Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: Want a witty science fiction thriller about the dark side of tech-bros? E.W. Doc Parris’s The Dent in the Universe is here to scratch that itch. Doc, take it away!

Doc: I tend to write matter-of-fact, hard science fiction grounded in the current scientific worldview, leavened with wit, and kindled by the warmth of human relationships. I’m a big fan of taking a scientific notion and asking, “What if?” Especially if that leads to questions of how badly this could go for humanity if things got out of hand.

For example: What if you could send information—internet data (emails, text, video, online orders)—into the past? What would you do? Order a pizza and have it arrive in an instant? Order that anniversary gift you forgot about? Place emergency supplies right where they’re needed before a tornado strikes? These sound like great ideas. What could go wrong? Well… what if your customers are monsters? Even just one? Because, y’know, some of them will be.

Sabitha: That sounds wild in the best possible way. What inspired you to write this book?

Doc: This story came from two conceptual vectors. The first was wondering how much trouble you could get into with the simplest possible time machine. Just a machine that allows you to send emails into the past. The second was, if everybody believes the zombie apocalypse is inevitable, how would it start? I mean, everybody has plans for the zombie apocalypse, right? Most movies don’t show us how it starts. Those two ideas came together in a really fun, scary way that you’re going to love.

Sabitha: I’m sure I will! Do you have a “fan-cast” – do you have actors you’d cast as your main characters?

Doc: The character Cliff Price was informed by a few performances by Cameron Britton (Mindhunter, The Umbrella Academy). Walrus Roberts could be played by some cross between Hurly on Lost (Jorge Garcia) and Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski. I only see Steve Jobs when I think of Stephen Lucas. Young Steve. 1990 Steve.

Sabitha: That gives me such a clear picture. What book do you tell all your friends to read? Besides yours of course!

Doc: I’ve just finished binge-reading The Murderbot Diaries, and I’m telling everyone about them. Most of them are novellas and quick reads or audiobook listens. Read those. Martha Wells is a genius.

Sabitha:  Do you have any suggestions to help people in our community become a better writers? 

Doc: Write those stories that you just can’t avoid. If you can sit and watch Netflix at night after work and think you’d like to be a writer, forget it. If you find yourself more interested in your story than in binging the latest streamer, if you can’t tear yourself away from your own story—those are the stories we want to read.

Sabitha: Absolutely. So what’s your next writing project you can’t tear yourself away from?

Doc: After The Aurora’s Pale Light, the next book in the WalrusTech Universe series, is released in the spring of 2024, I’ve got a story called The Land of Nod in the pipeline. It’s a story of the development of nanotechnology and machine learning being used to repair human neural networks for things like nerve damage or strokes. It feels like a miracle until things get out of hand.

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Doc: The Dent in the Universe is available exclusively on Amazon through November. Kindle Unlimited readers can devour it for free. You can find the link on the Magic Genius Books website.

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: Looking for a deliciously dark and dystopian science fiction novel? Look no further. We have David Arrowsmith here to tell us about his novel, Corona!

David: In a fallen London, how far will one man go to save his family—and himself…

…or is it already too late?

Trapped in his top floor mansion block apartment in Denmark Hill, South East London, can The Man escape and pick his way through the crumbling ruins of the city, avoiding the violent gangs that now vie for supremacy, and find his heavily pregnant ex-wife?

Can a belated act of heroism wash him clean of his sins, or is he too far gone?

In a world where civilization has fallen, what hope is there for the future?

Corona is a story about the dark—and the light—inside all of us. It’s about man’s inhumanity and humanity. It’s a story in which the threat, the danger, comes from within us—not from the undead or vampires or even a virus, but from our neighbours, our friends, and even ourselves. Corona combines elements of dystopian fiction with the literary survival horror of works like J.G. Ballard’s High Rise and Concrete Island. It’s the perfect read for fans of The Road, I Am Legend, The Last Of Us, Children of Men, The Walking Dead, Mad Max, or 28 Days Later.

Sabitha: What inspired you to write this book?

David: This novel began life as entries typed into the Notes app on my phone—a brief personal diary as I attempted to document the extraordinary and scary first few weeks of the lockdowns and that first summer under the cloud of Covid-19, trapped in a garden flat in SE London, with my wife and our young daughter. I didn’t want to publish a diary, or a factual account—and then I hit on the idea of turning it into a dystopian novel, inspired by my love of JG Ballard and his stories like High Rise, Concrete Island, The Drowned World, The Drought and The Crystal World. It’s also got some major The Last of Us vibes!

Sabitha: Do you have a playlist for your book? Can you tell us why you picked a couple of the songs?

