A Moment with Alex Gorman

When and why did you decide to pursue writing as more than a hobby?

This question made me feel like my first college roommate. He and I were both in a writing class, one that every freshman was required to take. He’d sit in front of his computer to work on each assignment, only to find himself staring at the blinking cursor on the screen, unable to think of a word. Meanwhile, a few feet away, I’d be happily tapping away on the keys, the paragraphs just flowing out of me.

I know on at least one occasion, he mentioned how much this made him hate me.

As I tried to come up with a response for this post, I found myself sitting in front of my computer, staring at the blinking cursor. So I stopped trying to answer the question and spent some time thinking about it. I quickly realized that I’ve never had a moment where I decided that writing should be more than a hobby. I’d never considered writing to be a hobby at all. It’s just something I’ve always been compelled to do. The stories start to form in my mind and it’s my job to catch them, to find the right collection of words that traps them on the page. Sometimes this is euphoric, sometimes it’s a slog.

The closest I came to having a moment of decision about writing was around my mid-twenties. I had decided that I had other priorities. I chose not to focus as much energy on writing stories. I still wrote a little, blogging, doing a few articles for soccer websites, things like that. But those only offered me a partial outlet. The ideas kept building up. So I found myself leaving behind a trail of incomplete stories even during those years when I thought I didn’t want to write.

Maybe I’d decided to pull back, as young adults often do, because I was a little afraid, more of failing than of putting myself out there. Not too many people pay the bills with the written word, after all. It took a little growing up for me to realize that it wasn’t about paying the bills. It was about the stories, about learning and improving and becoming a better writer, so I could really bring those ideas to life.

The reality is that I’ve let hundreds of story ideas go, uncaptured. Some because I was too lazy to write them down, others because they never became more than a note on a scrap of paper, many because the words just never came together into a story I thought was good enough.

For those few stories that actually make the journey from idea to completed work, keeping them to myself was never really an option. I think if I considered myself a hobbyist, I’d be okay with not sharing them. But I’ve always wanted my stories to be read. After all, a story only comes to life in the head of the person reading it. I want my stories out there, moving in the world, interacting with people and helping create new ideas.

Alex Gorman lives in sunny San Diego with his wife and two children. He writes maniacally and has had work published in Big Pulp, the Triangulation Anthology and the Kazka Press.

Learn more about Alex Gorman and his adventures on his blog Nonsensicles.

A Moment with Hannah Adcock

When and why did you decide to pursue writing as more than a hobby?

I always wanted to write, or at least to make stories, since I was about six. Maybe even five. I was obsessed with rewriting fairy tales, and my own versions of them were, looking back, quite grisly. For example, Goldilocks would find Baby Bear lost in the woods and then raise him…only to have him turn around and eat her once he was big enough!

My first audience (who were my nan and mum) would read these stories and be going, “Why so gory? What did she do to deserve that?” - and laughing - and I’d say, “’Cause it’s funny.”

The urge to write came to light around the same time I got the urge to make people laugh. It was only when I started to read the Roald Dahl books, and the Beatrix Potter books, and then a little later the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis, that I began to get the idea you could actually do this for a living. It was like, “Hey - wait a minute. These people are adults…and they get paid to scribble down whatever they’re daydreaming about?…I want to do that!”

I wasn’t sure how. I still wrote, though. My first novel, aged seven, was a farcical story about a family of rabbits who constantly fell out and beat each other up. From then on I was known, by close relatives, as ‘Potty Beatrix’ until I abandoned that particular book. (If you can call all of fifteen pages a book.)

I didn’t try to write a proper book again until I was just finishing my GCSEs. I have to confess, whatever opportunity I had, I’d whip out my notebook and start scrawling when I should have been revising…not in ALL my lessons, of course…how the teacher never noticed I’ll never know. But the fact is, I wanted to write more than anything else, and this was because it was about the only thing I could do well, (apart from wonky comic strips which haven’t seen the light of day). It was like swimming, or flying. Brilliant.

