The Worldshapers

An hour-long conversation with New York Times-bestselling author Kelley Armstrong, author of numerous fantasy, mystery, and thriller novels in multiple series for adults, including the thirteen-book Otherworld series, which began with her first novel, Bitten, and other series and standalone novels for young adults and middle-grade readers.

Websitekelleyarmstrong.com

Twitter@KelleyArmstrong

Facebook@KelleyArmstrongAuthor

Kelley Armstrong’s Amazon Page

The Introduction

Photo by Kathryn Hollinrake

Kelley Armstrong is the bestselling author of numerous fantasy novels, mysteries, and thrillers, for adults, young adults, and middle-grade readers, both standalones and in multiple series.

Born in Sudbury, Ontario, she grew up in London, Ontario. She went to the University of Western Ontario to study psychology, with plans to become a clinical psychologist, but on the brink of grad school, realizing such a career would limit her writing time for many years, switched paths and went to Fanshawe College in London, studying computer programming.

While getting her education, she married and had first child, a daughter, then took a full-time job programming for a bank while continuing writing. She sold her first novel, Bitten, in 1999, and had two more children, sons, before it was released in 2001, at which point she quit her job to write full-time, which she’s been doing ever since.

Among her series: Otherworld, Cainsville, Rockton, Darkest Powers and Darkness Rising, Age of Legends, and the Nadia Stafford crime trilogy. She has also written several serial novellas and short stories for the Otherworld series. Starting in 2014, a Canadian television series based on Otherworld, called Bitten, aired for three seasons on Space and SyFy. Kelley lives in rural Ontario.

The (Lightly Edited) Transcript

So, Kelly, welcome to The Worldshapers.

Thank you.

Now we’re both authors in Canada, but I don’t know that we’ve ever actually met each other in person anywhere at any conventions or anything like that. I can’t think of a time.

I don’t think so. We’ve probably passed somewhere at some convention because it’s a, you know, relatively restricted literary landscape. But, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t recall.

Yeah, it’s a small literary landscape, but it’s a very, very large physical landscape. And Saskatchewan and…you’re in Ontario?

I am.

Yeah, they’re actually a long way away from each other.

They are.

When we moved up here from Texas when I was eight years old, it was the year of Expo ’67.

An hour-long conversation with Adria Laycraft, author of Jumpship Hope (Tyche Books), freelance editor, and wood artisan, an Odyssey Writers Workshop alumna whose short stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, both online and in print.

Websiteadrialaycraft.com

Facebook@adria.laycraft

YouTubeCarving the Cottonwood Girl Gone to Ground

The Introduction

Adria Laycraft is an author, freelance editor of fiction, and wood artisan who earned honours in journalism in 1992 and has always worked with words and visual arts. She coedited The Urban Green Man Anthology in 2013, which was nominated for an Aurora Award, and launched her debut novel, Jumpship Hope,, in 2019. Her short stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, both online and in print. Adria is a grateful member of Calgary’s Imaginative Fiction Writers Association, and a proud survivor of the Odyssey Writers Workshop. She also has two YouTube channels, Carving the Cottonwood and Girl Gone to Ground.

The (Lightly Edited) Transcript

Adria, welcome to The Worldshapers.

Thank you, Ed. It’s wonderful to be here.

Now, I say I feel like I’m kind of an honorary member of the IFWA, because we’ve known each other for a long time through conventions in Calgary, and so, although I’ve never, you know, really been a member of the organization, I’ve been part of the Writers at the Improv that that group does every year, for many, many years now.

That is so much fun, Writers at the Improv.

I’ve done it a couple of times as a program. In fact, I did it when I was writer-in-residence at the Regina Public Library, and I did it again this year at the Saskatoon Public Library. Except I didn’t really have anybody show…it was just before everything closed down and I think people were a little iffy. All I had was an English As a Second Language class, and none of them wanted to compete. So what I did was, I just took words from them…because for those…I guess I should explain…Writers at the Improv is like any improv, you get words in the audience and you write a story using those words. I wrote a story on the words that they gave me. So that was kind of fun for me. It wasn’t quite the usual kind of a process, though. But anyway, enough about me. You’re actually here to talk about you. So, we have known each other a long time and you’ve been a writer all that time that I’ve known you. So, let’s take you back into the mists of time, as I like to say. How did you get interested…well, first of all, in science fiction and fantasy…and in writing? Which came first, or how did those two things come together for you?

Well, I can…of course, that’s why my phone rings…I have definitely been a re...

