Big Idea Category
The Big Idea: Peter David
Posted on June 17, 2008 9 Comments
What does it take to return to Neverland? Author Peter David, who as a child dreamed of life among the Lost Boys, mulled over this question as an adult. His answer is Tigerheart, a pastiche and paean to Peter Pan and J.M. Barrie that is being praised as having “the same kind of atmosphere as […]
The Big Idea: Lewis Shiner
Posted on June 13, 2008 37 Comments
These are the days of $4 a gallon gas here in the US, a fact which does not generate much sympathy from most other people in the world (who saw the back end of $4 gas a long time ago) but which pinches us pretty hard anyway, and makes us wonder if our car-driven society […]
The Big Idea: N.M. Kelby
Posted on June 4, 2008
Inspiration is a funny thing in that it hardly ever comes as you straight-on; it comes in at different angles and sometimes what it inspires doesn’t necessarily seem to be an obvious takeaway. Case in point: Murder at the Bad Girl’s Bar and Grill, a funny, Florida-soaked mystery novel (“A perfect beach read” — New […]
The Big Idea: David J. Williams
Posted on May 27, 2008 17 Comments
Terrorism is alive and well and living in the 22nd century — and if you don’t believe that, check out The Mirrored Heavens, in which one of the US’ proudest technological achievements is attacked and US scrambles to respond. Library Journal is calling it a “stellar hard sf debut,” which must make David J. Williams, […]
The Big Idea: Walter Jon Williams
Posted on May 20, 2008 28 Comments
This week’s Big Idea is special. Not only does famed author Walter Jon Williams explain the whys and wherefores of his big new novel Implied Spaces to you, but he also finally explains what UFOs are made of! You will be shocked and surprised, as I was. And you will also find out what, if […]
The Big Idea: Jeri Smith-Ready
Posted on May 15, 2008 8 Comments
It’s a two-fer week for Big Ideas, and today we have Jeri Smith-Ready, who brings you: vampires! And not just any vampires. No, her vampires have better musical taste than you do, and in Jeri’s latest book Wicked Game, they’re not afraid to prove it. But how does exquisite taste in music combine with an […]
The Big Idea: Melinda Snodgrass
Posted on May 13, 2008 25 Comments
One day Melinda Snodgrass started wondering about aircars and why we don’t have them yet. Most people would stop there, with maybe a brief side thought about themselves puttering around in the sky like George Jetson. Snodgrass, however, kept going with that thought and ended up with a book: The Edge of Reason, which is […]
The Big Idea: Maureen Johnson
Posted on May 6, 2008 17 Comments
We’ve been talking about YA quite a lot here in Whateverland, and as coincidence has it, today’s Big Idea piece is from Maureen Johnson, who writes — can you guess? — young adult books. Her latest, Suite Scarlett, takes place in a fantastical land with strange creatures, but in this case the fantastical land is […]
The Big Idea: Cory Doctorow
Posted on April 29, 2008 28 Comments
Last year my editor at Tor Books, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, gave me a manuscript copy of Little Brother, Cory Doctorow’s young adult thriller, to see if I might want to blurb it. About halfway into it, I wanted to stop reading it — not because I didn’t like it, but because I wanted to jam […]
The Big Idea: Kate Elliott
Posted on April 18, 2008 12 Comments
One of the questions that plagues authors is “where do you get your ideas?” The standard answer to this (thanks to Harlan Ellison) is “Schenectady,” but in fact ideas come from anywhere. And I do mean: anywhere. If you don’t believe me on this, then all you have to do is read this Big Idea […]
The Big Idea: Barth Anderson
Posted on April 1, 2008 11 Comments
Just because we’re in the middle of a Reader Request Week, it doesn’t mean we should ignore The Big Idea series. Indeed not — and here’s the awesome Barth Anderson, to talk about his latest novel, The Magician and the Fool, in which an exploration of the history of the Tarot leads the characters in […]
The Big Idea: Scott Sigler
Posted on March 28, 2008 24 Comments
While I’m off in Lots-of-Meetings Land, here’s a fun Big Idea for you, from author Scott Sigler. Sigler made quite a big splash being one of the the first and most successful authors to podcast his writing, garnering up to 30,000 listeners per book — which naturally enough, I think, convinced publishers to say, “hmmm, […]
The Big Idea: Caitlin Kittredge
Posted on March 18, 2008 9 Comments
I wish I could tell you something about Night Life, the dark fantasy novel by Caitlin Kittredge, but I can’t, because I haven’t read it. And the reason I haven’t read it is that when it came in, my wife looked at it, thought it looked interesting, and took it. And since then she’s entirely […]
The Big Idea: J.F. Lewis
Posted on March 18, 2008 15 Comments
Vampire novels: ever get tired of reading the gothic angst of the undead? J.F. Lewis did — a minor issue, because, you see, he sort of wanted to write a vampire novel himself. So what do you do when you’re in a situation like that? You go back to first principles and re-examine what it […]
The Big Idea: Julie Buxbaum
Posted on March 11, 2008
Since this is a feature called “The Big Idea,” it’s worth asking how authors get to the big idea in their books in the first place — do they start with the big idea and then build around it, or do they start writing and hope they come across a big idea while they’re going […]
The Big Idea: Jennifer Pelland
Posted on March 4, 2008 12 Comments
First, a thanks to the writers/editors/publicists who responded to the call for more Big Ideas — y’all rock. For everyone else, I got a lot of interest, and over the next few weeks, you should see an interesting mix of writers swing by here to share their ideas about their books. I know you’re a-quiver […]
The Big Idea: Jami Attenberg
Posted on February 20, 2008 3 Comments
For her debut novel The Kept Man, writer Jami Attenberg fashioned a nice, big challenge for herself: having her main character unravel a mystery about her husband’s life — a husband who was not dead, but in a coma for six years. It’s easy to create a character who is a widow; examples abound in […]
The Big Idea: Paul Melko
Posted on February 12, 2008 26 Comments
Paul Melko is another member of the Ohio SF/F Cabal (our motto: There’s More Of Us Than You Think™), and he’s just released his first novel, Singularity’s Ring, to a not inconsiderable amount of acclaim (“[A] superior debut… the ingenious character development and startling images and ideas are deeply satisfying” — Publishers Weekly). Some of […]
The Big Idea: Philip Palmer
Posted on February 7, 2008 8 Comments
Hey look! Another “The Big Idea” feature! See, now you can tell they are really here to stay on Whatever: we’ve had two of them. In today’s installment: Philip Palmer. Palmer is a novelist, with the new and ambitiously all-over-the-place space opera/comedy/pirate adventure Debatable Space. He’s also a been screenwriter for several British television series, […]
The Big Idea: Marcus Sakey
Posted on January 22, 2008 13 Comments
Hey look, The Big Idea is back — this is a feature in which authors of newly-released books tell you a little bit about one of the big ideas in their book, and how they managed to work with it as they wrote their book. This feature used to be on Ficlets, but since I […]
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