The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory

Picture yourself falling asleep inside a machine and waking up as an Egyptian from another century. You don’t watch that life through a headset. You live it, completely convinced you are that person. Then you open your eyes back in your own body, still speaking the language. Leonardo Camargo-Forero, a Colombian AI engineer with a PhD in aerospace science, joins Mookie Spitz as a guest on Science Fiction and Fantasy Factory to talk about The Dark Buddha: Too Many Faces, the first book in his planned trilogy.

The machine only opens the door. Leonardo’s characters come...

Picture this: Washington goes broke, auctions off the Capitol and the Grand Canyon, and walks away. No taxes, no cops, no courts. On this 74th episode of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Factory, Mookie asks Jeff Jefferies, author of Carter's World: 2084, the obvious question about the America he dreamed up: utopia or dystopia? Jeff says he'd happily live there, and he thinks life would be "okay."

Not awesome. Not paradise. Just okay. Most political novels promise heaven if their side wins, their detractors calling it hell, the outcome lost in the ideology. Jeff offers a world about...

Mindy Indy sprinkled actual dirt on a watercolor to make Mars look like Mars. Then she gave it a pink sky, because she can. That's her whole AER HEAD philosophy: every page hand-made and crammed to the margins, because the creativity and the creation is most of the fun.

On the 73rd episode of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Factory, host Mookie catches the Brooklyn comics creator fresh off New York Comic Con, where she worked the floor in a beanie with a QR-code sandwich board strapped to it. Her comic follows Aereo "Aer" Zephyr, a teen...

Brits and Yanks speak the same language, yet their speculative fiction often dreads very different futures. Martin Grace, curator and contributor of Future Britains, joins Mookie on the Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory to dig into an anthology of 22 near-future stories by British writers, and what those stories reveal about a country wrestling with its own identity in 2026 and beyond. 

Future Britains started as a contest between Martin and his father, fellow sci-fi writer Nick Grace: who could hit 3,000 words first? Martin won. His story, "Implanted," turns his hometown of Portsmouth into an island prison for dissidents in a...

Patrick Abbott takes St. Paul’s advice to "test everything" seriously, whether the subject is a scheming flapper vampire, an alien civilization’s faith or a 1946 ghost rocket over Scandinavia. Patrick returns to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Factory after his first visit, when he and Mookie dug into his novels Fallen and Risen. This time the two Substack buddies explore how a writer holds faith and skepticism in the same hand, and why a little absurdity keeps us sane enough to take the serious things seriously. 

The conversation opens in Savannah, where Patrick's Paranormal Detective Agency serves...

Robert Biehn first dreamed up The First Stone at fifteen. Twenty years and eight rewrites later, he's finally launching a novel that's also building a world readers can step into and claim as their own.

On the 70th episode of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, host Mookie Spitz, an official Grafter Corps member according to Biehn's faction quiz, talks with the author before his debut lands. The First Stone, book one of the Exousia Chronicles, arrives in early January 2027. The YA dystopian fantasy follows siblings Cass and Evelon through a world that runs on law, metal, magic...

Space is infinite. The menu is not. Sebastian Howarth joins Mookie in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Factory from Johannesburg, South Africa, to break down The Synthetic Hunger, his debut novel built on a premise that should've occurred to a hundred sci-fi writers before him and somehow never did: every war in human history eventually comes down to food, so what happens when one company controls the only food left? Howarth hands humanity's entire interstellar diet to the Panterran Nutritional Authority and a single gray, flavorless gel everyone just calls the gel, or slop, or something worse. 

S...

Blake Anderson joins Mookie in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Factory to talk about The Great Awakening, his debut novel built around an amazing premise: every person on Earth shares the exact same near-death-style dream overnight, wakes up transformed, and watches the world's tribalism dissolve into universal empathy. Blake traces the idea back to a debate he watched between Ben Shapiro and Alex O'Connor about religion and open-mindedness. As an atheist, he started asking himself what kind of message would actually convince him God was real, and he landed on the premise driving the whole book, a single unmistakable...

