My guest this week is author Becky Chambers! Becky is known for her breakout science fiction Wayfarers series, which began in 2015 with A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Wayfarers books have been nominated for a whole bunch of awards, and won the Hugo for best series in 2019. Becky is also the author of the Monk and Robot series as well as a number of short stories.

Becky and I chat about beekeeping and our love of the natural world, and the way hope and wonder helps fuel our writing. We also talk about the way fiction can explore nuance in a way the real world often ignores. Finally, we get into the way writers grow and change over time, and how we can fall into the rut of working on the same types of projects for the same audiences over and over again.

Find Becky on her website.

Find Brian McClellan at his website, on Twitter and Instagram, or find his books on Amazon, direct from his bookstore, or wherever books are sold!

Don't forget to support the show on Patreon, or pick up some swag on Redbubble.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest this week is author Beth Cato! Beth is known for her Clockwork Dagger series and Blood of Earth Trilogy, and is a widely-published science fiction and fantasy poet and short story writer. Beth also runs a wonderful recipe blog called Bready or Not. She has a new swashbuckling fantasy novel out on June 1st called A Thousand Recipes for Revenge.

Beth and I chat about her upcoming book, and we talk about food. Seriously, we spend a good forty-five minutes talking about food so if you’re not prepared for this sudden culinary episode then you can get right out of here because Beth and I LOVE food. Beth is a cheese tourist, which is my new favorite thing. Enjoy my yummy conversation with Beth Cato!

Find Beth on her social media or website.

Find Brian McClellan at his website, on Twitter and Instagram, or find his books on Amazon, direct from his bookstore, or wherever books are sold!

Don't forget to support the show on Patreon, or pick up some swag on Redbubble.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest this week is audio narrator and bestselling author Travis Baldree. Travis is a former video game developer, having worked on well-known games like Torchlight and Torchlight II, and has built himself a new career narrating science fiction and fantasy–in particular Will Wight’s bestselling Cradle books. Travis recently broke into writing with his smash hit, the cozy fantasy Legends and Lattes. The sequel, Bookshops and Bonedust, is out this November.

We talk extensively about an author’s varying relationship with the narrating process, as well at Travis’s journey through his three major careers. We also chat about the heart behind cozy fantasy and the future of Travis’s writing. Enjoy my conversation with Travis Baldree!

Find Travis on his website and twitter.

Find Brian McClellan at his website, on Twitter and Instagram, or find his books on Amazon, direct from his bookstore, or wherever books are sold!

Don't forget to support the show on Patreon, or pick up some swag on Redbubble.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest this week is author Michael Stackpole. Michael has a long and fantastic career highlighted, among many things, by his work on the Star Wars X-wing books in the 90’s. He’s written in both his own original worlds and for intellectual properties, including Star Wars, Battletech, and World of Warcraft. As a long time gaming writer and enthusiast, he’s worked on both tabletop RPGs and computer games.

Michael is kind enough to let my inner teenager gush about Star Wars and chat about his process in creating the X-wing books. We also discuss his work on the original Wasteland game and briefly touch on its influence on the Fallout universe. We get into a long conversation on the history of the entertainment industry and the scale and longevity of a writer’s fame. Enjoy my conversation with Michael Stackpole!

Find Michael on Twitter and his patreon.

Find Brian McClellan at his website, on Twitter and Instagram, or find his books on Amazon, direct from his bookstore, or wherever books are sold!

Don't forget to support the show on Patreon, or pick up some swag on Redbubble.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest this week is the youtuber and instragramer known as Bookborn. Bookborn is a video essayist and reviewer primarily of science fiction and fantasy, engaging in deep dives on tropes, philosophical questions, community, authors, and more. She’s also one of the judges for the popular Self Published Fantasy Blog-off.

Bookborn and I chat about the difficulty of gauging success on the internet and the emotional complications of reviewing media when you know there are real-life people on the other end. We also hit a bit of topical news regarding the way anger tends to sell so much better and how that messes with the view counts on her youtube channel. Enjoy my conversation with Bookborn!

Find Bookborn on Youtube and Instagram.

Find Brian McClellan at his website, on Twitter and Instagram, or find his books on Amazon, direct from his bookstore, or wherever books are sold!

Don't forget to support the show on Patreon, or pick up some swag on Redbubble.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is science fiction and fantasy author Ken Liu! Ken is known for his wonderful silkpunk epic fantasy series the Dandelion Dynasty and has written numerous award-winning short stories and novellas. He also speaks and consults all over the world on many different topics.

