Category: Writer Wednesday

Writer Wednesday: Stark Holborn

Posted on by Carrie Cuinn

Stark Holborn is the author of Nunslinger – the first ever digital serial published by Hodder & Stoughton – as well as the Triggernometry series and new space opera, Ten Low. As well as writing about westerns for Pornokitsch and Screen Queens, Stark works as a games writer and is currently a lead writer on the SF-noir detective game Shadows of Doubt.

Stark Holborn. Photo courtesy of the author.

I was lucky enough to have Holborn stop by the site today for a chat about Ten Low, that new space opera (I love space operas!) recently published by Titan Books.

First, the blurb…

Ten Low (her name is her sentence) is an ex-army medic, one of many convicts eking out a living at the universe’s edge. She’s desperate to escape her memories of the interstellar war, and the crimes she committed. Trouble, however, seems to follow wherever she goes. One night, attempting to atone for her sins, she pulls a teenage girl – the sole survivor – from the wreck of a spaceship. But Gabriella Ortiz is no ordinary girl. The result of a military genetics programme, she is a decorated Army General from the opposing side of the war to Ten. Worse, Ten realises the crash was an assassination attempt, and that someone wants Ortiz dead…

Although at odds in every way, the pair strike an uneasy deal to smuggle the General offworld. Their road won’t be easy: they must cross the moon’s lawless wastes, facing military hit squads, bandits and the one-eyed leader of an all-female road gang, in a frantic race to get the General to safety. But something else waits in the darkness at the universe’s edge. Something that threatens to reveal Ten’s worst nightmare: the truth of who she really is and what she is running from.

Cover art by Julia Lloyd at Titan.

And now, the questions…

I love to know about the places in a story, the ways that setting isn’t just a location but a character in its own right, influencing the rest of the story. Tell me about the world of Ten Low?

Ten Low is in many ways a space-western, and so includes a mash-up of high and low tech. The book is set on the desert moon of Factus at the very edge of a star system. Factus is a wind-swept, hardscrabble place neglected by the system’s authorities, and so the objects, foods and vehicles had to reflect that. For example, it made sense that people would try to grow things that thrive in arid climates – like agave – and so forms of mescal are popular. Wildlife, too: instead of cattle, people farm snakes and use vultures and buzzards as work animals. Insects are prized as both entertainment and food; in a place where there’s little amusement, a beetle fight can be an exciting thing.

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Writer Wednesday: A.C. Wise

Posted on by Carrie Cuinn

A.C. Wise is one of my first writer buddies here on the East Coast, and I’m delighted to have her here to talk for a quick chat about her debut novel, Wendy, Darling! Her fiction has appeared in publications such as Clarkesworld, Apex, and several Year’s Best anthologies, among other places. Her work has won the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, as well as twice more being a finalist for the Sunburst Award, twice being a finalist for the Nebula Award, and being a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. She has two collections published with Lethe Press, and a novella published with Broken Eye Books. Her debut novel, Wendy, Darling, was published by Titan Books in June 2021, and a new collection, The Ghost Sequences, will be published by Undertow Books in Fall 2021.

A.C. Wise, holding a book
A.C. Wise, photo courtesy of the author

First, the blurb…

Wendy, Darling is a feminist take on Peter Pan, following a grown-up Wendy Darling as she returns to Neverland after Peter kidnaps her daughter, forcing her to confront her past, the traumas she endured, the broken relationships, and the hidden darkness at the heart of her childhood paradise.

cover for "Wendy, Darling" novel
Wendy, Darling, by A.C. Wise. Cover design by Julia Lloyd.

So, A.C., tell me a little more about your world…

The novel moves between London in the early 1900s and Neverland. For the most part, I tried to stick relatively close to actual London, whereas with Neverland, I took a fair number of liberties. At the same time, I tried to capture the spirit of Neverland. There are elements that fans of the original Peter Pan, and subsequent adaptations, may recognize and hopefully appreciate, but I also took it as a setting I could shape to suit the whims of my story. Time, geography, and physical features are tricksy and subject to shifting around. Sometimes the sun doesn’t set for days. Sometimes mountains and streams pop up where there were none before. It’s a world designed to be one particular boy’s ideal, and tends to shape itself to his will, whatever that may be at the moment. If Peter wants the perfect tree for climbing, it will appear. If he wants a band of inexperienced children to be able to regularly go up against a pirate ship full of seasoned, grown men, and never lose a fight, then so be it! If he says a thing is so, whether or not it comports at all with our understanding of reality, that’s the way it is and there’s no arguing it.

