Seeking New Victims, I Mean, Subjects For The Interview Chair

And I’m slowly running out of interview subjects once again.

This is not, by the way, a blog post soliciting authors to email me for interviews. That happened last time and the resultant avalanche was mighty. (I literally still don’t know if I’m un-buried; I’m sure I missed emails and failed to respond to people accordingly, and if that happened, you have my apologies. I literally got many hundreds of emails, which surprised the crap out of me. I was woefully unprepared.)

What is this, then? This is me, asking you, the audience here, who you want me to interview.

I figure, hey, last week I managed to get Margaret Atwood. Any storyteller below Atwood on the Authorial Chain of Being (which is, I think, most everyone) is fair game at least for me to ask. Right? Right. Plus, this blog gets ~250k hits a month these days (which is why I’m starting to pay with blood for the privilege of someone else hosting it), so I’ve got that going for me.

So. Big picture, little picture, whatever:

What storytellers do you want to see me interview here?

They can be storytellers you love, or know, or who you think are appropriately controversial.

And don’t feel limited to just authors.

Game designers! Filmmakers! Comic folks! Transmedia practitioners!

Now, you may still be saying, “But I’m a storyteller and I want to recommend me, me, me.”

Okay, fine.

Here’s how you do it if you still want to solicit an interview at this blog.

You email me at terribleminds at gmail dot com with the following subject line:

[terribleminds-interview] Your Name + Your Project

(Meaning, duh, type out your actual name and your project name.)

I also demand a copy of whatever project you’ve got going on. E-copy or physical copy fine.

I am quite unlikely to publish interviews with self-published authors unless you have other published credentials or some manner of kick-ass sales numbers or some other success story worth talking about. I apologize for this but the majority of those emails I had to (unsuccessfully) wade through were from self-published authors. It was… not pleasant.

So, there you go.

Now, to finish up: we’ve got interviews ideally coming in from James Finn Garner, Jake Bible, Mike Underwood, and Alex Hughes. But, as noted: will still need more to carry us past the holidays and into the new year, so jump into the comments and get to recommendin’.

Oh! Another question, actually.

If you have new questions you’d like me to ask all interview subjects, toss them into the comments, too. With the new batch of interviews I’ll probably once more update my initial 10 questions.

68 comments

  • M.S. Manz

    October 26, 2012 at 4:20 AM // Reply

    I also immediately went to Neil Gaiman, but he’s pretty much everywhere already so I don’t know if another interview with him would be particularly enlightening. I’d be interested in hearing what Neil DeGrasse Tyson has to say about storytelling and its role in his work, but…

    Tad Williams

    I would really, really like to read that interview. Really.

  • Ellen M. Gregg

    October 26, 2012 at 8:44 AM // Reply

    Anne Rice (In addition to the obvious questions about her writing, questions about how she manages to put her politics “out there” to her masses of fans without alienating half of them.)
    Joss Whedon (echo echo echo echo “iko iko an nay”)
    Stephen King (Do this as a vlog/mp3, please. I think it would be beyond entertaining to see/hear the two of you “in talks.”)
    Amanda Hocking and/or Hugh Howey
    George Lucas/Steven Spielberg/James Cameron (Storytelling, world-building, etc. Might as well go big or go home, right?)
    Honey Boo Boo (kidding!)

  • Jeff Xilon

    October 26, 2012 at 10:22 AM // Reply

    OK here’s a shoty list (and yes I know there is some crossover in my categories):

    Short Story/Book Folk: Ken Liu, Tobias Buckell, Genevieve Valentine, A. Lee Martinez,

    Comics Folk: Joe Hill, Howard Chaykin, Brian K. Vaughan, Mark Waid

    And here’s a slightly different category – Audio Book Narrators.
    I’m thinking especially some of the people Audible uses and my number one recommendation is: Scott Aiello.

    That’s probably not a name most are going to recognize, but I’ve heard him read A. Lee Martinez’s “Emperor Mollusk Versus the Sinister Brain”, Genevieve Valentines’ “Mechanique” and Stanislaw Lem’s “The Cyberiad” and he’s fantastic. I think it’d be interesting to hear the perspective of someone who brings stories to life in the mode of pure storyteller. It’s quite a thing to listen to a really good audio book and realize all the characters and the narration are being brought to life by a single narrator. Of course, there are plenty of other narrator’s from Audible that would probably be good to but my personal request/nomination is Scott Aiello.

  • Kev

    October 27, 2012 at 3:12 AM // Reply

    I saw someone mention Jack McDevitt – good idea! also: F. Paul Wilson, E. E. Knight, Jim C. Hines, Kristine Kathryn Rusch…

    Moving away from books, how about the story-crafters from Guild Wars 2 at Arenanet? (they have 2 novels out based on the game, and another on the way – and the story within the game is interesting.)

  • Laura W.

    October 27, 2012 at 6:40 PM // Reply

    …If you could get an interview with literary agent Janet Reid, of Query Shark fame, that would be fantastic. And/or the Rejectionist, a great author/blogger with lots of snark.

  • James R. Tuck

    November 1, 2012 at 12:18 AM // Reply

    Chuck Muthafuckin Dixon.
    The man has written some of the best comics to hit paper.

    Brian Keene.
    Damn he’s good.

    Andrew Vachss
    If you can get Vachss I will kiss you on the mouth.

    Joe R. Lansdale.
    Cause he kicks all that ass.

    Joe Hill.
    Have you read Locke and Key?

    Kurt Busiek
    Astro City. Nuff said.

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