So, I typed up the novel, which was going to be a fantasy novel for older children - dead chuffed, had it all set up in my head - and, aged sixteen, I posted it to a publisher. And I had no idea what I was doing. No idea of how the publishing side of things worked. I was flying, yes - but by the seat of my pants.

They were very nice about it. I got a long letter back giving me words of encouragement and some suggestions about what I should try first before actually spitting out a book. Still kept the letter. I have it lurking somewhere in a frightening corner of my drawers. (Chest of drawers, in case you were wondering.)

After that I left it again for another couple of years. Did my A-levels, reasonably well, but by that time I’d decided I didn’t want Higher Education. I wanted to get off the treadmill and just get on with work. I thought I’d be a pre-school teacher and went on a childcare course for all of six months, and thought, “These people are all right, but I don’t belong here. This isn’t for me.”

So, I set out to learn a bit more - finally. I did a short course in creative writing with the Open University, read An Author’s Guide To Publishing by Michael Legat (written in the days when they still used typewriters, but still interesting), got the Writers and Artists’ Yearbook, and it was like, “Oh!” (slaps forehead) “That’s how it works! You send shorter stuff to magazines!”

I’ve been doing just that (as well as poetry) for almost a year now, and I’m overjoyed to say it’s working.

Hannah Adcock is a writer of fantasy, sci-fi and poetry (often with a humorous bent)living in a strange corner of Lincolnshire, England. Her work has appeared in Poetic Diversity, Clockwise Cat and Penumbra. She posts poetry, artwork and other oddments over at inspirationandlaughs.wordpress.com.

Learn more about Hannah Adcock her Facebook author page.

A Moment with J.M. Scott

When did you first become interested in writing?

I became interested in writing fiction when I was at San Francisco State University. Between classes, I had a lot of down time, so reading more than just my text books became a standard practice. I’d spend many foggy afternoons enjoying the works of authors like Peter Benchley, Michael Chrichton, and occasionally, Stephen King. I respected their creativity, but at that point in my life, never thought that I would try to write my own stories.

During my senior year, I took an advanced screenwriting course. It was very educational but extremely labor intensive. The instructor wanted a completed script by the end of the term. Needless to say, I spent countless hours penning my screenplay. When it was time to turn in the assignment, only a few students had completed the work. The sheer volume of the project had disenchanted many of my fellow writers. It was then that I thought I might have the qualifying skills to merit publication. I wrote a couple science fiction pieces and eventually sold one to an online magazine. That same summer, I was hired as an English teacher at a local high school. I was very enthusiastic about my new job, so I went back to earn a master’s degree in Education. Unfortunately, because of the demands of my fledgling career I had to place writing on hold.

Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to read and teach many incredible works of literature, but I always felt that there was something missing. Most English teachers appreciate and critique the written word often, but few make an attempt to publish work for other people to read. It became important to me to show my students that I could demonstrate the skills that I was teaching them, so one fateful day I started typing.

I made every mistake in the book, but after two years of believing in myself and listening closely to editors and other trained authors, I started to find some success. I finished my first novel, Tarus Falls, and was able to write several short stories that are either out for consideration, or have been published.

I enjoy the craft immensely and still get excited when I take a course or purchase a new book on writing. Optimistically, I’ll continue to learn with each word that I press onto the page, and with a little luck, build a readership that will enjoy my work for years to come.

J.M. Scott is a writer from Fremont, California. When he is not working on his next story, he enjoys an active life of scuba diving, Aikido, and amateur marksmanship.

A Moment with Jenny Blackford

How long did it take you to get your first publication, and what were some of the obstacles you had to overcome?

That's a surprisingly complicated question! I'll have to tackle it in layers.

If you had asked me ten years ago, I would have said that my first publication was "Dave's Diary" back in 2002. It's a creepy sf short story for kids, in which aliens are stealthily taking over Dave's suburb. Dave realizes something is wrong when his hippie mother and heavily-tattooed older sister start going all Stepford Wives, but it's not long before Dave himself is taken over. I wrote it for a set of two-story paperbacks for kids that was edited by Meredith Costain and Paul Collins, who to my great joy accepted it.

