Jennifer Brozek | All posts tagged 'interviews'

Bubble and Squeek for 20 May 2015

It's been an amazing couple of weeks. Really amazing.

Awards: I've been nominated for two different Scribe Awards. One for best tie-in short story. One for best tie-in YA novel.

Conventions: I've been named one of Gen Con's Industry Insider Featured Presenters. I'm really excited about this.

Election: I've been voted in as one of the new Directors-at-Large for SFWA along with Matthew Johnson. I will take office on July 1, 2015.

Interview: I've been interviewed by Katie Teller, focusing on my Dark Quest Books anthologies.

Review: Thomas Gondolfi of Scifimonkeys.com reviewed CALLER UNKNOWN and gave it an "Unexpected A-". He had some interesting points to make.

Bubble and Squeek for 13 Apr 2015

I'm deep in the throes of writing NEVER LET ME DIE, Melissa Allen #3, so I'm not checking Twitter or Facebook right now. However, lots has happened. Here's a Bubble & Squeek for you.

Award: I was nominated for a Hugo Award. This is both exciting and terrifying.

Convention: I've been added to OrcaCon's Special Guest lineup. I'm also on their kickstarter with a custom game of Katanas & Trenchcoats for you and four of your friends.

Interview: I was interviewed by Douglas Hawk for his 7 Questions series. Want to know what my workspace looks like?

Publication Release: DocWagon 19 is out the door! Get it here:  Amazon | BattleShop | DriveThruRPG

Recommendation: Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix is one of the best, messed up horror books I’ve read in a long time. I will never look at a large home store the same ever again.

Recommendation: Science STYLE - Taylor Swift Acapella Parody. I just really liked this video.

Review: Goodreads review of Chimera Incarnate.

Review: Goodreads review of DocWagon 19.

Sale: I sold The Last Days of the Salton Academy to Ragnarok Publications! Yay!

Bubble and Squeek for 27 Jan 2015

I'm all edits all time. Between finishing up NEVER LET ME LEAVE and getting the final proof notes on CHIMERA INCARNATE and having edits come back on my Shadowrun story, all I can give you is some Bubble and Squeek.

Article: I popped over to Clarissa Johal's journal to talk about how I put together the table of contents for APOCALYPSE GIRL DREAMING.

Book Release: Happy book release to me! APOCALYPSE GIRL DREAMING is available in ebook (physical copy coming soon). I'm so in love with this book. It's getting some great reviews.

Interview: I had an interview with Vagabond Saint. We talks about all sorts of things. It was a fun interview.

Review: I got a review of APOCALYPSE GIRL DREAMING from the Fantastical Librarian. I love it when librarians review my work. I think the Fantastical Librarian had some great things to say.

Review: This is a review of the Valdemar anthology, NO TRUE WAY, and it has to have one of my favorite lines about any one of my stories to date. "This was one of the saddest stories I’ve ever read, I feel like I will be recovering from it days from now." How can you not love that?

Review: The Exploding Spaceship reviews SHATTERED SHIELDS and had some great things to say.

Urban Fantasy Roundtable

The authors of Under an Enchanted Skyline box set ($0.99, available only until Dec 31st), participated in an urban fantasy roundtable.

Most Urban Fantasy stories focus on magical creatures and entities. Even so, ordinary people still play important roles within the story line. Do these “normals” have much of an impact in your story…and if so, in what ways?


Erik Scott de Bie: As a superhero adventure, Eye for an Eye is a bit of a black sheep: it features exactly one character with magical abilities—Lady Vengeance. In addition to her high-tech hero opposite, Stardust, the story features a series of mundane characters, including The Raven, who is the tech-based vigilante you’d get if you combined Iron Man and Batman, and Elizabeth Stevens, Stardust’s non-superhero wife, tech company tycoon, and the smartest person in the whole novella.

Phoebe Matthews: Always. It is the normals who have to solve the problems created by magic and by paranormals. Sorry, no superheroes here.

Django Wexler: Yes, definitely. Again, a common UF trope is that the protagonist is in some way special, somewhere between the monsters and the normals so he or she can serve as a guide to the fantastic for the readers. In the John Golden stories, this is literally true, since John’s only real power is to transport himself to the fairy burrows and back again. But since fairy burrows run on real-world computer systems, he has to deal with the “normals" who build and maintain them – system administrators, executives, users, and so on. He’s more or less an exterminator, since fairies are a nuisance!

