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The Big Idea: Tiffani Angus & Val Nolan

Posted onMarch 24, 2026    Posted byAthena Scalzi     3 Comments

You know ’em, you love ’em, authors Tiffani Angus and Val Nolan are back again with another installment of their speculative fiction guidebooks. Hop on board the Big Idea to see how they’ve done it again in Spec Fic for Newbies Vol. 3: A Beginner’s Guide to Writing Even More Subgenres of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror.

TIFFANI ANGUS & VAL NOLAN:

Imagine a classic scene: A car driving down a lonely rural road… a bright light overhead… an examination table aboard an alien spacecraft… and then, instead of the typical medical business, our protagonist—let’s call her Sally—finds herself sitting across from an extraterrestrial. This being communicates with a curious thought-to-text translator device it places on the table. When the entity speaks, its words appear in the air between them:

“My species has learned all we can about your physiology. Now we wish to know about your culture. Does your society… tell stories?”

Sally, who’s been studying Creative Writing, is only too happy to discuss this. “We sure do,” she says. “Lots of different kinds! Science Fiction stories, Fantasy, Horror. And they take all sorts of different forms, like written fiction, TV shows, comics books…”

The alien’s already wide eyes expand even further. “And your species just instinctively understands how to tell these stories?”

“I mean, kinda. We’ve been doing it since we sat around campfires in the Ice Age. But we benefit from practice, you know? Plus, it helps to have guidance from enthusiastic instructors. Not literary snobs who want to make everyone write the same way as them but people sympathetic to the kinds of stories you want to tell.”

“And does one need to go to a school or university for this?”

“Not necessarily. Some people who’ve taught Creative Writing at universities have written books about it.” Sally looks around, finds her backpack (which conveniently materialized beside her), and pulls out a copy of Spec Fic for Newbies Vol. 3: A Beginner’s Guide to Writing Even More Subgenres of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror by Tiffani Angus and Val Nolan. “This, for example, helps novice scribblers and even more seasoned writers learn how to write thirty different subgenres and major tropes. It gives deep dives into the history and development of each subgenre or trope, offers spotter’s guides to their typical manifestations, and provides writing exercises to get you started. Plus, it’s all based on real classroom experience!”

“Subgenres…” The alien’s word floats in the air. “We have heard of these. So many to keep track of.”

Sally thinks about this for a moment. She reaches for the translator. “Can I…?”

The alien nods.

Sally quickly finds the translator’s settings and alters a couple of font choices. “There,” she says, returning the device, “I’ve set it so that when I mention a subgenre that’s in Spec Fic 3, it will appear in bold. That’s what they do in the book. Like all this”—she gestures around the silver room—“is a recognizable Alien Abduction narrative. But the book covers everything from Dinosaur Tales to Swashbuckling Fantasy to Fungal Horror to Superheroes.”

“Fascinating.” The alien considers the book. “I wish I’d been able to study this.”

“They don’t teach Creative Writing at Space Academies?”

“Our universities mostly produce Mad Scientists,” the alien says. “Oh!” It points at the bolded word. “It did the thing!”

Sally smiles. “It’s fun, isn’t it? Plus, when Angus and Nolan discuss subgenres in the other volumes of the series, they underline its name so you can track it down easily.”

“Yes.” The alien turns Spec Fic for Newbies over in its spindly fingers. “I was wondering: can I just jump in with this third volume?”

“Oh absolutely! They’re all stand-alone books. Though if you want to know more about the previous ones…” She takes out her phone. “Have you got wi-fi here? Like, space wi-fi?”

The alien turns the translator upside down and shows her the password.

“Okay, cool,” Sally says, logging on. “So, Angus and Nolan have written about the previous volumes on Scalzi’s blog. You can read about Volume One here and Volume Two here.” She passes her phone to the alien, who reads the blog posts with interest.

“And people find these guides useful?” it asks.

“Useful and enjoyable,” Sally says. “The first two volumes were included on the Locus Recommended Reading List and shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Awards and British Fantasy Awards. Those are, like, big deals on our planet.”

