Hope that everyone enjoyed the first set of mini interviews on Wednesday! Continuing with the first week of Boskone 57 ‘s mini interviews is Cat Scully, Grady Hendrix, and Dana Cameron! See who wrote another haiku about Boston’s snow, who wants you to talk about killer animals them, and who fell in love with Boskone at their first convention last year!

Cat Scully

Cat Scully is the author-illustrator of JENNIFER STRANGE, out next July 2019 with Haverhill House Publishing. She has illustrated more than thirty world maps for clients like Penguin-Random House, Scholastic, Simon and Schuster, and Sourcebooks.

Visit Cat on their Facebook, Twitter, or website.

What is it about Boskone that makes this the convention you choose to attend each year?

Or if this is your first Boskone, what attracted you most to Boskone this year?

I loved attending my first Boskone last year and speaking on some fantastic art panels. After one of the panels, I was approached to work in game development working with a fantastic team on an unannounced title. After some pitches and artist tests, I landed the role I work in now. I absolutely wanted to come back to Boskone after that experience

What topics are you most looking forward to talking about at Boskone?

My book Jennifer Strange, which is part comic and part novel, comes out later this year. I’d love to be on both some writing panels and art panels talking about what it’s like to work as both writer and artist on a project, designing my own book cover and what that was like, what it’s like to work in video games as a designer, and how to write scripts (I’ve written scripts for animation, commercials, and now I assist with video game writing)

Looking back, what was the first piece of work (whether it be from literature, cinema, art, music, video game, toy, or whatever it may be) that first made you love science-fiction and fantasy?

It was Bruce Coville’s Into the Land of the Unicorns series. I read that book until it fell apart. I loved the idea of a family legacy, a secret world of fantasy only reachable by taking a leap of faith from atop a clock tower. The moment with science-fiction for me was the Matrix – I still love the idea of philosophical science fiction, the chosen one stories, and imagined technological futures and how far we might go to explore technology without considering the consequences.

What was your first book event or literary convention? Tell us about it! Perhaps you even have a photo to share?

Dragon Con was my first. I participated in the parade, dressed up as Death from Sandman, and was particularly inspired by all the writers on panels I met as well as the artists selling prints at their booths. Almost ten years later, I made it into the Dragon Con art show (last year) and felt tremendously proud to be standing alongside the artists I met long ago as a fellow professional. The picture I included is of me dressed as the new design for Wonder Woman taken by the late comic artist Jeremy Dale, who passed a few years ago. He was the first artists I ever commissioned for a piece and really encouraged me to get serious about my art. He’s one of the people who I feel like I owe my career to.

What will you be working on in 2020? Any new releases or dates that fans should be looking forward to hearing about?

Jennifer Strange releases July 21, 2020 at this year’s Necon, which is taking place in Salem, MA this year! I’m tremendously excited to be sharing my debut book.

If you could bring any object or device into the real world from fiction or film, and it would work perfectly, what would you choose? Why would you choose that item?

An Alethiometer from the Golden Compass books by Phillip Pullman. I’d love to have a symbolic truth-teller in my pocket to guide me wherever I go.

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Grady Hendrix

Grady Hendrix is the award-winning author of the novels Horrorstor, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, and We Sold Our Souls. He’s also the author of Paperbacks from Hell, a history of the horror paperback boom of the 70’s and 80’s, as well as the screenwriter of Mohawk and Satanic Panic.

Visit Grady on their Facebook,  Twitter, or website.

What topics are you most looking forward to talking about at Boskone?

I’m really hoping someone needs to have a conversation about killer animals. I feel like it’s a forgotten genre in horror but there used to be so many of them and they’re so great. Please, someone talk to me about killer animals???

If you could be a fly on the wall during any scene or event in literature of film, which scene would it be and why?

I’m assuming by “fly” you mean some kind of horrible Cronenbergian half-human, half-fly creature like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly only way less attractive. In that case, I’d love to be a “fly” clinging to the wall during the Christmas feast in Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny & Alexander. The food always looks delicious and I’d have a really ungainly body and could only cling to the wall for so long before my horrible appendages gave out, sending me crashing into the middle of the table, flopping around in the delicious dinner, dissolving it with my own vomit and then lapping it up like a fly. The thought of these appalled, well-mannered Swedes looking on and trying not to faint sounds like Christmas magic to me.