So what obstacles had I faced? For a start, Meredith and Paul are by no means pushovers, even for old friends, and my story had to be at least as good as the stories submitted by real published authors. They'd kindly but firmly rejected a story I'd submitted for a previous project. But the main obstacle to the publication of this, my first published story, was that I had needed time and space to let my brain work creatively, so that I could actually write it. A lot of time and space. Basically, I needed to leave my job of twenty years.

I know that many people can work at high-pressure jobs and still manage to write two thousand words at the kitchen table before breakfast or after midnight, or a thousand words every weekend, or whatever works for them. Some even manage to sneak in a few hundred words while they're in the office. But none of those strategies ever worked for me.

I spent twenty years as a computer network specialist, at first with IBM then running my own consultancy, and during that time I didn't manage to write any creative words, though I was heavily involved with books and writing. I was a partner (with my husband Russell Blackford) in small press Ebony Books, which published lovely things including Damien Broderick's novel Transmitters; I was one of the founding members of the collective that produced Australian Science Fiction Review: Second Series; and I wrote many reviews for the New York Review of Science Fiction and the Age newspaper – but I simply couldn't produce creative words during those twenty years. I could stare at a piece of paper, or a computer screen, for hours or days, but nothing happened. My brain was set purely to produce analytic thought, not for creativity. Even when I tapered down to working two days a week, the creative juices still refused to do their bit.

I gave up my day job totally in mid-2001, and spent a lot of time gardening, walking and generally decompressing. I almost despaired that it would ever happen, but eventually the creative words started to flow, and kept on flowing. So you could say that "Dave's Diary" took twenty-one years from when I started at IBM, or one year from when I gave up computer networking, or even longer, if you count in the absence of any creative writing during my four-year Classics (Greek and Latin) degree plus two years of my long-unfinished Ph.D in comparative ancient religion.

But I had in fact been published decades before that story came out. I had almost forgotten, because I'd almost forgotten about writing poetry until I started doing it seriously again, this last few years.

Back when I was fifteen or sixteen years old, my English class in a (fairly rough) high school near Newcastle, north of Sydney (in sunny Australia) was set the task of writing poems to enter into the Hunter Valley Research Foundation Poetry Prize. Mine won, which pleased my English teacher immensely, and emboldened me to submit the poem to my favorite magazine, Dolly – which published it and sent a gratifying check. (That was before the cult of celebrity took over the world, and even a magazine aimed at teenage girls included serious content.) I had no idea at the time how unlikely this publication was, so fear of rejection wasn't an issue!

So what were the obstacles to that publication? (Deep breath.) It was really, truly, seriously difficult, to be a poet in a rough high school in a working class town. It wasn't easy being anything much, at my school, unless you were one of the rough kids, and, preferably, a surfer. My life was rejection, scorn and mockery from everyone except a handful of like-minded close friends. In retrospect, though, it's hard to know whether the others mocked and scorned me any more for being a poet as well as a "brain", or whether being conspicuously clever was a sufficient crime – so maybe it wasn't as big an obstacle as it may have seemed at the time.

But even that long-ago glossy-magazine publication wasn't my first. There's one more layer in this onion. Back when I was a tween, I spent a lot of my spare time sending poetry and (very bad) artwork in to the kids' page of the Sunday newspaper. Most of the time I got cards denoting points; when the points mounted up, they could be exchanged for cash. At least once, though, one of my poems was actually published.

While I was looking for something completely different last year, I found a newspaper clipping of what I'm fairly sure was my first paid publication, a poem, "Viking", which even notes my age as twelve, and shows that I was paid $1.50 for it. (Once more, the major obstacle was increased opprobrium at school.)

