Sword and Sorceress 33 Author Interviews: Lorie Calkins

Enter a wondrous universe…the latest volume of Sword and Sorceress, featuring stories from new and seasoned authors. Herein you will find tales of fantasy with strong female characters, with some version of either martial skill or magic. Not all the protagonists will be human, and sometimes the magic will take highly original forms, but the emotional satisfaction in each story and in the anthology as a whole, remains true to the original vision. The release date will be November 2, 2018.

ePub: https://www.books2read.com/u/b62gG6

Kindle: https://amzn.to/2NitlHH

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us a little about yourself. How did you come to be a writer?

Lorie Calkins: I’ve been writing since I was about three. I would scribble in a blank notebook, trying to make lines that looked like my parents’ handwriting.Then I’d “read” it back and tell my stuffed animals what the “story” said. Sure wish I had recorded those tales in a more reproducible manner. My stuffed animals thought they were Really Good.

The writing comes pretty easily for me, actually. The two things that are absolute hell for me are determining whether the stuff I wrote is worth showing to anyone,and trying to sell it.

 DJR: What inspired your story in Sword and Sorceress 33?

 LC: I like to turn things inside out and see what color the lining is. You never know what you’ll find. Fairy tales are fun like that, because everyone already thinks they know how the story goes.

Short Book Reviews: Imagination as a Super Power

More wonderful Middle Grade reading...

The Marvelous Adventures of Gwendolyn Gray, by B. A. Williamson (Jolly Fish) 

This delightful adventure crosses worlds of imagination with a singularly creative young heroine. At times the settings reminded me of A Wrinkle in Time, Kidnapped, Peter Pan, and The Never-Ending Story, to name a few. Humor tempers the seriously creepy villains, and the dramatic story moves right along with more than its share of twists and turns. Gwendolyn Gray is not only a resourceful and sympathetic heroine, but someone I would have loved to play with as a child. My only reservation about the book concerns the audience, since Gwendolyn is adolescent, but the length of the book and the complexity of the world place it more in the YA/teen niche. Regardless, I look forward to more imagination-fueled adventures.

Today's Moment of Art

 Mountain and Falls, California, by Albertus Del Orient Browere (1814 – 1887)

NORTHLIGHT on sale, this week only!

 October 2-8, 2018, Nortlight in multi-format ebook edition from Book View Cafe for only $1.50.

She’s a Ranger, a wild and savvy knife-fighter, determined to get help in finding her partner who’s lost on the treacherous northern border. He’s a scholar who sees visions, eager to escape the confines of city life and the shadow of his charismatic mother. With the assassination of a beloved leader and the city in turmoil, the two have only each other to turn to. What begins as a rescue mission turns deadly as together they unravel the secret that lies beneath Laurea’s idyllic surface.

REVIEWS

“A beautifully constructed fantasy with characters who grow and mature before the reader’s eyes and who are engagingly human while being fantastically heroic. Her writing flows and the point of view switches are interesting and exciting. This book is a keeper.” — Rickey Mallory, Affair de Coeur

“A style and manner reminiscent of McCaffrey’s Crystal Singer series.” — The Bookwatch

“An unusual saga that starts slowly but builds to a startling climax.” — Sherry S. Hoy, Kliatt

“Solid characters and a well-designed world make for good reading.” — Philadelphia Press

“The plot moves briskly from crisis in Laureal to capture by the Norther barbarians to discovery of the true meaning of the Northlight of the title, with ample foreshadowing from the mysterious spooky something in the air of the frontier. And the culmination quite satisfactorily evokes the sense of wonder.” –Tom Easton, Analog

Sword and Sorceress 33 Author Interviews: Jessie Eaker

Enter a wondrous universe…the latest volume of Sword and Sorceress, featuring stories from new and seasoned authors. Herein you will find tales of fantasy with strong female characters, with some version of either martial skill or magic. Not all the protagonists will be human, and sometimes the magic will take highly original forms, but the emotional satisfaction in each story and in the anthology as a whole, remains true to the original vision. The release date will be November 2, 2018.

ePub: https://www.books2read.com/u/b62gG6

Kindle: https://amzn.to/2NitlHH

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us a little about yourself.  How did you come to be a writer?

Jessie Eaker: When I was in elementary school, I would painstakingly write out my thoughts and stories, along with accompanying illustrations, and keep them in a special binder which I fantasized about publishing.  I loved making up stories about rockets, robots and dragons.  (I didn't much care for unicorns--they were too hard to draw.)  When I hit middle school and on into high school, I entered what I now consider my great input phase--I read everything I could get my hands on.  And out of that I began to craft my first stories.  But as fate would have it, one of my high school English teachers gave a very harsh criticism of one of my works.   I was devastated--my fantasy of being published evaporating in a moment.  But then I got angry.  My story couldn't be that bad.  I resolved right then and there that I was going to prove to that I could be a published author.   Of course, it took me another fifteen years to actually develop enough to pull it off.

DJR: What inspired your story in Sword and Sorceress 33?

JE: "All In a Name" was inspired by my youngest daughter's pregnancy and their search for a suitable name for the baby.While they offered us hints as to what it might be, she and her husband had decided they would keep the name secret until the baby was born.  It nearly drove us crazy not knowing and we feared it would be some off-the-wall name that would permanently scar the child.