Big Idea Category

The Big Idea: Ellen Kushner

For longtime fans of the urban fantasy genre, the Bordertown series of anthologies hardly needs an introduction — it was literally one of the foundations of the genre when it emerged on the publishing scene in 1986. Now Welcome to Bordertown, introduces a new generation of readers to that gritty, magical place — and in […]

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The Big Idea: Maria Dahvana Headley

Author Maria Dahvana Headley, in her new novel Queen of Kings, essays one of the most famous women of all time: Cleopatra. But how does one approach writing about someone who has already been immortalized in words so many times? As you’ll discover, for Headley, it’s not about choosing just one way to come at […]

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The Big Idea: Christopher Farnsworth

So, The President’s Vampire is about — as the title suggests — a vampire who is in the employ of the U.S. President, and who from time to time does certain tasks that only an undead creature could undertake. It’s a fantastical concept, but as author Christopher Farnsworth very recently found out, even fantastical concepts […]

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The Big Idea: Kevin Hearne

Author Kevin Hearne had a novel way of getting to his novel Hounded — a way that involved equal parts of geekery, stubbornness and alcohol. Given who the constituency is here, I know I now have your attention. Or more accurately, Hearne has your attention, and I’ll give him the floor now to explain how […]

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The Big Idea: Jennifer Estep

Here’s a crazy idea: Books should be fun. That’s Jennifer Estep’s philosophy, and today she’s here to tell you how it informs her “Elemental Assassin” series of novels, including the latest, Tangled Threads. And she has questions of her own for you at the end. Be ready! JENNIFER ESTEP: So here’s my Big Idea – […]

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The Big Idea: Janni Lee Simner

Janni Lee Simner’s latest novel Faerie Winter features a world in change — moving from state of being to another in a way that’s both dramatic and unprecedented. But how to tell of that dramatic change, especially when the writer’s own personal experience with the sort of change being described is vastly different? For Simner, […]

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The Big Idea: Peter Orullian

Choices, motivations, and the unintended consequences thereof — heady stuff for any novel, much less a series. In The Unremembered, the debut fantasy novel from Peter Orullian, which is in itself the first novel in a six book series, each of these things is considered, and weighed, and tested before being put into practice. Orullian […]

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The Big Idea: Douglas Hulick

Some say that dictionaries are descriptive, some say they are prescriptive — but how many say that they are inspirational? Douglas Hulick is one of the (I assume) relatively few in that last category, and he’s here to explain how a chance encounter with one eventually led to his debut fantasy novel Among Thieves. The […]

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The Big Idea: Derryl Murphy

They say travel broadens the mind, but for Derryl Murphy, it did more than that: It helped to write his newest novel, Napier’s Bones, and did so not just on a practical level (that is, of allowing him to research information) but also on an inspirational level as well. It’s an argument that being there […]

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The Big Idea: Jesse Bullington

In some ways, writing a novel is as much about giving your characters space to introduce themselves — especially to you, their author — as it is giving them a plot so they will have something to do. In The Enterprise of Death, author Jesse Bullington had a particular character which he had been trying […]

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The Big Idea: Lyda Morehouse

Nature is a strange and fascinating thing, and for the theologically and/or teleologically minded, it raises some interesting questions. It certainly did for Lyda Morehouse, who in writing up her latest novel Resurrection Code looked at some curious aspects of the animal world and wondered what God was thinking. Did she comes up with answers? […]

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The Big Idea: M.J. Locke

M.J. Locke is riding a wave with Up Against It, including a starred review in Publishers Weekly (“Compulsively readable and packed with challenging ideas… this smart, satisfying hard SF adventure celebrates human resilience”) and the sort of fellow author praise most authors would kill for (see the George RR Martin blurb right there on the […]

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The Big Idea: M.J. Putney

You’ve heard of the concept of the Big Idea, as it involves books (I mean, honestly, right?). But in describing the construction of her debut YA novel Dark Mirror, author M.J. Putney introduces a new concept to the lexicon: Fairly Sizable Ideas. What are they? Do they involve Napoleon in some way? And what do […]

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The Big Idea: Anton Strout

Super heroes have their appeal to authors — after all, what’s not to like about characters who have special powers and strengths? But there’s something to be said for the workaday hero, too: The schmoe who finds himself in a strange spot without superpowers and still has to get the job done. Author Anton Strout […]

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