The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory – Details, episodes & analysis
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The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory
Mookie Spitz
Frequency: 1 episode/5d. Total Eps: 25

Hosted by writer and ranter Mookie Spitz, the SFFF is where science fiction & fantasy creators, fans, and technologists transform imagination into reality. Each episode explores how writers, filmmakers, and world-builders bring their universes to life, with personal stories about turning wild ideas into finished projects that connect, inspire, and thrill. From indie authors to visionary engineers, Mookie uncovers the creative engines powering the future of sci-fi & fantasy storytelling!
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C.S.E. Cooney Is Knocking on Saint Death's Doorway
Season 1 · Episode 25
mercredi 18 février 2026 • Duration 01:56:18
On this 25th episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy podcast, host Mookie Spitz sits down with C.S.E. Cooney for a lively conversation about her Saint Death series—and the living, breathing speculative-fiction community that shaped it.
Cooney is a 20+-year veteran of the genre: poetry, short fiction, audio narration, conventions, small presses, writing groups, and editorial volleys. Her career was forged inside the ecosystem that still defines serious science fiction and fantasy, and is part of the human storytelling carried by magazines, anthologies, awards, and communities rather than algorithms.
Claire maps that ecosystem from the inside:
• the enduring influence of publications like Uncanny Magazine, Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld Magazine, Apex Magazine, and Locus Magazine
• how short fiction, audio venues, and anthologies still function as talent engines
• why conventions and writing groups matter more than “networking”
• how awards like the World Fantasy Awards actually work from the judging side
Against that backdrop, Cooney breaks down her own work, especially Saint Death’s Daughter and Saint Death’s Herald—as an argument against fantasy’s tropes and baseline assumptions. Her protagonist, Lanie Stones, can't solve problems through violence. Instead, the books explore death as labor, power as responsibility, disability as a permanent condition, and morality under pressure.
Claire also lays out her approach to writing, bluntly and without sentimentality:
• voice and character come before plot
• revision is where the real writing happens
• joy is central optional, and a survival strategy
• community sustains careers, not lone genius myths
• lowering expectations (not raising them) can unlock productivity
• the sentence has to sound right—mouthfeel matters
The conversation expands further into publishing realities, burnout, editorial battles worth fighting, and Cooney’s unfiltered critique of generative AI as a threat to already-fragile magazines, and as a cultural shortcut that undermines the struggle at the heart of art.
Mookie and Claire's chat is less about selling a book and more about how science fiction and fantasy actually function as a culture—who carries it forward, how writers grow inside it, and why the field still matters.
The Guest
C. S. E. Cooney (she/her) is a two-time World Fantasy Award-winning author: for novel Saint Death’s Daughter, and collection Bone Swans, Stories. Other work includes Saint Death’s Herald (second in the Saint Death Series), The Twice-Drowned Saint, Dark Breakers, and Desdemona and the Deep. As a voice actor and proud member of SAG-AFTRA, Cooney has narrated over 130 audiobooks, as well as short fiction for podcasts like Uncanny Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Tales to Terrify, and Podcastle. In March 2023, she produced her collaborative sci-fi musical, Ballads from a Distant Star, at New York City’s Arts on Site. With her husband, writer and game-designer Carlos Hernandez, she co-designed a GM-less TTRPG called, Negocios Infernales, Find her website and Substack newlsetter via her Linktree or try “csecooney” on various social media platforms.
A.C. Wise Sings the Ballad of the Bone Road: Criticism & Craft from Haunted Cities
Season 1 · Episode 24
vendredi 6 février 2026 • Duration 01:06:56
Mookie Spitz welcomes A.C. Wise to the 24th episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory: a Canadian-born, award-winning speculative writer, and one of the most incisive critics across genre circles. Wise boldly crosses boundaries between science fiction, fantasy, and horror, and her decades-long career has explored them from both sides of the page as creator and critic.
Mookie and Alison chat about her work as an author of novels like Wendy, Darling and Hooked — quirky, character-driven stories that reveal trauma, identity, and belonging through fantastical lenses, written alongside her celebrated short fiction such as those in The Ghost Sequences collection, where ghosts, monsters, and eerie impossible moments become mirrors for alienation and self-discovery.
Alison's prolific contributions to creative writing and literary criticism have sharpened her discerning eye, making her an even more insightful author and reviewer. From Apex Magazine to Locus, A.C. brings dedication, empathy, and rigor to all her pursuits as she constantly asks herself and her readers: whose story is being told, who gets to tell it, and what does that choice reveal about us?
