The Worldshapers

An hour-long conversation with Kristi Charish, author of the Kincaid Strange and The Adventures of Owl urban fantasy series and a scientist with a Ph.D. in Zoology who specializes in genetics, cell biology, and molecular biology.

Websitewww.kristicharish.com

Twitter@kristicharish

Facebook@KristiCharishAuthor

Instagram@CharishKristi

Kristi Charish’s Amazon Page

The Introduction

Kristi Charish is the author of Kincaid Strange, an urban fantasy series about a voodoo practitioner living in Seattle with the ghost of a grunge rocker, and The Adventures of Owl, an “Indiana Jane”-style adventure about ex-archaeology grad student turned international antiquities thief who reluctantly navigates the hidden supernatural world. 

Kristi writes what she loves; adventure heavy stories featuring strong, savvy female protagonists, pop culture, and the occasional RPG fantasy game thrown in the mix. Kristi is also a scientist. She has a BSc and MSc from Simon Fraser University in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and a PhD in Zoology from the University of British Columbia. She specializes in genetics, cell biology, and molecular biology and gratuitously uses her expertise throughout her fiction. You can find Kristi with her laptop on Vancouver film sets, getting paid to write while filling in the background. 

The Rough, Lightly Edited Transcript

Coming soon . . .

An hour-long conversation with Christian (Miles) Cameron, author of more than forty novels, including the just-released epic space opera Artifact Space (Gollancz).

Websitewww.christiancameronauthor.com

Facebook@CameronAuthorPage

Twitter@Phokion1

Instagram@christian_cameron_author

Christian Cameron’s Amazon Page

The Introduction

Christian (MIles) Cameron was born in Pittsburgh in 1962 and graduated from the University of Rochester after an outstandingly long undergraduate career. He served in the US Navy onboard aircraft carriers and elsewhere, and then moved on to a writing career.

He’s written over forty novels, including The Red Knight from Gollancz and Killer of Men from Orion Books.  His latest novel is Artifact Space, an epic space opera set in the not-too-distant future. 

He lives in Toronto with his wife, daughter, and too many cats.

The Automated, Lightly Edited Transcript

(Check against recording before quoting)

So, Christian, welcome to The Worldshapers.

Well, thanks for having me. Should I call you Edward or Ed?

Ed is typical. Edward is my formal byline. Ed is what most people call me. And Eddie is what people called me until I left my hometown, so when somebody that calls me Eddie, I always know they knew me back in Weyburn when I was a kid or a newspaper reporter there.

So, what is a very useful, fabulous lesson I learned from my grandmother was to never refer to anyone by their diminutive unless they told me to.

Yeah, that’s good advice. So, I’m very happy to have you on. You have a very interesting background and an amazing collection of books. And we do share a connection through Mickey Mikkelsen at Creative Edge Publicity.

Yes.

And I always look for connections. This is not much of a connection, but I know that you were in the Navy in the US and I have a nephew who was in the Navy. And I know that the new book that you’re going to talk about had some inspiration from aircraft carriers. And my nephew served on the Harry S. Truman for, I think, two tours. So, there you go. That’s not much of a connection but it’s something.

So, here’s our age difference. Your nephew would have been going on board an aircraft carrier that I’m pretty sure was commissioned the year I left the Navy.

Well, he’s quite . . . I think he’s quite young, actually. I guess he’s forty something now, but we won’t talk about age too much. I’m pretty sure I’m still older than you. So anyway, so let’s start, as I always like to do with my guests, taking you back into the mists of time, and find out a little bit about your background and, you know, where you were born and grew up and how you got interested in writing—it usually starts with reading for most of us—and especially in writing . . .I mean, I know you write historical fiction as well, but especially in writing fantasy and science fiction stories. How did that all come about for you?

An hour-long chat with Jane Yolen, the much-honored, multiple-award-winning author of some 400 books for children and adults.

An hour-long conversation with Anna Mocikat, the award-nominated, internationally published author of the Behind Blue Eyes cyberpunk series, as well as the Tales of the Shadow City series, and the MUC series.