“The section on Magic Schools and Dark Academia sounds interesting,” says the alien, now looking through the table of contents. “As does the section about Magical Realism.”

“I like some of the horror stuff myself,” Sally says. “I’ve lately given a go to writing about Near Death Experiences and Urban Gothic and Weird Fiction.”

“And?”

“And I’ve been trying lots of things that I never thought I’d try. The book is really encouraging that way. Angus and Nolan don’t believe in gatekeeping. The whole ethos of Spec Fic for Newbies revolves around bringing people into the realms of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror by giving them the tools to explore these really rich and rewarding imaginary worlds.”

“I see there’s lots of jokes, too,” the alien says, the translator registering its chuckles as a series of curious emojis. 

Sally makes an affirmative noise. “Yeah, the authors have a really snarky sense of humor. Angus and Nolan don’t take themselves too seriously, which is another thing that separates this book from the really dry, old-school academic writing guides. Though, of course, that doesn’t mean the book isn’t smart—”

The alien holds up the section on End of the Universe stories. “I can see that.”

“—but it does mean it’s approachable. Anyone can read Spec Fic for Newbies. Anyone can learn from this book. That’s their big idea!”

“Bugs!!!” the alien suddenly shouts.

“Where?!”

“Page 229!”

Sally laughs. “I haven’t got to that part yet!”

“This book tells us much about humanity,” the alien says, “as well as things about Elves and Kaiju.”

“And we’ve barely even covered half of the subgenres here!”

The alien returns the book to Sally. “Where can I get my own copy?”

“Direct from Luna Press.” She opens up the website. “Or from any of your usual retailers.”

“I think I would like to beam down and pick one up right away!”

“Great,” says Sally, “let’s go get you writing!”

Spec Fic For Newbies Vol. 3: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Amazon UK|Blackstone UK|Waterstones UK

Author socials: Tiffani’s Website|Val’s Website|Tiffani’s Bluesky|Vals’ Bluesky

The Big Idea: Lynne M. Thomas & Katy Rawdon

Posted onMarch 19, 2026    Posted byAthena Scalzi     7 Comments

Like two peas in a time travel pod, archivist and author Katy Rawdon teamed up with Hugo-award winning editor Lynne M. Thomas to craft the perfect time travel narrative. Take a closer look at famous time travel stories from all across the globe in The Infinite Loop: Archives and Time Travel in the Popular Imagination, with a foreword from one such writer herself, Connie Willis.

KATY RAWDON (a.k.a. KATY JAMES):

Archives are made of time. Time is made of archives. Archives are where time gets mixed up, turned around, and pulled apart.

I have always been obsessed with time, frustrated with it, wanting to tear at it and see what’s behind and underneath it. No doubt that’s why I became an archivist some thirty years ago, so that I could look at the physical remnants of time and preserve them, see what’s missing, and organize and interpret time’s leftovers for people who, wisely, do not think about time all the… time.

When I was approached to submit an idea (a big idea!) for a book series jointly published by the American Library Association (ALA) and the Society of American Archivists (SAA) called Archival Futures – a series that tackles big ideas around the archival profession – there was only one possible topic for me to write about: time.

While the phrase “archives are like time travel” is thrown around a lot, I knew the relationship between historical records and time was far more complicated. Archives reinforce and challenge our very conceptions of time, of what has happened, of what will happen, of what is truth and what is unknowable. The evidence of archives can be used to demonstrate how the past is so much more faceted than the narrow stories of history we tend to tell ourselves and others. Archives can also be selectively wielded as propaganda, or erased to allow for falsehoods to sprout and flourish in the empty spaces. Time can be illustrated, illuminated, rendered invisible, or constructed in new ways using the material items created in the course of history. 

Unfortunately, all of this turned out to be so complicated that the series’ word limit of 50,000 was never going to cover it, as I painfully discovered while writing the book proposal.

