Coming to Town: Wendy Webb for The Vanishing, interviewed by Richard Dansky

Posted on 2014-01-28 at 16:33 by montsamu

Interview by Richard Dansky:

Think “Gothic” and you might not immediately think Minnesota, but Wendy Webb is working on changing that perception. Building on a writing career that began as a journalist for a Twin Cities arts & entertainment weekly, she’s published three critically and commercially successful gothic novels set in her home state. The third, The Vanishing [ebook], was released in January 2014, and in support of the book, she’s visiting Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill on Saturday, February 1st for an early reading at 11 am [Facebook event] in one of three North Carolina events on her current tour [the others include Thursday, Jan 30 at Charlotte's PARK ROAD BOOKS and Saturday evening at Asheville's MALAPROPS]. Ahead of that visit, she was kind enough to take a few minutes to answer some questions. From the "Devil’s Toy Box" to the influence of Downton Abbey, here’s a few questions with Wendy Webb.

Can you tell us a little bit about The Vanishing?

All of my novels feature long-buried family secrets that bubble to the surface in big, old mansions. The Vanishing is the story of Julia, who receives an intriguing job offer when her life seems to be falling apart around her. A man, Adrian Sinclair, asks Julia to be a companion to his elderly mother, a famous horror novelist who the whole world thinks is dead. For reasons unknown, this novelist chose to vanish from public life and now lives in her magnificent estate in the middle of the wilderness. Intrigued, Julia accepts the position. But when she arrives at Havenwood, she begins to wonder whether this too-good-to-be-true job offer is exactly that. 

The gothic as a genre is usually associated with windswept moors and craggy mountains. What was the inspiration for setting The Vanishing in northern Minnesota?

Posted in Coming to Town | Tagged flyleaf books, gothic, richard dansky, the vanishing, wendy webb

Paul Kincaid's From the Other Side, January 2014: Simon Ings, Adam Roberts, James Smythe, and some awards talk

Posted on 2014-01-27 at 21:17 by montsamu

From the Other Side: January 2014

By Paul Kincaid

I’m going to use this column to talk about some of the things that are happening in science fiction in Britain each month.

January, of course, is not usually a month when publishers roll out their biggest guns, but this year seems to be something of an exception. Gollancz have brought out Wolves by Simon Ings, which I confidently expect to feature on a few best of the year lists come this time next year (I certainly expect it to feature on my list). It is set in a near future in which flooding is starting to change the British landscape. This is, of course, a very familiar scenario for anyone who has read British catastrophe fiction, from Richard Jefferies to Christopher Priest, but given the heavy rain and flooding we’re enduring for the second winter in a row it does feel awfully prescient. But Wolves is not really a catastrophe novel, there’s an element of cyberpunk in the Augmented Reality technology that can change the way we see reality, and there’s also a very affecting mystery as a young boy finds his mother murdered and his father growing more distant. The publishers are comparing it to J.G. Ballard and even to Iain M. Banks, though I think a better comparison might be to M. John Harrison.

Also from Gollancz comes Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea, a gorgeous collaboration between Adam Roberts and illustrator Mahendra Singh. As well as his award-winning science fiction, Roberts is also known as a rather cheeky pasticheur, but this novel seems to fall midway between the two. It’s a thrilling sequel to Jules Verne’s original, set aboard France’s first nuclear submarine, the Plongeur.

Another new novel that is generating quite a bit of excitement is The Echo by James Smythe from HarperCollins. It’s a sequel to last year’s The Explorer. In the original novel, a journalist found himself the last man alive on the first manned mission into deep space. In this sequel, it’s twenty years later and a new mission is preparing to find out exactly what did happen on that fateful first voyage. Smythe is a new writer who has produced quite a lot in a very little time, but with no obvious diminution of quality, so this could well be a book to look out for.

January is also the beginning of our award season. The Arthur C. Clarke Award has caused quite a stir by separately releasing the list of the 33 novels by women submitted this year. Given the controversy over last year’s all-male shortlist, it was a canny move, and shows what a strong shortlist could be compiled just from these titles (though I note that the novel I would have like to see win the award is missing from the list, and that is Life After Life by Kate Atkinson). However, the remainder of the submissions list is due to be released shortly, so I’ll hold off on discussing the award until next time.

