Tag: speculative fiction
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Five Characteristics of Great Speculative Fiction
Speculative fiction explores the unknown, the impossible, and the extraordinary. The genre (which includes fantasy, science fiction, horror, superhero fiction, dystopian, utopian, and other stories with supernatural and/or futuristic elements) allows us to venture into the uncharted territories of our imagination, and delve into worlds that challenge our understanding of what is possible. I write…
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Erik Foge, author of One Way Roads
What inspired you to pursue a career as a novelist? When I was 14, my parents sent me to Washington DC, on a school trip. That was the first spark that got me interested in writing, but it also inspired me to work for the federal government. When I was a senior in high school,…
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New Release: Eve and the Faders by Berneta L. Haynes & Lornett B. Vestal
The first time it happened, Eve almost killed a kid. That’s when she learned the importance of secrecy—after all, it was nobody’s business that she could disappear or break most things with her bare hands. Years later, she lives an ordinary life as a high school English teacher, with a bank account as bleak as…
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A Co-Writing Journey, Pt. 2: Berneta and Lornett Talk Characters and Story
In case you missed it, I recently sat down with my co-writer, Lornett B. Vestal (founder of Evolving Man Project), to discuss our upcoming novel, Eve and the Faders. In Pt. 1, we discussed the process of co-writing and why we chose to write speculative fiction. This week, we sat down to talk about Eve…
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A Co-Writing Journey, Pt. 1: Berneta and Lornett Talk Creative Process
Besides running Waking Writer, I also write novels! I know…a woman who runs a site for writers and also writes. Shocker, right? Well, I recently ventured into co-writing with my spouse, Lornett B. Vestal (founder of Evolving Man Project). Coming to online retailers on January 1, 2021, Eve and the Faders will be the first…
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Middle-aged Women as Heroes in Crime Fiction and more…
What is speculative fiction? (Book Riot) Margaret Atwood writes in her book In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination that science fiction and speculative fiction are fluid terms. The worlds of science fiction and speculative fiction “don’t exist, and their non-existence is of a difference in order than the non-existence of the realistic novels.” Additionally, Atwood…
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David Russell, author of Self’s Blossom
When and why did you begin writing? My first poem was triggered by acute personal tensions; through writing it, I got some sense of control over those tensions. When did you first consider yourself a writer? From my early 20s, though it took a long time for my opinion to be vindicated. Why did you…
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An Author Arrested for Murder, Science Fiction in China, and more…
He was writing a book about a murderous author. Now he’s accused of four murders. (The Sacramento Bee) A Chinese crime writer working on a novel about a serial-killing author may have based the book’s storyline on his own life. Liu Yongbiao, an award-winning Chinese crime novelist, was arrested early Friday morning for allegedly bludgeoning four…
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Harry Potter turns 20, Queer South Asian Fiction, and more…
It’s Pride Month, and here are five queer South Asian speculative stories to raise a toast (Scroll.in) The speculative fiction community has progressed right along, and it’s hard to find a science fiction or fantasy story these days that is openly homophobic in its plot or insinuation. And it’s not only the foreign or white…
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Dystopian Fiction, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Comic Books…
A Golden Age of Dystopian Fiction (New Yorker) Dystopias follow utopias the way thunder follows lightning. This year, the thunder is roaring. But people are so grumpy, what with the petty tyrants and such, that it’s easy to forget how recently lightning struck. “Whether we measure our progress in terms of wiredness, open-mindedness, or optimism,…
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