An Interview with Coral Walker: Author of Children of Swan
My life has been like a collection of interconnected rills, streams and brooks, swelling when it rains and diminishing when it’s dry. All the same they flow, as tributaries do, to a river. Writing is my perpetual river. I am Coral Walker, born and raised in China, and now living happily with my husband and three children in South Wales, in the UK.
Tell us something about your book. The basics: what’s it about?
‘The Land of Taron’ is about Jack and Brianna, the older siblings of the Goodman family, who must search for their missing parents and abducted young […]
The Perihelion by D.M. Wozniak is literary, character-driven science fiction at its best. Set in 2069, The Perihelion comprises a world where there are hybrid humans with 1% animal or insect DNA, called 99ers. The novel follows the lives of six different characters in an approaching apocalypse, the Perihelion: “The point in the path of a celestial body that is nearest to the sun,” in which the world is melting down both physically and mentally. This is an epic, uniquely inventive novel about big ideas that should hopefully get a lot of attention.
The Professional Security Manual Class 1, Urban Security by Charles White might not sound like it, but it’s an inventive and hilarious take on a training manual, and one security guard’s over-the-top take on just what it takes to become a rent-a-cop. Covering important topics such as dealing with ghosts and how to use a stapler as a ninja weapon, this book will have you covered and then some. Mixed in with Charles White’s instructions are footnotes from a mysterious ghostwriter who finds himself imprisoned by Charles White, and ridiculing him the whole way through.
Squirrel Days by Dustin Costa is the hard-to-classify but always-entertaining satire about the so-called US drug war. Renegade disc jockey insults the wrong people on the radio and flees to the marijuana capital of Northern California with his one-legged girlfriend, Juanita. There they find refuge with a wide variety of eccentric characters, each more insane than the last: wizards, an alien, a mad scientist, among others. Harnessing a powerful quantum weapon, this group of misfits thinks they have what it takes to defeat a bloodthirsty drug cartel.
Weeping Water by JT Ruby is an epic novel about cryonic suspension – freezing something with life-threatening injuries in order to heal them when there are significant advances in medical technology. It follows Annie, who dies in a plane crash in the eighties, and Elliot, who dies in a car accident in the nineties, as they try to piece together their lives after being unfrozen. Spanning many generations and covering cryogenics from every angle, Weeping Water is a fast-paced and thought-provoking read.