I can, however, mention the shortlists for the Kitschies. The Kitschies have only been going since 2009, but their idiosyncratic criteria (they “reward the year’s most progressive, intelligent and entertaining works”) and the high quality of the awards (previous winners of the Red Tentacle include China Mieville, Lauren Beukes, Patrick Ness and Nick Harkaway) have marked them out as one to watch. And this year’s list, as ever, contains works that are unlikely to feature on other SFF lists (Thomas Pynchon? Anne Carson?), but which makes this award particularly interesting and exciting. And I’ll be able to report on the award ceremony next month.

Paul Kincaid is the author of What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction. He has won both the Thomas D. Clareson Award and the BSFA Non-Fiction Award. A new collection of reviews, Call And Response, is due to be published early in 2014.

[caption id=“attachment_2984” align=“alignnone” width=“300”] photo credit: Maureen Kincaid Speller[/caption]

Posted in From the Other Side | Tagged adam roberts, james smythe, kate atkinson, life after life, mahendra singh, paul kincaid, simon ings, the arthur c clarke award, the echo, the kitschies, twenty trillion leagues under the sea, wolves

Book Harvest collecting children's book donations on Monday for their annual MLK drive

Posted on 2014-01-19 at 16:13 by montsamu

On Monday, January 20, 2014, from 1 to 4 pm, Book Harvest is having a children’s book drive at the Carolina Theatre of Durham. “10,000 Books for Kids (10KBK) is Book Harvest’s annual community-wide book drive on MLK Day and a celebration of diversity, literacy, and book ownership for all kids.  Help us bring in 10,000 books in a single afternoon! Everyone! Round up your new and gently used children’s books – and those of your neighbors, friends, classmates, and coworkers – and bring them to us at the Carolina Theatre on the afternoon of MLK Day.  Working together, we can ensure that all our children have books! Durham Mayor Bill Bell will kick off the festivities at 1:00 p.m.  Also joining us will be: Wool E Bull; the Only Burger truck; musicians Matt Phillips and John Marshall; a pop-up store from Letters Bookshop; and local author “celebrity volunteers”, including Sarah Dessen, Daniel Wallace, Randall Kenan, Stephanie Greene, John Stanley, j.j. Johnson, Kristyn Kusek Lewis, Frances O’Roark Dowell, and John Claude Bemis.” [Facebook event]

Posted in Uncategorized

Coming to Town: Carrie Vaughn for Dreams of the Golden Age, interviewed by James Maxey

Posted on 2014-01-13 at 13:00 by montsamu

As the author of the "Kitty Norville" urban fantasy series Carrie Vaughn has built a career and a following, and her origin story as a writer includes the 1998 Odyssey Writing Workshop and a long string of short story publications, including a Hugo Award nomination for "Amaryllis" and multiple appearances in George R.R. Martin's Wild Cards superhero book series. In 2011, Tor published her superhero novel After the Golden Age, and now Vaughn is out on tour for the January 7, 2014-published sequel, Dreams of the Golden Age. That tour reaches Raleigh's Quail Ridge Books on Friday, January 17th at 7:30 pm [Facebook event]. In conversation with Hillsborough author James Maxey for the "Coming to Town" interview series, Vaughn talks about the novel, larger than life heroes, comic books on television, and more. Enjoy!

Interview by James Maxey

In After the Golden Age, you construct a world with several powerful superhuman heroes, but they turn out not to be the focus of the story. Instead, you tell us the story of Celia, the daughter of a pair of famous superheroes, who has no powers and no grand heroic intentions and is trying to make a career as an accountant. What appealed to you about Celia that you chose to make her the heart of the story instead of one of the costumed do-gooders?

To put it simply, Celia's story was the most interesting. There are more than enough stories out there about costumed do-gooders. Thousands of stories. There are even quite a few stories about the children of costumed do-gooders. I wanted to do a couple of things with Celia: first, overturn the trope where the child of superheroes doesn't have powers but then acquires them somehow -- Celia never gets powers. And second, tell the near-universal story of the person who has never been able to live up to her parents expectations. I wanted to tell the story of someone living in a superpowered world, who is trying to reject that world. Most superhero fans dream of living in a superpowered world, but Celia is a person who has had entirely too much of that world.

