Big Idea Category
The Big Idea: Kat Richardson
Posted on August 5, 2010 12 Comments
Hey, you know what’s really scary? Kat Richardson does — and what she thinks is scary forms the basis of her popular “Greywalker” series of paranormal novels, of which Labyrinth is the latest installment. While Richardson’s heroine Harper Blaine explores the thin grey line between fantasy and reality, Richardson herself is here to explore what […]
The Big Idea: Mary Robinette Kowal
Posted on August 3, 2010 18 Comments
I’m not going to pretend to be objective here — Mary Robinette Kowal is one of my favorite people, and more than that, she’s a heck of an author, as her Campbell Award and Hugo nomination strongly suggest. So it was no surprise that I greatly enjoyed her debut novel Shades of Milk and Honey, […]
The Big Idea: S.A. Swann
Posted on July 29, 2010 5 Comments
How do you write a sequel for a book that you wrote without thinking of a sequel at all?It’s a pretty puzzle, and one that happens more often than you might think. S.A. Swann faced this problem with Wolf’s Cross, an unexpected sequel to his novel Wolfbreed. His solution to the situation? Read on, dear […]
The Big Idea: A.C.E. Bauer
Posted on July 27, 2010 10 Comments
The great thing about Shakespeare — as if there were just one great thing about him — is that he offers so many opportunities for other writers to explore his work, ask questions and then build their own stories from there. He’s a lodestone of inspiration, and even some of the smallest elements of his […]
The Big Idea: Anne Zouroudi
Posted on July 20, 2010 4 Comments
Anne Zouroudi is in love with Greece — which is not entirely surprising, as many people over the years have be smitten by that Mediterranean land. But unlike most people, who are simply content to enjoy the sun and warmth of the people there, when Zouroudi wandered that land of gods, she found something else: […]
The Big Idea: Alethea Kontis
Posted on July 13, 2010 16 Comments
It’s my opinion that any sort of book can have a Big Idea behind it, and when I say “any sort of book” I really mean “any sort of book.” And to prove this point, here’s Alethea Kontis, talking about her book AlphaOops! H is for Halloween — a kid’s alphabet book. Skeptical there’s a […]
The Big Idea: Karen Lord
Posted on July 8, 2010 19 Comments
Sometimes in writing, who you make your protagonist, and the qualities that person possesses, makes all the difference for the story you want to tell. When it came time for Karen Lord to tell the story in Redemption in Indigo, she chose a protagonist who was unconventional — Paama, a character from African lore — […]
The Big Idea: Carrie Vaughn
Posted on July 6, 2010 13 Comments
Carrie Vaughn is best known in many circles for her New York Times best selling paranormal series featuring a werewolf named Kitty, but as with many authors every once in a while she likes to wander away from what she’s known for and try something new. And thus, her latest novel, Discord’s Apple, in which […]
The Big Idea: Amelia Beamer
Posted on July 1, 2010 5 Comments
We know a number of things about zombies, mostly involving their undead state, their willingness to consume brains, and their general monotone emotional nature. But could it be that we’re missing something fundamental about zombies and their nature — and what that fundamental thing about their nature can mean for their literary (undead) lives? Those […]
The Big Idea: Larry Doyle
Posted on June 29, 2010 11 Comments
The 50s were an archetypal time, both for America and for science fiction, but more than half a century later, does that era have anything to say to our own? Larry Doyle was minding his own business when one day a couple of years ago someone said something that made him believe that in many […]
The Big Idea: Meg Gardiner
Posted on June 24, 2010 11 Comments
The American tradition of political paranoia isn’t new — just ask Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, circa 1800 — but that doesn’t mean the latest version of it can’t be annoying to those of us living through it. Meg Gardiner knows all about that feeling, as she explains in this Big Idea about The Liar’s […]
The Big Idea: Nnedi Okorafor
Posted on June 17, 2010 11 Comments
What do spiders have to do with stories? For most of us, not much of anything, unless the spider gets into the book you’re reading, in which case it might get very physically involved in the story when you squish it with the book. But for Nnedi Okorafor, whose latest novel Who Fears Death is […]
The Big Idea: Leanna Renee Hieber
Posted on June 15, 2010 9 Comments
Author Leanna Renee Hieber likes all things Gothic, and I’m not just saying that because when I met her at Phoenix Comicon a few weeks ago, she was dressed head to foot in a sumptuously Gothic blue and black Victorian-era getup (although she was, and that was my first big hint). The Gothic sensibility is […]
The Big Idea: Michael Koryta
Posted on June 11, 2010 5 Comments
Reporters are often told to ask the “W”s — Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? (which does not start with a “w” but which has a “w” in it, so there) — because in a news story, all of these things are usually relevant. Author Michael Koryta is a former reporter, so it would […]
The Big Idea: Stacia Kane
Posted on June 9, 2010 16 Comments
Sometimes a ghost is just a ghost — that is, a dead soul wandering about the world without having moved on, and occasionally breaking things or scaring people. But sometimes a ghost is something else entirely: evidence that the world has changed, and with it, the ground rules of how the world actually works. Stacia […]
The Big Idea: Ryk E. Spoor
Posted on June 3, 2010 22 Comments
As a genre, science fiction is often lauded for its “sense of wonder” — or as many of its practitioners prefer to spell it, “sensawunda” — but like any aspect of writing, this element doesn’t just show up on the pages of a book; the author has to work to put it there. Ryk E. […]
The Big Idea: David J. Williams
Posted on May 28, 2010 19 Comments
Everything you know about war is going to change… someday. We know that because it always has before; we’re not fighting wars today like we fought them 70 or 90 years ago, and those were fought differently than the wars before then. What will the next war be? With The Machinery of Light and the […]
The Big Idea: Robin Becker
Posted on May 26, 2010 29 Comments
Zombies: Very popular in literature these days. But there’s a (zombie) elephant in the room here: In all of zombie literature, there is one person whose needs, wants and desires are woefully underarticulated — yea, hardly a shuffling moan is heard in his or her defense. Who is that silent person? Author Robin Becker knows, […]
The Big Idea: Vicki Pettersson
Posted on May 24, 2010 10 Comments
Vicki Pettersson is in the enviable position of having a successful urban fantasy series with her “Signs of the Zodiac” books, of which the latest, Cheat the Grave, is the fifth. But when any series goes out to the fifth book (or beyond), the question becomes: What now? What next? What’s new? Pettersson’s answer to […]
The Big Idea: Paolo Bacigalupi
Posted on May 20, 2010 25 Comments
So, Paolo Bacigalupi is having kind of a good month. Just this last weekend, his novel The Windup Girl was awarded the Nebula Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award being one of the two highest awards in the science fiction and fantasy field (the other one is the Hugo, and The Windup Girl is […]
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