The release date is Valentine's Day 2019, but you can pre-order it now:
Kindle: https://amzn.to/
In the marvelous serendipity of anthologies, Lace and Blade features not one but two love stories with djinni (or jinni, or djinn, depending on which dictionary one consults). One is "Fire Season" by Anne Leonard. The second, quite different, is Steven Harper's "The Bottle."
DJR: What have you written recently? What lies ahead?
SH: I recently sold a YA novel to Dreamspinner Press. The title hasn't been settled yet, but it's about a teenaged boy who joins a summer theater program to keep his parole officer happy and falls in love with the male lead in the show.
DJR: What advice would you give an aspiring writer?
SH: Write it, finish it, send it out, repeat.
DJR: Any thoughts on the Lace and Blade series or this being its final volume?
SH: I just discovered the series, and now it's ending! I need my special writers bottle of whisky.
Steven Harper is the pen name for Steven Piziks,
a name no one can reliably spell or pronounce. He sold his first short story way back in 1990, and his keyboard has been clattering ever since. So far, he's written fifty-some stories and twenty-some novels, including The Silent Empire series and The Clockwork
Empire steampunk series. He's also written movie
novelizations and books based on Star Trek, Battlestar
Galactica, and The Blacklist. Steven also teaches English in southeast Michigan, where he
lives with his husband and son. When not writing, he plays the folk
harp, tries to stick to weight-lifting, and spends more time on-line than is
probably good for him.
In the marvelous serendipity of anthologies, Lace and Blade features not one but two love stories with djinni (or jinni, or djinn, depending on which dictionary one consults). One is "Fire Season" by Anne Leonard. The second, quite different, is Steven Harper's "The Bottle."
Deborah J. Ross: Tell
us a little about yourself. How did you come to be a writer?
Steven Harper: I've
been writing since I learned my letters. There were few fantasy authors in
those days, and when you can read a book in a couple hours, you run out right
quick. And I realized no one seemed to be writing the kind of stories I
really wanted to read. So I started writing my own.
DJR: What inspired your story in Lace and Blade 5?
SH: An old folk tale from the Middle East. A man accepts a bargain with a djinn, who will grant him one wish every day, but if he ever fails to make a wish, or if he repeats a wish, the djinn will kill him. At first, this seems like a good deal. But after a few months, the man sees the curse. I started to write my own take on the story, and eventually realized I was writing about slavery vs. free will.
DJR: How does your writing process work?
SH: I write almost daily, usually between getting home from my teaching job and making supper. My first drafts tend to go slowly because I edit quite a lot as a go. This means my first draft takes a long time to do, but it also means the rewrites go very fast.
DJR: What inspired your story in Lace and Blade 5?
SH: An old folk tale from the Middle East. A man accepts a bargain with a djinn, who will grant him one wish every day, but if he ever fails to make a wish, or if he repeats a wish, the djinn will kill him. At first, this seems like a good deal. But after a few months, the man sees the curse. I started to write my own take on the story, and eventually realized I was writing about slavery vs. free will.
DJR: How does your writing process work?
SH: I write almost daily, usually between getting home from my teaching job and making supper. My first drafts tend to go slowly because I edit quite a lot as a go. This means my first draft takes a long time to do, but it also means the rewrites go very fast.
DJR: What have you written recently? What lies ahead?
SH: I recently sold a YA novel to Dreamspinner Press. The title hasn't been settled yet, but it's about a teenaged boy who joins a summer theater program to keep his parole officer happy and falls in love with the male lead in the show.
DJR: What advice would you give an aspiring writer?
SH: Write it, finish it, send it out, repeat.
DJR: Any thoughts on the Lace and Blade series or this being its final volume?
SH: I just discovered the series, and now it's ending! I need my special writers bottle of whisky.
Steven Harper is the pen name for Steven Piziks,
a name no one can reliably spell or pronounce. He sold his first short story way back in 1990, and his keyboard has been clattering ever since. So far, he's written fifty-some stories and twenty-some novels, including The Silent Empire series and The Clockwork
Empire steampunk series. He's also written movie
novelizations and books based on Star Trek, Battlestar
Galactica, and The Blacklist. Steven also teaches English in southeast Michigan, where he
lives with his husband and son. When not writing, he plays the folk
harp, tries to stick to weight-lifting, and spends more time on-line than is
probably good for him.
Visit his web page at http://www.stevenpiziks.com
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