Ken and I chat about his experience having a story adapted by Netflix’s Love, Death, and Robots and the glut of stories available to entertain us in the modern world. We talk extensively about his work as a futurist and the problems with trying to predict pretty much anything, in particular recent advances in artificial intelligence and what that means for the creative industries. Enjoy my conversation with Ken Liu!

Find Ken on his website or social media.

Find Brian McClellan at his website, on Twitter and Instagram, or find his books on Amazon, direct from his bookstore, or wherever books are sold!

Don't forget to support the show on Patreon, or pick up some swag on Redbubble.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest this week is game developer Aaryn Flynn! Aaryn is the CEO of Inflexion Games, whose first title, Nightingale, will hit early release on Steam sometime this year. Aaryn spent much of his career at Bioware, where he worked his way up from tools programmer to Studio General Manager. He had his hands in a number of massive titles including the Mass Effect series, the Baldur’s Gate series, the Dragon Age series, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

Aaryn and I get deep into the weeds on development of Nightingale, including game mechanics, the importance of nailing a certain vibe for the player, and the challenges and complexity of creating a new game from scratch. We cover Aaryn’s career at Bioware, and we talk about the use of early release for small developers and how any creative endeavor has to balance the business and creative sides in order to succeed. Enjoy my conversation with Aaryn Flynn!

Check out Nightingale on Steam or their social media.

Find Brian McClellan at his website, on Twitter and Instagram, or find his books on Amazon, direct from his bookstore, or wherever books are sold!

Don't forget to support the show on Patreon, or pick up some swag on Redbubble.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest this week is author Django Wexler. Django is probably best known to my fans as a fellow progenitor of the current flintlock fantasy subgenre with his Shadow Campaigns series. He’s written the young adult Forbidden Library series and the Wells of Sorcery. Django’s newest book, Emperor of Ruin, number three in the Burningblade and Silvereye series, came out just last week and is available for purchase now! Django and his wife Casey also have writing craft discussions over on their Patreon.

Django and I chat about our near-simultaneous start in flintlock fantasy and why we think the little subgenre took off when it did. We discuss Django’s education and pre-writing career, his work on very early artificial intelligence, and of course speculate on the exciting and sometimes scary state of AI today.

Check out Django's newest book, Emperor of Ruin, follow him on Twitter, or check his website.

Find Brian McClellan at his website, on Twitter and Instagram, or find his books on Amazon, direct from his bookstore, or wherever books are sold!

Don't forget to support the show on Patreon, or pick up some swag on Redbubble.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest this week is author Max Gladstone! Max is best known to fantasy readers for his wonderful Craft Sequence. He’s written extensive serialized fiction with the Book Burners and the Witch Who Came in from the Cold, and has a huge backlist of short fiction published on Tor.com and in various magazines and collections. He’s also the co-author of This is How You Lose the Time War, a multi-award-winning novella.

Max and I chat about the state of publishing a decade ago and how his unique approach to a fantasy series managed to sneak into a chaotic and changing industry. We take a long dive into rereading old sword and sorcery authors, the problems we find within them as educated adults, and the qualities we still love. Finally, we talk about the creative implications of showing off early drafts of a work-in-progress. Enjoy my conversation with Max Gladstone!

Find Max on his website, Twitter, or pick up his books.

Find Brian McClellan at his website, on Twitter and Instagram, or find his books on Amazon, direct from his bookstore, or wherever books are sold!

Don't forget to support the show on Patreon, or pick up some swag on Redbubble.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest this week is artist, writer, and narrative designer Grace P. Fong! Grace has created art content for speculative fiction publications and promotional material for authors - including designing the weapons for my very own Powder Mage RPG - and has exhibited regularly at conventions. She’s also published short fiction in Uncanny Magazine. For her day job she’s worked as a narrative designer for Magic: the Gathering, and spent ten years as a senior technical artist on blockbuster movies and AAA video games.

Grace and I chat about her work with movie and game studios as an animation problem-solver. We go over the insane complexity of these studios and the hard work that goes into rendering as much as a single frame of animation. We also swap medical stories and discuss the difficulty of dealing with healthcare when you’re working gigs, changing companies, or self-employed. Enjoy my conversation with Grace P. Fong!

Find Grace on Twitter and her website.

Find Brian McClellan at his website, on Twitter and Instagram, or find his books on Amazon, direct from his bookstore, or wherever books are sold!

Don't forget to support the show on Patreon, or pick up some swag on Redbubble.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.