David: I do! It’s on Spotify. I picked songs with a grimy, dark or mysterious and isolated London vibe – so there’s lots of classic 70s punk like ‘Anarchy in the UK’ by the Sex Pistols, ‘Guns of Brixton’ by The Clash, and ‘Message in a Bottle’ and ‘So Lonely’ by The Police. But the book also has a beauty and connection with the environment and the weather, hence tracks like ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ by The Verve, ‘Wild World’ by Cat Stevens and ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain’ by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Give it a listen and let me know if you enjoy it!

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

David: All my social links can be found here. Check out Corona here or here. Read my short stories, Nevada Noir, here.

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: Looking for a queer fantasy adventure? Look no further! We’re talking to Vanessa Ricci-Thode about her novel, Fireborn. Vanessa, can you introduce us to your book?

Vanessa: Fireborn is a fantasy novel about a queer teen rebuilding her life and fighting to reshape the future after she loses everything. Like her mother and grandmother before her, Spark is a uniquely skilled pyromancer born immune to fire, with a deep family connection to the local dragon population. But her power draws the attention of a dangerous faction. Spark needs to learn finesse and to conquer old fears if she and everyone she cares for are going to survive.

Sabitha: What inspired you to write this book?

Vanessa: Fireborn was heavily influenced by the How to Train Your Dragon films and TV show, but with queer teens and a female lead.

Sabitha: Do you have a playlist for your book?

Vanessa: I listened to a lot of the How to Train Your Dragon soundtrack while writing it, to keep me in the spirit of the original inspiration for the book. And the Mad Max: Fury Road soundtrack came in handy when it was time for me to write this book’s climax. The climax includes a high-speed dragon chase through the desert, so Fury Road really set the mood.

Sabitha: If you could meet your characters, what would you say to them?

Vanessa: I would probably apologize. A lot. Especially to the main character Spark.

Sabitha: What book do you tell all your friends to read? Besides yours of course!

Vanessa: I’m obsessed with the Murderbot Diaries and recommend that everywhere. A less known book I also really love is World Running Down by Al Hess.

Sabitha:  How much research did you need to do for your book?

Vanessa: Spark is a blacksmith and I am very not, so I had to do a lot of research into how certain things are made and then figure out how and where Spark’s fire magic would fit into the process. I also did some research on aerial combat. Dragons are magic and don’t move quite like fighter planes, but having the basics and some terminology helped in describing some of the aerial fight scenes.

Sabitha: Do you have any suggestions to help people in our community become better writers?

Vanessa: Join a critique group, but make sure it’s the right fit!

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Vanessa: You can buy Fireborn here. You can keep up with me at my website or my newsletter—subscribers get a free short story from the dragon’s POV. I use the handle vriccithode on all the social media platforms I use (currently mostly Discord and Bluesky),

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: We have one of our Night Beats family here, Rohan O’Duill. Full disclosure—I’ve read Cold Rush and I absolutely love it. So of course we have him on the blog to tell us about his science fiction novella! 

Rohan: Cold Rising is told from the point of view of two characters. The first, Olgo, is a special agent tasked with improving the working conditions in the Martian underground metropolis. Olgo sees this mission as a stepping stone in their career and has little interest in the plight of the Martian people. The second main character, Suong, is a 12-year-old girl who works in a clothing company on Mars. After the two end up on the wrong side of the local cartel, they must work as a team to escape the caverns and what lurks there. 

Sabitha: As I understand it, the Cold Rush Novellas are not a traditional series—they’re a collection of stories set in the same time and place. How does Cold Rising relate to your larger universe and will we meet these characters again?

Rohan: Some of my friends would suggest that I never make life easy for myself, and the Cold Rush Novellas may be proof of that. I initially tried to put all of Cold Rush in one book, but that many POVs and storylines didn’t fit properly. I spent a long time playing around with the format and eventually landed on the idea of telling the story through interconnecting standalone novellas. I was careful not to fall into the Marvel trap where you have to have read 30 other books to get what’s going on in each one. Hopefully, I have created something that stands on its own feet while adding depth if you have read the other stories.

The next two novellas are complete and will not feature the main characters from Cold Rising, but Olgo and Suong will appear again in later novellas.

Sabitha: Having read several works in your universe, Olgo is by far my favourite of your characters. How did you conceive of them, and what was your process to make them such a compelling personality?

Rohan: I really enjoyed writing Olgo’s character even though Olgo’s backstory is not a happy one. They use an emotional control device to block the mysterious trauma they experienced as a child. The upside of the device is that it makes them an extremely effective and driven special agent. But they have limited battery life on the device, and when shit hits the fan on Mars they have to deal with the most trying conditions of their life. Olgo is forced to go through a major transformation to survive the pits of Mars. 

I think what makes Olgo stand out as a character is their uncomplicated, straight-talking view of their surroundings. They constantly make droll observations about human shortcomings while still being aware of how they are a pawn in a bigger game.

