The Future Fire

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A couple more mini-interviews from TFF#38 contributors up at FB:

• F.J. Bergmann, author of “How Far Does Night Have To Fall?” (poem)
• Miranda Jean, illustrator of “The Road under the Bay”

As always, more of these to come on our FB page.

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Our co-editor Valeria Vitale has interviewed Nick Wood, author of the challenging alternative-history Apartheid novel Azanian Bridges, which was listed among the Guardian's best SF/F of 2016 and blurbed by none less than Ursula K. Le Guin herself! (Nick also has a story in TFF#33, The Paragon of Knowlege.)

Read this interview in which he talks about psychology, empathy, racism and decolonizing language, and also gives us a long list of recommendations of African SFF and comics. Fascinating stuff.

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A few more mini-interviews posted this week:

• Rebecca Gomez Farrell, author of “Good Genes”
• Rachel Linn, illustrator of “Before We Left the Forest”
• Petra Kuppers, author of “The Road under the Bay”

Keep an eye on facebook.com/thefuturefire for a few more going past next week…

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This week we have a guest post from Jo Thomas, author of the Elkie Bernstein trilogy of urban werewolf novels, co-editor of several anthologies over at Fox Spirit, and author of three fantasy and scifi stories in TFF. (*) (*) (*)

The Lost Manual for Life (™)

Jo talks about her experience as a writer on the Autism Spectrum, likening this to going through life without being having given the users’ manual—just as her heroine Elkie has to fight twenty-five werewolves while writing the book for herself…

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Last couple of FB micro-interviews from TFF #38 before Christmas (and issue #39 due next week)…

• Pear Nuallak, illustrator of “Good Genes” (on her art and 1960s fashion)
• Kelly Rose Pflug-Back, author of “Before We Left the Forest” (on her story and creepy abandoned mines)

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Actually, two more mini-interviews unexpectedly came in after I wrote that last post, so here is the last link update before our next issue (due within days or hours). We ask our mini-interviewees two or three questions, and they reply in a couple sentences each, which we post on FB and link to their work in our latest issue (in this case #38). Our latest subjects…

• Cécile Matthey, illustrator of “How Far Does Night Have To Fall?” (including sketches that led to her final art)
• Ola Al-Fateh, author of “The Grand Museum” —an unsettling horror story set in a modern Alexandria museum…

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This week at the TFF blog we had a visit from Katrina S. Forest, whose wonderful mid-apocalyptic short story “The Poisoned City” appeared in The Future Fire #31 back in 2014, and a revised version is now the title story in her self-published SF and Fantasy collection The Poisoned City and Other Stories. She answered a few questions about her writing, collaboration, and learning d/Deaf sign language.

Read our interview with Katrina S. Forest here.

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This week sees the release of TFF Issue 2016.39, the last of this year, featuring wonderful work from seven authors and five illustrators. We’re really proud of this issue, and feel it does justice to a hard year.

Flash fiction

• ‘The Cryptographer’s Body’, Evelyn Deshane

Short stories

• ‘Immaterial’, Dan Grace (illustrated by Cécile Matthey)
• ‘Songbird’, L. Chan (illustrated by Laura-Anca Adascalitei)
• ‘Hard Rains’, S.J. Sabri (illustrated by Pear Nuallak)
• ‘We Are All Wasteland on the Inside’, Benjanun Sriduangkaew (illustrated by Eric Asaris)

Novelettes

• ‘Over the New Horizon’, T.D. Walker (illustrated by Toeken)

Poetry

• ‘Athena on Motherhood’, Kari Castor

If you like any of the work in issue #39, please feel free to leave a comment at the Press Blog saying so, or even leave a rating or review at Goodreads.

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We did get one last micro-interview from one of the artists of issue #38: Miguel Santos, illustrator of “Siv Delfin” talks about his illustrating style for this dystopian noir piece, and his ideal wonder-drug.

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Last week we posted an interview with Margrét Helgadóttir, editor of the Asian Monsters anthology from Fox Spirit Books (and co-editor of the two previous volumes European Monsters and African Monsters), in which she talks about the coverage and variety of each volume, the importance of illustration and other images, and the future installments of the World of Monsters series.

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This week we've been posting mini-interviews on Fakebooc with all the authors and artists who contributed to TFF #42. These will keep coming every couple of days for a while yet, but the people we've interviewed so far include:

• Melanie Rees, author of “Tidal Waves”
• Cécile Matthey, illustrator of “How Will They Judge Us?”
• Vanessa Fogg, author of “Taiya”
• Richard R. Blake, author of “Lady of the Court of Black Wings”
• Rachel Linn, illustrator of “Building the Arcology”

I'll try to remember to post updates here, but follow or keep an eye on the TFF page if you want to be sure not to miss anything.

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Interview with Ephiny Gale

Our friend Ephiny Gale (whose lovely story “The Light Princess” appeared in The Future Fire in 2013, and “Five Tales of the Rose Palace” in 2018) has released a collection of her fantastic and unconventional short stories this week, under the title Next Curious Thing from Foxgrove Press. To celebrate this release, we invited Ephiny to the TFF Press blog to tell us a little more about her work.

Full interview at http://press.futurefire.net/2018/12/interview-with-ephiny-gale.html