Queen of Swords Press has been publishing outstanding fiction for a number of years now. Featuring an emphasis on stories with LGBTQ representation, they are creating a space for themselves in the publishing world by bringing great stories to the world. I asked Queen of Swords chief Catherine Lundoff – herself a successful author and editor – a few questions about Queen of Swords and how they came to be.

Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition was developed by industry veteran Monica Valentinelli for Onyx Path Publishing. To celebrate the release of the Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition Kickstarter, Monica reached out to members of her team for a series of in-depth interviews. Today, Monica chats with Cassandra Khaw, who wrote the fiction and designed monsters […]

Greetings FlamesRising.com readers! We are very excited to sit down with J.M. Lee, novelist and screenplay writer. J.M. Lee is known for his Young Adult series Shadows of the Dark Crystal and his work as a screenwriter for The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance series on Netflix. Lee has two new books are coming out in November: Aughra’s Wisdom of Thra and Heroes of the Resistance: A Guide to the Characters of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present an interview with author and editor Melanie R. Meadors. Her latest release is an anthology called Tales of Excellent Cats, for the Monarchies of Mau roleplaying game. Hi Melanie! Can you introduce yourself to our FlamesRising.com readers? Hi there! I am an author of science fiction and fantasy, I edit […]

Hello FlamesRising.com readers! Today, we are sitting down with author and biologist Robyn Bennis. Her first novel, an action-packed steampunk tale called The Guns Above, debuted in May 2017. Since then she’s released a sequel titled By Fire Above and a brand new book titled The Devil’s Guide to Managing Difficult People. If you’re curious […]

Rosariumpublishing.com, which was established in 2013, recently launched an IndieGoGo campaign to help cover printing costs for their books, comics, and graphic novels. In today’s interview, Monica Valentinelli sits down with founder Bill Campbell to ask him about his small press publishing house.

Edison T. Crux is an author whose first novel, “Tale of the Wisconsin Werewolf” debuts on December 15. The author will be attending an event at Pegasus Games

Matt Forbeck is an award-winning game designer and author whose most recent endeavor, “12-for-12”, is a personal challenge issued to himself to write a novel a month for an entire year. I caught up with Matt after his most recent Kickstarter campaign concluded to ask him how things were going.

You’ve run a number of highly successful Kickstarters in support of your 12-for-12 initiative; what’s the most important thing you’ve learned about running a Kickstarter project?

It’s a lot more work than you think. While I ran my Kickstarters, they seemed to suck up every bit of time I had as I kept thinking about ways to improve them. That’s especially true toward the end, when you’re either getting desperate to hit your goals or thrilled that you’ve shot past them.

RIGOR MORTIS is a zombie-focused zine that is part academic, part fanboy/fangirl. Started by the dynamic Davida Gypsy Breier, it’s one of the best resources for information on obscure zombie films, book and more. Nancy O. Greene recently had a chance to talk shop with Davida about the zine.

In the sands of Thuvia, the atheist Salim Ghadafar must find the stolen soul of a murdered merchant. His search for souls extends throughout the planes and tests his strength to the breaking point. Death’s Heretic by James L. Sutter is a grand tour of the Outer Planes… a tour that balances large-scale awe and wonder with intimate character development.

Indeed, Death’s Heretic is more than “a book about tracking down kidnapped souls and killing monsters.” It’s a novel shot through with mystery, mayhem, and romping good adventure, sure, but it also asks some weighty questions… while killing monsters.

“If we really understood immortality,” asks Sutter, “would we still want it?”

There’s more, of course. What are the power dynamics of faith? The true nature of honor? Of heroism? What lurks within the complexities of human ambivalence? The resulting novel blends intimate knowledge of the Pathfinder setting with compelling characters and a plot that packs the energy of a Byzantine naphtha bomb.

Today, FlamesRising.com sits down with author extraordinaire Laura Anne Gilman to talk about Miles To Go / Promises to Keep: a Cosa Nostradamus Kickstarter which ends on Saturday, May 5th.

Let’s listen to Laura as she dives into what the Cosa Nostradamus series is all about and why she’s pursuing new stories on Kickstarter.

Chuck Wendig has been a mainstay of White Wolf Publishing for years, and one of their most popular authors. Having successfully branched out into non-World of Darkness fiction, Chuck continues to develop a strong following for his longer-form prose. Recently, Chuck and Evil Hat Productions announced a series of novels based on Evil Hat’s Spirit of the Century RPG. Chuck will be authoring a trilogy of short novels, the first of which, Dinocalypse Now!, is being released soon. Chuck and I recently spent some time chatting about this new series.

Welcome back to Golarion–the world of Krunzle the Quick, Isiem the wizard, and Alaeron the seeker of forbidden knowledge. Here you’ll find lands such as Cheliax, Numeria, Druma, and Nidel where greed, secrecy, and savagery await heroes and readers alike.

Below, the authors of three forthcoming Pathfinder Tales novels discuss how they came to the world of Golarion and what stories they found there.