My immensely helpful husband read the newspaper clipping with delight, when I showed it to him. I'd thought it embarrassing juvenilia, but he told me that the new-found poem was perfectly all right, and that I should send it to the School Magazine – our equivalent of the US Cricket. I did, with a note about its rediscovery – and it's going to be reprinted in the August issue of that marvelous institution of a literary magazine for kids.

Viking
Slender, clad in white,
with her golden plaits
over her shoulders, and
wearing a torque
of twisted silver,
she looks at the stars
and thinks of a Viking
in his longship,
tall and strong,
the light of sunrise
glinting on his helmet
and his sword.

– Jenny Blackford

Jenny Blackford's stories and poems have appeared in places as diverse as Random House's 30 Australian Ghost Stories for Children and The Pedestal Magazine. Pamela Sargent described Jenny's historical novella set in classical Athens and Delphi, The Priestess and the Slave, as "elegant." Jenny's current major project is writing the violent, sexy life of Bronze Age princess Medea.

Learn more about Jenny Blackford on her website and blog.

A Moment with Beth Cato

If you could give an aspiring writer any one piece of advice, what would it be and why?

Find your tribe.

Writing is a lonely art, and one that's often discouraging. There are endless revisions, plot dead ends that you can't figure out how to fix, and rejections. Always rejections. Even if you have a supportive family, unless they are writers, they can't completely get it.

Writers understand.

See, when I started out writing, I was so afraid of being judged that I tried to muck through on my own. The result was a torrent of rejections that I couldn't quite process. I was terrified that I was a bad writer. I had to realize it wasn't about being a good writer NOW. It was about the determination to become a better writer, constantly. Every story and poem is different. I have to strive to be better every time.

To do this, I learned to make myself vulnerable. I joined a critique group. The feedback hurt, but I balanced that by providing painful feedback to others. It taught me tact, and that other people had just as many faults and foibles in their writing as I did. That actually surprised me. I had this stupid idea in my head that really good writers didn't have to revise. They wrote. It was good. The end. Instead, I discovered that people I respect immensely could write stories that were riveting yet at the same time deeply flawed. This made me feel better--normal!

Beyond the critique cycle, writers need other writers for information and support. We need to know about the wait times for markets, and which editors are awesome or awful, and which places are open for submissions. Also, we need other writers to commiserate with on those days when five rejections flood in at once, and to cheer us on when we get a long-sought acceptance.

Never underestimate the power of a group hug, even if it's typed over the internet!

Beth Cato's stories can be found in Nature, Flash Fiction Online, Daily Science Fiction, and many other publications. She's originally from Hanford, California, but now resides in Arizona with her husband and son.

Learn more about Beth’s fiction, poetry, and tasty cookie recipes on her website.

A Moment with Lindsey Duncan

If you could give an aspiring writer any one piece of advice, what would it be and why?

The one piece of advice I would give an aspiring writer is to know yourself. Books on craft and fellow writers have a lot of theories about the best way to write whether insisting it is crucial you write first thing in the morning every day, requiring an outline, decrying outlines as stifling to creativity, telling you that humor or elaborate prose or stories about garden gnomes don't sell and it doesn't get any clearer with editors. More than once, I've had a story rejected by one venue where the editor cited a specific element of the story as their reason for rejection and the next place I submitted it, their editor loved the very same element.

To decide which advice to take and which to ignore, you need to know who you are as a writer and how you work. Do you need the discipline of daily sessions? Are you a night-owl and likely to get your best work done after midnight? After years of trying to push through writer’s block, I finally realized that usually, when I block, it’s my subconscious telling me I’m coming up on a plot hole I haven’t worked through yet – so now, rather than trying to force it or giving up, I stop and consciously analyze what’s going on in the work. Part of knowing your process, though, is not taking the easy route. If you know you need breaks to recharge and incubate ideas, take breaks – but don’t let the break itself become a habit.