An hour-long chat with actress, singer-songwriter, dancer, voice-over artist and writer Lisa Foiles, former cast member of Nickelodeon’s All That, author of the new middle-grade novel Ash Ridley and the Phoenix.

Websitelisafoiles.com

Twitter@LisaFoiles

Instagram@LisaFoiles

Facebook@LisaFoilesOfficial

Lisa Foile’s Amazon Page

The Introduction

Lisa Foiles

Lisa Foiles is best known as a four-year series regular on the Nickelodeon sketch comedy show All That. Other TV appearances include Fox’s Malcolm in the Middle, Disney’s Even Steven, TNT’s Leverage and Nickelodeon’s Game Shakers. Lisa is the host of UFC.com’s UFC Minute and Screw Attack’s Desk of Death Battle. Her voiceover credits include multiple national radio campaigns, as well as the lead voice in the X Box One videogame Lococycle.

Lisa is also an accomplished singer, as well as tap, jazz, and ballet dancer, with more than twenty years of professional training, and now she is the author of the middle-grade fantasy novel Ash Ridley and the Phoenix (Permuted Press).

The (Lightly Edited) Transcript

Welcome to The Worldshapers, Lisa.

Hi, Edward. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

It’s my pleasure. I was watching the video about your book, and it just looks like a lot of fun. So I’m really happy that your publicist got in touch and asked if I wanted to talk to you, because it looks like this should be a fun conversation.

Yeah, it’s…you know, it’s kind of a new venture for me. I definitely didn’t start out as an author. I’ve gone in many different career paths, and somehow I’ve ended up here and I’m having a great time.

Well, let’s talk about that a little bit. I always start by taking my guests…it’s become a cliché on here, “back into the mists of time”—I wish I had reverb I could add in at that point—to find out…well, first of all, I know from your video that you have on your Web site talking about the book, that you were a big reader as a kid, even if you weren’t thinking of writing at the time. So, is that kind of where this writing all started, was reading as a kid? And when did the acting come into it?

Yes, a big reader, but very specific reader. I pretty much only picked up books that were fantasy, that were middle-grade works of fantasy about kids with dragons and going on grand adventures in vast countries and, you know, fictional worlds. That’s really what I loved. You know, I was good at school, but I didn’t really enjoy it, and reading any other type of book was really a chore. And even to this day, I’m the longest reader of all time. It takes me so long to read anything. So, I like really have to pick and choose what I’m going to read. “All right. This is what I’m going to be writing for the next year.” But, yeah, when I was a kid, I would just sit in the bookstore, and they say don’t judge a book by its cover, but 14-year-olds don’t understand that, you know, 12-year-olds don’t care. And I was very young, and I would just pick out books based on the cove...

An hour-long conversation with Bryan Thomas Schmidt, national bestselling author and Hugo-nominated editor of adult and children's speculative fiction whose debut novel, The Worker Prince, received Honorable Mention on Barnes & Noble Book Club's Year's Best Science Fiction Releases and whose short stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies and online. Among other accomplishments, Bryan was the first editor of Andy Weir's bestselling novel The Martian.

An hour-long interview with Nancy Kress, bestselling Nebula, Hugo, Sturgeon, and Campbell Award-winning author of thirty science fiction and fantasy novels and novellas and five short-story collections, including Beggars in Spain, Probability Space, and Steal Across the Sky, as well as three non-fiction books for Writer’s Digest on the fundamentals of writing.

Websitewww.nancykress.com

Nancy Kress’s Amazon Page

The Introduction

Photo by Richard Man

Nancy Kress is the bestselling author of thirty science fiction and fantasy novels and novellas and five short-story collections. Among her books are Beggars in Spain, Probability Space, and Steal Across the Sky. She’s also published three non-fiction books for Writer’s Digest on the fundamentals of writing.Nancy is a six-time Nebula Award winner, including two consecutive awards for her novellas “After the Fall,” “Before the Fall,” “During the Fall,” and “Yesterday’s Kin.” She’s also the recipient of the Sturgeon and Campbell Awards, as well as two Hugo Awards. Her fiction has been translated into nearly two dozen languages, including Klingon. She teaches writing at workshops, including Clarion West and Taos Toolbox, as well as at the University of Leipzig in Germany as a guest professor. She lives in Seattle, Washington, with her husband, the author Jack Skillingstead.

The (Lightly Edited) Transcript

So, welcome to The Worldshapers, Nancy.

Thank you, Ed.

