Big Idea Category

The Big Idea: Harry Connolly

Monsters: you know, those big, hairy and scaly things with the claws and teeth and the overwhelming desire to do nasty bad things to you? But then there’s Harry Connolly. No, he’s not a monster (I mean, as far as we know), but he has definite ideas about monsters, and what they should be – […]

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The Big Idea: Mark Van Name

Fiction can inspire those who read it to do new and even possibly noble things with their lives – but fiction can also be cathartic and transformative for the writer as well. While writing Children No More, author Mark Van Name discovered he wasn’t just trying to write an efficient page-turner, he was working on […]

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The Big Idea: Matthew Hughes

I’ve been a follower of Matthew Hughes’ work since Old Man’s War and one of his novels had the same “birthday,” and that following has been rewarded with a series of works that think deeply on a number of issues, along with enough plot twists and turns to keep things interesting along the way. Template, […]

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The Big Idea: Anthony Huso

Suffering: Sure, it’s a pain in the ass, but does it make for good art? And more to the point, if you make your characters suffer (which is objectively at least more comfortable than having yourself suffer), will their struggles help to perfect their stories? Perhaps it’s not the only way to tell a tale, […]

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The Big Idea: Zoe Ferraris

It’s well known that one of the best ways to get someone to do something is to tell them that they shouldn’t do it. In the case of author Zoe Ferraris, the thing she was told she shouldn’t do is write about a particular character — one whose origins are outside the usual experience of […]

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The Big Idea: Kat Richardson

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 […]

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The Big Idea: Mary Robinette Kowal

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, […]

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The Big Idea: S.A. Swann

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 […]

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The Big Idea: A.C.E. Bauer

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 […]

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The Big Idea: Anne Zouroudi

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: […]

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The Big Idea: Alethea Kontis

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 […]

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The Big Idea: Karen Lord

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 — […]

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The Big Idea: Carrie Vaughn

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 […]

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The Big Idea: Amelia Beamer

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 […]

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The Big Idea: Larry Doyle

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 […]

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The Big Idea: Meg Gardiner

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 […]

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The Big Idea: Nnedi Okorafor

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 […]

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The Big Idea: Leanna Renee Hieber

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 […]

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