The same applies to the style of your writing. Do you enjoy vivid descriptions and unusual metaphors, or do you prefer to write streamlined and to the point? As long as you’re not grinding the story to a halt to immortalize a patch of moss or conversely, not giving enough information to picture a scene, it’s almost a guarantee there are readers for whom your prose is just right. Knowing which you are can help you identify problem spots in your fiction. You’ll know to scan for places to cut or hunt for long stretches of barely interrupted dialogue to fix the dreaded talking-head syndrome.

Don’t worry about fads and should-nots. I’m reminded in reading an intro for Robert Asprin’s Myth series that he was told humor didn’t sell. His series took off – long before Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels dominated the public consciousness. Conversely, with the speed of publishing, by the time you latch onto a trend, it’s likely to have passed.

You might need a detailed outline before you begin, or you might need nothing more than a name and a core concept. If you’re the latter type – a pantser, as in “by the seat of your” – go into the process knowing the final draft will probably need more revision and rewriting. I’ve discovered I don’t need any kind of outline for novels, but what I do need is near-exhaustive world and character-building. With the backdrop and cast fully fleshed out, I can write as a pantser and still create a (relatively) smooth plot in the first draft.

Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is invaluable in analyzing critiques or editor comments – deciding what to keep and what to change. While it’s always important to pay serious attention to amassed evidence of a problem – when every reader / editor is saying the same thing – this self-knowledge helps you decide what to do with conflicting opinions or outliers. Otherwise, you’d drive yourself mad trying to edit to everyone’s liking.

Finally, the most unique part of any writer’s work comes from the individual. I’m not saying that you have to bare your soul in print or write solely based in personal experiences – disagreeing with both these concepts is part of my identity as a writer – but rather that no one else has your precise combination of opinions, beliefs, personal style … and a hundred other things, besides. I’ve always agreed with those who flip the old “write what you know” adage on its head and say that the real goal is to “know what you write” – and the most important subject for a writer to know about is themselves.

Lindsey Duncan is a life-long writer and professional Celtic harp performer, with short fiction and poetry in numerous speculative fiction publications. Her contemporary fantasy novel, Flow, is available from Double Dragon Publishing. She feels that music and language are inextricably linked. She lives, performs and teaches harp in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Learn more about Lindsey on her website.

A Moment with Brian Griggs

If you could go back and redo any one thing in your life, what would it be?

Trust me: time travel is tricky. Go too far in any one direction and you could end up with a Tyrannosaur and a Terminator at a tea party. While the potential for awesomeness is great, it will more times than not end in a loss of life and/or fine china. So even though there are words of mine that I wish were unsaid, fights not picked, one-pound cheeseburgers left uneaten, I realize that we are all part of a bigger story and the best character change can only come through conflict.

Professionally, there are works and submissions that I have sent off too quickly that I wish I could do over. I have revised and revised and yet forgotten to read the thing aloud - a task that I have made years of students do - before sending it off as a finished product. Physician, heal thyself! My own impatience has been my worst nemesis as I watch those ships of opportunity set sail with me still on the shore. And yet these lessons, too, are an integral part of character growth.

In my experience I have found that there are always more opportunities; I need to keep my eyes open no matter how many times failure tempts me to tuck in my head and curl up in a ball. Opportunity will show up again, but probably wearing different clothes.

This is true except in the case of old people.

I have missed a big chunk of the story by not talking with my grandparents when I had the chance. I was always too busy with basketball or band or anything that didn't involve sitting around listening to an old person talk about their life. Now that they're gone, those are opportunities that will never show up again.

When my last grandparent died, I remember driving up to my parents' house after the funeral and hallucinating that my grandma's van was parked in its usual spot for family gatherings. The van had been at her house the last time that she was alive. Had she driven it over after her funeral? I had one more chance to listen to her, to hear about what she had learned in eight decades of life, to tell her that I love her. But the van wasn't there and neither was my chance.

