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Interview with Michael Sliter

Interview with Michael Sliter

Hi everyone, Petrik from Novel Notions here. Today, I’m bringing you an interview with Michael Sliter, the author behind the incredibly underrated grimdark debut: Solace Lost. You can check out my review of Solace Lost on the blog or Goodreads. If you’re a grimdark enthusiast, try to buy and read it as soon as possible. Plus, the Kindle price is currently set at a massive discount of $0.99 for a week! Now, without further ado, here is my interview with Michael Sliter!


  1. Hi, Mike! Thank you for doing this interview with me! Firstly, please tell us about yourself and your debut, Solace Lost.

Thanks for having me! So… me. I’m a workplace psychologist by day—I do things like leadership assessment and development, training, and data crunching. I love my job; it’s always something different and new. Nuclear power? I met the person who finds the uranium. Environmental science? I’ve seen endless labs where they quantify how much pollution is too much. Astronauts? I’ve worked with the guys who build the rockets. It’s pretty cool stuff.

Aside from work, which keeps me pretty busy, I have a fantastic, horse-riding psychologist wife, an amazingly hilarious little two-year-old daughter, and a couple of tiny, broken dogs (one missing an eye and one with extreme anxiety). I play racquetball whenever I can, and I own a couple of swords. When not I’m doing any of the above, I’m reading and writing!

Solace Lost is a character-driven grimdark fantasy novel. A civil war is brewing, and the novel explores the lives of four common folk—a former guardsman-turned-criminal, a handmaiden to a great lady, a Wasmer attempting to assimilate into human society, and a young innkeeper’s daughter with a gift—as they are caught up in the plotting and politicking of the powerful. Their stories end up intertwined as they struggle for survival in their own ways. I’m stealing the below from the back of the book because I’ll never be able to say it this well again:

“A story of love lost and family destroyed, of bigotry and belonging, of suffering and strength, and of religion and magic, Solace Lost grows from a character-driven tale to something grand in scale…”

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Interview with Rachel Aaron and Travis Bach

Interview with Rachel Aaron and Travis Bach

Hi everyone, TS here!  This is the first time Novel Notions is hosting an interview on a co-authored series.  Forever Fantasy Online is both the name of this LitRPG trilogy and the first book.  Its sequel, Last Bastion, was released yesterday and I have to say that the book was fantastic and an improvement over the first book (which was a fun and great read as well) in every way possible.

Rachel Aaron and Travis Bach have kindly agreed to answer a few burning questions that I have, and so let’s get right to it. 

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Interview with M. L. Wang

Interview with M. L. Wang

Hi everyone, Petrik from Novel Notions here. Today I’m bringing you an interview with M. L. Wang, the author behind Theonite series and the recently released standalone, The Sword of Kaigen. If you somehow missed it, I have read and reviewed The Sword of Kaigen with extremely high praises. To simplify my praises, The Sword of Kaigen hits a lot of new milestones for me:

  • Number one favorite self-published book.
  • Number one favorite standalone fantasy book.
  • One of my favorite books of all time
  • It’s literally the only standalone fantasy novel I would rate 6 out of 5 stars if possible.

Yes, that’s how much I loved it! You can check out my review of The Sword of Kaigen on the blog or Goodreads and I hope it will convince you to order and read it as soon as possible. Now, without further ado, here is my interview with M. L. Wang!


  1. Hi, M. L.  Wang! Thank you for doing this interview with me. Please tell us a bit about yourself, your newest book, and the main inspirations behind your work.

Thank you for having me!

I got started in self-publishing with my Theonite Series (now two books long), which combines some of my favorite genres, including magic school, alternate history, and superheroes. Growing up biracial in the weird tangle of racial tensions that make up the USA, I was always morbidly fascinated by racism, prejudice, and the mechanisms behind oppression. This gave rise to what is probably the most distinct feature of the Theonite universe: the planet’s inverted racial hierarchy, with a West African empire having dominated the globe and Europe being the most devastated of its many former colonies. Readers of Theonite, whatever their background, are intended to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.

My newest book, The Sword of Kaigen, is a military fantasy that takes place in the Japanese-inspired corner of the Theonite universe, thirteen years before the events of the main series. The Sword of Kaigen spawned from the few-sentence-long backstory I provided to explain the Matsuda family’s anti-Ranganese tendencies and to inject some WW2-esque tragedy into Duna’s history. The middle two Matsuda brothers’ names, Hiroshi and Nagasa, are extensions of that idea, implying national trauma (heavy-handed, I know, but I was in high school when I came up with it, okay? My metaphor game was in its adolescence).