Mookie flies solo on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Factory podcast to unpack why Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl has become the decade's breakout indie sensation, and why the rise looks almost identical to one that happened ten years earlier with Andy Weir's The Martian. Both writers built an audience from nothing on a serialized platform, both let readers shape the story as it grew, and both books ended up capturing the mood of the exact moment they were written in: Weir's post-Obama optimism and faith in institutions against Dinniman's post-pandemic dread and distrust of the systems running the...

Vinx the Mercenary Minx is a prequel spinoff of Mookie's flagship series, Jonnie Fazoolie and the Transfinite Reality Engine, and it answers a question the main story never stops to ask: how did Jonnie's tantalizing, savage love interest claw her way up to become the second most powerful being inside the all-powerful agency? Mookie got the idea for the whole project from conversations with LitRPG and military science fiction authors he'd had on the podcast, which sparked the thought that one of his own characters could carry that kind of story.

Vinx has been sitting near the...

Gus James, author of The Xeno File and The Terra File, joins Mookie on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Factory podcast to talk about his evolving trilogy. Gus is an Oregon attorney by day, spending his hours fighting insurance companies, and a first-time novelist who wrote his debut purely to make himself laugh. When an early reader sent him detailed notes on proper three-act structure and where certain beats were supposed to land, he read every note and ignored almost all of them on purpose, reasoning that his story should be his, so screw the rules dictating how it's...

A.G. Meier joins Mookie on the 64th episode of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Factory to talk about Champions Awakening, his debut novel and the first book in the True Power saga. 

Adam's been telling stories his whole life, long before he ever sat down to write one. As a kid, he was the one at the family cottage every summer who'd get a dozen cousins gathered around a campfire and make up scary stories on the spot, purely from instinct, reading the crowd as he went. That same impulse carried straight into adulthood, where, behind t...

Dennison Smith joins Mookie in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Factory to talk about The Westward Hours, a genre-blending literary dystopia landing in the US and Canada on September 8th. The premise starts from something genuinely real: in the 1970s, corporations quietly floated the idea in Congress of declaring the strip-mined Four Corners region a formal "sacrifice area," officially exempt from cleanup or accountability. It never made it to a vote. In Dennison's near-future America, that idea won by default: everything west of a single line in Kansas becomes exactly that, a sacrifice area, plundered for resources once corporate...

Mookie steps away from interviews for a moment for a solo episode of Science Fiction and Fantasy Factory, revealing a new project and reading its opening chapter live: Vinx the Mercenary Minx, a prequel spinoff from his debut novel, Jonnie Fazoolie and the Transfinite Reality Engine.

He starts with the origin story behind the original book: a short story written on Medium in 2020, during the pandemic, on the Lower East Side, about a hustler who discovers a machine capable of jumping between infinite parallel universes. That idea eventually exploded into a two-and-a-half-month, twelve-to-twenty-hour-a-day writing binge, the kind...

Matt Witten's writing career spans shows including Homicide, Law & Order, and CSI: Miami, a series of Jacob Burns mysteries, and a novel optioned by Leonardo DiCaprio. On this episode of Science Fiction and Fantasy Factory, he joins Mookie to talk about his newest book, 51%, a dystopian crime noir one reviewer described as a stylistic mashup of Philip K. Dick and Dashiell Hammett.

The book's origin is genuinely personal. After hearing television producer David Nevins say the best shows come from a writer's deepest fears, Matt walked home one night and landed, unexpectedly, on two words: student loans...

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory opens today the way you'd hope a conversation with an Australian ichthyologist-turned-novelist would: an extended riff on cell phones versus mobile phones, why Australians call beer "piss," and Dave's deadpan insistence that all Tasmanians carry a small scar where their second head used to be. From there, Dave Freer joins the same week he's set to accept a brand-new Prometheus Award, virtually, at three in the morning his time, for Storm-Dragon, the first year that particular Young Adult category has ever been awarded.

Storm-Dragon exists because fellow author Cedar Sanderson told Dave...

Elliot Blake has spent his career inside the entertainment industry, directing Sir Ben Kingsley and Helen Mirren on Audible's Moriarty trilogy, executive producing Apple TV's The Sisters Grimm, working on an Emmy-winning Tomb Raider series. On this episode of Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, he joins Mookie to talk about his debut novella, Into the Great, and the very different, very DIY road that got it into print.