So, what do I do now? Could I redo those missed opportunities with my grandparents? Much like time-traveling Tyrannosaurs, messing with the fabric of life and death itself comes with its own inherent complications. Instead, I grieve and in that grief I am shaped as a character. I grieve and then I tell stories, stories to my daughters about the grandparents who took me camping or taught me how to repair furniture or would generously cook me fifteen pancakes every summer morning despite how crazy that is. As you read about Wendell, Custodian of the Galaxy, in the March issue of Penumbra, know that he is partly inspired by stories of my lovable grandparents - and, you know, a giant intergalactic war with killer robots, but let's not get bogged down with technicalities.

At 6' 9" Brian Griggs is unofficially the world's tallest librarian (the claim was submitted to Guinness in November and is currently being processed). He has also taught English at both the junior high and high school levels.

Brian would love to chat with you about intergalactic wars with killer robots and can be reached on Twitter or on his website.

A Moment with Dantzel Cherry

Why did you choose to write speculative fiction instead of another genre?

I've always been drawn towards the 'what ifs?' that speculative fiction posits. As a kid these what ifs started with stories I read and watched – What if another world is hiding in my closet? I even found the more horrifying ideas fascinating: What if my dolls came to life? Would we be best friends or would I pay for the times that I squished them in a box or (accidentally) popped their heads off? What if a clown really could suck me through a pipe? (I have my older brothers and sisters to thank for all the nightmares after watching Stephen King's It when I was five.)

As I grew older, it became more obvious that many of these what-ifs were actually teaching me, like when Aslan taught Shasta (and Aravis, later on) in The Horse and His Boy:

I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.

This always sounded a lot like a lesson on gossip to me, and it was a great way to learn about minding my own business.

As a teenager, I was powerfully impacted by Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron, the story of a young man in a future 'we must all be equal so no one feels bad' society who refused to hide his talents and intelligence. It was a society that made beautiful people wear uglifying masks, and distracted intelligent people from thinking too much by blasting periodic loud noises in their ears. A completely ridiculous society, and yet… it sounded an awful lot like some of my dance competitions, where we didn't receive 1st, 2nd, or 3rd anymore, just a somewhat arbitrary Gold, High Gold, or Platinum rating (this rating creeps a little higher every year, by the way. Bronze and silver are apparently too shameful to include in a scoring system.) The resounding impact of this tale probably had something to do with the fact that it involved a ballerina (which has always been an easy sell for me), but even though for years I couldn't remember the title or author, the message stuck.

Not all spec fic stories go in with intent to change one's perspective so profoundly, of course, and that doesn't decrease their reading value. Sometimes we just really need to read a story about green unicorns that shoot laser beams out of their horns. I can't immediately think of a specific lightning bolt moment I had while reading Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn or Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, even though the what-ifs these books sparked were seriously awesome. I assume they're there, but even if they aren't, the pure entertainment value in these series is worth the time spent reading. As a bullied kid I used many a fantasy book for therapy.

Which, in itself, served as a giant, profound what-if. Reading to escape from the troubles of reality was my way of asking "What if I lived here, where that jerk Kyle doesn't exist?" What a simple, safe way to recharge oneself! And after dousing myself with the worlds of Lewis Carroll, T.H. White, and Susan Cooper, I would come back to my life, renewed, willing to look for a little magic and goodness in the world around me.

And so as I got older, I naturally wanted to create my own what-ifs.

Speculative fiction lends itself very well to creation – I can write about as many new worlds, new technologies, and new creatures as my imagination can come up with. Each of these creations, whether produced by adding a little magic to our breakfast or moving forward 15 years with a burgeoning technology, takes us one step away from our current reality, and offers us a new magnifying glass with which we can view our own lives, relationships, and society. I love that we can take these shiny new lenses, examine the human condition with fresh eyes, and ultimately help us better understand ourselves.

Dantzel Cherry is a dance, yoga, and Pilates teacher living with her husband and cricket-eating cat in Texas. They welcomed their first child in June. Dantzel is a graduate of the Orson Scott Card Literary Boot Camp workshop and a member of Codex Writer's Group.