I am forever grateful that the inimitable Lynne M. Thomas stepped into my creative mess and provided direction: Why not analyze the depiction of both archives and time travel in popular narratives (books, television, movies, etc.) and see what we could unearth? As a romance author (Katy James) as well as an archivist (Katy Rawdon), I was more than happy to spend time in fictional worlds in order to better understand my non-fictional archivist profession.

It turns out that we unearthed a lot – about cultural views regarding time and time travel, the popular perception of archives and archivists, and the ways current archival theory and practice intersect (or don’t) with ideas about time and time travel. 

How does time work? How is it understood by different people and cultures? How do archives help or hinder our understanding of the past (and future)? How can popular narratives about time travel and archives guide archivists to shift their methods to a more expansive, inclusive, transparent approach? How can archival workers apply current archival theory and practice to all of the above ideas to better serve their communities and increase the use of archives?

Researching this book and synthesizing all of the swirling concepts was a real mind-twister of an exercise, trying to write our expansive, big ideas while keeping it succinct and legible for archivists and general readers alike.

We hope we’ve succeeded.

LYNNE M. THOMAS:

Sometimes, if you’re very lucky, the right project turns up at exactly the right time. As a professional rare book librarian, twelve-time Hugo Award winning SFF editor and podcaster, and massive Doctor Who fan, I had a moment of “I was literally made for this” when Katy explained her concept for the book to me and asked me to join her. My initial contribution was more or less “but what if we add Doctor Who examples to make all this time stuff understandable,” and then … we got excited. Because when you have the chance to dive deep into a particular rabbit hole that looks perfect for you specifically, you lean hard into your personal weird. 

Time travel stories often feature archives to prove the narrative truth of characters’ experiences. The main character goes into a locked room full of dusty boxes, and immediately finds the one piece of documentary evidence they need to solve their problem, or make sense of their experiences. And yet archivists—the people tasked with organizing and running archives—are almost always invisible or nonexistent in these very same narratives. When we do show up…well, it feels like writers haven’t talked to an archivist lately.

That…bothered us. It turns out, when you have professional archivists and librarians who are also active writers and editors in science fiction, we have thoughts and opinions about how archivists and librarians are portrayed (or not) in fiction and nonfiction. But we thought, maybe we’re seeing a pattern that doesn’t exist, it’s just that “red car syndrome” thing where experts pay more attention to the areas of their expertise in the narratives than non-experts do. So… we checked. We looked at dozens of time travel stories across novels, comics, television series, and films. We discuss Doctor Who, of course, but also Loki, Star Wars, works by Connie Willis (who wrote our foreword), Octavia Butler, Jodi Taylor, Rivers Solomon, Deborah Harkness, and H.G. Wells, among many, many more. We also looked at a whole lot of archival literature—how archivists and librarians talk about themselves, their professions, and their work to one another. And because we are both academic librarians, we laid out our findings in a peer-reviewed book. 

What we learned is that there’s a massive divide between what pop culture thinks we do, and what we actually do, and the even greater divide between the level of resources pop culture thinks we have, and what we actually have…and we posit multiple ways to close those gaps.

The Infinite Loop is where archives and pop culture’s image of archives meet and have a long overdue chat. Our hope is that these conversations will lead to archivists being better able to explain what we do, and have that knowledge spread far and wide across popular culture. Ideally, with some time travel stories that feature archivists as main characters. It’s well past time.

The Infinite Loop: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Powell’s|Inkwood Books

Author socials: Katy’s Bluesky|Katy’s Instagram|Katy’s Website|Lynne’s Bluesky|Lynne’s Instagram|Lynne’s Website

The Big Idea: J. M. Sidorova

Posted onMarch 17, 2026    Posted byAthena Scalzi     2 Comments

How is it that fairy tales persist? In the Big Idea for The Witch of Prague, author J.M. Sidorova suggests that it might be because they are malleable and can be made to fit more times and places than just their own. To what use has the author put them here? Read on.

