The 2021 Online Version of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books was a few months back and so I'm a bit late in getting these posts out, but as always I seriously enjoyed catching various panel discussions. One such panel discussion was about speculative fiction.
Here are some bio information that I took from the LA Times website.
Amal El-Mohtar is the science fiction and fantasy columnist for the New York Times Book Review and the co-author, with Max Gladstone, of This Is How You Lose the Time War, a novella which has been published in ten languages and received such honours as the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards.
Max Gladstone is the author of the Hugo-nominated Craft Sequence, which Patrick Rothfuss called “stupefyingly good.” The sixth book, Ruin of Angels, was released this September . . . John Crowley described Max as “a true star of twenty first century fantasy.”
Stephen Graham Jones is the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians, a 2020 finalist for The Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction.
The following are my notes from the panel discussion:
Amal El-Mohtar
Has never read Ray Bradbury, which is embarrassing considering the context of the panel. But does love J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit." Read it at the age of 7. Lived in Lebanon at the time and her dad's cousin gave her the book. Loved the book so much she memorized the songs in the book. It was the first time she was aware of an author.
Last year, period of 3 months starting during lockdowns, she couldn't read books. There were multiple realities when it came to COVID such as infection and non-infection. She wanted to write, but couldn't do so. Only wrote a TV pilot.
Wanted her book with Max Gladstone to include time travel. Relationship between two people across time and space. She wanted to address someone who doesn't exist yet.
Spent the pandemic listening to Rina Sawayama. Reading Micaiah Johnson's "The Space Between Worlds." Watching Ted Lasso.
Megan Giddings
Loved C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." When the animals turned to stone, it made her so scared. She loved comic books. Her dad gave her comic books from the 70s/80s. In those comic books, anything could happen: you could fly, have claws. It helped cultivate her imagination.
She didn't write at the beginning of the pandemic as her first book was coming out. Around June when the protests started, she started on her second book.
How can people need people again? Community is important.
She was writing a literary novel about grief, but then realized it was boring so brought in thoughts of speculative fiction.
Spent time watching "Demon Slayer" on Netflix. Watched Jeff VanderMeer's "Annilation."
Max Gladstone
His favorite Ray Bradbury book is "The Veldt." He read the story and had no idea you could do that. He found it deeply chilling and inevitable speculative fiction.
He wrote throughout the pandemic. He did it every day, which helped him get through it: one day at a time.
He wrote with Amal El-Mohtar, because they like each other. They had been writing letters and decided to write something together. They wanted to write something that they could finish so they wrote a novella, "This Is How You Lose the Time War." Their styles meshed. They also took individual characters.
He also spent the pandemic reading the Marcel Proust collection. He also spent time watching the Haikyuu anime volleyball on Netflix.
Stephen Graham Jones
His favorite Ray Bradbury book is "The Veldt." The book opened his mind and filled it with terror.
He usually writes his books while he's on the road. But recently wrote at home, which was unusual for him.
His book "The Only Good Indians" was supposed to be 150 pages, but ended up being over 300 pages. He never knows how a book will end up. He starts with a line and then goes from there. For him, being into horror made him realize that the pandemic will have an end.
He misses conventions and seeing a sea of black shirts and knowing that those are his people.
He's spent the pandemic listening to the "With Gourley and Rust" podcast. They'll spend four hours talking about Friday the 13th, Aliens, Halloween -- movies that are maybe 82 minutes long.
To write good horror, need to write about things that scare you. If it scares you, it probably scares someone else.
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