Websitewww.annamocikat.com

Twitter@anna_mocikat

Facebook@amocikat

Instagram@AnnaMocikat

Anna Mocikat’s YouTube Channel

Anna Mocikat’s Amazon Page

The Introduction

Anna Mocikat is the award-nominated, internationally published author of Behind Blue Eyes, the Tales of the Shadow City series, and the MUC series. Born in Warsaw, Poland, she spent most of her life in Germany, where, before becoming a novelist, she graduated from film school and worked as a screenwriter and game writer for more than a decade. Her MUC novels, published by a major German publisher, were nominated for Germany’s most prestigious awards for fantasy and science fiction.

In 2016, Anna moved to the US, where she continues her writing career in English. She lives in Greenville, South Carolina.

The (Lightly Edited) Transcript

So, Anna, welcome to The Worldshapers!

Hi, Ed, thank you very much for inviting me.

OK, I’m going to tell what happened because . . . we started, and I realized about five minutes in that I had pressed record. So, this is take two.

Well, you’re human, you know. You’re not a cyborg or something like that. So, you’re entitled to making mistakes. That’s OK.

I don’t mind telling listeners. I’m a stage actor, and if there’s one thing you learn as a stage actor, it’s that what audiences really like is to see something go wrong.

Oh, yeah, definitely. That’s also why all the fail videos are so, so popular on YouTube. People love it just to watch how people fail with whatever, right?

Blooper reels and all that sort of thing.

Fall from a bicycle or all kinds of stuff, that’s just the best. You know, you laugh about something and are happy it didn’t happen to you.

So, I guess I should repeat again what I said the first time around, that failed to record, which is that my only connection that . . . we’ve never met, but I’ve been to Warsaw, and it was a long time ago when it was still a communist country, Poland, in the mid-1980s. And I went there as a singer with my choir from Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas. So, we went down there with a bunch of Southerners, we were in Poland, and it was a very interesting tour all over Europe. I mean, it wasn’t just Poland, obviously. We were in Hungary, and we came through Checkpoint Charlie when we came out of Eastern Europe into Western Europe. And if you told me in 1987 that that wall would be gone a year later, it would have I wouldn’t have believed it. So, I’m glad I got to go then, but I’m glad it’s not like that now.

Oh, yeah, me too. Definitely. I think everybody is.

So, we will start by taking you back into the mists of time, as I like to say, to when you were growing up and how did the whole writing thing come about for you?

An hour-long conversation with David Ebenbach, award-winning author of eight books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, including How to Mars (Tachyon Publications).

Websitewww.davidebenbach.com

Twitter@debenbach

Facebook@david.ebenbach

Instagram@davidebenbach

David Ebenbach’s Amazon Page

The Introduction

Photo by Joe King

David Ebenbach writes. He’s been writing ever since he was a kid, when he kept his whole family awake by banging away on an enormous manual typewriter, and he’s never wanted to stop.

In fact, David’s now the author of eight books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, and his work has picked up awards along the way: the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, the Juniper Prize, the Patricia Bibby Award, and more.

A Philadelphia native, these days David does most of his writing in Washington, DC, where he lives with his family—because he uses a laptop now, he doesn’t keep them awake with his typing—and where he works at Georgetown University, teaching creative writing and literature at the Center for Jewish Civilization and promoting student-centered teaching at the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship.

The (Lightly Edited) Transcript

So, David, welcome to The Worldshapers.

Thank you so much for having me. And I should say, by the way, that the typewriter was at least enormous when I was small. It wasn’t as big as I remember,

We had this little Smith-Corona portable, which took me right through university. And I loved it because it was mechanical. There was a key that would occasionally quit working, but I knew how to fix it. And as long as I could get ribbons, I actually quite liked it. It had a nice it was easy to type on, and yeah. So, I kind of miss it some, but I don’t really miss the sound of the tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, and then the carriage. I don’t miss carriage returns flipping.

