Tagged: author interview
Conversation with Ginger Mann; Author Interview
Today’s post is a transcript from a recent conversation with author Miss Ginger Mann, which occurred during her visit to my little corner of the etherverse. Mann is an up and coming novelist and acquaintance of mine through Xchyler Publishing.
Aurel: Hello Ms Mann, It was so good of you to accept my invitation for an interview.
Mann: Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to talk to you today.
Aurel: As I understand it, you have a new work of fiction just released. What can you tell us about it?
Mann: Yes, I have had a new work released. It’s a story called “Jilted River.” Here’s a look at it:
A river siren lives in an Appalachian forest. She lurks at the bottom of a sinkhole, where a mountain collapsed more than a hundred years ago. Her magical voice haunts the underground river there, where she Continue reading
Conversation with A.F. Stewart – Author Interview
The recording device from which this transcript came was recently found on a church doorstep near Salem Massachusetts. It involves a conversation between J. Aurel Guay and author A.F. Stewart. The whereabouts of Dr. Guay are still unknown.
Aurel: Hello Ms. Stewart, it was so good of you to accept my invitation for an interview. Although I must say, your choice of setting here in this centuries old cemetery, under a full moon is a little… unorthodox. Fortunately, I’ve brought along a little picnic basket. Help yourself to a fruit tart and a glass of wine, and we will begin.
Stewart: Oh, blackberry and sour cherry tarts. My favourite flavours. I’ll pass on the wine, though, as I don’t imbibe. I’ve also brought something, my own little delectable delicacy, Deviled Egg Eyeballs (holds out a container of deviled eggs in the shape of bloodshot eyeballs). Care for one?
Aurel: Don’t mind if I do! As I understand it, you have just released a new work of fiction and are celebrating with gifts to your readers. What can you tell us about it?
Stewart: My new book is a Continue reading
Conversation with Jay Barnson ~ Author Interview
Today’s post is a transcript from a recent conversation with author Mr. Jay Barnson, which occurred during his visit to my little corner of the etherverse. Barnson is video game designer, up and coming novelist and acquaintance of mine through Xchyler Publishing.
J. Aurel: Hello Mr. Barnson, It was so good of you to accept my invitation for an afternoon drink at the ‘Grog-and-Dart’. Pull yourself up a stool.
Barnson: What, they’ve got stools here, too? Man. Classy establishment. So much better than the last place I found myself…
J. Aurel: I understand that you have a new work of fiction. Can you tell us a little about your story?
Barnson: I could tell you, but then I’d have to ki… oh, fiction. Right.
I was actually inspired when I was doing research on what was going to be a totally different story, involving telecommunications in the Victorian era. I had some weird idea for steampunk technology, but the more I dug into the actual technology of the era, the more I realized that what I thought would be science fiction in the 1880s was actually science fact. They really did have pretty amazing technology back then. Trans-Atlantic communication, fax machines, “online” romances, telecommunications fraud…Really, all the stuff that we think are unique to the Internet age… maybe back when it was text-based, at least… existed back then, on a smaller scale.
A few months earlier, I’d read an article about a profoundly autistic teenaged girl. Her therapists believed that she was also intellectually disabled. With a great deal of effort, her family taught her to use the keyboard. After a while, she was able to write messages to explain what she was going through. Even her family, who loved her and knew her best, had completely underestimated her. Here was an intelligent young lady with the same emotions as any other girl her age, fully cognizant of how her brain and body were betraying her. Until she used an alternative form of communication, everyone assumed she was incapable of understanding what she was doing.
Between this, and a little study of Savant Syndrome, I thought about how little we know now in the 21st century about these kinds of disabilities. Back in the 19th century, what chance would even a mildly autistic individual have?
These ideas became the seeds for Dots, Dashes, and Deceit. From the high-tech telegraphy industry came Winnie. She’s a young, small-town telegraph operator who has been displaced by advancing technology. She’s frustrated by her love of technology and hope for adventure, and the expectations of society which considers her perilously close to “old maid” status. Then you have Joshua, a mute savant, dismissed by the town as harmless but hopelessly “dumb,” in both senses of the word. However, nobody recognizes that the supposedly nervous habit he has of tapping with his hand is actually Morse code… and that he’s discovered a deadly plot that he has been unable to communicate.