Their lively conversation explores:
- Her philosophy of criticism as a creative discipline, not just a thumbs-up / downswing based on her own subjective tastes.
- How themes of alienation, memory, and self-discovery thread through her characters: from haunted cityscapes to fractured identities.
- The mutual influence between her reviewing and her own storytelling, and how criticism sharpens her empathy, craft, and lived experiences.
- Why atmosphere and character matter more than spectacle, and why good speculative fiction inhabits moody worlds with complex characters.
- Exploration of the bleak, the melancholic, the unresolved, and why those states are where the most compelling drama emerges.
Alison goes beyond writing as merely a craft, and treats storytelling as a way of better understanding the world and ourselves, and of questioning what others overlook. Mookie wholeheartedly agrees: the true power of speculative fiction resides in exposing the flaws, the pain, and the very human hope that by telling these tales we might discover things we've somehow known and felt all along.
The Guest
A.C. Wise is the author of the numerous novels and novellas, and over a hundred short stories. Her work has won the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, and has been a finalist for the Nebula Awards, Stoker, World Fantasy, Locus, British Fantasy, Aurora, Lambda, and Ignyte Awards. In addition to her fiction, she contributes a review column to Apex Magazine.
Her Website: https://acwise.net/
Voicing the Infiniverse: A Cornish Poet Becomes the Spider Genius
Season 1 · Episode 15
mercredi 17 décembre 2025 • Duration 57:17
Out on the Science Fiction & Fantasy Factor floor is Cornish poet and performer Bert Biscoe, who voices two sections from Jonnie Fazoolie and the Transfinite Reality Engine audiobook as a teaser reel.
The first reading shares the infinitale of Kreo Bonsai, a sardonic, alien spider scientist who has built the Jar—the ultimate simulation machine that instantiates every possible universe, one Planck-second at a time. As Kreo marvels over how his Jar works, we hear how he also endures abuse by bureaucrats, scientists, and rich fools, and how he uses cynicism and laziness to avoid both responsibility and love. His monologue is interrupted when the Jar is hacked by Alice Void, the avatar of a transcendent being who proves its power by deleting entire universes mid-sentence while looping a taunting message: solve her riddles, or watch all of Reality vanish.
The second reading jumps to later in the novel, when Agency executives arrive with military escorts, multidimensional admirals argue with bureaucrats and scientists over control, and an inter-universal civil war ignites around them Two-dimensional warships fold into three-dimensional weapons, universes blink out of existence, and various alien species wrangle for control of the Jar, as the fate of the Infiniverse rests with an anthropomorphic alien spider who just wants everyone to go away and leave him alone.
Throughout both sections, Biscoe’s Cornish cadence—wry, grounded, irreverent, and unmistakably human—adds grit and humor to the cosmic scale, turning dense ideas about infinity, power, and annihilation into something immediate, sharp, and enticingly intimate. These excerpts aren’t just a sample of the story, they’re a lively and lovely demonstration of how voice and text lock together in the entertaining audiobook to come...
The Voice
Bert Biscoe is a Cornish poet, songwriter, local historian, playwright, and former Mayor of Truro, best known for his work rooted in Cornish identity, language, politics, and cultural activism. A bard of the Cornish Gorsedh with the bardic name Viajor Gans Geryow, he has published several books of verse and prose — including Maudlin’ Pilgrimage, Rebecca (1996), The Dance of the Cornish Air (1996), At a Wedding with Yeats in Turin (2003), Trurra (winner of a Waterstones award at the Holyer an Gof Publishers’ Awards 2012), Words of Granite, On Yer Trolley: Poems Made During Complete Bed Rest! (2008), and White Crusted Eyes: Tales of Par (2009) — and performs widely across Cornwall. A long-time independent councillor on Cornwall Council and later Truro City Council, he’s also chaired local heritage groups, written on Cornish history, and regularly performs poetry and songs that blend local political commentary with folk tradition.
The Novel
Jonnie Fazoolie & the Transfinite Reality Engine was published this June, with the audiobook featuring Bert Biscoe and other voices, available soon.
Phasers Set to Snark: Warp-Speed Smartassery
Season 1 · Episode 14
dimanche 14 décembre 2025 • Duration 01:30:41
What happens when two Gen-X science-fiction lifers turn on the mic, set themselves loose, and argue about everything?
You get the 14th episode of SFFF.