Yeah, that part was not the best, yeah.

And when I started as a newspaper reporter, started my career, we were on big manual typewriters. So, I did my share of that for sure.

That typewriter was practically a weapon. I mean, if you picked it up and dropped it on somebody, that would be the last time you talked to them.

That’s right. I don’t think we have . . . I know for a fact, in fact, I think that we have never met. I don’t know, we might have been at a convention at the same time, but we’ve never met in person. But you came to me through Tachyon, who’s publishing your upcoming book, How to Mars, that we’re going to talk about. And we were talking before we started about what a great publishing company they are. And I’ve talked to several authors who have worked with t...

An hour-long conversation with Sebastien de Castell, award-nominated author of the swashbuckling fantasy series The Greatcoats and YA fantasy series Spellslinger, whose latest book is Way of the Argosi.

Websitewww.decastell.com

Twitter@decastell

Facebook@decastell

Sebastien de Castell’s Amazon Page

The Introduction

Sebastien de Castell had just finished a degree in Archaeology when he started work on his first dig. Four hours later he realized how much he actually hated archaeology and left to pursue a very focused career as a musician, ombudsman, interaction designer, fight choreographer, teacher, project manager, actor, and product strategist. His only defence against the charge of unbridled dilettantism is that he genuinely likes doing these things and that, in one way or another, each of these fields plays a role in his writing. He sternly resists the accusation of being a Renaissance Man in the hopes that more people will label him that way.

Sebastien’s acclaimed swashbuckling fantasy series, The Greatcoats, was shortlisted for both the 2014 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Fantasy, the Gemmell Morningstar Award for Best Debut, the Prix Imaginales for Best Foreign Work, and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His YA fantasy series, Spellslinger, was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and is published in more than a dozen languages.

Sebastien lives in Vancouver, Canada with his lovely wife and two belligerent cats.

The (Lightly Edited) Transcript

So, Sebastien, welcome to The Worldshapers.

Thanks so much for having me.

I should have practiced “dilettantism” before I tried to read that bio.

Yeah, that’s that’s one of those tricky words, isn’t it, where there’s just one too many syllables for what we kind of expect when our eyes go over the word

And all those Ts. It’s very confusing. But yeah. So, we are both in Canada, we haven’t met anywhere, but we do share a publicist in Mickey Mickkelsen from Creative Edge, and that’s kind of how I made connections with you. Also, you were mentioned by Chris Humphreys, whom I interviewed not that long ago, as somebody who was kind of a beta reader for his stuff. And I thought, hey, I should talk to Sebastien. So here we are.

Well, you know, I’ve only recently met Mickey and he seems lovely, but I think it’s important to get on the record that Chris Humphreys is a dastardly rogue. He’s too talented. He’s too good looking. And above all else, he’s far too British for anyone to trust.

Well, I enjoyed talking to him anyway, and I’m sure I’ll enjoy talking to you, too, as well. So, I’m going to start as I always start, which is to take my guests back into the mists of time—I’m going to put reverb on that any day now—and find out . . . well, you started in archaeology, you didn’t start in writing, but you must have been interested in reading and writing before that. So how did that all come together for you? How did you get interested in in the world of telling stories, and where did you grow up,

A conversation with Mark Everglade, author of the cyberpunk novel Hemispheres (RockHill Publishing) and several short stories, and member of the Cyberpunk Coalition.

Websitemarkeverglade.com

Twitter@MarkEverglade

Facebook@MarkEverglade1

YouTube

Mark Everglade’s Amazon Page

The Introduction

Mark Everglade

An avid reader of science fiction, Mark Everglade takes both its warnings and opportunities for change to heart. His first novel, Hemispheres, published through RockHill Publishing, has a 4.5-star rating on Amazon and went to number five in its category during its launch week.

Mark holds a Master’s of Science in Conflict Theory. His previous works have been featured in Expolanet Magazine and Unrealpolitik. He has appeared on numerous podcasts and newscasts for his books and social activism.

