Today I’m back with an update from four of the authors I’ve interviewed since I started blogging. I hope like me you enjoyed hearing about their latest news and new projects.

Gabi Coatsworth

I interviewed Gabi back in September 2018 as she had a story published in an anthology When to Now and I caught up with her about how things were going.

GC: I’ve finished my novel, (general fiction) and it’s currently with my editor, which will definitely mean revisions before I submit it to two publishers who’ve expressed interest. These are traditional publishers who accept unagented submissions. I’m about to outline my second novel, with a view to breaking the back of the writing during NaNoWriMo this year.

I’ve been published in two more anthologies: Imagining Monsters and Don’t Be a Hero which is due any time now.

I won a couple of awards for the short story in When to Now – the book you were covering first time round.  And I’ve been doing live interviews with authors, which has been fun and I seem to be good at! It’s the English accent. I acquire an automatic 40 IQ points just because I talk the way I do…

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Catriona Ward

CW: Since our interview back in December last year, Little Eve won the 2019 Shirley Jackson Award for best novel, and best horror novel at the British Fantasy Awards. I’ve just finished writing book 3, tentatively titled Last House on Needless Street, narrated by a cat who comes to believe her owner is a serial killer. My goals for the rest of this year are to learn to drive and write a novel about vampires! 

GJ: Many congratulations Cat. For all those of you who haven’t read the award winning novel, you can check out Little Eve here.

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Leslie Burton-Lopez

When I contacted Leslie for a follow up on our interview last year, I knew I was in for a rollercoaster ride and I wasn’t wrong!

GJ: Can you give me a rundown of what you’ve been up to, successes and anything interesting you’d like to share?

LB: Welp, I do have something that I can bring up at inopportune moments at parties: the story I wrote for the When to Now anthology, “Baggage” was selected as a finalist for the Washington Science Fiction Association’s Best Short Fiction of 2019. I read the other seven stories that were nominated, and all are leaps and heaps better, longer, more entertaining, and better than Baggage, so I can only assume that just eight stories were submitted for the eight finalist slots.

My biggest decision in life right now is whether to wear a tuxedo, a Cinderella ballgown, or a dirndl to the award ceremony in October. Thoughts?

GJ: I suggest you take both and change halfway through. Have you learnt any new skills of have any exciting news you want to pass along?

LB: No new skills to report, BUT, I am considering getting back into the ancient art of hula hooping. 

Oh! Also, I went hiking in Yosemite last week, and it turns out my normally affable personality is severely affected by high altitudes. To me, this means I should either be content to stay at sea level, or I need to start hiking alone…now THAT is a contest I could win.

GJ: Just after our conversation I then got the following in an email…

LB: Gareth! I forgot to plug our new book: Don’t Be a Hero, a Villainthology. It will be published and available on Amazon soon.

The villainthology is a sobering glimpse of the dangers heroes/superheroes pose to our health. Villains have a low approval rating historically, but we are here to say NAY NAY. Villains are people too! This was another writing contest, and this time we received more than double the submissions, making it triply hard to pick a winner. But we did: Michael Robert won the contest with his hilarious story featuring an inept villain “Only Okay at Bad”.

My own villain is a soul-sucking woman that is inexplicably changed into a swan and gets her feathered fann– um, I mean, heinie – into heaps of trouble. Will she be redeemed? Find out next week, in the first (and only) installment of “Swansong”. If you like bird-related quips, and borderline inappropriate language, then this is the story for you!

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Andrew C. Piazza

AP: One Last Gasp has a new cover.  Pricey, but it’s pretty good. I’ve put together a prequel short story for that novel, called Flying Fortress, which I use as a free reader magnet.  I’ve been driving traffic to it with Facebook ads, with varying results.  Typically, it’s somewhere between 0.50-1.00$ per download.  That’s here:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/dog919rgy7

I’ve found trying to do my own audio narration for “One Last Gasp” to be a very, very, very slow process.  No idea when that will be done.
As far as new releases, I just released an expanded version of my first-in-series for my urban fantasy series Mage Hunters.  It was originally only a 
novella, and as such, didn’t work very well as a first in series. Now it’s a short novel. That series is up to three novels, now.

It’s an urban fantasy action adventure; basically, it’s SWAT teams versus rogue wizards.  The first novel is kind of like “Die Hard” with magic and monsters.  One of my readers joked that it’s “Dirty” Harry Potter.  I’ll add that link here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A9HWD2W

That, and I’m in the midst of research for my next novel, which will be another historical horror novel.

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A big thank you to all four of the authors who gave updates today.

Also just a quick reminder that it’s not long now before my new novel BEFORE THE END releases, which will mean my current 99c/99p promotion for my debut comes to an end soon. Why not grab it while it’s a bargain!