Host Mookie Spitz welcomes longtime friend and fellow sci-fi heretic Lee Kantz for a sprawling, sharp-tongued, no-sacred-cows conversation that tears through Star Trek, Star Wars, Spielberg, Nolan, AI, wokeness, anti-wokeness, bad writing, great ideas, worse dialogue, and the slow death of subtlety in modern science fiction
A rant sampling:
- “Steven Spielberg has mastered the art of turning existential horror into a feel-good ending. He's the master spectacle merchant, but with a Hallmark greeting card soul."
- "Star Trek: The Next Generation was so stiff and super woke that it made me emotionally limp. Every time Riker launched into a monologue, I wanted to shout, ‘Shut the hell up!'"
- “Gene Roddenberry thought the future would be conflict-free, which is a great way to kill drama. Wasn't until Deep Space Nine fixed Star Trek by reintroducing misery.”
- “Christopher Nolan thinks explaining things louder makes them smarter. If someone in a Nolan movie reaches for a cup of coffee, Hans Zimmer detonates the orchestra.”
- “The Matrix worked because Neo didn’t know what the hell was going on—and neither did we. Then the sequels begged the question: 'Who gives a shit about Zion’s zoning committee?'"
- “Great ideas don’t excuse terrible writing. Looking at you, Philip K. Dick. And Arthur C. Clarke? He had a galaxy-sized brain and amazing imagination, yet his prose was the style of an instruction manual.”
- “Science fiction has always been political. Pretending otherwise just means you weren’t paying attention. We live in a science-fiction world now. Unfortunately, the writing is sloppy.”
If you want polite takes, this is not your show.
If you want two smart people arguing in good faith while lighting sacred genre icons on fire—welcome to the Factory. Warning: contains opinions, heresy, and the radical idea that storytelling still matters.
The Guest
Lee Kantz is Mookie Spitz's high school friend and fellow science fiction raving fan and critical maniac. Together they get to let loose their opinions, including Lee's love of all things Deep Space Nine, and Mookie's visceral hatred of string theory, world building for its own sake, and all the gratuitous pizza delivery in Stephenson's Snow Crash.
Virtual Rebel J.Z. Pitts Unwraps His Christmas Demons
Season 1 · Episode 13
mardi 25 novembre 2025 • Duration 01:11:47
J.Z. Pitts doesn’t posture, pretend, or pose behind “author brand” theatrics. He comes on the Factory floor to pod with Mookie Spitz, where they tell the truth about what it costs to write, to fail, to get back up, and to self-publish when the world is drowning in content and nobody’s handing out golden tickets.
In this episode, Pitts walks us through Virtual Rebel, his YA sci-fi novel about a teenage girl fighting through a virtual-reality dystopia: equal parts Ready Player One, coming-of-age, and “wake the hell up” critique of soft, digital tyranny. He breaks down how Ava, his protagonist, isn’t some chosen-one cliché; she’s a kid who has to decide whether freedom is worth wrecking her own comfort. And yes, the parallels to our dopamine-addled online lives are intentional, all while he stubbornly refuses to preach.
Pitts and Spitz then go dark and human with The Christmas Demon, his Bavarian-Alps novella born out of a brutal period in his own life. Pitts lays out how the story started as pure character work, riddled with addiction, grief, marital implosion before he realized he could thread it all through the mythology of Krampus himself. Not the goofy, Loki-lite version—Pitts went full folklore demon. He talks craft: tension that suffocates one paragraph at a time, horror that hides in the walls until you can’t ignore it, and the payoff that only works when the characters’ internal fractures are already cracking.
They also get real about the indie grind: the disappointment after a launch that doesn’t match the fantasy, the predatory swamp of “book marketing services,” the Amazon ads treadmill, the endless content burden, and the emotional crash no one warns new authors about. Pitts doesn’t sugarcoat it, as he tried all the tricks, learned what was bullshit, and landed where real writers land and kept going, is writing the next book, building community, and not chasing Hugh Howey’s ghost.
By the end, Pitts and Spitz are knee-deep in the raw stuff: why we write, why stories matter, why characters eventually grab the steering wheel, and why holding your own printed book is a quiet, defiant middle finger to a world obsessed with metrics.
The conversation is indie authorhood without the Instagram filter, a bruised, determined, funny, anxious, honest, and absolutely worth hearing exchange between two writers with heart, grit, and tons of imagination.
The Guest
J.Z. Pitts crafts stories where hope and danger walk hand in hand. In Virtual Rebel, the fight for freedom begins in a world too eager to give it up. In The Christmas Demon, survival means facing the darkness outside—and within.