Since Dreams of the Golden Age is set twenty years after the first book, are any of the heroes from the first book still active? Or has Commerce City been hero-free for a while? Or does the city even need these heroes, if the Destructor is finally safely locked away?

Posted in Coming to Town | Tagged after the golden age, carrie vaughn, dreams of the golden age, james maxey, quail ridge books

Friday Quick Updates: illogiCon is here!

Posted on 2014-01-10 at 15:51 by montsamu

Friday, January 10, 2014: I’m likely the last to post my own illogiCon panel schedule, so let me get that out of the way first:

• FRIDAY 3 PM -- The Things About Thieves -- SMITH
• FRIDAY 4 PM -- The Fortunes of Small Press -- REYNOLDS [moderator]
• SATURDAY 11 AM -- A Million Nations -- REYNOLDS
• SATURDAY 12 PM -- Social Scientists' Science Fiction -- SMITH
• SATURDAY 4 PM -- Best F&SF Novels of 2013 -- SMITH

• Coming to Town: Misty Massey for illogiCon, interviewed by Edmund R. Schubert
• Coming to Town: Lawrence M. Schoen for illogiCon, interviewed by Ada Milenkovic Brown
• Coming to Town: Laura Anne Gilman for illogiCon, interviewed by Jaym Gates

Posted in Friday Quick Updates | Tagged illogicon

Coming to Town: Misty Massey for illogiCon, interviewed by Edmund R. Schubert

Posted on 2014-01-09 at 22:00 by montsamu

Misty Massey is the author of Mad Kestrel (Tor Books), a rollicking adventure of magic on the high seas which was nominated for the 2010 SCASL Book Award. Misty is one of the featured writers on the MagicalWords.net blog, along with David B. Coe and Faith Hunter. When she’s not writing, she studies Middle Eastern dance. Misty’s short fiction has recently appeared in the Rum and Runestones anthology (Dragon Moon Press) and the Dragon’s Lure anthology (Dark Quest Books). A sequel to Mad Kestrel, Kestrel’s Dance, is in the works. I'm delighted to have fellow NC author Edmund R. Schubert on to interview Massey for "Coming to Town" ahead of the both of them appearing at illogiCon this weekend. I should have thought to ask Massey to interview Schubert as well, turnabout being fair play and all... though, of course, pirates don't play fair.

Interview by Edmund R. Schubert

Your novel Mad Kestrel was a wonderful, magical (both literally and figuratively) romp through the world of high piracy. I know you've published a number of short stories and contributed to the non-fiction book How To Write Magical Words since M" came out. What are you working on now?

Right this minute I'm finishing a short story for The Big Bad II, a wonderful anthology planned for a late summer release. I've written the second book in Kestrel's adventures, "Kestrel's Dance", and had an editor friend read and critique it for me. As soon as the story's done, I'll be diving into that rewrite. I'm also working on a fantasy western involving lost love, faerie hunters, a little bit of voodoo and a lot of electricity showing up in all the most dangerous and inconvenient places. The hardest part is trying to write one thing at a time, because all the ideas keep crying for my attention at once.

Speaking of Magical Words, how are things going over at MagicalWords.net? It's one of the most helpful writer's websites I've ever visited and I've seen a lot of new folks have been writing there in the recent months.

Posted in Coming to Town | Tagged edmund r schubert, illogicon, magical words, misty massey

Coming to Town: Lawrence M. Schoen for illogiCon, interviewed by Ada Milenkovic Brown

Posted on 2014-01-09 at 21:32 by montsamu

Author, Klingon expert, and certified hypnotist Lawrence M. Schoen is one of the guests of honor at illogiCon this weekend (Jan 10-12) in Raleigh. He holds a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics. He spent ten years as a college professor, and has done extensive research in the areas of human memory and language. This background provides a principal metaphor for his fiction, for which he was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2007. He received a Hugo Award nomination for Best Short Story in 2010 and a Nebula Award nomination for Best Novella in 2013. He currently works as the director of research and analytics for a series of mental health and addiction recovery facilities in Philadelphia. And now, thanks to a short interview with Durham author Ada Milenkovic Brown, he's part of the "Coming to Town" interviews family. Welcome!