In its original form, The Sword of Kaigen was a serialized story that I released to my newsletter subscribers in monthly installments beginning in 2017. When I realized that my little ‘novella’ had exceeded 100,000 words, I decided to complete the story and publish it as a proper novel. Part of the reason I got so carried away with The Sword of Kaigen was that it presented a convenient excuse to play with a lot of things that had a place in my heart but not in the already very busy Theonite series—Japanese martial arts, Chinese martial arts, complex adult characters, Buddhist and pre-Buddhist Japanese religious symbolism, big battles, and a more personal inverted history.

I’m alive to write this story because, in 1937, in a Jiangsu Province village outside Nanjing, a Japanese bullet missed my great grandmother when she bent down to get a cooking pot. Certain events in The Sword of Kaigen harken back to the Nanjing Massacre, holding true to the guiding principle behind the Theonite universe: the mile walked in another’s shoes. What if you had been on the other side? What if it had been your family?

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Interview with Justin Call

Interview with Justin Call

Hello everyone, this is TS from Novel Notions.  It gives me great pleasure to host this interview with Justin Call following the release of his fantastic debut, Master of Sorrows.  I was intrigued when I first saw the book’s tagline – what if you were destined to be a villain?  To my utter delight as I read it, I also discovered that the story had a lot of influences from classic epic fantasy, but felt different and modern with a grittier and darker tone.  It was like that breath of fresh air that carried a scent of nostalgia. 

I should not ramble any further as you can read my review for Master of Sorrows on the blog.  Our special guest had quite a lot to share with us, so let’s get the show on the road.

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Interview with Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan

Interview with Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan

Hi everyone, Petrik from Novel Notions here. Today I’m bringing you an interview with Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, the author behind the recently released debut, The Gutter Prayer. I have read and reviewed The Gutter Prayer since last year and upon finishing it, I immediately claim that it will be the best fantasy debut of 2019 and I’m sticking by my words. It was really that good if you stick through it. I decided then that I simply have to interview the author so here we are.

You can check out my review of The Gutter Prayer on the blog and I hope it will convince you to order it if you haven’t already done so. Now, without further ado, here is my interview with Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan.

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Interview with Ben Galley

Interview with Ben Galley

Hello everyone, this is Haïfa and today I have a special guest at Novel Notions. 

On the occasion of the release of his unique and dark tale of bound ghosts, unsanctioned murderers and dead gods, we are hosting Ben Galley on the blog today to chat about Chasing Graves, his inspirations, self-publishing and his future projects. After deeply enjoying Task’s original and gripping story in The Heart of Stone, and after hearing Chasing Graves, was an Egyptian mythology-inspired fantasy, I knew I had to read it as soon as possible. I’m very glad I did because Chasing Graves was atmospheric, unique and both dark and funny! I can’t wait to explore more of the Far Reaches and see what fate Ben is planning for his characters.

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Interview with Alicia Wanstall-Burke

Interview with Alicia Wanstall-Burke

Hi everyone, Petrik from Novel Notions here! Today, I’m bringing you an interview with Alicia Wanstall-Burke, the author behind the recently released debut, Blood of Heirs. Blood of Heirs is easily one of the biggest surprises of the year for me. It was a book that I decided to read simply based on instincts without knowing anything about it. If you’re still not sure about the book, you can check out my review of the book on the blog by clicking this link. Done? Yeah, suffice to say that I was deeply impressed and I highly enjoyed reading the novel. I hope my review and this interview will spark your interest to give the debut a read. Without further ado, here is my interview with Alicia Wanstall-Burke.

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Interview with Nicholas Eames

Interview with Nicholas Eames

Hi everyone, Petrik here! I won’t bother you with long introduction. Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames ended up being not only my favorite debut of last year but also one of my favorite fantasy debut of all time. I’ve read and reviewed (which is currently available on Goodreads. I will post it on the blog during the book’s publication day.) its sequel, Bloody Rose, which comes out in two weeks managed to live up to the high quality that the first book set, maybe even better! It’s one of those series where I practically became a walking advertisement for. Ever since I finished KotW last year, I knew that that it will proceed to win awards and Nicholas Eames did it. KotW won David Gemmell Morningstar Award for the best fantasy debut category and now, without further ado, here’s my interview with Nicholas Eames about his upcoming book, Bloody Rose.

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Interview with Devin Madson

Interview with Devin Madson

Hi everyone, Petrik from Novel Notions here. Today I’m bringing you an interview with Devin Madson, the author behind The Vengeance Trilogy, the Aurealis award-winning In Shadows We Fall, and the recently released We Ride the Storm. All her books completely captivated me, with We Ride the Storm being included into one of the two best indie works I’ve ever read. Right after I finished reading and reviewing her books, I decided immediately that I simply have to interview her so here we are.

 

You can check out my review of her books on the blog and I hope it will convince you to order it if you haven’t already done so. Now, without further ado, here is my interview with Devin Madson.

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