His Info
The Astrophysicist Who Loves Space Operas
Season 1 · Episode 12
dimanche 23 novembre 2025 • Duration 01:12:13
The twelfth episode of the SFFF features Mookie chatting up the genre with Princeton astrophysics grad student turned tech consultant Ed Powell, where they immediately launch into hard science, bad science, and unraveling state of a genre that used to dream big and think smart.
Ed walks in with his PhD, his plasma-physics past, and his lifelong obsession with Clarke and Asimov. He remembers buying The Sands of Mars on the Jersey shore; Mookie counters with his own gateway drug, Asimov’s nonfiction. From there, the two discuss the difference between "hard" sci-fi grounded in real physics, the "space opera" where the tech is mere geeky atmospherics and moody backdrop.
They bring up Her, Alita, Terminator, the whole spectrum — as the conversation widens into deep space and deeper cynicism. Mookie shares the Dark Forest hypothesis, Hawking’s worry about SETI, humanity’s tendency to destroy anything it finds — including itself — and the depressing likelihood that our species wouldn’t handle first contact any better than we’ve handled anything else. Ed agrees, and offers the planetary-colonizer version: every advanced civilization in human history used its tech advantage to crush someone weaker. Why would aliens be different? Why would we be?
From there you both tear into Hollywood’s relationship with science — the good, the bad, and the bloviating. Apollo 13 gets credit for its engineering accuracy and slapped for its cinematic liberties. The Martian gets praise for its cleverness and a punch to the throat for that idiotic Iron Man scene the studio couldn’t resist. 2001, Forbidden Planet, Silent Running, the golden era they both grew up on.
They cover aliens, AI, spaceflight, bad editors, good engineering, nostalgia, disappointment, hope, fear, quantum brains, audiobooks, collapsed attention spans, and how most modern sci-fi publishing these days has the structural integrity of a flimsy 50s movie set, but without the old school charm and nostalgia. Where have all the good sci-fi times gone? Perhaps indie authors are the spark!
The Guest
Ed Powell received his PhD in Astrophysics (Plasma Physics and Controlled Thermonuclear Fusion) from Princeton University and has worked as a contractor for the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, and the Intelligence Community since graduating. Today he owns his own consulting company specializing in systems and simulation architecture and engineering.
Robert Reif Debuts Frontier One
Season 1 · Episode 11
mercredi 19 novembre 2025 • Duration 01:01:06
This episode of the SFFF drops you straight onto the factory floor with Robert Reif, the Zoomer indie author who somehow writes like a pulp-era wanderer inebriated on optimism. His debut novel, Frontier One, feels like Tarzan meets Sally Ride, wrapped in that old-school, high-adventure energy that so much of science fiction abandoned when it got moody, preachy, and self-righteous.
Robert riffs about Charlie, the jungle-raised flat-world himbo who treats the sky like a ceiling; Talina, the astro-zoologist who drags him into the cosmos and immediately questions every life choice; and the 12-world star system loaded with giant bugs, Cold War moons, and a rogue planet firing off creepy signals. Reif drives the action through character collisions: Charlie crushes, Talina blocks, the crew bickers, and every twist comes from real human choices, not world-building geekery.
The new novel hums with pulpy momentum, the kind a Gen Z author has no business writing but pulls it off anyway. We tear through the plot without spoiling the bigger beats: oxygen-jacked megafauna, inter-moon political brinksmanship, relationship friction, philosophical clashes, and a complex solar system poised for the sequels. Along the way, their conversation takes the scenic route through everything sci-fi fans love to talk about:
- Retro futurism vs. hard-science spreadsheet fiction
- Star Trek optimism vs. Star Wars myth-making
- The Expanse’s appeal
- Why most writers drown their books in lore instead of story
- Why Reif writes like he grew up in 1957 instead of 1997
- Space exploration rants with real heat—Artemis, Mars delusions, lunar sanity
- Why science fiction refuses to die in a world allergic to truth
Meet a new author who rejects nihilism and writes with actual wonder, and loves to talk classic sci-fi, real space exploration, while offering a preview of his expanding 12-world universe. Grab a copy, settle in, and leave him a stellar review.
The Guest
Robert T. Reif is an American science fiction writer, filmmaker, world adventurer and amateur astronomer. He was born in New York City, raised between New York and Connecticut, and studied at Sarah Lawrence College. While writing, he worked behind the scenes on documentaries, commercials and television productions. Frontier One is his first novel.
