Christmas is one of those times of the year - you either love it or hate it. There is no middle ground.
The season of good will provides a wonderful lens through which to look at the human isde of the time, often lost in the consumerist hurly burly. After all, what is Christmas without the [...]
M John Harrison is one of those writers whose novels excite as well as confuse the living daylights from me. (I am after all a bear with a small brain.) However, I’ve been eagerly awaiting Nova Swing since its announcement earlier this year and I definitely wasn’t disappointed. If Light was a dysfuntional prog rock [...]
When did you first get interested in young adult SF/Fantasy? Was it a conscious decision to write Hood for a younger audience than your previous books?
Publishing Hood as a YA novel was a decision that was made by my editor at Atom/Orbit – his call, which I trust entirely. That said, in the US, it [...]
Robin Hood, Robin Hood riding through the glen?
Well no.
This Robin Hood is taken back to Norman times with the invasion of England and Wales. Stephen Lawhead has an interesting take on the myth and really lifts it above a mere retelling. He begins to get into the heart of the individual characters and allows their [...]
Orbit has just started publishing the Dante Valentine series of novels. If you’re looking for a series of fast-paced books centred the eponymous central character with som efun trips on various horror tropes, then check these books out. I got the opportunity to ask Lilith Saintcrow some questions.
What made you create the character of Dante [...]
Mike Carey’s Felix Castor novels are wonderful and go far beyond my initial expectations of the character since he seemed to me to be like John Constantine (he was still writing Hellblazer at the time). He’s carved out a great little noir niche combining crime, horror and fantasy with his own brand of dark humour. [...]
What is it that you thinks makes a good horror story? You’ve worked within many facets of the genre over the years.
A sense of dread, a sense of structure, an imaginative engagement with the material. Essentially a body of lived experience, experienced in the imagination. A great many horror stories, not just horror but many [...]
Having written the successful Ashraf Bey novels, you’ve moved into standalone books, very much Japanese and Chinese mythology. What made you move from North Africa to another extreme?
What actually happened was that after finishing Felaheen, which is the last of the Ashraf Bey mysteries, I wrote Stamping Butterflies, which has an Arab and North [...]