Janine A. Southard: As the collection’s compiler, I don’t have a story in this boxed set. I have, however, had the chance to read them all. Each author in this bundle blends fantasy characters into the normal world, or vice versa. There couldn’t be a super-natural adventure without a familiar jumping off point. In some cases the protagonists are as magical as magical can be, making their way in our normal world. In others, simply touching the magical world transforms a normal person’s experience.

Cedar Blake: Well, Luke and Chalice provide the impetus for Rachel’s “transition,” and Rachel’s rotten manager Margie supplies the push that gets her going. Her pal Ashli (inspired by a real-life friend of mine back when I lived in the Bay Area) adds an essential (in)sanity check for Rachel, and Kim the Yoga Girl acts as sort of a benevolent archon figure, watching over the point of transition and providing a small yet significant test as the hero steps from one threshold to another. So yeah – Rachel’s story could not exist without these key figures. “Normal” or otherwise, they provide foundations and activities that make everything else possible.

Jennifer Brozek: Absolutely. The mundane people in a story become the “everyman” characters that the Reader can identify with. They are the normal people who have to face extraordinary circumstances. Many characters in my UF series are normal people just trying to get by as they are affected by the supernatural events going on around them. Many times, they show that the normal person can be just as effective as the supernatural creature.

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Other questions and their roundtable answers are with: Phil, Erik, Phoebe, Doug, and Janine. This was a great roundtable. And I hope you all enjoyed it.

Bubble and Squeek for 3 Dec 2014

Article: An SFSignal Mind Meld on the Best Book Openings.
 
Interview: Wag the Fox interviewed me about Apocalypse Girl Dreaming

Podcast: Baen Books Podcast: BFRH 2014 11 21. Bryan and I talk about Shattered Shields.

Review: SF Crowsnest reviews Shattered Shields. It appears that the review, Kelly Jensen, really liked it. Awesome.

Review: Bookwraiths review of Shattered Shields. 3 out of 5 stars but really like it.

Sale: Apocalypse Ink Productions is running a Winter Special. Code: WINTER2014. 20% entire order. If you ever wanted my Karen Wilson Chronicles, or Industry Talk... or Jay Lake's Process of Writing... or Ivan Ewert's Gentlemen Ghouls series... or Peter M. Ball's Flotsam series... or Dylan Birtolo's Sheynan series... now is the time.

Writers: I am now open to edit your work. Here are my freelance editor rates.

Bubble and Squeek for 18 Nov 2014

Heads down on my novel, NEVER LET ME LEAVE. Have some links and podcasts and reviews and books!

Article: Writing Tips by Amanda Pillar. These are worth a read.

Article: Suvudu editor Matt Staggs asked for an article on anthologies. I decided to write about the little-discussed art of putting a Table of Contents together.

Interview: I was interviewed by Kindra Sowder for Horror Geeks magazine: Gamer Nerd and Wordslinger. Horror Geeks magazine is really neat. I like it.

Podcast Interview: Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing. Talking about Shattered Shields with Bryan Thomas Schmidt. The topics ranged from marketing to diversity to RPG books.

Podcast Review: Game on Girl by Regina and Rhonda reviews Chicks Dig Gaming. My Google alerts gave me this one. It's really a fun look at the anthology. Especially when they refused to name author names but I recognized who and what they were talking about.

Review: Attack of the Books Reviews Shattered Shields. The reviewer, Daniel Burton, really enjoyed the anthology.

ReviewPaul Weimer of SF Signal reviews Chicks Dig Gaming. 4 out of 5 stars. He enjoyed the book and asked some of the questions I asked.

Pre-order
: JAZZ AGE CTHULHU with my novelette, "Dreams of a Thousand Young." Visit Assam, India, where a British dilettante wakes up one morning covered in bruises and welts, with a dead man in her bed and no memory of what happened in the last 24 hours. Her only clue is a trashed invitation to the exclusive Black Ram Club.

Publication: Short run boxed set: Under an Enchanted Skyline. Apocalypse Ink Productions has joined Martain Cantina's boxed Urban Fantasy set. 8 novels and novellas. $0.99. From now until December 30th. Includes my mosaic novel Caller Unknown and fellow AIP author Peter M. Ball's Exile.

Bubble and Squeek for 14 Oct 2014

Busy, busy, busy writing and editing. Here are some links for you.

Authorgraph: You can get a number of my books electronically signed by me.

