Podcast: Download (Duration: 56:22 — 51.6MB)
Kristi Charish and Rob Matheny chat with Sam Sykes, author of the critically acclaimed novel The City Stained Red, the first book in his new fantasy trilogy, Bring Down Heaven.
This episode is brought to you by The Forgotten Prince from Josh Hayes.
In book two of the Second Star series, Fighter pilot Lt. John McNeal narrowly escaped the powerful and deadly Regency and is desperately trying to come to grips with the truth about Neverland. New friendships are formed and new enemies are made as John struggles to find his place in this strange new world. They have a plan to win back their home and save their world, but there is one thing they haven’t counted on…
Rumors of a new arrival bring the Lord of Neverland back to the city and he will stop at nothing to see that his power is unchallenged. His mission is simple: find the intruder from the Otherside, erase all memory of his existence and crush the resistance for good.
The time for bedtime stories is over. The final battle for Neverland has begun.
In our Sam Sykes episode:
Kristi Charish and Rob Matheny (who some of you may recognize as our buddy from The Grim Tidings Podcast and epically awesome sound engineer) chat with Sam Sykes, author of the Aeon’s Gate Series (Pyr Books), and The City Stained Red (Hachette/Gollancz), the first book in the Bring Down Heaven Trilogy, which was released late last year. Described as fantasy with a strong helping of dark humor, violence, and chaos, it’s received some serious high praise from the SFF community. John Scalzi has weighed in on Sam’s work before saying that he “Does not wish him dead.”
In the show we talk:
- Sam’s Bring Down Heaven series
- Grimdark (and why or why not Sam’s series toe the Grimdark line)
- Privacy in the social media age
- Working with different publishers
- Fan/conference etiquette
- The scourge of Hippos
It’s obvious to see that Sykes has been heavily influenced by his mother, Diana Gabaldon, even though he is at pains to avoid mentioning this. The two clearly share personality traits in common big time (arrogance) and this comes across in the interview and not in a good way.