Rare Earth Elegance with Lou Iovino
Season 1 · Episode 10
mercredi 19 novembre 2025 • Duration 01:34:45
Mookie gets chatty with speculative-fiction author Lou Iovino about the long, uneven road to becoming a working writer. Lou shares how his creative life started in comics through co-authoring a ten-issue graphic novel on his commute to Manhattan, hiring artists out of pocket, and learning the discipline of concise storytelling and crisp dialogue.
That foundation carried Lou into screenwriting and eventually novels. He explains why he didn’t chase traditional publishing at first, how Hugh Howey’s indie success shifted his thinking, and why hiring a professional book editor and cover artist was non-negotiable to reach the widest possible audience.
Lou walks through the ideas behind his books, from Earth’s rotation suddenly stopping to a future shaped by data harvesting, privacy battles, or rare-earth scarcity. He explains how these “what if” questions and frequent focus on technology somehow stopping anchor his stories in real-world concerns, those of science versus faith, technology versus autonomy, and the cost of progress.
Highlights and Best Practices
- letting life “get in the way” until you finally force yourself to start
- how comics and screenwriting sharpen your instincts before you ever attempt a novel
- how different writers manage structure—Lou’s index-card blueprints versus Mookie’s improvisational sprints
- the quiet, private definition of success that has to come before any external recognition
- how world-building can serve a story without strangling it
- and the strange mechanics of finding an audience when you’re publishing on your own
He also shares how to find time when you have none, finish projects that feel too big, and navigate the tension between writing for yourself and writing for readers. Whether you’re a working writer, an aspiring one, or just someone curious about how stories actually get made, this episode offers an honest look behind the scenes of science fiction creativity.
The Guest
Lou Iovino’s debut novel SKYBOUND was named a Kirkus Reviews Indie Book of the Year in 2021 and praised for its emotional resonance and cinematic scope. His follow-up, the sci-fi thriller DATA MINE, dives into the darker corners of digital surveillance, political power, and the choices that shape identity. Lou also co-authored the original graphic novel THE LAST WEST and has contributed to several comic book titles for Zenescope Entertainment. His hour-long television pilot COASTLINERS won the 2016 Set in Philadelphia TV Prime Time Award.
Outside of fiction, Lou has spent over two decades working in advertising and currently serves as an executive at one of the world’s largest global agencies. He teaches advertising at Villanova University and has also taught writing and literature at Rutgers and Temple Universities, bringing a deep understanding of narrative craft and audience connection to his work. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and two grown sons.
Blake & Sherry Shimshock Rock the Derek Fade Series
Season 1 · Episode 9
samedi 15 novembre 2025 • Duration 01:04:35
Mookie is thrilled to chat with Blake and Sherry Shimshock, the husband-and-wife team behind the Chronicles of Derek Fade: a fast-paced sci-fi adventure series that fuses James Bond swagger, Star Wars style, and Firefly heart.
Their partnership echoes the creative chemistry of The Expanse’s Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck: Blake provides the action, imagination, and cinematic energy of a screenwriter, while Sherry crafts the emotional core, depth, and prose that make the characters human. Together, they reveal how two opposite creative temperaments—his extroverted vision and her disciplined storytelling—fuse into one seamless voice.
Their conversation explores:
- How their collaboration began with a single “sick day” that changed everything
- The delicate balance of ego, trust, and artistic control in co-authorship
- Their philosophy on character-driven science fiction in an era obsessed with “hard” tech and worldbuilding for worldbuilding's sake
- How their main protagonist Derek Fade evolved into a rogue Galactic Intelligence Agent torn between justice and revenge
- What it takes to keep a creative marriage alive, and a sprawling galactic saga coherent and compelling
- How their creative collaboration further fuels their off-page relationship, and what that's meant over the years
They also dive into nostalgia for Space: 1999 and the pulp adventures that shaped them, trading indie publishing war stories, book cover secrets, and marketing lessons learned along the way. If you’ve ever dreamed of writing a series, building your own fictional galaxy, or finding a creative partner who shares your madness and work ethic, this episode delivers the blueprint with humor, heart, and honesty.
The Guests
Blake and Sherry Shimshock are the interstellar storytellers behind the Firebird Award winning Chronicles of Derek Fade: The Hunt for Valdune, introducing readers to Senior Agent Derek Fade, whose quest for justice spirals into a galaxy-spanning vendetta. The sequel, The Edge of the Abyss, delves deeper into Fade's turmoil, blending action with emotional depth. Together, the novels challenge readers to question the boundaries of duty and vengeance.
