From artists and authors to RPG line developers, Flames Rising specializes in bringing you interviews with professionals from all aspects of the fiction, gaming industry and beyond. Our mission has been to interview both creative professionals that are top names within the entire entertainment industry, as well as and up-and-coming people to watch for as they embark on their horror-ific career. We invite you to read these interviews to learn more about these talented folk, and are happy to entertain suggestions for new people to interview.

Our Interviews are listed in chronological order, with the most recent Interviews at the top (click on the “Read more…” link just below this paragraph). For an alternative means of navigation, feel free to take advantage of the search box on the left or use the Tag Cloud to find what you’re hunting for.

It is the dawn of a new age in the Multiverse. The balance of power is shifting and Agents of Artifice brings readers to the heart of a planeswalker struggle.

In Agents of Artifice, Ari Marmell re-imagines Planeswalkers, taking fans deeper than ever into the lives of the Multiverse’s most powerful beings.

In this interview Ari tells us a little about the creative process that went into the writing of Agents of Artifice and what it was like exploring the worlds of Magic: the Gathering. We also ask him about the Ravenloft serial novel Black Crusade and even get a question or two about some upcoming Dungeons & Dragons books in before we wrap things up.

We have a special treat for all you Neil Gaiman fans out there! From comic books to best-selling novels, Gaiman has wowed fans with his mythical tales and endless imagination. Now for the first time on the big screen, the animated film Coraline is set to debut in just a few weeks. Fans of The Nightmare Before Christmas will want to go see this film; Coraline has the same talented director, Henry Selick.

What is Coraline about? The film is based on a novella first published in 2002 entitled Coraline, about a young girl who avoids a warning and goes through that fateful door. Once inside, Coraline faces a world similar to her own with marked differences: her mother is no longer recognizable, the cat can talk, and the doddering old ladies Miss Spink and Miss Forcible are more than they appear. Winding through other twists and turns, you’ll watch as Coraline attempts to emerge victorious, rescuing more than just herself.

Jeff Preston has been working in the RPG industry as a freelance illustrator and concept artist for several years. His art has been featured in products released by Chaosium, Atlas Games, Catalyst Game Labs and many others.

Recently Jeff was one of the featured artists in the Halloween Horror series here at Flames Rising. Jeff has also been busy working on some of the Shroud products with the folks at One Bad Egg.

I recently had the chance to ask Jeff a few questions about his work…

David Wellington is the author of several successful horror novels, short stories and web serials. The Monster Island zombie series and 13 Bullets vampire fiction are very popular with horror fans, who can’t wait to see what happens next.

Vampire Zero, the third book featuring Laura Caxton and Jameson Arkeley was recently released. I had the chance to talk to David a bit about the story and some of his other projects.

Jaleigh Johnson’s second Forgotten Realms novel, Mistshore, opens with a letter from a grandfather to his infant granddaughter. “Someday,” the letter concludes, “you will go forth into the world and find your own adventure waiting. I want this for you, above all things, granddaughter. The world is spread out before you, and life is meant to be lived. Be well, and be happy…”

Mistshore tells the story of the granddaughter, Icelin, as she flees into Mistshore, a district of Waterdeep built upon the wreckage of sunken ships, warped planks, and violent crime. Mistshore is, as Ed Greenwood, the creator of the Forgotten Realms, says in his introduction to the book, “a corner of Waterdeep much whispered about by the fearful, who believe all manner of sinister half-sea-monsters, half-humans lurk in its sagging riggings and rotten cabins. Creatures with webbed fingers, gills hidden under high-collared robes, and sly, stealthy tentacles waiting to throttle or snatch.”

Interview by Jeremy Jones

Freelance writer Monica Valentinelli likes to play around with ideas, forms, rules, words… and just about anything else that can be thrown into a creative stew pot. She blends a love of history and philosophy with a love of dark fantasy and horror to create startling and exciting fiction and games.

“Monica possesses a genuine passion for creating and a sharply self-critical eye, both of which are essential for someone to grow as a writer,” said James Lowder, author and editor, whose most recent anthology, Worlds of Their Own was released last month. “She has lots of good ideas and the discipline to develop them in interesting, genre-expanding ways.”

Elaine Cunningham writes character-driven fantasy stories that are rich with humor, complexity, and action. She could very well be speaking of her own fiction when she describes “a satisfying story” as “both surprising and logical.”

Since 1991, Cunningham has written extensively in the Forgotten Realms, co-authored a novel with Ed Greenwood, ventured into the Star Wars Expanded Universe, and produced a steady flow of short fiction.

Interview by Jeremy Jones

Matt Forbeck writes about superheroes. And mutants. And parodic, homicidal American football players in his Blood Bowl novels. He does some Weird West, too.

In fact, there’s more than a little cowboy thrown into every thing he does. Check out the Lost Mark Trilogy for an idea of how seamlessly the Wild West and heroic fantasy can meld into something much bigger than the sum of both genres.

For the last twenty years, most of Forbeck’s work—game design, fiction, non-fiction—has in some way or another been connected to a shared world or licensed setting. He has worked with many settings from just about every possible angle—writer, editor, and developer.

A while back, Forbeck and I talked about writing in general and shared world writing in particular.

Interview by Jeremy Jones

Novelist Z. A. Recht, the author of Morningstar Strain: Plague of the Dead and Morningstar Strain: Thunder and Ashes, likes playing god in a world of shamblers (slow moving zombies), sprinters (fast-moving ones), and rotting, stinking corpses (unmoving).

“No, really,” said Recht of playing god. “If the Morningstar Strain universe actually existed, I would be the Great Spirit of it, and that’s the beauty of writing. It allows you to create and destroy entire worlds on a whim.”