Equally serious about music, Mark has jammed with one of the Rolling Stones, met Randy Bachman, and used to have Jim Morrison’s stage equipment in his basement.

He currently resides in Florida with his wife and four children.

The (Lightly Edited) Transcript

So, Mark, welcome to The Worldshapers.

Thank you, Ed, great to be here.

Great to have you. And thanks for reaching out. A lot of these podcasts are people I’ve, you know, I encounter, or I just see somebody online, and I think they’d make a good interview. But you reached out to me, and I’m glad you did because I think this should be an interesting conversation. You’re down in Florida, I understand, where spring has probably already sprung. We’re still kind of waiting for it here.

Absolutely.

I was walking around the lake this morning, which is not far from the house, and the lake is still quite frozen. I wouldn’t want to go to the ice, but the geese are still on the ice without worrying about it.

Oh, wow.

So, we’re going to start, as I always do, by taking you back into the mists of time—I don’t know how far back that is for you, it’s getting further back for me—to find out how you . . . well, first of all, where you grew up and your education and all that, but especially how you got interested in science fiction. And probably you started as a reader and then moved into the writing side of it. But how did that all work for you? Where did you grow up, and how did you get interested in writing?

Absolutely. Well, I grew up about 20 miles north of Baltimore City, Maryland, U.S. And I’m 40 now, but growing up, I was very interested in some of the books that came out in the ’80s and ’90s that were cyberpunk books that really got me involved in science fiction, science fiction such as Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. And I was reading a lot of that at the time, but I was also reading a lot of philosophy,

An hour-long conversation with Walter Jon Williams, Nebula Award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of more than forty books of historical fiction, fantasy, and science fiction, as well as work in film, television, comics, and games.

Websitewww.walterjonwilliams.net

Walter Jon Williams’s Amazon Page

The Introduction

Walter Jon Williams is the Nebula Award-winning, New York Times-bestelling author of more than forty volumes of fiction, in addition to works in film, television, comics, and the gaming field. 

He began his career writing historical fiction, the sea-adventure series Privateers & Gentlemen, then, when the market for historical novels died, began a new career as a science fiction writer. Since then, he’s written cyberpunk, near-future thrillers, classic space opera, “new” space opera, post-cyberpunk epic fantasy new weird, and the world’s only gothic western science fiction police procedural (Days of Atonement). He’s also a reasonably prolific writer of short fiction, including contributions to George RR Martin’s Wild Cards project.

Williams has been nominated for numerous literary awards, and won Nebula Awards in 205 and 2011. In addition to fiction, he’s written a number of films for Hollywood, although none have yet been made. He’s also maintained a foot in the gaming industry, having written RPGs based on his Privateers & Gentlemen series and his novel Hardwired, contributed to the alternate-reality game Last Call Poker, and written the dialog for the Electronic Arts game Spore. In 2017, he was the Guest of Honor at the 75th World Science Fiction Convention, held in Helsinki.

In addition to writing, Williams is a world traveler, scuba diver, and a black belt in Kenpo Karate. He lives in New Mexico.

The (Lightly Edited) Transcript

So, Walter, welcome to The Worldshapers. 

Happy to be here.

I always try to find connections, and I can think of two. You live in New Mexico, and I was born in New Mexico. So that’s something.

OK.

I was born in Silver City, New Mexico, but yeah, I didn’t live there very long. We moved to Texas, and then we moved from Texas to Canada, which is where I am now. But, yeah. So, there’s that connection.

Silver City is quite pretty and has quite a history.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen it when I was old enough to remember it. I know we went back a couple of times when I was young, but I don’t have any memories of it, unfortunately.

Well, the thing I like about certain old towns is, you know, if they were, say, a mining town, silver-mining town, which Silver City was, and then the silver mining went bust, they never had enough money to tear down their old Victorian town and build up an ugly new modern one.

Mm hmm. 

So, it’s still got all these beautiful Victorian buildings still, as does all the surrounding area.

It’s a bit like Moose Jaw here in Saskatchewan. They had a couple of fires in the early years that burned everything down. So, they passed a bylaw that everything had to be built out of brick.