J. M. SIDOROVA:

When I think about a Big Idea of a novel, what comes to my mind first is more of a premise, an inceptive sprout from which the novel had grown. In this regard, The Witch of Prague grew out of a common fairy-tale archetype: an old hag gives a magic gift/poison apple to a young girl; think Sleeping beauty, forests, and castles. Except in this case, the archetype was invoked by true stories my Mom had told me about her young adulthood.

Thus, forests became the Cold War era Eastern European bureaucracies, castles became government departments, and the relationship between the hag and the young girl became complicated, as I, in the act of reimagining the fairy tale, subverted the heck out of it.

That said, this novel took a long time to become what it is now; it evolved in fits and starts while a sizeable chunk of my life was going by and the world was changing, and as a result it became a repository of symbolic representations for the ideas that are not new but have been important for me to unpack and highlight.

There is the Hunt of a Unicorn that, historically, fronts a host of contradictory ideas about power asymmetries between women and men; and then there is a Stag Hunt, which, as an example of a game of trust (or, more broadly, public goods game theory, like it’s better known cousin, the prisoner’s dilemma), stands for a balance of trust/cooperation vs. predation/competition in a given society.

There is also the Orwellian idea that authoritarian regimes not just restrict speech and writing, but, far more insidiously, they warp the very meaning, usage, and purpose of words, of the language itself. My main character, Alica, who’s grown up with mild dyslexia, is primed against such shenanigans because she’s always thought words were treacherous and out to get her, and one of her ways of fighting back was to invent an imaginary friend, a live typewriter with spider legs and word-swatting pincers.

So many different symbols, in other words, that at some point even I, their compulsive collector, felt that it was too much. And my awesome editors, Rachel Sobel and Huw Evans of Homeward Books, were of the same opinion: wait, is the Stag the same as the Unicorn or not? Author, explain thyself! So I went on an editing rampage, and I think I fixed things, and now all symbols are there to serve the story. 

But the big — or at any rate the permeating — idea that I would like to foreground since we are talking speculative fiction here, is what constitutes magic in this book. I think if one creates an alternative, fully magic-enabled reality for one’s tales, one can give a reader an escape, a full-on suspension of disbelief and all that, and that is fine. But if one instead injects bits of fantastical or magical into our viscerally recognizable reality, one gives a yearning, gives flickering moments of disassociation, of belief, “what if it were real?” It’s like magic comes to you, instead of you taking a vacation to go see magic.

And of course, so many works of speculative fiction do one approach or the other or anything in between. I personally, prefer the latter end of the spectrum over the former. So, what I was trying to do in The Witch of Prague was to have seemingly small, tenuous even amounts of magic within a historically accurate reality, and I was interested to work with this premise: what if magic was generated from scratch under certain unique constellations of circumstances and human lived experiences and emotional states, for instance, extreme trauma or enduring hope or devotion?

It wouldn’t be by anyone’s design, and it would be hard to predict what or who would become the magic’s “carrier” once it was produced. It would be a sort of undomesticated, involuntary magic for which no one really knows the rules or capabilities, though one could make assumptions or jump to conclusions according to one’s beliefs or character, in trying to harness it to one’s own benefit.

If we agree that as humanity, we have always been “producing” magic in our stories, histories, and self-narratives (“it was a miracle that I survived!”) as a matter of belief or metaphor, to help us parse reality or even just to communicate it — then my premise in this novel simply takes this fact and implements it. Literally and physically.

The Witch of Prague: Asterism|Homeward Books

Author socials: Website|Blog

The Big Idea: Cindy Cohn

Posted onMarch 12, 2026    Posted byJohn Scalzi     6 Comments

When you’re trying to get folks excited about their own digital rights, a lot will depend on the examples you give them to understand the fight. As the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Cindy Cohn certainly has examples. But which ones to choose? In this Big Idea for Privacy’s Defender, Cohn offers up her choices and explains why they matter.

CINDY COHN:

Do we have the right to have a private conversation online? 

In this age of constant, pervasive surveillance, both government and corporate, how do you get people to believe that they can and should have that right? 

And how do you show that safeguarding privacy is part of safeguarding a free, open and democratic society? 

