Ask the Author: Matthew S. Cox
Answered Questions (19)
Matthew S. Cox
Hmm. You know, I never thought about mixing those two series... but VI has the potential to be whimsical enough for something to happen. Probably a misadventure on Sophia's part with magic.
Matthew S. Cox
Eventually, yes!
Matthew S. Cox
Hi! Prophet's Journey is the first book of a spinoff series with Althea. The original series is The Awakened, which is 6 books long. The first book of that series, Prophet of the Badlands, is the book that originally introduced Althea as a character. That book is out in audio format. Prophet's Journey is set after the 6-book Awakened series. Same character, same world, different story arc. I received numerous requests to do a spinoff series with Althea (and she's still my favorite character) so I couldn't say no. I /am/ planning to get Prophet's Journey made into an audiobook as soon as it is feasible to do so. Narrators can only do so many projects at a time.
Matthew S. Cox
Good question! I'm usually so busy I don't have the chance to plan out what I read for fun (when I get the occasion to read for fun) so I tend to just grab whatever happens to catch my eye in that moment. (Generally science fiction or fantasy, and nothing too bleak).
Matthew S. Cox
Hi Art,
The second book, A Beginner's Guide to Fangs, is presently available on Kindle and print. The audiobook is in production (with the same narrator). It's scheduled to be completed by June 30.
I've recently finished the first draft of the third book as well, but it's a little ways off from release :)
The second book, A Beginner's Guide to Fangs, is presently available on Kindle and print. The audiobook is in production (with the same narrator). It's scheduled to be completed by June 30.
I've recently finished the first draft of the third book as well, but it's a little ways off from release :)
Matthew S. Cox
Dr. Carter arrived in the sub-basement morgue to start her shift, but all the empty cooler doors hung open. Seconds after a thump came from the corridor, the power went out.
Matthew S. Cox
Wow, this one's not so easy to answer. A lot of the books I like are set in sci fi dystopias that are pretty scary to live in. Also, given that we seem to be living in a real dystopia these days, I think I'd opt for something that had the potential to be as fun as it was dangerous... so I'll probably have to go with the Harry Potter world assuming I had magic :) Not entirely sure what I'd wind up doing there. I tend to wind up going healer in most fantasy settings, so more than likely i'd wind up doing that.
Matthew S. Cox
Well... Thus far I've been fortunate (perhaps unfortunate?) enough to have had a fairly straightforward, if boring, life. The only thing I can think of close to a mystery is... I came along rather late, the youngest of three. Both my brother and sister were around 18 when I was born, and my father passed away when I was 5 (ALS). A lot of people kept commenting how much like my sister I looked, so I spent quite a while wondering if my sister was actually my mother. (A few years ago I ran into my sister again and she commented that I look just like my father when he was in his 40s, so I suppose that answered that.) [and I'm sure the "your mother is really your grandmother" plot has already been done to death :)]
Matthew S. Cox
I apologize in advance for what's probably going to be a non-answer, but I haven't read a whole lot of books focused on couples. When I sit back and try to think of a favorite fictional couple, I'm coming up a bit blank. Though I will say that I'm in that group that thought Harry and Hermione ought to have wound up together.
Matthew S. Cox
Maybe... I surprised myself while writing this one. I only mistyped the name Paige as Page 11 times in the first draft :)
Matthew S. Cox
Oh wow... sorry about your dad :( That's interesting about the spirits. Who knows what happened on that land ages ago. I'm thrilled that you liked the book :) Amanda? (did you mean Amber?)
Matthew S. Cox
Wow...thank you! My childhood was pretty normal suburban stuff. Single mom (father died while I was very young). I do think the house I grew up in had a ghost or two in it. Footsteps in the attic at night, lights would sometimes turn themselves off or on, and my cousin once thought he saw an angry old man standing on a new stairway. (He later picked a face from a photo album which turned out to be the guy who built the house in 1903 or so.) Probably upset with the modification to the place.
Matthew S. Cox
Hi Rich :)
Virtual Immortality takes place prior to Division Zero 1 by a couple months. Nina from VI resurfaces in Division Zero 3 for a bit. The events of the Awakened series (Prophet etc) are happening around the same time of the Division Zero series, but Kirsten doesn't get caught up in it. In Division Zero 4 (not yet released), Nicole's team is called in after getting reports of the fight between Archon's people and the Man In White's thugs. That links the two series in terms of timeline. The events of Prophet happen around the same time as Division Zero 4 if not slightly before.
Archon's Queen (Awakened 2) jumps back 5 years prior (2413 instead of 2418) but the rest of the series continues on the 2418 timeline after Prophet.
Virtual Immortality takes place prior to Division Zero 1 by a couple months. Nina from VI resurfaces in Division Zero 3 for a bit. The events of the Awakened series (Prophet etc) are happening around the same time of the Division Zero series, but Kirsten doesn't get caught up in it. In Division Zero 4 (not yet released), Nicole's team is called in after getting reports of the fight between Archon's people and the Man In White's thugs. That links the two series in terms of timeline. The events of Prophet happen around the same time as Division Zero 4 if not slightly before.
Archon's Queen (Awakened 2) jumps back 5 years prior (2413 instead of 2418) but the rest of the series continues on the 2418 timeline after Prophet.
Matthew S. Cox
I have added a few cats here and there, but so far none have been a major element. In Caller 107, Natalie's friend Leah has a cat Milo (named after the cat of a friend) who has a bad reaction to some paranormal stuff and freaks out. Also, in Angel Descended, one of the minor characters shares his run down apartment with 6 cats. Now you've got me thinking about a project where a cat is a major character. /ponders
Matthew S. Cox
The direct answer to this is from a game session I ran for some friends several years ago (which the Awakened series is loosely based on.) It was so long ago I lost the exact details of much of the story, but I am using the same core idea to build out the book series. Of course, I had to come up with the idea in the first place to run it as a tabletop game... and where that came from is a little more esoteric.
Matthew S. Cox
There are a lot of sources of inspiration for me. Fragments of just about everything I see or hear cycle around in my head for days-months before they change into things that come out in the books. Some of it just comes out of thin air, but then again the "thin air" ideas are probably ones where I didn't notice the input.
Matthew S. Cox
My current project is Zero Rogue, book 5 of the Awakened series.
Matthew S. Cox
Show your work to readers and other writers who are not immediate family. Take all feedback with a grain of salt. If one person says something, ponder it but wait. If two people say it, give thought to adjusting it. If more than two people say the same thing, chances are it needs to be tweaked.
Also - adverbs are the devil. Sometimes they are the most elegant solution to convey an idea, but all too often they are crutches.
Also - adverbs are the devil. Sometimes they are the most elegant solution to convey an idea, but all too often they are crutches.
Matthew S. Cox
When a reader is drawn into the world or characters I've created, and finds something there to love. It's like sharing a mass hallucination.
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Dec 12, 2020 09:15AM · flag