Interview by Ada Milenkovic Brown

What is your reaction as an expert on the Klingon language to NC Councilman David Waddell from Indian Trial, NC who tendered his resignation in Klingon?

With respect to the Klingon in his resignation, I'm told he made use of Microsoft's BING translation package. It's an amazing piece of software that only gets better and better as it learns. Some of the world's best Klingon speakers have been working with BING's engineers to teach the system the warriors' tongue, but it still has a ways to go. As such, there were several places in the councilman's resignation letter that weren't quite right. When it happened, my email box filled up, pretty evenly split between friends who wanted to be sure I'd seen it and members of the press who wanted some comment. I'm assuming Waddell did it as a publicity stunt, one last hurrah in the lime light as it were. But let's assume for the sake of argument that the Indian Trail city council is made up of Klingons. If so, and if they believe Waddell's resignation was honorable, than their response would have simply been “pItlh” which is a Klingon expression that basically means “done!” and the matter would be closed. In an interview, Waddell had indicated that his reason for resigning had to do with various council policies that he felt stood in the way of him getting anything done. If so, a better bit of Klingon might have been to cite the popular Klingon aphorism: “meQtaHbogh qachDaq Suv qoH neH” or in English, “Only a fool fights in a burning house."

How do you feel about William Shatner mentioning you in a recent interview?

Posted in Coming to Town | Tagged ada milenkovic brown, illogicon, lawrence m schoen

Coming to Town, link edition: Zack Smith interviews William Shatner about "Shatner's World"

Posted on 2014-01-09 at 15:12 by montsamu

Local writer Zack Smith has had some fantastic, fantastic interviews over the years. But this one, I mean, c’mon. He talked via phone with Shatner! On his blog, Zack posts his full/extended interview with the actor ahead of “Shatner’s World: We Just Live In It”, Shatner’s one man show in Raleigh on Sunday evening. A compressed version of the interview appears in this week’s Independent Weekly. In the full interview, Shatner talks about how this one-man show started and grew, about Chapel Hill musician Ben Folds, about the NC city councilman who resigned in Klingon, and more. Do check it out!

Posted in Coming to Town | Tagged shatner's world, william shatner, zack smith

The Hardest Part: Jenna Black on writing a full novel after having sold it on proposal

Posted on 2014-01-09 at 03:38 by montsamu

Durham author Jenna Black's next novel publication is a re-issue of her 2006 novel Watchers in the Night, which begins her series The Guardians of the Night, all set for re-release in 2014 starting with book one next week. With two additional series also in print, Faeriewalker and Morgan Kingsley, she has two more series ongoing, her Nikki Glass urban fantasy series and her new near future YA dystopia Replica, and with all these novels she's had plenty of time to examine and exercise her craft. Here she writes about one of the consistently difficult parts of her career.

By Jenna Black:

It’s very difficult to single out the hardest part of writing a novel. It tends to be different with each one. With sixteen novels on the market, I have plenty of hard parts to choose from. But one thing that I’ve found consistently hard over the years is writing a full novel after I’ve sold it on proposal.

Posted in The Hardest Part | Tagged jenna black

Coming to Town: Laura Anne Gilman for illogiCon, interviewed by Jaym Gates

Posted on 2014-01-07 at 03:55 by montsamu

Author Laura Anne Gilman joined the illogiCon guest roster a few months back, and now I'm very happy to have her on bullspec.com's "Coming to Town" series, the first of hopefully a few features on the incoming illogiCon guests and other panelists. Gilman is the author of multiple fantasy series including Retrievers, Paranormal Scene Investigators, Grail Quest, and The Vineart War, along with media tie-in and other novels, non-fiction books, not to mention a long list of short stories, on and on. She'll be at illogiCon this weekend, January 10-12, at the Embassy Suites RDU, and I for one am looking forward to hearing more about her work. Enjoy!

Interview by Jaym Gates:

Posted in Coming to Town | Tagged illogicon, jaym gates, laura anne gilman