Elliot's novella mashes up genres most writers keep separate: military sci-fi conflict, a full alien invasion, and a real romance at its core, all pulling from influences like William Gibson's...

What happens when thirty-two years of walking into crime scenes collides with a lifelong love of Tolkien, Zelazny, and Edgar Rice Burroughs? You get James Stuart Kinsey — retired forensics investigator, Navy submariner, and the world-builder behind the Gifts of Olmith fantasy series.

In this 58th episode of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, host Mookie Spitz sits down with Kinsey to unpack the sprawling world he's spent years constructing: a heroic-fantasy setting populated by humans, elves, and dwarves, anchored by his debut novel Strand of Hope and expanding through companion short fiction like The Emperor's Bath. They trace Ki...

What if the biggest obstacle to living a more creative, fulfilled life isn't talent or opportunity—but the fear of looking ridiculous?

Mookie sits down with Jef & Mindy, the married co-creators of The Ridiculous, to explore a science-fiction comedy universe that grew out of an unexpected place: the competitive fitness industry. After spending decades helping people transform their bodies, they came to an uncomfortable realization. Looking better didn't necessarily make people happier. Confidence built on appearance alone often collapsed under pressure, leaving the deeper questions of identity, purpose, and fulfillment unanswered.

That realization sent them in...

What do gardening, balloon animals, pulp fiction, Japanese manga, military science fiction, homeschooling, cover design, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and peeing basset hounds have in common? Cedar Sanderson, obviously.

In this lively and often hilarious episode, Cedar joins Mookie Spitz for a sprawling conversation that begins with flowers and parenting and somehow winds its way through publishing, illustration, pulp fiction, education, storytelling, creativity, and the peculiar neuroses that drive writers to spend years inventing people who don't exist.

Cedar shares her winding journey from entertainer, face painter, and balloon twister to scientist, entrepreneur, illustrator, publisher, and...

Stepping into the 55th episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, Debbie Bishop has spent decades doing what most creators only talk about doing: building her own path. Author, comic book creator, publisher, entrepreneur, marketer, filmmaker, podcaster, and now AI-powered platform builder, Debbie joins Mookie for a wide-ranging conversation that spans fantasy fiction, Hollywood, independent publishing, emerging technology, and the future of creativity itself.

The discussion begins with Debbie's new novel, Pillywiggin Awakening, a dark fantasy adventure that blends magic, technology, history, and human resilience into a story designed for readers who love immersive worlds and larger-than-life...

The 54th episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory has Mookie talking ghosts, gothic fiction, generational trauma, creativity, labor politics, and the thin membrane between the living and the dead with acclaimed author, actress, and haunted history guide Leanna Renee Hieber.

Leanna’s work lives in the shadowy crossroads between gaslamp fantasy, horror, romance, historical fiction, paranormal mystery, and social commentary — which means trying to pin her to a single genre is like trying to handcuff fog. From Victorian ghost precincts and spectral detectives to haunted mansions, robber barons, labor uprisings, and vengeance-driven spirits, her fiction blends lush...

Ben and Karen Gibson have been quietly building an entire fantasy universe for years — not one book, not two, but an entire pipeline of stories forged through late-night collaboration, technical day jobs, parenting chaos, RPG design, and a shared obsession with speculative fiction. In the 53rd episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, Mookie chats with the married writing duo behind Freedom’s Vow, the debut novel helping to launch Selene Press into fantasy territory.

Mookie encourages Ben and Karen to unpack the heartfelt and surprisingly functional mechanics of co-authoring as a married couple: outlining together, poking hole...

Scott Allen has spent years voicing other people’s stories — grimdark warriors, space captains, assassins, at least one traumatized wizard — and now he’s finally thrown his own brain into the ring with The Aerie Protocol. So he's excited to join Mookie Spitz to talk about his flight from audiobook narrator to author, and how one stubborn sci-fi idea refused to leave him alone for years: What if there were hidden cities floating above the clouds… and humanity never noticed?

What starts as a conversation about speculative fiction quickly mutates into a full-blown discussion about creativity, self-doubt, AI, storyt...