In Privacy’s Defender, my Big Idea is that by telling some rollicking stories about my three big fights for digital privacy over the past 30 years, I might inspire people not only to understand why privacy matters, but to actually start fighting for it themselves. 

The challenge was different for each of the three stories I told. The first one, about cryptography, was in many ways the easiest, since it had a pretty straightforward narrative.  Before the beginning of the broad public internet, in the early 1990s, I led a ragtag bunch of hackers and lawyers who sued to fight a federal law that treated encryption – specifically “software with the capability of maintaining secrecy” – as a weapon. We argued that code is speech and put together a case based on the First Amendment. By pulling in help from academics, scientists, companies and others, and by the grace of several women judges who were willing to listen to us in spite of the government’s national security claims on the other side, we won.

Many other stories from the early public internet are about men and the products they built. This one is different: It tells how some scruffy underdogs beat the national security infrastructure and brought all of us the promise of a more secure internet. But it’s otherwise kind of a hero’s tale with a dramatic ending when I was called to DC to negotiate the government’s surrender. 

The second and third stories don’t end in such clean wins, which perhaps makes them more typical of how actual change happens when you are up against the government.

The second set of stories are about the cases we brought against the National Security Agency’s mass spying,  starting after the New York Times revealed in late 2005 that the government was spying on Americans on our home soil. The fight was  pushed forward by a whistleblower named Mark Klein who literally knocked on our front door at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in early 2006 with details of how the NSA was tapping into the internet’s backbone at key junctures, including in a secret room in an AT&T building  in downtown San Francisco.  This is the most cloak-and-dagger of the stories, made possible both by Mark’s courage and that of Edward Snowden, who revealed even more about the NSA spying in 2013 because he was angry at watching the government lie repeatedly to the American people, including before Congress.

As a result, Congress  rushed in to protect… the phone companies, killing our first lawsuit. Later, after Snowden’s revelations, lawmakers passed some reforms to some of the programs we had sought to stop, but not nearly enough. In the end, the Supreme Court supported the government’s argument that – even though the whole world knew about the NSA spying and that it relied on access to information collected and handled by  major telephone companies – identifying which company participated would violate the state secrets privilege. But we had dramatically shifted how the government did mass spying: ending two of the three programs we had sued over, scaling back the third, and providing far more public information  about what the government was doing. In writing my book, I wanted to tell the truth about the progress we made without sugarcoating that we had not succeeded at nearly the scale that we did in the cryptography fights.

The third set of cases had a similar trajectory – an early win in the courts and some reform in Congress but ultimately not enough. These were the “Alphabet Cases” – so named because we couldn’t even name our clients publicly, assigning the cases letters instead – that we brought from 2011 through 2022 to scale back a kind of governmental subpoena called National Security Letters (NSLs), which let the FBI require companies to provide metadata about their customers but gagged them from ever telling anyone what had happened.

Though an appellate court ultimately sided with the government, we did succeed in helping our clients participate in the public debate and use their own experiences as evidence to counter the government’s misleading assertions. We had increased the procedural protections for those receiving NSLs, including clearing the way to challenge them with standards that were not quite as stacked against them. And we had helped create a path for corporate transparency reports that at least gave some information to the public about how often these controversial tools were being used. 

I wanted this book to bring readers with me into the actual work, the bumpy ride, the incremental progress of protecting privacy, especially in the courts, in hope that people will think about how they too can join the fight. What we worried about in the 1990s, and fought to prevent in the 2000s and 2010s, seems closer than ever: that surveillance becomes the handmaiden of authoritarianism. But even in our troubled times, I’m confident that we are not powerless and we can prevail if we are patient, smart, thoughtful and work together.  The Big Idea is that privacy is not just a  coat of anonymity that you throw on before doing something embarrassing –  it’s a check against unbridled government power. And as it turns out,  the actual work of protecting that privacy can make for a fun, exciting and surprising life.