Article: The Anthology Balance. I wrote an article for the Locus blog about the balance between diversity and what sells. Hint: diversity sells.

Review: Shattered Shields video review by Other Realms Book Reviews. This is a first for me. Kind of exciting. She liked it.

Review: Shattered Shields. This one is from 50 Book Challenge. Another good review.

Podcast: Geekerati interviews me and Bryan Thomas Schmidt about Shattered Shields and a myriad of other things.

Horror Selfies: Read more horror! It's good for your heart. Also, don't forget about All Hallows Read. Give a scary book for Halloween.

Meet the Character Blog Tour

I got tagged by Jody Lynn Nye to do this Character Blog Tour. Since I just typed “The End” on Chimera Incarnate, the fourth and final book in the Karen Wilson Chronicles, I figured this would be a nice wrap-up to the titular character.

1.What is the name of your character?
Karen Wilson

2. Is he/she fictional or a historic person?
She is a completely fictional character who is vaguely based on the looks and personality of several authors I know. I absolutely adore Karen.

3. When and where is the story set?
It is set in the modern day in the fictional city of Kendrick in Washington. It located between Port Angeles and Port Townsend around the left and bottom edges of discovery bay. In truth, I took the weirdness of Port Townsend and it historical weirdness of Seattle and riffed off it for Kendrick.

4. What should we know about him/her?
At the start of the series, Karen is a mundane 911 operator. Her parents worked in Emergency Services and she followed in their footsteps. Though she gains supernatural allies, she does not have any powers of her own. She is forthright, determined, and willing to take changes. This often gets her hurt.

5. What is the main conflict? What messes up his/her life?
The main conflict is that the “Master of the City” has chosen Karen to be his representative because “she helps people.” Karen knows nothing of the unspoken rules to interacting with the supernatural factions of Kendrick and breaks them all. She forces the cold war into a hot one because the status quo isn’t healthy for anyone. But, as you might imagine, that doesn’t go well for Karen.

6. What is the personal goal of the character?
Now that Karen’s eyes have been opened to the supernatural dangers within Kendrick and threatening the city, she just wants to protect as many people as possible. She also wants to help forge a new understanding between the various factions. As an outsider, she is most qualified to do this. With some of her allies, she has a chance of succeeding.

7. Is there a working title for this novel, and can we read more about it?
The Karen Wilson Chronicles is made up of four books: Caller Unknown, Children of Anu, Keystones, and Chimera Incarnate. These books are available on the publisher’s website, Amazon. Barnes & Noble, and DriveThruFiction.

8. When can we expect the book to be published or when was it published?
The first three books are already out and Chimera Incarnate will be out in March 2015.

I’m going to tag:
M. Todd Gallowglas, Ivan Ewert, Dylan Birtolo, Peter M. Ball, and Wendy Hammer. They may choose to do this blog tour or not.

Bubble and Squeek for 24 Mar 2014

REVIEW: My anthology, Coins of Chaos, was reviewed by The Nameless Zine. They liked it.

INTERVIEW: Sarna.net interviewed me about The Nellus Academy Incident.

ARTICLE: FlickFilosopher wrote an article about the TARDIS Little Free Library I have in front of my house.

COVER REVEAL #1: The Future Embodied anthology has revealed its final cover by the amazing Galen Dara. This has my story, "The Bathory Clinic Deal," in it.

COVER REVEAL #2: Evil Girlfriend Media reveals the cover for my anthology, Bless Your Mechanical Heart. The cover art is by the wonderful Larry Dixon!

COVER REVEAL #3: Baen Books has revealed the cover of my anthology, Shattered Shields, co-edited with Bryan Thomas Schmidt, by the talented Todd Lockwood.

I absolutely win the cover art game this week. I am happy dancing all over the place.

Bubble and Squeek for 14 Jan 2014

Interview: New Interview with me from Muse Hack.

TOC: SF Signal lists the table of contents for Shattered Shields, the military fantasy anthology from Baen Books edited by me and Bryan Thomas Schmidt. It will be released on 4 November 2014.

TOC: I’ve finished the story selection for Bless Your Mechanical Heart anthology from Evil Girlfriend Media and am in the process of writing up and sending out the story contracts. However, keep your eyes peeled on the EGM website for the official TOC and all that.

Cover art: New book cover for The Nellus Academy Incident, my YA Battletech novel and the story of how it came to be.

Open Call: Reminder that Apocalypse Ink Productions is open for linked novella queries for modern day dark speculative fiction.