jason (and the reader) will soon discover is that in this world of magic nothing is what it seems.

DJ: What were some of your influences for Magicians Impossible?

Brad: I grew up on James Bond movies, and 80s fantasy films, I’m a big Steven Spielberg fan also, and in many ways Magicians Impossible has that Spielbergian feel – think Minority Report meets The BFG. Of course, I’ve read a lot of both these genres – Ian Fleming, Robert Ludlum, Neil Gaiman, JK Rowling, but as far as specific influences I tried to focus more on the iconography of the spy and fantasy genres. But what I did do was read a lot of folklore and mythology; particularly European and Middle-Eastern myths. I wanted the magical aspects of the book to have grounding in the folklore of our world.

Author Interview: Alistair Kimble

Today I am interviewing Alistair Kimble, co-author of the new urban fantasy novel, Iron Angels.

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DJ: Hey Alistair! Thanks for agreeing to do this interview!

For readers who aren’t familiar with you, could you tell us a little about yourself?

Alistair Kimble: I’m an FBI Special Agent and former U.S. Navy enlisted aircrewman who loves to write fiction. I’m currently assigned to the Denver, Colorado field office where I work national security matters as well as process crime scenes as a member of the Evidence Response Team. My first exposure to science fiction and fantasy was when my great-grandmother would babysit me and watch Kolchak: The Night Stalker, so I’ve been a fan since the mid-1970s!

DJ: What is Iron Angels about?

Alistair: Iron Angels is an urban fantasy detective novel where a group of outcast FBI agents battle a cult intent on extracting supernatural powers from another world. It begins with a bizarre kidnapping case that leads FBI Special Agent Jasper Wilde into the mysterious world of a strange religious cult and even stranger criminals.

DJ: What were some of your influences for Iron Angels?

Alistair: As Iron Angels utilizes the FBI as its investigative agency, I couldn’t help but be influenced by The X-Files, as well as so many science fiction and fantasy films from my childhood and teenage years way back in the ’70s and ’80s. But there’s also a heavy dose of the classic hardboiled detective mixed with the banter of buddy cop films.

Author Interview: Annelie Wendeberg

Today I am interviewing Annelie Wendeberg, author of the bestselling climate change thriller series, 1/2986.

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DJ: Hey Annelie! Thanks for agreeing to do this interview!

For readers who aren’t familiar with you, could you tell us a little about yourself?

Annelie Wendeberg: I drink coffee and write stuff. So there ☺

DJ: What is 1/2986 about?

Annelie: : It’s about a girl living in a post-climate disaster world, her struggles, fears, and hopes. The scientific background of the series relies on latest scientific publications on impacts of climate change on present and future generations. Much of it is based on the IPCC’s 5th assessment report. I wanted to communicate the risks of climate change to a broader public. Problem is, we scientist are often pretty crappy in communicating our findings, because we love our numbers, and believe that we shouldn’t let our emotions carry us away (but we are driven by curiosity and passion, so…). Numbers rarely get non-scientists excited, and we tend to forget that. In the 1/2986 series I wanted to explore how our grandchildren and great-grandchildren might experience the world we are now creating.

DJ: What were some of your influences for 1/2986?

Annelie: Twenty years in environmental sciences, and the love to tell stories.

Author Interview: Daniel A. Willis

Today I am interviewing Daniel A. Willis, author of the new fantasy novel, Prophecy of the Awakening.

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DJ: Hey Daniel! Thanks for agreeing to do this interview!

For readers who aren’t familiar with you, could you tell us a little about yourself?

Daniel A. Willis: I have been many things during my life, but I am most well known as an historian and genealogist. I wrote several nonfiction books in this area before venturing into fiction and exploring my love of fantasy. Then my first novel, Immortal Betrayal, came out in 2011.

DJ: What is Prophecy of the Awakening about?

Daniel: Nikki is a young woman who literally has a voice talking inside her head. The voice turns out to be the Earth-goddess Gaea. She sends Nikki on the heroine’s quest to help fulfill an ancient prophecy about the return of the Greek gods in the present day. However, she is thwarted by the Vatican who knows the prophecy and is determined to prevent it from coming true. This prophecy revolves around an unborn child, whom a devout scientist has mistaken to be the biblically foretold Antichrist. The child’s parents are a mercenary and a movie star. The paths of all these diverse characters come together for a chilling climax in the ruins of ancient Olympia.

DJ: What were some of your influences for Prophecy of the Awakening?

Daniel: It all started when I read the first Percy Jackson book. I went looking for mythology-based stories written more for adults and found precious few. I was also fascinated from an early age by the prospect of the “Antichrist” and mythos surrounding the purported “End Times”. This book blended those influences.

Author Interview: Peter Cawdron

Today I am interviewing Peter Cawdron, author of the new science-fiction novel, Retrograde.

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DJ: Hey Peter! Thanks for agreeing to do this interview!

For readers who aren’t familiar with you, could you tell us a little about yourself?

Peter: Thank you for having me. I’m an Australian scifi writer specializing in hard science fiction, although I detest the term “hard.”

There’s nothing hard about good science fiction, rather it simply adheres to reality as closely as possible. For me, that makes it more plausible.

A lot of science fiction boarders on fantasy, with “science” being rather loose. As an example, in one of the new Star Trek movies, Kirk (on Kronos a dozen light years away) calls Scotty (in a bar on Earth) to ask him an engineering question. In reality, faster-than-light communication isn’t possible. Rather than giving Kirk a phone-a-friend lifeline, I would have had him lament his inability to call Scotty for answers, and science his way out of trouble. Not only would that make the story more plausible, it would make it more interesting. So for me, hard science fiction provides plenty of natural challenges to be overcome.

DJ: What is Retrograde about?

Peter: Have you ever watched a science fiction film and seen the characters do something dumb, like take their helmets off on an alien world (only to become infected by something)? Yeah, well, if it’s obvious to us that’s stupid, can you really imaging a scientist or astronaut being that clueless? Me neither. So RETROGRADE asks the question, what would shake the most highly trained, and experience explorers in all of history? If they were prepared for every eventuality on Mars, what’s the one thing that might shake them? What’s something they could never prepare for? For me, the answer was, a disaster on Earth.

RETROGRADE explores how scientists and engineers would deal with war breaking out between their countries back on Earth, examining where their loyalties lie.