Blake is a lifelong enthusiast of science fiction literature and films who spent much of his childhood creating wild stories and sketching elaborate scenes of faraway worlds in his schoolbooks (much to the frustration of his teachers). He also loved hanging out at the theaters where his dad was a projectionist and chasing around his hometown of Riverside, California making short films with friends using an 8-millimeter movie camera.
Sherry Brass grew up an insatiable reader, enamored with the power of language thanks to such trailblazing classical writers as Charles Dickens and George Eliot, along with the inspiring work of children's writers such as Madeleine L'Engle. When her nose was not in a book, Sherry was known to pen her own stories and coerce her friends into helping her act them out using her cool super 8 millimeter movie camera.
Inevitably, their paths would cross. Blake and Sherry met in college and connected over their mutual love of storytelling. Today, the Shimshocks enjoy sitting around over a cup of tea on a Sunday morning (or a glass of wine on a Saturday night) bouncing around story ideas, diagramming plots, and deliberating character motivations. Together they make childhood dreams come true as they bring the huge fictional universe Blake always imagined to life.
Nathan J Pearce Launches Faith Faraday & the Cyber Samurai
Season 1 · Episode 8
lundi 3 novembre 2025 • Duration 03:02:19
The engines of creativity are humming, the publishing lights are flickering, and an electrifying story just streamed off the line. On this launch-day episode of The Science Fiction Factory, host Mookie Spitz welcomes indie author Nathan J. Pearce, whose debut cyberpunk thriller Faith Faraday and the Cyber Samurai hits screens and shelves today!
Set in 2076 Tokyo, the book follows Faith Faraday, a daemon hunter chasing rogue AIs that masquerade as digital ghosts. Think Men in Black for machine intelligence—Blade Runner grit colliding with Gilmore Girls wit. Faith is part Batman, part Kim Possible, part existential therapy session. Pearce calls her a “self-insert with better hair and bigger guts,” and he’s on point.
Mookie and Nathan explore how to write and flourish in the indie trenches:
- The Birth of Faith: How one character obsession evolved into a full-blown cyberpunk universe over four years.
- Deception vs. Sentience: Why the Turing Test is a #fail and why true AI stories start with emotion, not code.
- Character-First Fiction: The danger of world-building yourself into distraction—and how to keep readers caring.
- Cultural Authenticity: Writing future Japan with respect, reality, and lived experience.
- Research as Worship: Three hours on neutrinos for two paragraphs, and why it’s worth it.
- The Indie Reality Check: Why self-publishing means doing everything—from cover design and blurbs to nagging for reviews and outsmarting Amazon’s black box.
- Creative Control as Currency: Why immediate freedom, not eventual fame, is the payoff for going indie—and why that’s enough (until the Netflix miniseries).
- Loving Your Own Work: How to finally drop the self-doubt and admit, out loud, “My new novel is awwwwwwwesome!"
They discuss how to fund a launch, build an audience, and make peace with algorithms that couldn’t care less about art. Their chat is raw, funny, and unfiltered about building worlds, building characters, and building as an independent creator.
Today is the day Faith Faraday comes online, and with her the future of indie sci-fi!
The Author
After photojournalism school, Nathan J. Pearce spent a year in Tokyo teaching conversational English. The people, the country, and the culture gave him a fresh perspective on his home country of the United States. Inspired by books like Shogun, Ender's Game, WOOL and Snowcrash, Nathan is eager to share his unique perspective with his readers.
The Novel
In 2076, a revolutionary AI elevates Japan as the world’s only technological mega-power. Samu, the Empress’s ‘Restorative AI’, leads a tech renaissance inventing quantum fusion, practical quantum computing, and a faster-than-light drive, promising a Japan-first colonization of the stars. That promise is broken when the colony ship explodes on launch, killing all aboard, including Hope Faraday.
Now it’s up to her twin sister Faith, a half-Danish, half-Japanese Daemon Hunter trained to detect and neutralize rogue AIs, to find out why. She infiltrates The Hollow, Japan’s research and development bunker deep inside Mt. Fuji, and she’s not coming out without answers. With her sentient AI, Grace, in her ear and her loyal utility bot, Chip, by her side, from tea ceremonies with mysterious cyber Geisha to horseback archery contests at the Empress's birthday celebration, Faith must prove herself ‘Japanese enough’ to uncover the truth.
Home: https://www.faithfaraday.com/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FXP37XVR




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