Sam Robb steps into The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory to talk with Mookie about his new fantasy novel A Sense of Murder, the launch of Selene Press as the fantasy extension of Cannon Publishing, and how he somehow managed to bounce between Raconteur Press, pulp anthologies, military sci-fi circles, fantasy storytelling, political campaigning, and indie author chaos without losing his sanity. 

Mookie is eager to hear about the rise of Sam's “Alpha Mercs” writing crew, convention culture, collaborating with illustrator Cedar Sanderson, and why the best science fiction and fantasy still lives or dies on character rather than...

Mookie's Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory launches its 50th episode with fellow anthology contributor, former naval engineer, and prolific author Marc Neuffer. 

They met through the 2026 SciFi Anthology, going strong for six years since Marc proposed the idea to the Science Fiction Novelists FB group. Mookie points out that he's had half the contributors from this installment on his podcast, with Marc joking there's still time to get the rest of them.

Born into the "science" of scifi, Marc grew up in Huntsville, Alabama during the Apollo era surrounded by rocket engineers and space-race optimism, later s...

Some writers build stories. J. Kenton Pierce seems to have stories stalking him until he writes them down.

He joins Mookie in the 49th episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory for a lively, sharp-edged discussion about creating an interstellar universe where frontier settlers, political schemers, orbital AI-controlled kill-satellites, engineered soldiers, traders, autocrats, and stubborn individualists all collide. Pierce breaks down the world behind his Prometheus award nominated A Kiss for Damocles, his debut novel, and An Apple for the Legion, a new prequel that follows a genetically optimized true believer slowly realizing the machine she serves i...

What happens when a LitRPG writer walks into the Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory and casually reveals that one of the fastest-growing corners of modern fantasy has also built the best ecosystem in publishing? You get this fascinating conversation with author Matthew Kent, who joins Mookie to explain why game-inspired fiction is no niche gimmick, instead a thriving movement with obsessed readers, hyper-engaged communities, massive books, booming audiobooks, and writers who help each other succeed.

Matthew breaks down "Literary Role Playing Game" genre from the ground floor: stories where characters level up, stats matter, systems speak, and narrative...

What happens when two writing obsessives lock themselves in a room and start talking craft, money, madness, creativity, publishing, best (and worst) practices, and the questionable life choice known as “becoming an author”? You get this lively, funny, and honest conversation with Mike Robinson—a true Renaissance writer and editor whose career spans novels, short stories, screenplays, editing, coaching, and helping other writers turn rough ideas into compelling books.

Mike talks to Mookie about the real mechanics of writing improvement. What’s the difference between line editing and developmental editing? Why do so many beginners overwrite? Why do some...

In this goofy and surprisingly useful roundtable episode, Mookie Spitz reunites with fellow indie author road warriors Ingrid Moon, Greg Sorber, and married co-writing duo Sherry Shimshock and Blake Shimshock to unpack their chaotic, sweaty, unexpectedly profitable adventure at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

Stuffed into a booth roughly the size of a phone booth, the group somehow managed to sell books, charm strangers, cross-promote each other, and prove that readers still exist despite years of internet propaganda claiming nobody reads anymore. Thousands of people streamed by. Many stopped. Some bought one book. Some bought...

In this lively and surprisingly candid 45th episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, Mookie Spitz sits down with fantasy author Catherine Cruzan for a deep dive into storytelling, publishing, creativity, and the realities of trying to build an audience in 2026. What starts as a conversation about conventions like WonderCon quickly turns into a masterclass on what separates compelling fiction from genre sludge.

Catherine opens up about being an introvert forced into the uncomfortable role of marketer, publicist, and salesperson. She discusses her Elfkind trilogy, the recently released Winter Forest, and the upcoming fourth book, Crown of...

In this 44th episode of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, Mookie dives in deep with science fiction author James Kenwood to explore his themes and best practices for storytelling. The discussion ranges from war and political power to moral responsibility, flawed heroes, pacing, worldbuilding, and the hard truth that readers do not owe writers their attention.

James explains how military history and recurring cycles of conflict shape his fiction. His serialized, work-in-progress novel Mars Fire examines settlers on Mars trapped between rival Earth powers, while his shorter fiction delivers concentrated bursts of action, sacrifice, and moral tension.<...

