Malka Older Chats with Fran Wilde About Her New Book
FT. COLLINS, COLO. — Old Firehouse Books hosted Fran Wilde and Malka Older, on Tuesday, March 7th.
The event took place on Facebook live, where Andrea Day, the bookstore’s events and social media coordinator introduced the two authors and left them to chat.
Malka Older is a teacher at Western Colorado, a writer, aid worker, and a sociologist. She is the author of Infomocracy which was named one of the best books of 2016 by The Washington Post and other organizations. Fran Wilde is a two-time Nebula award winner and currently has seven published novels, a poetry collection, and over 50 short stories.
The two met on Old Firehouse Book’s Facebook page to talk about Older’s newest book, The Mimicking of Known Successes. It is a science fiction, mystery, and romance novel that takes place in a human colony on a Jupiter-like planet where a man goes missing. Wilde asked the questions and Older responded in a normal Q&A fashion.
Without giving too much away, Older revealed that she began writing this book in late 2020 and was heavily influenced by Holmes & Watson retellings.
“There’s definitely a kind of mental play between two people who have very different ways of looking at the world and how they interact as they’re trying to uncover things,” Older said. She wanted to make sure that there was a mystery that had to be solved and that there were some academic and cerebral elements to it.
Wilde expresses her love and interest in Older’s newest book. She shares her favorite excerpts and lines from the first chapter. “The world that you create and the characters that you set up with these lines are amazing.”
Wilde even asked Older to share one of her favorite excerpts that she had written.
“That is brilliant, and I love the way that you used food and verbal sparring to center on their relationship at the end. It just really went so nicely,” Wilde said in response to the excerpt Older shared.
With about twenty minutes left of the live stream, Day hopped back on to relay viewer questions. Audience members had questions about the challenges and opportunities that Older found when integrating different genres into the plot.
The Q&A session ended with Older expressing her thanks and appreciation to Old Firehouse Books for getting her name and book out there.
Older and Wilde talk about the book in great detail, and if you are interested in hearing Malka Older talk more about her new book, you can do so on the Old Firehouse Books Facebook page.
If you’d like to read Malka Older’s book, you can purchase it at Old Firehouse Books or online. If you are interested in attending an event that is put on by Old Firehouse Books, make sure you check out their website.
“You can always find out about all of our events on our website. We have a calendar, and that will be the easiest way to find everything.” Day says.