Huh. OK.

And then there was kind of a boom and then a bust. And a lot of those old brick buildings are still there. So,

An hour-long chat with Chris (C.C.) Humphreys, actor, playwright, and author of twenty historical and fantasy novels, including the Immortals’ Blood series for Gollancz and the new Tapestry Trilogy.

Sign up here for Chris Humphreys’ March 6 online workshop, “Fantasy Worlds – And How to Build Them,” part of the new Paper Covers Rock literary festival on Salt Spring Island.

Websiteauthorchrishumphreys.com

Twitter@HumphreysCC

Instagram@CCHumphreys

Facebook@AuthorCCHumphreys

Chris Humphreys’ Amazon Page

The Introduction

Chris (C.C.) Humphreys has played Hamlet in Calgary, a gladiator in Tunisia, and a dead immortal in Highlander; he’s waltzed in London’s West End, conned the landlord of the Rovers Return in Coronation Street, commanded a star fleet in Andromeda, and voiced Salem the cat in the original Sabrina. A playwright, his plays have been produced in Calgary, Vancouver, and London. He has published twenty novels, including The French Executioner, The Jack Absolute Trilogy, Vlad – The Last Confession, A Place Called Armageddon, and Shakespeare’s Rebel. His novel Plague won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel in Canada in 2015. He is now writing epic fantasy with the Immortals’ Blood trilogy for Gollancz; the first book, Smoke in the Glass, was published in 2019. Book Two, The Coming of the Dark, has now been published in the UK and Canada. He has just published The Tapestry Trilogy, set around—and through—the fabulous medieval Unicorn Tapestries in New York’s Cloisters Museum. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia.

The (Lightly Edited) Transcript

Chris, welcome to The Worldshapers!

Thank you very much for having me.

We were just talking—we know we’ve been at the same place at the same time, but we didn’t actually talk to each other at the time, because we were both at When Worlds Collide, the great literary conference that’s held in Calgary every year, a few years ago.

That’s right. Well, we might have, though we might have been drunk, and that’s why we don’t.

Entirely possible. So, we’re going to talk about specifically the Tapestry trilogy as an example of your creative process. But first,

An hour-long conversation with K.M. Rice, national award-winning screenwriter and independent author whose four-part Afterworld series launched with Ophelia and continues with book two, Priestess.

Websitewww.kmrice.com

Twitter@KMRiceAuthor

Instagram@KMRiceAuthor

Facebook@KMRiceAuthor

K.M. Rice’s Amazon Page

The Introduction

K.M. Rice, or Kellie, is a national award-winning screenwriter and independent author. Her four-part Afterworld series launched with the first book, Ophelia, and continues with book two, Priestess.

Her first novel, Darkling, is a young adult dark fantasy that now has a companion novel titled The Watcher. Her novella The Wild Frontier is an ode to the American spirit of adventure and seeks to awaken the wildish nature in all of us. Black Irish, a dark comedy, highlights contemporary political drama in the emerald isle.

Over the years, her love of storytelling has led to producing and geeking out in various webshows and short films, including her author vlog and a webseries called Happy Hobbit, along with working for both Magic Leap and Weta Workshop. She provided additional writing and research for Middle-earth From Script to Screen: Building the World of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. 

When not writing or filming, she can be found hiking in the woods, baking, running, and enjoying the company of the many animals on her family ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California.

The (Lightly Edited) Transcript

So, Kellie, welcome to The Worldshapers.

Thank you so much for having me.

Now, I laughed a little bit there because I might as well explain that this is our second take on this interview. We’ve had quite a challenge making this happen.

Something in the universe was kind of conspiring that, like, for some reason, it was meant to not happen until now.

Exactly. The first time we tried, I had a windstorm, a huge windstorm up here in Regina, Saskatchewan–the whole province, it wasn’t just the city–that took out power for hours and hours and hours. And then we rescheduled for the following week, at which point you had a windstorm that took o...