Saddle up for a wild ride into one of speculative fiction’s coolest frontier mashups: the science fiction western. In this episode, Mookie stirs it up with debut novelist Rick Cutler, author of Colt Ostergaard: A Man with a Gun, to talk about laser six-shooters, frontier justice, worldbuilding grit, and how the cowboy archetype still hits hard when launched into the future.

Rick breaks down why science fiction westerns work so well. The two genres combine the raw freedom and danger of the Old West with the limitless imagination of sci-fi. That means lonely gunslingers, lawless territories, st...

In this episode of The Science Fiction and Fantasy Factory, Mookie sits down with Michael A. Clement, a former finance professional turned speculative fiction writer, to trace the unlikely path from spreadsheets to stories, and why it worked.

Clement didn’t come up through the usual writer pipeline. No MFA. No lifelong literary obsession. Just a late-life pivot sparked by a single idea: what if a machine chose not to obey? From there, things escalated into asteroid-mining AI blackmailers, homicidal appliances, buffoonish aliens, and deeply human stories about loss, memory, and moral consequence.

Mookie and Mi...

On this 41st episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, Mookie sits down with Cannon Publishing founder and Editor-in-Chief John F. Holmes. He's a former platoon sergeant who runs his publishing outfit with the same mindset: train the talent, build the unit, execute the mission.

Cannon gives military science fiction authors a real path between doing everything yourself and waiting years for a traditional deal that may never come. You bring the manuscript, Cannon brings the machine: Editing that improves the book, covers designed to sell, full production handled without cutting corners. Distribution across the channels that...

In this episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, Mookie sits down with the elusive author Saengard, who emerges from behind a pseudonym to talk about his debut novel The World Ender—a fast-moving, idea-heavy sci-fi story decades in the making that answers the question: "What happens when the system meant to save humanity becomes the thing that destroys it?

At the center is George Greycloud Guess, a physicist who creates a revolutionary energy source meant to save a collapsing world. Instead, it triggers a chain reaction: rogue machines, shadowy global power structures, nanotech gone sideways, and an...

In this 39th episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, Mookie brings Michael S. Clarke onto the factory floor to dissect the craft, the grind, and the brutal reality of trying to write—and sell—serious sci-fi in a world drowning in noise.

Clarke is deep in the trenches with Synthetic, a novel about mind uploading, identity duplication, and what happens when “you” becomes plural. Mookie, never one to let a concept sit quietly, pushes it further: if you copy your brain into a machine, who’s the real you, and which one gets screwed in the divorce?<...

What happens when a pandemic kills your D&D campaign? If you’re Rachanee Lumayno, you don’t sulk or bake bread—you construct an entire fantasy universe instead.

In the 38th episode of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, host Mookie Spitz sits down with Rachanee, the indie author behind the Kingdom Legacy series. She describes how she turned an abandoned gaming character into a seven-book saga spanning interconnected kingdoms, shifting protagonists, and themes of identity, power, and found family. Her approach flips the usual fantasy model on its head: no bloated continuity, no homework for the reader...

In this episode of The Science Fiction and Fantasy Factory, Mookie Spitz sits down with Peter Gribble, author of the sprawling City of Magicians trilogy. They dig into a world where magic replaces military force, complacency masquerades as stability, and a barbarian invasion exposes the cracks holding everything together.

At the center is a deceptively simple premise: a pacifist, pilgrimage-driven city-state has grown rich, comfortable, and dangerously soft. When violence comes knocking, the ruling council scrambles—not to fight, but to manipulate, negotiate, and survive. Their solution? A reluctant young man tasked with telepathically binding himself to th...

The 36th episode of Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory features Mookie going deep into storytelling craft with Michael Morton, a military sci-fi author, editor, and former Air Force space operations specialist who breaks writing down the same way he approaches missions: Clear objectives, defined adversaries, and no wasted energy or motion.

Morton lays out a core principle that drives everything: If your characters do not have goals, and nothing stands in their way, the story collapses. Conflict is the engine, and everything else supports it. He explains how weak character motivation and overbuilt worlds drag stories down, especially...