On the surface, Michael Cowan’s new novel John B. Peoples (hardcover, paperback, Kindle) is about a guy who wins the lottery with his boss, only to have said boss run off with it.
But as Cowan explains in the following email interview — in which he describes this novel as “mostly a character study with thriller elements appearing most dramatically at the end or in the last 1/3 of the novel” — it’s about more than just the money.
Given that (as they explain in the following email interview), they wrote these poems with the “intention to write about the period of my life in which I lived on the road,” it’s probably no surprise that one of the writers that poet Carson Wolfe credits as an influence on their new collection Coin Laundry At Midnight (paperback) is Jack Keroac. Y’know, the guy who wrote On The Road.
But Jackie’s not the only writer who had a big impact on these poems…
Like Indiana Jones if he went full-on Doctor Who, Andrew Ludington’s Splinter Effect was a time travel caper novel that has an archeologist for the Smithsonian going back in time to rescue priceless artifacts before they were lost to history. But while Ludington is sending readers on another adventure through time in the sequel, Double Shadow (hardcover, Kindle), as he explains in the following email interview, it’s a different kind of adventure.
One of the issues with reading poetry is that because both the presses and audience can be small, books often go out of print. But sometimes they come back. Which is what’s happening with Pink Elephant, which poet Rachel Camacho originally released in 2009, and then rerelased in 2016, and is now releasing once more, thanks to Button Poetry, in paperback.
In the following email interview, Camacho discusses what originally inspired and influenced this collection, as well as how it connects to one that followed and another that’s yet to come.
While queer people have it relatively easier these days than their counterparts did in, say, the 1950s or the 1980s, it’s still not easy, especially if you’re a queer teenager. Life isn’t always safe. It’s this lack of safety that author Sadie McCarney explores in her book-length epic poem The Bright Afters (paperback, Kindle), in which she tells the story of a murdered queer boy.
In the following email interview, McCarney discusses what inspired and influenced this epic poem.
If you describe a novel as being a “suburban horror story,” my immediate thought is that it involves an overly punitive HOA. But in the following email interview with author C.J. Dotson about her new dual-timeline haunted house / suburban horror novel These Familiar Walls (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), she explains how it’s not about a home owner failing to cut their lawn to exact specifications.
Forty-six years ago, at St. Mark’s Church in New York City, poet Eileen Myles read their epic poem “Bird Watching,” a poem they never included in any of the poetry collections they’ve released in the years since. That is, until now. With Bird Watching And Their First Three Books Of Poetry (hardcover, paperback, Kindle), Myles it not only publishing this long-lost epic for the first time, but also all of the poems from their first three collections — 1978’s The Irony Of The Leash, 1981’s A Fresh Young Voice Form The Plains, and 1982’s Sappho’s Boat — most of which have been unavailable for years.
In the following email interview, Myles talks about assembling this collection, as well as how rereading “Bird Watching” for this collection has “influenced me now.”
Five down; one to go. It’s what fans of Seth Ring’s science fiction / LitRPG / progression fantasy series The Exlian Syndrome must be thinking now that he’s released the penultimate installment, Shattered Glory (hardcover, paperback, Kindle, audiobook).
In the following email interview, Ring discusses what inspired and influenced this fifth novel, as well as his plans to conclude the series…and maybe continue it.