“This is not just idle banter, either,” he added. “I actually mean create and destroy whole worlds.”

It doesn’t take much to get hooked by one of Recht’s novels, just a few short paragraphs or pages. His zombies, the viral by-product of the dread Morningstar Strain, are hungry for flesh and his humans are survivors with enough character and enough ammunition to live another day. Except, of course, when they get killed, eaten, or infected.

Recht and I spoke in mid-July, while he was hard at work on Survivor, his third Morningstar Strain novel due out from Permuted Press sometime in 2009.

Interview by Jeremy Jones

Writer and editor Jess Hartley had just finished the novel Exalted: In Northern Twilight when she got the call from White Wolf to help write what would become the game supplement Predators.

Hartley will tell you that she got the gaming gig because she knew werewolves from the as of yet-unpublished novel she’d been hired to write. But, certainly, it had as much to do with her clear, straightforward prose, her professionalism, and her eye for evil.

Since White Wolf’s invitation, Hartley’s continued to diversify, writing fiction, developing and editing games, and doing magazine work.

Interview by Jeremy Jones

Flames Rising is proud to bring you an exclusive interview with Tad Stones, a veteran in the animation industry and long-time Hellboy fan. Tad worked as a producer and as a writer on the popular Animated Hellboy series; breathing life into “Big Red” on the small screen.

In this interview, Tad talks to us about his experiences working on the Animated Hellboy films Sword of Storms and Blood and Iron, how he met Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and a few, other surprises.

Interview by Monica Valentinelli

The Dictionary of Mu, a pulp setting for The Sorceror RPG, was published in 2006 and became and instant hit among the indie games community for its blending of pulp, horror, low-fantasy and science fiction.

I recently contacted author and game designer Judd Karlman about the Dictionary, and he graciously agreed to answer my questions about this unique and imaginative book.

-Interview by Michael Erb

So, what is “steampunk”?

“Cool stuff, rich language, invented – reinvented — science,” says James Blaylock, a pioneer of steampunk and author of the novel, Lord Kevlin’s Machine. “Steampunk [a sub-genre of science fiction] offers a great deal of what is most flamboyantly, eccentrically, visually, and adventurously interesting about the Victorian era and its curious scientific hopes and speculations.”

The recently-released anthology Steampunk, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, clatters and clinks with gadgets, airships, and forty-foot tall steam-powered men. The thirteen stories and novel excerpts contained in this collection are enhanced by a preface, an introduction, and two essays.

The editors themselves are no strangers to strange fiction. Ann VanderMeer is an editor for Weird Tales and Jeff VanderMeer is the World Fantasy Award-winning author of Shriek: an Afterword as well as a collection of linked stories, City of Saints and Madmen, both set in the imaginary world of Ambergris.

Interview by Jeremy Jones

David Drake’s fiction has always been dark. His combat experiences in Vietnam made his fiction even darker and, in many ways, more honest and more horrifying. Earlier this summer Night Shade Books released the paperback edition of a collection of Drake’s “weird and fantastic” stories, Balefires.

The collection is rich with generous commentary from the author and a variety of fantasy, science fiction and horror stories. Shortly after the hardback release, Mr. Drake and I discussed writing and his experiences in Vietnam for an interview that ran in The New York Review of Science Fiction. What follows grew out of that larger conversation.

Interview by Jeremy Jones

The dead are walking and hungry for brains. Shutter the windows, barricade the door and load your shotgun.

Oh, and this round draw three and play two.

“Zombie Fluxx,” a card game from the appropriately-named Looney Labs, is based off the popular and zany “Fluxx,” an ever changing card game that begins simple and ends up insane.

“Zombie Fluxx” takes the base game one shuffling step forward, adding in iconic images from zombie and horror movies and a new kind of card to liven (pardon the pun) up the mix.

Editor James Lowder shaped Worlds of Their Own around a very simple premise: you might know the writers featured in the anthology for their franchise fiction (such as Forgotten Realms or Warhammer Fantasy), but just you wait until you read fiction set in their own worlds.

“The stories presented herein take place, as the book’s title suggests, in worlds created and controlled by the participating writers,” Lowder says in his introduction to Worlds of Their Own. “[The writers] applied their passion and their skill, and told the fantasy and SF adventure tales they wanted to tell. Sometimes their style or theme dovetails nicely with the author’s franchise work. Other times there are surprising departures. But the stories all depict worlds for which the original author has final say, a fact that places the burden for each work’s success or failure squarely on the shoulders of that author.”

Chuck Wendig has contributed to over sixty books for White Wolf Game Studios. His short fiction has infiltrated Whispers From the Shattered Forum, Not One of Us, and an upcoming Carnifex Press anthology.

In this interview Chuck tells us about how got his start at White Wolf Game Studios. He also tells us a bit about working on the previous World of Darkness, Requiem for Rome and, of course, Hunter: the Vigil.

12 to Midnight publishes modern horror roleplaying games and accessories.

In this interview Ed Wetterman and Preston DuBose take us on a tour of Pinebox and then they explain a little bit about the design process that went into the new Steamworks d20 fantasy book.

We also get to hear about why 12 to Midnight likes the Savage Worlds system and get some details on the first ever Midnight Charity Project.

Flames Rising Project Manager, Monica Valentinelli, was delighted when Tad Williams agreed to an interview for Flames Rising. This interview gave Monica the chance to ask Tad “the” burning questions she’s always wondered about. Monica has reviewed a few of Tad William’s books for Flames, you can read her Shadowplay review and her War of the Flowers Review.

Tad Williams opens up about his writing style, favorite villains, and his new young adult fantasy series co-authored with Deborah Beale. So sit back and read along about veteran science fiction and fantasy writer Tad Williams, in this engaging interview.