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Writer Wednesday: C.L. Clark

Posted on by Carrie Cuinn

This week C.L. Clark (Cherae) was kind enough to stop by for a quick chat about her debut novel, The Unbroken. Cherae graduated from Indiana University’s creative writing MFA and was a 2012 Lambda Literary Fellow. She’s been a personal trainer, an English teacher, and an editor, and is some combination thereof as she travels the world. When she’s not writing or working, she’s learning languages, doing P90something, or reading about war and [post-]colonial history. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in FIYAH, PodCastle, Uncanny and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Now she’s one of the co-editors at PodCastle, and the SFWA Blog editor.

C.L. Clark, photo courtesy of the author.

First, the blurb…

Every Empire Demands Revoultion. Touraine is a soldier. Stolen as a child and raised to kill and die for the empire, her only loyalty is to her fellow conscripts. But now, her company has been sent back to her homeland to stop a rebellion, and the ties of blood may be stronger than she thought. Luca needs a turncoat. Someone desperate enough to tiptoe the bayonet’s edge between treason and orders. Someone who can sway the rebels toward peace, while Luca focuses on what really matters: getting her uncle off her throne. Through assassinations and massacres, in bedrooms and war rooms, Touraine and Luca will haggle over the price of a nation. But some things aren’t for sale.

And this cover! I adore it.

Without context, what’s one of your favorite sentences in the book?

“If you thought I’d be useful, I’d be free by now.”

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Writer Wednesday: Marie Vibbert

Posted on by Carrie Cuinn

Writer Wednesday is back! Today we’re chatting with Marie Vibbert about her new novel, Galactic Hellcats…

Marie Vibbert. Photo courtesy of the author.

Marie Vibbert has sold over 60 short stories to markets such as Analog, Amazing Stories, and F&SF. The Oxford Culture review called her work, “Everything science fiction should be.” Her stories have been translated by magazines in Vietnam and China! By day she is a computer programmer in Cleveland, Ohio, and has been a medieval reenactor and a professional football player. 

Vibbert’s novel is out now from Vernacular Books! What is Galactic Hellcats? The quick but enticing explanation is it’s a novel about a female biker gang in outer space rescuing a gay prince, and forming a family together. Yeah, you want to know more…

Cover art by I.L. Vinokur; Elf Elm Publishing did the design and layout. 

Where do you see yourself in this story? Or more accurately, where would your readers see you, between the lines?

I was a bit of a klepto as a kid. Growing up poor, all the things I wanted were on the other side of safety glass or security tie-downs. I’d go days without eating down the street from a store full of candy. Is it any wonder then, that all my heroes were cat thieves? I thrilled over Harry Harrison’s “Stainless Steel Rat” and thought Cat Woman should’ve beaten Batman every time. I got mad when the characters in my stories didn’t get to keep their treasures, which sure happened a lot.  

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Writer Wednesday: Isabel Yap

Posted on by Carrie Cuinn

Isabel Yap writes fiction and poetry, works in the tech industry, and drinks tea. Born and raised in Manila, she has also lived in California, London, and Boston. She holds a BS in Marketing from Santa Clara University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. In 2013 she attended the Clarion Writers Workshop, and since 2016 has served as Secretary for the Clarion Foundation. Her work has appeared in venues including Tor.com, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, and Year’s Best Weird Fiction. Her debut short story collection, Never Have I Ever, is out 2/23/2021 from Small Beer Press. She is @visyap on Twitter and her website is https://isabelyap.com.

Isabel Yap. Photo courtesy of the author.

Today we’re chatting with Yap about her forthcoming collection, writing while Filipino, and believing in yourself (or getting out of your own way) …

Cover for Never Have I Ever. Art by Alexa Sharpe.

Spells and stories, urban legends and immigrant tales: the magic in Isabel Yap’s debut collection jumps right off the page, from the joy in her new story, “A Spell for Foolish Hearts” to the terrifying tension of the urban legend “Have You Heard the One About Anamaria Marquez.”

Without context, what’s one of your favorite sentences in the book?

Humans make up wonderfully intricate rituals, pretend to have such control—but they easily devolve into animal longing, just heartbeats flaring in their cage of skin and bones.

What will readers learn about you as a person from reading your debut collection?

Well, this is a terrifying question! And the kind of thing that I’d love to turn back on the reader, as in: well, what do you think you know about me? Generally, I was trained to critique stories in terms of formalism: the author is dead. I believe authors should be taken at their word, and I’d like people to read these stories not really thinking about me at all. But one thing that did come to mind, looking at this question, is: I hope a lonely reader will feel a kindred spirit. A deeply felt, persistent loneliness is something I live with, even if I have the best family and friends anyone could really ask for. The struggle with that, and the different resolutions I see regarding it, are threaded all through the veins of this book.

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