Ancient Wonders: Kari Sperring

And our final Ancient Wonders interview is the one, the only, Kari Sperring!

Tell us a little about yourself, and what you like to write? 

I'm a mediaeval historian (specialising in Celts) by training and a writer by instinct – I started writing aged seven and I haven't stopped since. I love swashbucklers, ancient mysteries, things and people who are not what they seem, complex worlds and intrigue, which get into everything I write. As does water; I can't account for that, but most of what I write ends up with water as a key element.

If the TARDIS could drop you off to any one site in its heyday, where would you go? 

Oh, goodness, that's hard ... I don't know. Maybe the court of Louis XIII or Louis XIV: I'd love to meet the real d'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis.

What appeals to you most about ancient sites/landscapes? 

That sense that the past is still there, immanent in every stone and that we are all part of the flow of history.

What do you have coming out next?

I have a sequel to The Grass King's Concubine due from DAW, probably next year. It has no final title as yet, but the working title is Death and the Madwoman

[Kari Sperring grew up dreaming of joining the musketeers and saving France, only to find they’d been disbanded in 1776. Disappointed, she became a historian and as Kari Maund published six books and many articles on Celtic and Viking history, plus one on the background to favourite novel, The Three Musketeers (with Phil Nanson). She started writing fantasy in her teens, inspired by Tolkien, Dumas and Mallory. She is the author of two novels, Living with Ghosts (DAW 2009), which won the 2010 Sydney J Bounds Award, was shortlisted for the William L Crawford Award and made the Tiptree Award Honours’ List; and The Grass King’s Concubine (DAW 2012).]

The Alchemy Book of Ancient Wonders is available in paperback and ebook formats from multiple retailers - see the anthology page here for linky links!    

Ancient Wonders: Lynn M. Cochrane

Under the Ancient Wonders interview spotlight today we have the very fine and funky Lynn M. Cochrane!

Tell us a little about yourself, and what you like to write? 

Challenged to describe myself in three words, I answered, "Orange headed barrel". Now you'll recognise me anywhere (oh, and it has worked!). To quote my Scottish grandmother, I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth, though I will admit to having both children and grandchildren. I prefer to write words. They often turn up as poems but they also appear as stories, usually hovering in the intersection of science fiction, fantasy and horror. Sometimes, the poems have tunes attached. Maybe they should be called songs. I'm a member of Yardley Baptist Church in Birmingham where I serve as Newsletter Editor and as a member of both the Worship Team and the Preaching Team – so perhaps you should add sermons to the list of things I write!

What inspired you to write “Ringfenced”? 

A photo of a standing stone, somewhere in the north-east of England, which had a ray of blue light firing straight up from its tip. Things like that burn themselves into my memory.

If the TARDIS could drop you off to any one site in its heyday, where would you go? 

Ness of Brodgar. From there I could get to the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness, possibly also Maes Howe and Skara Brae, all on Orkney. So many questions: Are they linked, other than by location? How are they linked? Were they all in use at the same time? How were they used? Would I be able to gain and give some answers?

What appeals to you most about ancient sites/landscapes?

Pass the trowel ... if only! I'm fascinated by the remnants in the ground (and anything still standing above ground) and by the puzzle of what such things and buildings were used for. I'd love to take part in archaeological explorations. Perhaps the big question is how someone from the 21st century would cope if they were dropped into the relevant point in time and space.

What do you have coming out next?

I'm always writing poems. It's almost as if they catch hold of my hands and won't let go until they've been attached to paper or the current electronic equivalent. I'm working on some short stories, a couple of which may well end up being rather longer – novellas or even novels; who knows? I also edit the showcase anthology for Cannon Hill Writers' Group, Salvo, and its new little sibling, Grapeshot.

[Lynn M Cochrane lives in the outskirts of Birmingham. She has been writing most of her life and has produced three collections of poems. She has had short stories published in convention publications and in Raw Edge, the West Midlands Arts publication. She is a member of Cannon Hill Writers’ Group, leading writing workshops from time to time.]

The Alchemy Book of Ancient Wonders is available in paperback and ebook formats from multiple retailers - see the anthology page here for linky links!    

Ancient Wonders: Anne Nicholls

And today in the Ancient Wonders interview spotlight, is the fabulous Anne Nicholls...

Tell us a little about yourself, and what you like to write? 

I love a good story: thrills, adventures, heroism, the writing of wrongs.

What inspired you to write “Dragonsbridge”? 

I wrote “Dragonsbridge” after I got back from a great little fantasy convention called Les Féeries du Bocage, held in a friendly village in rolling French countryside an hour south of Paris. We were sat next to Pierre Dubois, a famous TV presenter of all things to do with Arthurian romance, which was what I did my thesis on. And of course we were quite close to the forest of Brocéliande, which I looked up on Google Earth. Hmm, hidden valley, Celtic deities, portals to Otherworlds, and just desserts (and I don't just mean those fantastic lemon tarts you get in France!).

If the TARDIS could drop you off to any one site in its heyday, where would you go? 

If I could TARDIS into any specific place and time in history it would have to be the Library at Alexandria in time to get the scrolls out before the ravening religious nutters set fire to it. I so want to see the maps of Atlantis, talk to the scholars and curators (after all, the TARDIS has a translation and interpreting program) – and enjoy the weather after all this late, blasted snow! I could free a couple of slaves who'd be grateful as well as good cooks and go off and have wonderful lives of their own. And I'd just generally enjoy ancient academia – before coming back to now with a small but tasteful treasure trove.