Leran more about Dantzel and her latest projects on her blog or on Twitter.

A Moment with Leah Rhyne

What's your favourite thing about speculative fiction and why?

I tell my child all the time that I’m terrible at picking favorite anythings. Seriously, I can’t even pick a favorite color – it changes daily. When I’m feeling bright and happy, I love yellow. If I’m a little down, perhaps brown, or grey. On neutral days I go for blues or greens.

I can’t pick a favorite thing about speculative fiction because I love it all, because in speculative fiction, anything can happen. Anything.

Want to go back in time? See the world as it was a thousand years ago? Then go ahead – build a time machine. If you’re writing speculative fiction, you can. You can even choose to ignore the complexities of paradoxes, of changing the past and thus the future, because in your own world, anything goes.

Want to create a new race of alien creatures that inhabit planets in a distant galaxy? Go for it! The weirder the better! Make them look like insects. Make them look like jiggling puddles of Jello. You can even make them look like giant, fuzzy bunnies if you want. It’s your world.

One of my favorite science fiction books of the moment is John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, in which humans get genetically engineered to have green skin and super-strength. He turned people into superhero soldiers, and with them he tried to rule the universe. And why not? It was his universe.

Want to bring to light all the terrifying skeletons that inhabit your deepest, darkest dream closets? Do it. Scare us. In speculative fiction, there’s room for all the monsters.

Picture Stephen King, creating a monster that takes the form of a clown with razor-sharp teeth and claws like knives. Picture him scaring a little girl so much with the resulting novel, she had no choice but to grow up and become a writer herself, to give shapes to her own inner demons.

Now try to imagine a world without speculative fiction. A world that never included the stories of Jules Verne or H.G. Wells or Edgar Allen Poe or H.P. Lovecraft. Imagine a world without outlets for our fears, our dreams.

It’s a drab place, don’t you think? A place where people might never have considered space travel achievable, that might never have made it to the moon, let alone Mars. A place without a ticking telltale heart or a time machine.

Picture a place without Aliens, without Back to the Future and Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. I wouldn’t want to live in that world.

My favorite thing about speculative fiction is all of it. Really. I mean that.

Because the sky is not the limit, in speculative fiction. Only our imaginations are.

Leah Rhyne is a Jersey girl who's lived in the south so long she's lost her accent...but never her attitude. Her first novel, Undead America Book 1: Zombie Days, Campfire Nights, released in October, 2012. When not writing she can be found playing with her daughter and husband, running, or drinking good red wine.

Learn more about Leah Rhyne on her website. Stay connected on Twitter.

Leah's book Undead America Book 1: Zombie Days, Campfire Nights, is available HERE.

A Moment with Samuel Marzioli

Why did you choose to write speculative fiction instead of another genre?

Perhaps it started in childhood. That always seems like the time period people dredge up to explain their current proclivities--some oddity post-infancy which maintained its edge throughout the years. And if so, who am I to go against the grain? Yes, let’s say it started in childhood, and we can blame my parents.

I was first introduced to spec fic when I was four and five. From books to movies, to comics, and books on tape, or even stories on vinyl. It was never a question for me if I would read or watch or listen. Only when. Because speculative fiction was a seamless part of my life, no different than school or bedtime, and I enjoyed it absolutely.

I remember when my family had just bought a brand new laserdisc, and we invited our family friends over for dinner and a movie. The dinner I’ve long since forgotten (maybe spaghetti?), but the movie stayed with me ever since. It was Star Wars, original and unbutchered, and--even for a kid whose idea of a great time was any 80’s video game turned cartoon--I was pretty damn impressed. Sometime later that year I remember sliding out of bed one dark night and making my way to the living room after a fit of sleeplessness. There I found my father reclining on the couch and on the TV another sci-fi film that I hadn’t seen before. I asked my dad if I could stay up and watch it too, and he said yes. That film was Ridley Scott’s Alien.

