The Next Big Thing is a blogging meme conceived by She Writes that gives authors an opportunity to discuss their next book.

Writer Chris Galvin Nguyen so kind as to tag me for the interview meme. You can read Chris’ answers and learn about her book Breakfast Under the Bodhi Tree here.

Thank you very much Chris for sharing the interview meme with me!

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What is the title of your book?

Beneath the Liquid Skin (firthFORTH Books).

What genre does it fall under?

Fiction / Short stories / Flash stories / Prose poems.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Beneath the Liquid Skin examines humankind’s response to the environment: our pursuit of milder emotional, political, social, and cultural climes; our flight from ecological catastrophe; and our refuge in safer mythical domains.

There’s a closer description and more about what writers such as Kathy Fish, Jeff VanderMeer, Paul Jessup and Tania Hershman are saying about the book here.

Will your book be self-pub or represented by an agency?

The collection is published by firthFORTH Books, an imprint of Queen’s Ferry Press.

How long did it take you to write the first draft?

The stories were written over the course of a year, but since they vary in length from 30 to 4000 words, they took very different lengths of time to draft and edit, from a few weeks to several months.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

That’s very hard to pick out. Collections that combine literary fiction with elements of the imaginary, I would say.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Many different things, and different things for each story. Most of the stories appeared by themselves, like the story in The Tale That Wrote Itself.

The stories are inspired by certain landscapes, real or imaginary, or memories, real or imaginary, aspects of science, folk tales, mythology, the natural world, philosophy, psychology, dreams, the current exploitation of the Earth, climate change, space exploration, works of art, literature, films, games, and music, and touch on these themes, either directly or more symbolically.

I think readers will quickly notice the various sources of inspiration and symbols throughout the stories.

You can find out in just a few days, as Beneath the Liquid Skin will be available for preorder and shipping on the 1st of November 2012!