Add to that an eccentric inventor, mechanical men controlled via Morse code, an alternate history where the East India Company was not nationalized after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, long-distance plots from across the world coordinated via coded telegraph messages, and an airship full of thugs… and you have Dots, Dashes, and Deceit, my short story coming soon in Terra Mechanica: A Steampunk Anthology.
J. Aurel: Wow that sounds like quite the story! What moved you to become an author?
Barnson: I honestly can’t Continue reading
Conversation with ‘Dancing with Fireflies’ ~ Author Interview
Today’s post is a transcript from a recent conversation with author Ms. Crysta, founder of ‘Dancing with Fireflies’. Ms. Crysta is a prolific blogger, champion of authors and the writing craft, and acquaintance of mine through our common interests in writing and blogging.
J. Aurel: Hello Ms. Crysta, thank you for coming. Would you care for some Tea? Crysta: I would love some. I have actually been a tea drinker for many years. In fact it is one of my many writing rituals, to make a cup of tea and sit for a few minutes watching the steam rise.
J. Aurel: You are very welcome. Let’s see now, I have Earl Grey, Green, and Raspberry Zinger, which would you prefer? I am so glad you were able to make time in your busy schedule. Tell me, what is ‘Dancing with Fireflies’ all about?
Crysta: I love Earl Grey with cream and sugar. So, Dancing with Fireflies started off like so many blogs as a personal space for my own creative writing. But through the years it has started to morph into an imaginative networking place for people who have the same love of writing as I do. Writers tend to be introverts, unless forced out into the public due to some grand luck of fame. So this gives people a chance to share their art from the comforts of their own sacred spaces.
J. Aurel: Please help yourself to a biscuit. And tell me Ms. Crysta, how is it that you find yourself in the world of Blogging?
Crysta: Well for me, I have always been a journal keeper since I was old enough to pick up a crayon. I found that through my writings, both fiction and non-fiction, I could express not just my feelings but create my own worlds when I felt like this one was just overwhelming. Blogging evolved from LiveJournal and moved into what it is now.
J. Aurel: What are your aspirations both for yourself and for Dancing with Fireflies?
Crysta: Dancing with Fireflies has been an amazing experience for me both as a writer and as someone who wasn’t sure what to do next, after Motherhood started to become less of a full-time job. I knew I wanted to be a writer, I spent some time with local press and always submitted freelance pieces. But I would like to take the steps to publish and take my own writing to a new level. Dancing with Fireflies is also moving forward in the direction of becoming more about creative exploration with others and opening up to bringing people in to share their talents. We learn from each other and grow as writers and as humans in the light of brilliance and talent.
J. Aurel: Can you tell us about some of the things that inspire you?
Crysta: I am always inspired by Continue reading
Conversation with Scott E. Tarbet – Author Interview
Today’s post is a transcript from a recent conversation with author Mr. Scott E. Tarbet, which occurred during his visit to my little corner of the etherverse. Tarbet is an up and coming novelist and acquaintance of mine through Xchyler Publishing. Enjoy:
J. Aurel: Hello Mr. Tarbet, thank you for joining me for this fine afternoon stroll.
Tarbet: So happy to join you! A lovely day for it.
J. Aurel: It certainly is. It’s not often that we get both moons in the same sky at sunset. I understand that you have a new work of fiction. Can you tell us a little about your story?
Tarbet: Yes, it’s a trifle disconcerting to cast this many shadows. There is no direction I can turn where a shadow isn’t reminding me I need to spend more time with my running shoes on. A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk (AMNS), is a Steampunk treatment of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is set in London near the end of Queen Victoria’s reign—the midsummer days leading up to her Diamond Jubilee—and has not only the comedic and updated, fairy-filled storyline of the Bard’s play, but wraps it up in the peril and international intrigues of the day.
That time is one of the great turning points of world history: the great empires were preparing to fall, our modern society was a-borning. How would the history of the 20th Century have been different, if at the end of the 19th, Kaiser Wilhelm’s mother had been able to kick his butt into line?
J. Aurel: Steampunk alternative history with a Shakespearian twist, how intriguing! So, Mr. Tarbet what is it that moved you to become an author? Continue reading
J. Aurel Around the Web
I know what you’re thinking; ‘J. Aurel Guay is an amazing author, I just wish there were somewhere I could find all of his interviews and guest blogs in one place!’
