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Category: Interviews

Talking Over the Drowning City: An Interview with Christopher Golden, Co-Author of Joe Golem, Occult Detective

Talking Over the Drowning City: An Interview with Christopher Golden, Co-Author of Joe Golem, Occult Detective

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Joe Golem Occult Detective-smallI’ve been e-interviewing different comics creators (indie comics guys Mirror Comics and graphic novelist-turned-TV producer Jay Odjick) as well as comic book editors (Xander Jarowey, Heather Antos, Jake Thomas, and Daniel Ketchum, all from Marvel Comics).

This time out, I wanted to chat with Christopher Golden, a best-selling author and one half of the writing team (along with Mike Mignola) on the 5-issue series Joe Golem: Occult Detective, from Dark Horse. Issue #1 comes out in November, but Dark Horse was kind enough to share an advanced view with Black Gate for this interview 🙂

Click on any of the artwork in this article for bigger versions.

Hey Christopher. Thanks for the chance to chat. I read a review copy of Joe Golem, Occult Detective, and really enjoyed it. I hadn’t seen the world of the Drowning City before, but it was compelling.

Glad you dug it. Mike and I spent a lot of time crafting this world, making sure all the weird pieces fit, so I’m really looking forward to seeing what readers think.

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Laxmi Hariharan on Marketing Books in India, Her Ruby Iyer Series, and Bombay as a Modern Day Dystopia

Laxmi Hariharan on Marketing Books in India, Her Ruby Iyer Series, and Bombay as a Modern Day Dystopia

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LaxmiRubyLaxmi Hariharan is both an indie author and a marketing professional. Her latest book, The First Life of Vikram Roy, is now for sale.

Black Gate readers will appreciate that Laxmi helped launch the SyFy Channel in Europe. Her Ruby Iyer Series is about a young woman in present day India, who is knocked off a train platform one morning, onto a live wire. 10,000 volts of electricity later, she doesn’t die as might be expected, but rather becomes much more than she ever dreamed she could be. Interlaced with her story is the mileau of modern India and ancient Bombay.

While most indie authors focus primarily on western publishing markets, Laxmi put a good portion of her resources towards marketing in her native India. As one of the first indie authors to break into this market, she’s in the ideal position to share what she’s learned from the experience.

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Call for Nominations! Meet Author, T.L. Zalecki, as She Gives an Insider’s Look at the Kindle Scout Program and Discusses Her Current Project: The Lost World (SIRENS Book 2)

Call for Nominations! Meet Author, T.L. Zalecki, as She Gives an Insider’s Look at the Kindle Scout Program and Discusses Her Current Project: The Lost World (SIRENS Book 2)

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HeadshotSirensT.L. Zalecki was one of the first speculative fiction authors offered a publishing contract via the Kindle Scout program, and her debut novel, Rising Tide (SIRENS Book 1) was recently published by Kindle Press. Her second book in the series, Lost World, is now up on the Kindle Scout site, where readers can nominate it, and if it is published, receive a free copy. I’m devouring Rising Tide right now. It’s scientifically plausible mer-people in a near future dystopia with government conspiracy to boot!

Tanya was kind enough to sit down with me for a Skype interview to discuss her experience with the Kindle Scout program and share insights into how it works. As one of the first forty authors selected for a publishing contract, she set up her Rising Tide campaign while the site was still in beta. In this interview, we discuss the process of selection on Kindle Scout, the timeline for publication, and the types of rights that the publisher seeks. This program is something to consider if you want the freedom of indie publishing with some of the editing and marketing support of a big publisher.

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Sharing Creative Space: An Interview with Marvel Editor Daniel Ketchum

Sharing Creative Space: An Interview with Marvel Editor Daniel Ketchum

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ketchu 3So far in this series, I’ve interviewed Marvel Associate Editor Jake Thomas, Assistant Editor Xander Jarowey, and Assistant Editor Heather Antos about their roles in the production process and their editorial voices.

Today, I wanted to e-talk about the sharing of creative territory between writer and editor. So, I’m having an e-conversation with Marvel Editor Daniel Ketchum, who edits A-Force, Magneto, Nightcrawler, Storm, X-Force, X-Men and other books.

Daniel, in an interview you mentioned that part of your job is deciding which villain the X-Men fight in the next issue. I suppose I assumed (naively) that the writer got to decide most things. How do you divide creative decision-making roles with your writers?

Haha. Truth be told, that answer I gave is more of an easy-to-grasp oversimplification of what Marvel editors do. Four times out of five, the conversation with a writer at the outset of a story arc starts with them pitching the story they want to tell. (That other one time is when something like AXIS or SECRET WARS comes up and you just shouldn’t avoid addressing it.)

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Victor Milan Talks Planet Paradise, His Many Pen Names, and a Plastic Dinosaur with Metallic Paint on It

Victor Milan Talks Planet Paradise, His Many Pen Names, and a Plastic Dinosaur with Metallic Paint on It

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DinoLordsCoverSmall 74250_126262914098950_3697860_nI had the opportunity to sit down with Victor Milan last month to discuss his current release, The Dinosaur Lords. As a member of his writers group, I’ve read the early drafts of this novel and am very excited to see it in print. George RR Martin refers to it as “Game of Thrones meets Jurassic Park,” and that’s a pretty good synopsis.

Set on the lost Earth colony of Paradise, feudal society humans live among dinosaurs of all epochs – wild dinosaurs, tame dinosaurs, and even war-mount dinosaurs. Hence the awesome knight on dino-back image that graces the cover of the book. Combine this with the sudden manifestation of a mythical angel of doom, and you’ve got the kickoff event of the story.