I don’t believe we’ve ever met in person. I’m sure we must have been at the same conventions at the same time, but I don’t think we’ve ever actually spoken in person.

Since I’ve been going to conventions for 40 years, I’m sure we were there some time together.

So, I’m very happy to have you. We’re going to talk about a couple of things, a new novella called “Sea Change” and upcoming novel, The Eleventh Gate. But before we get to that, let’s do the background information. So where did you grow up and how did you get interested in writing? Most of us started as kids, or at least we started reading as kids. And that’s what turned us on to science fiction and fantasy. Was that how it was for you?

Rumpelstiltskin from Andrew Lang’sThe Blue Fairy Book

No, not exactly. I grew up in the 1950s in a small town, and we lived way out in the country. And my mother did not drive and my father had the car away at work, so I didn’t get into town very often. The books that were available to me, other than the ones at home, were in the school library. And remember, this was the ‘50s. When I was a child, the library was divided into a boys’ section and a girls’ section, and all of the science fiction, with little rocketships on the spines, was shelved in the boys’ section, and all of the fantasy in the girls’ section. So I read Andrew Lang’s Red Fairy Book, and Green Fairy Book, and Plaid Fairy Book and Polka-Dot Fairy Book and ...

An hour-long chat with Barbara Hambly, New York Times-bestselling author of fantasy and science fiction, as well as historical novels set in the nineteenth century, about her creative process.

Websitewww.barbarahambly.com

Facebook@BarbaraHamblyWriter

Barbara Hambly’s Amazon Page

The Introduction

Since her first published fantasy in 1982, The Time of the Dark, Barbara Hambly has touched most bases in genre fiction: her most recent vampire novel is Prisoner of Midnight (Severn House, 2019) and her most recent historical whodunnit, Lady of Perdition, continues the well-reviewed Benjamin January series.

In times past, she has written Star Trek (TOS) and Star Wars tie-in novels (Ishamel, Crossroad, Children of the Jedi), and did scripts for Saturday morning cartoons.  In addition – when she can – she writes short fiction about the further adventures of characters from her fantasy novels of the ‘80s and ‘90s, which can be purchased on Amazon (Gil and Ingold from the Darwath series, Antryg and Joanna from The Silent Tower, John and Jenny from Dragonsbane, plus a couple of Sherlock Holmes tales “for the hell of it”).

She teaches history at a local community college, and practices iaido, costuming, and painting. Now a widow, she shares a house in Los Angeles with several small carnivores.

The (Lightly Edited) Transcript

So, welcome to The Worldshapers, Barb.

Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for asking me to be on.

Well, it was…I ran into you, I guess, at World Fantasy, I was sort of, you know, keeping my eye out for people I wanted to talk to. And I thought, hey, there’s somebody. So I’m glad you said yes.

Very nice.

I think that’s the only time we’ve met, actually. And we didn’t really meet, just sort of chatted there at World Fantasy, but I’ve been familiar with your work for a long time and currently reading, I haven’t quite finished it, but Stranger at the Wedding is the one we’re gonna talk about today as an example of your creative process. So we’ll get to that in a little bit.

But I always start by taking my guests back into the mists of time and finding out how you got started, became interested in writing, how you got started writing, and also just a little bit of your biography, which is kind of an interesting one. So, where did you grow up and all that sort of stuff? And how did you get interested in writing? Was it through reading books like most of us?

I suppose it must have been. But I remember, even before I learned to read, I was storyboarding stories. I would, like, draw the characters in a storyboard form. And I remember doing that when I was about four. So actually, I think my desire to tell stories predated learning to read. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a household where my father was a great reader. He always had fiction. He loved the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars series, he was a great fan of Zane Grey. He liked adventure stories. He liked biographies. He liked history and when we were small childrenR...

An hour-long conversation with S.M. Stirling, author of numerous science fiction and fantasy novels, including the novels of the Change and the Shadowspawn series, and most recently Shadows of Annihilation, Book 3 of the Tales from the Black Chamber series, about an alternate First World War.

Websitesmstirling.com

Facebook@worldsofwhatif

S.M. Stirling’s Amazon Page

The Introduction

Photo by Anton Brkic

S.M. Stirling was born in France in 1953, to Canadian parents—although his mother was born in England and grew up in Peru.  After that, he lived in Europe, Canada, Africa, and the US and visited several other continents.  He graduated from law school in Canada but “had his dorsal fin surgically removed,” and published his first novel (Snowbrother) in 1984, going full-time as a writer in 1988, the year of his marriage to Janet Moore of Milford, Massachusetts, who he met, wooed and proposed to at successive World Fantasy Conventions. In 1995 he suddenly realized that they could live anywhere and they decamped from Toronto, “that large, cold, gray city on Lake Ontario,” and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  He became an American citizen in 2004. 