What appeals to you most about ancient sites/landscapes? 

Hmm, ancient landscapes and sites. Well, all landscapes (except urban ones) are ancient. It's the colour, the exoticism, the thought that so many different peoples have lived their individual lives shaped by the great cultural sweeps of history, climate and location, that's what appeals to me. What about Florence in the time of Lorenzo? Wouldn't you just love to see the procession he organised for his betrothal, him in his gold-bedecked armour, the courtiers in their jewelled robes, the musicians and the artists before Savanarola burned their pictures? The valleys of the Pueblo Indians when they were still alive? Tahiti before cargo cults? The great greenwood that carpeted the length and breadth of England as the last ice-age retreated? Charnwood Forest when it fringed a tropic sea?

What do you have coming out next?

I'm in the throes of finishing three short stories for Alchemy Press, and a couple of novels – one historical and one a fantasy, so I'm keeping busy. In fact, at times my life feels like a Heath Robinson contraption edited by Escher. Luckily I'm enjoying the ride.

[Anne Nicholls, has had ten books published in SF and the self-help fields. Her highly acclaimed novels Mindsail and The Brooch of Azure Midnight appeared under the name of Anne Gay. For four years she was the editor of LineOne's Science Fiction Zone, which had around 140,000 readers every month. She is currently working on a YA fantasy trilogy. Anne also features in The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes.]

The Alchemy Book of Ancient Wonders is available in paperback and ebook formats from multiple retailers - see the anthology page here for linky links!    

Ancient Wonders: Adrian Cole

And let us not forget Ancient Wonders!  Today we have the excellent Adrian Cole under the spotlight...

Tell us a little about yourself, and what you like to write?

I'm a Devonian with Irish blood (County Cork) I live in Solomon Kane country and I'm a retired Business Manager now writing full time. I have a lovely wife, Judy, and two grown children, Sam and Katia; and the other woman in my life is Bella, my feisty calico cat. I write what I suppose could generally be termed imaginative fiction, if such a term could adequately cover SF, fantasy, horror, pulp, with a few crossbred bits. I have had over 20 novels published, and many short stories, since the mid-seventies. I enjoy writing old fashioned pulp stories but equally enjoy writing modern SF.

What inspired you to write “The Sound of Distant Gunfire”?

One of the ways I try to keep fit is by cycling and in North Devon we are blessed with some marvellous trackways, including an old railway line converted to a cycle path for nearly 20 miles. I've been up and down it numerous times and the countryside and unique atmosphere gave me the idea for the story, although I don't actually find the cycle path spooky – it appeals to the elemental in me. (Or perhaps that should be, the mental in me).

If the TARDIS could drop you off to any one site in its heyday, where would you go?

Machu Picchu, up in the Andes. I'd want to be disguised as a native, though, otherwise I daresay I'd be pegged out and sacrificed to the sun, or worse. I've never been there, but one day...

What appeals to you most about ancient sites/landscapes?

Like many people, I suppose, I relate to them in some kind of atavistic way. I am an outdoor person (but also, by contrast, bookish and movie-ish) and love the elements – I lived on the edge of Dartmoor as a kid and as a youngster I grew up around the Cornish landscape (mines and beaches); and I now spend a big chunk of the year in the sea (I go home for tea, of course). Much as I appreciate modern technology, I still feel moved by the ancient past. I think it is because people were closer to the earth and the elements in those days.

What do you have coming out next?

My next novel is due out in 2014 and is a science fiction book, The Shadow Academy. It is set in an alternative Britain, the action moving between Dumnonia (Devon) and Londonborough. It's about a corrupt Authority and how it abuses power, a common theme in all my stuff! There are some short stories due as well, “Nightmare on Mad Gull Island”, a booklet from Spectre Press, and “You Don't Want to Know”, which will be in Stephen Jones' third Innsmouth collection from Fedogan and Bremer, Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth – both of these are Nick Nightmare stories and there are more of his stories in the works. He's got a strong grip on my PC at the moment. And there are other various projects in hand, large and small. Watch this space!

[Adrian Cole is the author of 25 novels, beginning with The Dream Lords in the 1970s, through The Omaran Saga and the Star Requiem to the Voidal Saga in 2011. He is also the author of numerous fantasy and horror short stories, having been published in Year’s Best Fantasy and Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Forthcoming from Edge Books is the novel The Shadow Academy; he has a short story in The Worlds of Cthulhu anthology due soon from Fedogan and Bremer; and he also has a story in The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes.]

The Alchemy Book of Ancient Wonders is available in paperback and ebook formats from multiple retailers - see the anthology page here for linky links!    

Urban Mythic awesomeness

Welcome, my pretties, to the anthology of awesomeness!

Otherwise known as the who's who and what's what in the Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic!  (Final order of appearance and blurbage and other such bits to be announced at a later date!)

Urban Mythic Funky Peeps:
James Brogden – The Smith of Hockley
Joyce Chng – Dragonform Witch
Zen Cho – Fish Bowl
Graham Edwards – A Night to Forget
Jaine Fenn – Not the Territory
Christopher Golden – Under Cover of Night
Kate Griffin – An Inspector Calls
Alison Littlewood – The Song of the City
Anne Nicholls – The Seeds of a Pomegranate
Jonathan Oliver – White Horse
Mike Resnick – The Wizard of West 34th Street
Gaie Sebold – Underground
Adrian Tchaikovsky – Family Business
Ian Whates – Default Reactions

I think it's safe to say that the editorial squee can be heard from outer space... ;-)