While Victor Milan is a well-known, prolific author, many people don’t know how prolific. On top of the dozen novels out under his own name, he’s also written many, many more under pen names. His career so far spans thirty-one years of publishing history, including the infamous midlist apocalypse of the 1980’s. Together, he and I discuss the ups and downs of the business and his journey so far.

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Call for Backers! Tales of the Lost Citadel Campaign on Kickstarter, in Conjunction with a Video Interview with C.A. Suleiman, in the DARK!

Call for Backers! Tales of the Lost Citadel Campaign on Kickstarter, in Conjunction with a Video Interview with C.A. Suleiman, in the DARK!

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Tales of the Lost Citadel-smallC A Suleiman-smallThe Kickstarter Campaign for Tales of the Lost Citadel, a trans-media anthology with C.A. Suleiman at the helm, has gone live!

So, first off, go become a backer for said campaign. And then you can come back here and watch Colin (which is what the “C” stands for) talk about it in the video interview below. Or if you want to know more about said anthology and the video on the campaign page only whets your appetite, then watch the interview below for more information (and then go back the campaign!)

C.A. Suleiman has written novels and game content for over a decade and has worked for franchises like White Wolf and Dungeons and Dragons. Nowadays, when he isn’t working on The Lost Citadel or with Mark Rein-Hagen on I Am Zombie, he makes music with his band, Toll Carom, and posts random pictures of large cats on Facebook. He sat down with me this weekend for the following interview.

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Raya Golden on Building a Career as a Hugo Nominated Illustrator, Putting Up with Demanding Author Clients, and Her Talent for Gay Pinups

Raya Golden on Building a Career as a Hugo Nominated Illustrator, Putting Up with Demanding Author Clients, and Her Talent for Gay Pinups

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RestlessEarthSmallBlessingSkySmallIt is cover reveal day for my two upcoming novels, Restless Earth and Blessing Sky, and so these beautiful covers are being posted all around the internet. What better excuse to interview Raya Golden, the illustrator? Raya lives here in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and has been working as a professional artist for ten years.

Recently, she and I sat down to discuss a wide range of topics (hence the interview has a detailed guide below it that tells you where to click to hear about the topics that interest you.) First we discussed how to build a career as an artist; it isn’t easy. Then we got into the particulars of different kinds of art, from her Hugo Nominated work on George RR Martin’s Meathouse Man comic, to the graphic novel she is working on now. She was kind enough to explain the process of creating a graphic novel or comic step by step.

Then there are book covers, which present a plethora of challenges. She and I talked about everything from the design basics of an effective book cover to the challenges of portraying minority cultures. During this time I also explained the milieu and setting of these novels, which are essentially fantasy steampunk westerns.

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Neil Gaiman and Kazuo Ishiguro on Sword & Sorcery

Neil Gaiman and Kazuo Ishiguro on Sword & Sorcery

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Neil Gaiman in The New Republic-small

The New Republic has posted a lengthy conversation on fantasy, titled Breaking the Boundaries Between Fantasy and Literary Fiction, between Neil Gaiman (The Graveyard Book, American Gods) and Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day, The Buried Giant). Among other fascinating topics, the two discuss sword & sorcery, and the different cultural approaches to swordfights.

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Paolo Bacigalupi on Black Swans, Crashing a Drought Conference, and Being in a Weird Place

Paolo Bacigalupi on Black Swans, Crashing a Drought Conference, and Being in a Weird Place

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headshotTheWaterKnife-PaoloBacigalupi-201x300Paolo Bacigalupi’s first novel, The Windup Girl, was named one of Time magazine’s top ten novels of the year, and yet he still talks to people like me, which makes him either very strange or very cool (probably a little of both.)

On May 25th his latest, The Water Knife, will be out, and this near future science fiction novel is set in a mega-drought-stricken, American southwest. The story explores issues of water rights, climate change, and the gratuitous destruction of the state of Texas, all of which we discuss in the interview.

He also takes the time to talk about his long and winding path towards a writing career. Anyone who’s ever reached the point of despair (in other words, all aspiring writers) will want to give this a listen.

After getting off Skype with me, he had another interview with NPR. So, without further ado: Paolo Bacigalupi’s warmup interview on the day he spoke to NPR.

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Editing Indie Comics and Editing Marvel Comics: The Different Worlds of Heather Antos

Editing Indie Comics and Editing Marvel Comics: The Different Worlds of Heather Antos

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Star_Wars_Princess_Leia_Vol_1_3_TextlessI’ve had a chance to e-chat with Marvel Comics editorial staff Xander Jarowey and Jake Thomas, as well as the indie comic creators from Mirror Comics. Now, I’m e-sitting down with Heather Antos, a newly-minted Assistant Editor at Marvel who also spent a year editing indie comics.

Heather got noticed by Marvel with her biggest indie credit, a comic anthology called Unlawful Good: An Anthology of Crime, which mixed together the innovations of creator-owned, anthology format, and Kickstarter crowd-funding. Crowd-funding takes a lot of work; check out its completed Kickstarter page and youtube promo video.

Kickstarter in prose as well as in comics is still relatively new as a business model, so New York Comic Con invited her to speak on a panel, which led to her hiring as assistant editor on Night of the Living Deadpool, Star Wars, Darth Vader, Deadpool and others.

So, some of your indie editor work still hasn’t come out yet. Are you able to talk about any of those works? Can you talk about Unlawful Good and how that was different for the industry?

Sure! My time in the industry as an editor is actually quite short. It was a little over a year ago that I began freelance editing. In fact, the whole point of UNLAWFUL GOOD was a bit of an experiment with myself to see even if comic editing was something I was capable of (I was a recent college grad trying to find ‘my place in the world’).

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