Well wish no more! Click the button in the top menu and check out the new J. Aurel Around the Web page!
Conversation with Pete Ford – Author Interview
Today’s post is a transcript from a recent conversation with author Mr. Pete Ford, which occurred during his visit to my little corner of the etherverse. Ford is an up and coming novelist and acquaintance of mine through Xchyler Publishing. Enjoy:
J. Aurel: Welcome Mr. Ford! Have a seat good sir, make yourself comfortable. I trust you found the place well enough?
Ford: No trouble finding you whatsoever. I am adept at navigating the currents of cyberspace, it seems.
J. Aurel: A necessary skill in this day and age, for certain. I understand that you have a new work of fiction. Can you tell us a little about your story?
Ford: It’s called Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia, and it’s a steampunk novel about a journalist who finds that a series of robberies he’s been reporting are much more than they seem. He uncovers a conspiracy, draws the attention of the conspirators, and gets himself and his wife into very hot water.
J. Aurel: Marvelous, where ever did you find the inspiration for such a charming tale?
Ford: I’d just finished another novel—a science-fiction story with a steampunk overtone, which I’d self-published—and I decided that for my next story I wanted to get back to something more “traditionally” steampunk, set in an alternate-history version of Victorian London. So part of the inspiration came from answering the question of what things might have been like if Charles Babbage—the inventor of the ill-fated Analytical Engine, an early mechanical computer—had succeeded in creating a working machine. That led to the idea of a world with steam-driven mechanical computers a century earlier than in our own history. On top of that I wanted to layer a story involving action and adventure. Rescue the lady, stop the bad guy, save the world. You get the idea.
J. Aurel: It sounds marvelous, and I am intrigued; how is it that a man of your years of wisdom came to be interested in the burgeoning fantasy world of cogs and clockwork that is called ‘Steampunk’? Continue reading
Blog Interview with Author of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk’!
There’s a new steampunk novel on the horizon.
Call for Guest Blogs/Interviewees
To Whom it may concern,
In addition to writing, I do have a ‘real’ job. Well, a sort of real job, if you count being paid just enough to survive so that you can pipette chemicals and dissect mice a ‘real job’.
Digressions, regarding the inequity of graduate student compensation in the sciences aside, the next few months should be very busy for me. I will be carrying out the experiments required to appease the reviewers of my research paper, finishing my Thesis, defending my Thesis, and finding a new and some-what-more-real J.O.B.
As such, I am inviting you to help fill in any of the blanks that may occur on this blog in the form of author guest posts and interviews. You can see my previous interviews with authors HERE. Contact me by comment, tweet, or FB if you have something literary or clever to share, or have an interest in being subjected to an intense full contact chess match/author interview.
Sincerely,
~J. Aurel Guay
Tea with Author J.M. Salyards
Posted on behalf of J. Aurel Guay, who will return to blogging once recovered from a minor Plasma Burn:
Today’s post is a transcript from a recent conversation with author J. M. Salyards over tea. Mr. Salyards is an up and coming novelist and acquaintance of mine through Xchyler Publishing. Enjoy:
J. Aurel: Hello Mr. Salyards, thank you for coming. Would you care for some Tea?
J.M. Salyards: I would love some, thanks. And thanks for having me.
J. Aurel: You are very welcome. Let’s see now I have Earl Grey, Green, and Raspberry Zinger, which would you prefer? I am so glad you were able to make time in your busy schedule. I understand that you have a new work of fiction coming out soon. Can you tell us a little about your story?
J.M. Salyards: Earl Grey, if you please. “Shadow of the Last Men” is the first volume of a three-book series called the Next Man Saga. Set centuries in the future, it follows three unlikely allies as they attempt to survive on the wasted earth known as the ‘Outlands’. Each of them has their own reasons for opposing the Last Men— the cruel, technocratic tyrants who rule the earth from their massive, black-domed city.
It is a tale that weaves science fiction, fantasy, military, paranormal and metaphysical elements. Sounds like a monstrous hybrid, I know. Nonetheless, I do like to think that it never strays far from the human touch.
J. Aurel: How intriguing, and how does the ‘Next Man’ portion of the title relate to the tale? Continue reading
The J. Aurel Guay Archive 