Privacy’s Defender: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop

Author socials: Website

The Big Idea: Randee Dawn

Posted onMarch 5, 2026    Posted byAthena Scalzi     4 Comments

If everyone only wrote what they knew, how many books would we be deprived of? Author Randee Dawn has some concerns about the age-old advice, and suggests writers should get out of their comfort zone in the Big Idea for her newest novel, We Interrupt This Program.

RANDEE DAWN:

There are many phrases writers long to hear: Your book is a best-seller! Your book changed my life! Your book is getting a Netflix adaptation! Your book props open my screen door!

Maybe not that last one.

But if there’s one phrase writers are a little tired of hearing is this: Write what you know.

What does that even mean? For years, I thought it was reductionist and stupid. I write speculative fiction. Spec fic is about dragons or distant planets or zombies or dragons and zombies on distant planets. I have yet to encounter any of those things. But isn’t that what imagination is for? Make stuff up!

Write what you know is a rhetorical piece of advice that sends young writers off on the wrong path, and often confuses older ones. It explains why twenty-two year olds write memoirs. They don’t know anything but their own lives!

But it can have value. My first useful encounter with understanding write what you know came when I plumbed my entertainment journalism past – including time at a soap opera magazine – to write a goofy first novel, Tune in Tomorrow (helpfully given its own discussion in The Big Idea in 2022). I knew what backstage on TV and film sets looked like. I’d spoken to thousands of actors, producers, and directors. It wasn’t so far a leap to imagine how things might be different if magical creatures were running things. 

Then it came time to write the next story in the Tune-iverse. I’d used up a lot of Stuff I Knew. So what could come next to keep things interesting? 

That was when I discovered that the advice isn’t stupid. It’s just not the only advice that matters. Writing what you know can – pick your metaphor – give you a frame, a recipe, or a direction to follow.

But writing what hurts gives you substance. Writing what hurts gets you into the subcutaneous zone. 

With We Interrupt this Program (the next, also standalone, novel in my Tune-iverse), I tried to picture what the rest of the fae entertainment universe – run by the Seelie Court Network, of course – would look like. I imagined whole villages run by fae, populated by humans full-time, whose lives fit into neat little tropey stories. What if all the Hallmark movies were shot in the cutest, sweetest, village ever? What if there was a whole burg populated with humans who’d pissed the fae off and were being punished? What if a seaside town existed where a gray-haired older lady author solved cozy mysteries? 

The latter one gave me Winnie, an older woman whose cozy mysteries about her TROPE Town neighbors were turned into movies for SCN. But Seaview Haven is in trouble when we meet Winnie, and she discovers she’ll have to write a really good story to fix matters. So she writes about a love affair with the town’s Seelie Showrunner/Mayor/Director.

But those who vet it say it isn’t good enough. It’s nice. She wrote what she knew. Then she’s told to write what’s hard.

The novel took me by surprise here. I hadn’t planned to make her write two important stories. The love story should be enough. But it was only good. It wasn’t great. Despite being supernatural, it felt mundane. Tropey.

In going deeper to find Winnie a hard story, I discovered I already had one based on events in my real life. I gave them to her. Sure, it’s about love. But it’s also about betrayal and writerly jealousy, the kind delivered with a stiletto and not a butcher knife. Frankly, I’m a little embarrassed it’s in there. It’s not an epic awfulness. I didn’t commit a crime. 

Probably. 

And in giving it to Winnie, the story worked for me. When she unveils her personal, painful moment, it folds into the story as if I’d planned it. We Interrupt remains slapsticky, punny, and full of lunatic moments. Hopefully, though, that’s why this moment – the hurtful story – hits the hardest.

Readers can sense when we’ve gone deep, and when we skate the surface. A writer always has to find a way to squint at their latest creation and ask if they’ve gone deep enough to make it hurt, no matter what the genre is. That’s what – if I’ve done it right – it means to stick the landing.

So let’s look at that old hoary advice once more. Yes, write what you know. 

But don’t stop there. 

After you figure out what you know, figure out what’s hard. What hurts. Pull out the stiletto, not the butcher knife … and get cutting. 

We Interrupt This Program: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop

Author socials: Website|Instagram|Facebook