Q & A With Mur Lafferty author of Heaven series

I am so excited to have my first Q & A with a wonderful author and well known name in the podibook world. On her Heaven series of books, I introduce to you Mur Lafferty! (I can hear the applause :P)

Q: What are your inspirations for writing the Heaven series?

I was thinking about how anticipation is often better (or worse) than the reality we anticipate. And I wondered if the ultimate reward turned out to be not as good as expected when we finally got it. Then I just started playing with mythologies and different afterlives.

Q: Did you already know a lot about the major religions or did you have to do a lot of research?

About half and half. I was familiar with Greek and Norse mythology, and passing knowledge with Native American. I had to do lots of research on Chinese and Egyptian and Japanese.

Q: What were you favorite parts of the series or each book?

Gosh. That's hard. I think Wasteland and War, flipping between the wasteland and afterlives and building a new world were my favorite. I also liked giving Heaven to a hobo for safe keeping in Earth.

I thought there was something left unanswered and that was the battle between Heaven and Hell.

Q: Was it intentionally left to the imagination or are we going to get to hear about the final battle between Heaven and Hell?

Sure. Every story is going to have open threads for the reader's interpretation.

Q: Is there anything you would like to say to the people reading this? Maybe about your future projects

I don't have any podcasted fiction coming up right now, nothing that I can talk about, anyway. I'd just recommend listening to the Tor.com podcast for fiction and listening to my podcast I Should Be Writing for writing advice.

Q: What you would like  listeners to have taken away from the Heaven series?

I never look at writing that way. I tell a story, I hope people enjoy it, and walk away with a desire, perhaps, to hear more stories, from me, from others, doesn't matter. And Heaven was really a love letter to all the stories that are the foundation storytellers rely on today.

Thank you so much Mur for you wonderfully open and honest answers. I hope to hear more from you in the future. I will be adding Playing for Keeps to this blog soon.

I hope my readers enjoyed this Q & A portion of my blog. Please download the Heaven series and give it a listen. Feel free to post your comments and your own reviews as well. 

~JadeDragoness