Behold, Matthew Hughes (www.archonate.com) who writes science fiction, crime, and media-tie novels as Matthew Hughes, Matt Hughes, and Hugh Matthews. He is best known for his Archonate tales, including Template in the Planet Stories line, and his recent Hell and Black trilogy. His Pathfinder Tales novel Song of the Serpent is due out in 2012.

The Worldwound weeps. The living tower looms overhead. The demon Yath and his minions spread throughout the southern kingdoms. Trying times call for unlikely heroes. In The Worldwound Gambit by Robin D. Laws, the charismatic con-man Gad pulls together a band of roguish adventurers— caustic Jerisa, gentle Tiberio, haunted Calliard, pragmatic Vitta, and the mad fire magician Hendregan–to head north to face Yath and make the world safe for thieves and miscreants once again.

Heroic fantasy, mystery, horror, comedy, and dashes of swashbuckling romance… Laws wraps it all around a heist. Yes, dear reader, The Worldwound Gambit is a heist novel and it is glorious!

In Plague of Shadows by Howard Andrew Jones, the half-elf Elyana and her companions must race across the ravaged land of Galt, scale the Five Kings Mountains, and scour the Vale of Shadows for the cure that will save the cursed Lord Stelan.

Prepare yourself, for Plague of Shadows, dear reader, is fast-paced, sword-and-sorcery at its best.

“Friendship and loyalty lie at the heart of Plague of Shadows,” said Jones. “In whom can you really place your trust, and what does friendship really mean? Not that I’m ever on a soapbox about it. But loyalties, choices, and friendship drive the plot.”

In the short form or long, Jones has been praised frequently for his lightning quick pacing and irresistible plotting—pacing that does not sacrifice character development but depends upon it. Indeed, as Jones says below, “plot is character.”

The Pathfinder Tales novel Winter Witch by Elaine Cunningham and Dave Gross tells the story of Declan, a magical mapmaker, and Ellasif, a diminutive barbarian from the Lands of the Linnorm Kinds.

“Some people are born knowing what they’re meant to be,” said Cunningham. “Ellasif is one of them, and from a very early age she was determined to become a fighter despite her apparent physical limitations.”

Together, Declan and Ellasif search for a missing child and in the process discover a lot about what it means to be a hero.

A veteran of shared world settings, Cunningham has written extensively in the Forgotten Realms. Her Realms work includes the Songs and Swords pentalogy, Starlight and Shadows trilogy, and the Counselors and Kings trilogy, as well as Evermeet: Island of Elves and City of Splendors: a Novel of Waterdeep (with Ed Greenwood). Her Realms stories were collected in The Best of the Realms, Book III: The Stories of Elaine Cunningham. She contributed Dark Journey to the New Jedi Order series set in the Star Wars Expanded Universe.

Welcome to part two of our talk with Dave Gross. If you missed part one, you may want to go check out Part One first.

Dave Gross continues the adventures of half-elven Pathfinder Varian Jeggare and his hellspawn bodyguard Radovan in Master of Devils. This time the oddly paired duo travel to the exotic land of Tian Xia, and Gross layers the storyline with a third narrative.

“Master of Devils is more about being trapped in a situation anathema to your desires,” said Gross. “What will it take to make you give up your pride or even your life?”

A “half-breed” protagonist past his prime and his hellspawn bodyguard must find a missing Pathfinder before it is too late. Sczarni, werewolves, and a very weird witch woman… With Prince of Wolves the first novel in the Pathfinder Tales Line, Dave Gross captures the pulpy grandeur of Golarion without burying the characters under mountains of world-building.

“In Prince of Wolves,” said Gross, “one big question is, How can you find something you never lost? It’s about searching for the wrong thing, or realizing that you had it all along. It’s also about finding the unexpected.”

Jeremy L. C. Jones recently had the chance to talk to Monica Valentinelli about her role as editor of HAUNTED: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror, the collection of ghost stories that we published late last year.

Bullet-riddled Etherometers, EMF detectors, tasers, and inconclusive footage of the spooky sort… Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror, edited by Monica Valentinelli, features original stories by Alex Bledsoe, Richard Dansky, Jess Hartley, Jason Sizemore, Chuck Wendig, and six other writers. While there are plenty of ghosts, poltergeists, and the supernatural unknown, the stories in Haunted focus, primarily, on the ghost hunters, chasers, or investigators.

Appropriately enough, the collection kicks off with an overview of ghost hunting (and the culture surrounding it) written by veteran hunter, Jaeson K. Jrakman, who describes the collection as containing “spine-tingling stories of phantom horrors lurking in the shadows of long-forgotten abandonments.”

One of the best things about my role at DriveThruComics.com is working with an amazing group of authors and artists that are producing some awesome comics. One of our publishers has a universe shattering series going on now and I recently had the chance to talk to Artifacts series author/architect Ron Marz about it. This interview was originally crafted for the DriveThruComics Newsletter, so I wanted to do things a little differently. I did some “crowd-sourcing” for questions from folks reading the series. I added those suggestions to my questions and fired them off to Ron.

Artifacts was originally a limited series that involves the bearers of 13 mythological items such as the Witchblade and The Darkness. Recently it was announced that Artifacts will continue past issue 13 and the affects on the Top Cow Universe will be lasting. Here Ron tells us a bit more about the series…