Looking back, what was the first piece of work (whether it be from literature, cinema, art, music, video game, toy, or whatever it may be) that first made you love science-fiction and fantasy?

“Are You My Mother?” was a children’s book about a lost, and slightly stupid bird whose mother was seemingly replaced by a variety of unlikely objects. It taught me the true meaning of terror.

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Dana Cameron

Dana Cameron writes across many genres, but mostly crime fiction and urban fantasy in every possible form. Dana’s work has won multiple Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity Awards, and has been nominated for the Edgar Award. Her six Emma Fielding archaeology mysteries were optioned by Muse Entertainment, and the first, Site Unseen, was made into a movie for the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries Channel. Dana will be one of the Writer Guests of Honor at Necon this July, and when she’s not traveling or visiting museums, she’s usually yelling at the TV about historical inaccuracies.

Visit Dana on their Facebook, Twitter or website.

What is it about Boskone that makes this the convention you choose to attend each year?

Or if this is your first Boskone, what attracted you most to Boskone this year?

Boskone is constantly evolving and improving. The organizers work like demons to make the panels and other events diverse and inclusive, and I’m always certain to find new authors I need to know about!

Bonus: Up for a challenge? Give us a haiku or limerick about Boskone!

Spec fic on the wharf/ Gray harbor and wintry skies/ Boskone brings blizzards.

Authors: Fans often ask authors to talk about their favorite main characters, but what about the side characters? Who is one of your favorite sidekicks or secondary/tertiary characters who have had a lesser role in your work?

Artists: Fans love looking at the portfolio of artwork and asking artists about some of their most well known images. Which of your images, that receives less attention from fans, do you hold dear? What is it about the creation of that piece that makes it so special for you?

Filkers: Listeners often know your most popular music. Which of your other, less well-known songs, affects you deeply? What is it about that song that speaks to your creative spirit?

I think my favorite side character is Gerry Steuben, who is an ex-cop PI. He’s a werewolf and one of the Fangborn, a family of supernatural creatures who protect humanity.He was the main character in “The Night Things Changed,” which was my first Fangborn short story, which was published in WOLFSBANE AND MISTLETOE (Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner were the editors). It was my first urban fantasy story, and I had so much fun with Gerry that I wrote a flock more short stories about the Fangborn, which eventually led me to writing my three novels set in that ‘verse. Zoe Miller, an archaeologist and werewolf, is the protagonist there, and what I like is Gerry has always so certain about the Fangborn and what they do, Zoe questions everything, because she didn’t grow up knowing who she was. It’s hard on Gerry, because she’s basically challenging his faith.

Looking back, what was the first piece of work (whether it be from literature, cinema, art, music, video game, toy, or whatever it may be) that first made you love science-fiction and fantasy?

There were lots of moments that sent me toward SF/F. STAR WARS (Episode IV) came out when I was twelve, blew my mind, and sent me scurrying to the SF sections of the local bookstore and library. Another was finding Andre Norton’s WRAITHS OF TIME, which featured an archaeologist, Tallahassee Mitford, who moved through time/space to Meroe. I read The Lord of the Rings books dozens of time during junior high, and later, on one of my first dates with my then-boyfriend, now husband, he recommended Robert Heinlein’s collection, THE PAST THROUGH TOMORROW (I also read THE STAND, by Stephen King because of him). They were also running Doctor Who, with Tom Baker; I adored Leela.

What will you be working on in 2020? Any new releases or dates that fans should be looking forward to hearing about?

I have a few short stories that should be coming out then, in THE DYSTOPIAN STATES OF AMERICA (which is dystopian and satirical), and one in SHATTERING GLASS: A NASTY WOMAN PRESS ANTHOLOGY! (this one is an AKA Jayne story, my “retired” covert operative who can’t stay retired).

If you could bring any object or device into the real world from fiction or film, and it would work perfectly, what would you choose? Why would you choose that item?

A TARDIS, from Doctor Who. No question.

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