My short story, Glitch Mitchell and the Island of Terror, has just been published in the new Future Chronicles anthology – The Jurassic Chronicles. (Currently on sale for just 99c!) To celebrate the launch, I’m running a few interviews here on the site. Today, I’m talking to Terry Maggert about Noble Savage. What attracted you to the Jurassic Chronicles project? Other than the quality of Samuel’s work? It was a chance to play– without rules– and use dinosaurs with no limits. That’s too tempting. I was in. What was the inspiration for your story? Naturally, I had a teacher who inspired fear and terror in even doses. This was the fourth grade, and when combined with a love of dinosaurs, it seemed like a logical conclusion to marry time travel, dinosaurs, a matriarchal revolution, and school into one narrative. In other news, I don’t sleep much and this seemed quite a good idea at the time. I’ll let the readers decide. Where do you stand on the whole “dinosaurs had feathers” issue? They did. We have the evidence, the feathers are real, and I for one am thrilled. The vibrancy of those animals must have been something akin to magical. What are you … Read More
The Jurassic Chronicles Q&A: Harry Manners
My short story, Glitch Mitchell and the Island of Terror, has just been published in the new Future Chronicles anthology – The Jurassic Chronicles. (Currently on sale for just 99c!) To celebrate the launch, I’m running a few interviews here on the site. Today, I’m talking to Harry Manners about Szcar’s Trial. What was the inspiration for your story? It came from two things. First, whenever I’ve ever had a spacey late-night conversation about alien civilisation, UFOs any whether on day Earth will be visited, my immediate thought is if it’s possible, it probably already happened. Humans in their modern form have existed a mere hundred-thousand-years (with hominids tracing back a few million years). Set that against over half a billion years for which complex life has existed on the land and oceans, an unimaginable stretch of time–a thousand times longer than the time apes have walked on two legs! What if aliens did come to check out Earth and sweep it for intelligence? What if what they found was a primordial planet full of monsters? The second source of inspiration is totally different. It comes from a Top Trumps card. The dinosaur version. It had a funky “evolved” humanoid card somewhere in … Read More
The Jurassic Chronicles Q&A: Emily Mah
My short story, Glitch Mitchell and the Island of Terror, has just been published in the new Future Chronicles anthology – The Jurassic Chronicles. (Currently on sale for just 99c!) To celebrate the launch, I’m running a few interviews here on the site. Today, I’m talking to Emily Mah about Cryptoscience. What attracted you to the Jurassic Chronicles project? I love a good theme anthology, and Samuel Peralta’s been doing some of the very best lately. I also began my writing career in science fiction, but then ended up with a romance career, which pays the bills. I really wanted to come home to the genre, though, and this was a great opportunity. Where do you stand on the whole “dinosaurs had feathers” issue? As I understand it, feathers and scales are structurally very similar. The main difference is the size (I could be completely wrong, there). So it makes sense to me, perhaps according to false information, that they might have feathers. I skirted the issue by not having a dinosaur in my story, but rather a different branch on that family tree, which did have feathers. What’s the setting for your story? Middle America, because I think that served as a … Read More
The Jurassic Chronicles Q&A: Samuel Peralta
My short story, Glitch Mitchell and the Island of Terror, has just been published in the new Future Chronicles anthology – The Jurassic Chronicles. Island of Terror is a return to the characters from my novel, Glitch Mitchell and the Unseen Planet, and as you can probably guess from the title, it’s another pulpy, action adventure tale. It’s a standalone adventure, but if you haven’t read Glitch Mitchell and the Unseen Planet, it’s on sale at the moment for just 99c – CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR COPY. To celebrate the launch, I’m running a few interviews here on the site. Today, I’m talking to the series editor of The Future Chronicles, Samuel Peralta. How did you get started with the Future Chronicles anthology series? I wrote a spec short story, “Trauma Room”, to prove what I could do with a thousand words — build a world, with a compelling main character, in what was at the same time a thriller and a love story. It got me entry into two anthologies that propelled me into the bestseller lists, with the stories “Hereafter” and “Liberty”. That segued into me putting together an anthology with editor David Gatewood, built around the robot theme of my … Read More