Sabitha: Hard sci-fi and Golden Age science fiction is a clear influence on your writing. These genres often star characters who are important explorers, scientists, and military and political leaders. In Cold Rush, you focused instead on the labour conditions of ordinary workers. Why do you think these stories are so important to tell?

Rohan: I think Golden Age sci-fi had a big influence on my life, never mind my writing. I grew up in a very conservative Catholic Ireland where I felt like an outsider. Finding the science fiction section in my library opened up a whole new world to me. I had no one to discuss these books with. Nobody I knew liked anything like this. So the books themselves were my companions. My first glimpse of a bigger, more diverse world came through these novels. And while these books didn’t talk directly about real world topics, they made comparisons and used fictional scenarios to examine genuine issues.

This is what I tried to do in Cold Rising—calling out our own hypocrisy in consuming products from countries with terrible working conditions and human rights abuses. As long as we can buy a steady stream of cheap goods, we turn a blind eye. Fiction can play a powerful role in reminding people about the woes of our world. I also think that pointing out these issues while telling an entertaining story can be more effective than slapping someone in the face with the facts.

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Rohan: You can find my book here. You can find me through Night Beats and through Lower Decks Press. For now I’m still on Twitter, but I’ve also joined Blue Sky. And I’m on Instagram.

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Two-book Tuesday! We’ll hear about the first two of Shana Stephen’s post-apocalyptic dark fantasy novels. Shana, tell us about your books!

Shana: This series is dark fantasy meets supernatural meets post-apocalyptic. Set in the United States in the present day, our story begins with our MC being abducted by an inhuman creature. Natural disaster follows. Alongside us for centuries were the Shadow Walkers, a species living in secret, bound by a magic pact. With the world turned upside down, and the Shadow Walkers revealed, what will happen? 

Both books are written in the first person. The blurb for the The Shadows Between is, “If you had told me last week that I would have been hiking through the woods with some weird, demonic, creature I would have said you were dreaming. Yet here I am, trekking through the mud, sleeping on the rock hard earth, and peeing in a hole in the ground. I don’t know what he wants, or why he took me. All I know is I need to survive. And I have a feeling that something bad is coming. For all of us.”

The blurb for Out of the Shadows is, “It’s crazy to think that just a month ago a supervolcano erupting was my biggest concern. Little did I know what was in store for me in the aftermath. Actions have consequences, I suppose. Breaking the pact freed the Shadow Walkers, but made me enemy number one. In the ash-filled remains of the world outside, I’m on a mission to bring peace. Too bad the world has other plans for me.”

Sabitha: What inspired you to write this book?

Shana: This series actually started as freethought writing, oddly enough. The first paragraph of Book 1 was born during journaling. When the freethought ended, the main male character, dubbed Death, materialized in my mind. The story just kind of took off from there. After the characters were formed, my inspiration for the plot was basically to focus on moral greys since that’s what I love to read and watch. 

Sabitha: We have a lot of writers in our community. What’s your writing process?

Shana: My writing process is a little chaotic. I will write when inspiration strikes, which is not regularly. Sometimes if I have an idea for a later scene, I will force myself to write to get to that scene, but when I do this a lot of editing has to occur later. If I’m feeling writer’s block I will usually switch to reading to get back into the right headspace. Then, as I go, I try to outline the plot or make character sheets, but I find it’s more so just what the characters would do in that given situation. In that sense, it almost feels like my choices are limited in where I take the story, haha. 

Sabitha: Do you have a “fan-cast” – do you have actors you’d cast as your main characters?

Shana: I haven’t given much thought to it but a friend of mine said Adam Driver, who plays Kylo Ren in Star Wars, would be good in the role of Death. I think the actor who played Dream, Tom Sturridge, in Sandman would also be a good Death. 

Sabitha: What book do you tell all your friends to read? 

Shana:  I have recommended the Hollows series by Kim Harrison to many friends because it is an awesome series, in my opinion, and is still going. If you like book one of that series, you are in for a treat because the books just keep coming. Another new favorite of mine is Can’t Wait to be Dead by Samantha Verba. I really enjoyed it so I recommended it to my friends and family. It has action, romance, vampires, and humor. What’s not to like?

Sabitha:  If you could pick any author to read your book, who would you want to read it? Why them?

Shana: I would love Neil Gaiman to read my book because I think that would just be so cool. And I believe any feedback he’d give would really help in my growth as a writer. 

Sabitha: Does the location the story takes place mean something to you or to the work?

Shana: The location for this series was basically a ‘write what you know’ situation for me. I live on the east coast of the U.S so that is where the story takes place. Any places I haven’t physically been I visited on Google Earth. Since this series is modern fantasy and not full-blown fantasy, I felt it was important to have a good mental visual of the location and scenery to best describe it to the reader. 

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Shana: You can find me and my series on my Amazon author page.