His latest books are Shadows of Annihilation, Theater of Spies, and Black Chamber (Roc/Penguin Random House), a trilogy of related alternate-history novels set in the 1910s and involving Teddy Roosevelt, dirigibles, and spies. His hobbies mostly involve reading—history, anthropology, archaeology, and travel, besides fiction—but he also cooks and bakes for fun and food.  For twenty years he also pursued the martial arts, until hyperextension injuries convinced him he was in danger of becoming “the most deadly cripple in human history.”  Currently, he lives with Janet and the compulsory authorial cats.

The Lightly Edited Transcript

Coming soon(ish)…

An hour-long chat with Ira Nayman, editor of Amazing Stories magazine, proprietor of the Alternate Reality News Service (11 books so far), and author of six novels in the Multiverse series published by Elsewhen Press.

WebsiteLes Pages aux Folles

Twitter@ARNSProprietor

Ira Nayman’s Amazon Page

The Introduction

Iray Nayman is the proprietor of the Alternate Reality News Service, which sends reporters into other universes and has them report on what they find there. There are 11 books in the series, the most recent of which is the omnibus volume Idiotocracy for Dummies. He is also the author of six novels in the Multiverse series published by Elsewhen Press; the latest is Good Intentions: The Multiverse Refugees Trilogy: First Pie in the Face. He won the 2010 Jonathan Swift Satire Writing Contest, and his novel Both Sides: Now! was longlisted for the Guernica Prize.

In his spare time, Ira is the editor of Amazing Stories magazine, and co-host of The Gernsback Machine: An Amazing Podcast. He has also been a writer/performer in radio sketch comedy groups and created several (as yet unproduced) television series. He has a Ph.D. in Communications from McGill University and taught part-time for five years in the New Media program at Ryerson University. 

The (Lightly Edited) Transcript

Coming soon(ish)…

An hour-long conversation with three-time World Fantasy Award (and two-time Philip K. Dick Award)-winning fantasy author Tim Powers, whose sixteen novels include The Anubis Gates, Forced Perspectives, and On Stranger Tides.

Websitewww.theworksoftimpowers.com

Facebook@AuthorTimPowers

Tim Powers Amazon Page

The Introduction

Photo by Serena Powers

An hour-long conversation with three-time World Fantasy Award (and two-time Philip K. Dick Award)-winning fantasy author , whose sixteen novels include The Anubis Gates, Forced Perspectives, and On Stranger Tides. Tim Powers is the author of sixteen novels, including The Anubis Gates , Forced Perspectives, and On Stranger Tides, which was the basis of the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. He has twice won the Philip K. Dick Award and three times won the World Fantasy Award, and his books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Powers lives with his wife, Serena, in San Bernardino, California.

The (Lightly Edited) Transcript

Coming (relatively) soon…

An hour-long chat with Carrie Vaughn, author of the Philip K. Dick Award-winning novel Bannerless, the New York Times-bestselling Kitty Norville urban fantasy series: more than twenty novels and upwards of 100 short stories, two of which have been finalists for the Hugo Award.

Websitewww.carrievaughn.com

Facebook@carrie.vaughn

Carrie Vaughn’s Amazon Page

The Introduction

Carrie Vaughn‘s work includes the Philip K. Dick Award-winning novel Bannerless, the New York Times bestselling Kitty Norville urban fantasy series: more than twenty novels and upwards of 100 short stories, two of which have been finalists for the Hugo Award. Her most recent work includes a Kitty spin-off collection, The Immortal Conquistador, and a pair of novellas about Robin Hood’s children, The Ghosts of Sherwood and The Heirs of Locksley. She’s a contributor to the Wild Cards series of shared world superhero books edited by George R. R. Martin and a graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop.

A bona fide Air Force brat (her father served on a B-52 flight crew during the Vietnam War), Carrie grew up all over the U.S. but managed to put down roots in Colorado, in the Boulder area, where she pursues an endlessly growing list of hobbies and enjoys the outdoors as much as she can. She is fiercely guarded by a miniature American Eskimo dog named Lily.

The (LIghtly Edited) Transcript

Coming (relatively) soon…