Many nights my brother and sister and I would snuggle up beside our parents in bed and they’d read us works by the masters of children’s speculative fiction: Roald Dahl, E. Nesbit, C. S. Lewis, Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum and more. Sometimes they’d even pull out a few issues from one of their many long white, and dusty, comic boxes and we’d follow along the pictures as they read to us Judge Dredd or Groo the Wanderer. In fact, it was Judge Dredd and Groo more than anything else that made me want to read. Because I soon became impatient waiting for my family to absorb the next adventure from these characters of absurdist sci-fi and ridiculous sword and sorcery, respectively.

From this groundwork, and the accumulation of a few more years, I branched off into more mature works as well. There was some H. P. Lovecraft, Poe, and Shakespeare thrown into the mix, as well as Stephen King. Maybe a few books by Clive Barker, or Michael Crichton, and of course Douglas Adams and Robert Aspirin. Probably a ton of books of pseudo histories of supernatural beasties, and various bits of parapsychology, by the likes of Harry Price, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Cesare Lombroso, and Montague Summers.

If this seems a disparate mix, it’s because that’s how it began and that’s how it continued, and to this day that’s what I write. One day I may type a tale of terror involving spilled guts with gratuitous descriptions, the next a humorous space opera involving intergalactic toys and the enthusiasts that collect them. The fact is speculative fiction is a rich and rewarding set of genres, the pixie dust that infuses the mundanity of this world with true, honest-to-God magic. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Anything!

‘Cept maybe a literary book deal.

Samuel Marzioli still does all of his writing on a laptop outside, under an umbrella. His fiction has appeared several times in Penumbra eMag, once in Stupefying Stories, and is forthcoming in Stupefying Stories Presents, Space & Time Magazine and the "A Darke Phantastique" anthology by Cycatrix Press.

Learn more about Samuel and his current projects from his blog.

A Moment with Christopher Cornell

Why did you choose to write speculative fiction instead of another genre?

We live in a world of miracle drugs, robotic companions and extraplanetary exploration. Likewise, we struggle with adaptive viruses, technological exploitation and diminishing privacies. Speculative fiction gives birth to many aspects of the modern world before they became part of everyday life. To read and write within this realm is to consider the possibilities of life, both great and horrible.

To speculate is not simply to imagine worlds that do not and will never exist. Imagination allows the reader, as well as the writer, to consider reality in a new light. Sometimes we reflect on the society we want to build; at other times, we spin cautionary tales that manifest our fears of what may come. Whether our heroes and heroines are from other worlds, or rooted firmly in our own, they can serve as markers for our progress as a society. Whenever Big Brother is referenced in a discussion of modern surveillance, or Judge Dredd considered the exemplary of a fascist police state, I am reminded of the role of speculative fiction in steering societal discourse. Many who have shaped our world grew up with Homer and Verne and LeGuin and Huxley. There can be little doubt these diverse voices have fueled the endeavors of those who turn fantasy into reality.

I write speculative fiction because it is more than a cataloging of the familiar. It’s an invitation to deconstruct the world and redeem it with what works, or damn it with what doesn’t. A work of fantasy or science fiction is the personal exploration of an idea, on a scale of one’s own choosing. Though some are tempted to consider such works frivolous entertainment, history proves otherwise. The dialog of our future begins within the pages of books and magazines. To continue that tradition is a true privilege, and provides impetus to continue expanding my own views on the world at large. These ideas need not become truth to accomplish their most important goal: broadening the discussion of where we are headed and what comes next.

I can’t begin to imagine what wonders of our near future have already been revealed within the pages of other authors. Where are the cars, submarines, elevators and satellites of the twenty-first century? The possibilities make reading fun. And heck, it’s pretty fun to write about, too.

But I’m still waiting for my flying car.

Christopher Cornell is a writer, musician, interface developer and somnambulist in California's East Bay. He has also studied film and television, and is a graduate of the Viable Paradise writers' workshop.

More information and inane anecdotes can be found on his website and Twitter.