Welcome to a celebration of indie writing recognition! The Outstanding Creator Awards is one of the most visible and influential platforms recognizing independent authors who deliver quality, originality, and emotional punch. These awards aren’t participation trophies—they’re competitive, professionally judged, and taken seriously in the indie community. They don’t just validate a book; they amplify it. And Ingrid Moon wasn't only nominated… she dominated. The Warrior’s Shade and The Te...

In the 17th episode of Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, Mookie Spitz chats with Steve Gibson (S.A. Gibson), the prolific indie science-fiction author, editor-in-chief of a globally sourced science-fiction anthology, and writer whose work asks an uncomfortable question: what survives when technology doesn’t? Gibson unpacks his journey from voracious sci-fi reader to author of more than twenty books, many set in a post-collapse world where steam power, printing presses, libraries, and hum...

The 16th episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory has Mookie sitting down with Daniel P. Douglas: the shared pen name of Paul and Phil Garver, prolific multi-genre writers who are also identical twins. Together, they unpack what it means to collaborate as creative partners for decades: how two distinct sensibilities merge into a single authorial voice, how trust replaces ego, and why their process has evolved from strict turn-taking to a sharper writer–editor dynamic. The twin ang...

Out on the Science Fiction & Fantasy Factor floor is Cornish poet and performer Bert Biscoe, who voices two sections from Jonnie Fazoolie and the Transfinite Reality Engine audiobook as a teaser reel. The first reading share the infinitale of Kreo Bonsai, a sardonic, alien spider scientist who has built the Jar—the ultimate simulation machine that instantiates every possible universe, one Planck-second at a time. As Kreo marvels over how his Jar works, we hear how he also endures a...

What happens when two Gen-X science-fiction lifers turn on the mic, set themselves loose, and argue about everything? You get the 14th episode of SFFF. Host Mookie Spitz welcomes longtime friend and fellow sci-fi heretic Lee Kantz for a sprawling, sharp-tongued, no-sacred-cows conversation that tears through Star Trek, Star Wars, Spielberg, Nolan, AI, wokeness, anti-wokeness, bad writing, great ideas, worse dialogue, and the slow death of subtlety in modern science fiction A rant sampling: “S...

J.Z. Pitts doesn’t posture, pretend, or pose behind “author brand” theatrics. He comes on the Factory floor to pod with Mookie Spitz, where they tell the truth about what it costs to write, to fail, to get back up, and to self-publish when the world is drowning in content and nobody’s handing out golden tickets. In this episode, Pitts walks us through Virtual Rebel, his YA sci-fi novel about a teenage girl fighting through a virtual-reality dystopia: equal parts Ready Player One, coming-of-ag...

The twelfth episode of the SFFF features Mookie chatting up the genre with Princeton astrophysics grad student turned tech consultant Ed Powell, where they immediately launch into hard science, bad science, and unraveling state of a genre that used to dream big and think smart. Ed walks in with his PhD, his plasma-physics past, and his lifelong obsession with Clarke and Asimov. He remembers buying The Sands of Mars on the Jersey shore; Mookie counters with his own gateway drug, Asimov’s...

This episode of the SFFF drops you straight onto the factory floor with Robert Reif, the Zoomer indie author who somehow writes like a pulp-era wanderer inebriated on optimism. His debut novel, Frontier One, feels like Tarzan meets Sally Ride, wrapped in that old-school, high-adventure energy that so much of science fiction abandoned when it got moody, preachy, and self-righteous. Robert riffs about Charlie, the jungle-raised flat-world himbo who treats the sky like a ceiling; Talina, t...

Mookie gets chatty with speculative-fiction author Lou Iovino about the long, uneven road to becoming a working writer. Lou shares how his creative life started in comics through co-authoring a ten-issue graphic novel on his commute to Manhattan, hiring artists out of pocket, and learning the discipline of concise storytelling and crisp dialogue. That foundation carried Lou into screenwriting and eventually novels. He explains why he didn’t chase traditional publishing at first, how Hugh Howe...

Mookie is thrilled to chat with Blake and Sherry Shimshock, the husband-and-wife team behind the Chronicles of Derek Fade: a fast-paced sci-fi adventure series that fuses James Bond swagger, Star Wars style, and Firefly heart. Their partnership echoes the creative chemistry of The Expanse’s Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck: Blake provides the action, imagination, and cinematic energy of a screenwriter, while Sherry crafts the emotional core, depth, and prose that make the characters human. ...

The engines of creativity are humming, the publishing lights are flickering, and an electrifying story just streamed off the line. On this launch-day episode of The Science Fiction Factory, host Mookie Spitz welcomes indie author Nathan J. Pearce, whose debut cyberpunk thriller Faith Faraday and the Cyber Samurai hits screens and shelves today! Set in 2076 Tokyo, the book follows Faith Faraday, a daemon hunter chasing rogue AIs that masquerade as digital ghosts. Think Men in Black for machine...

The seventh episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory explores how speculative fiction actually gets made — the grind, the vision, and the madness behind the worlds we can’t stop dreaming about. Hosted by writer, ranter, and raconteur Mookie Spitz, he sits down with Matthew Carauddo, creator of the Diamond Dragons saga — a richly illustrated six-book fantasy series blending martial arts, mysticism, and philosophy. But Matthew isn’t just an author: he’s a stunt performer, fenc...

What do you get when a dopamine-deficient bald guy, a stack of manuscript pages, and an accidental reader with a doctorate walk into a podcast? You get this wild, heartfelt, and honest episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory—where Mookie Spitz, podcaster, ranter, and writer talks about the creation of his latest science fiction novel: Jonnie Fazoolie and the Transfinite Reality Engine. In a full-circle moment of gratitude and literary soul-searching, Mookie hands the mic to...

Sci-fi author Ingrid Moon and voiceover wizard Scott Allen join your host, Mookie Spitz, for an unfiltered ride through the making of audiobook for Biohunter—a post-apocalyptic sci-fi love story between a deadly alien tracker and a teenage human target. They talk shop about audiobooks, content repurposing, and self-publishing in the age of AI. Ingrid reveals how the novel began as a pseudonymous writing challenge—complete with a mystery book cover and fake name—and ended as a full...

Your sci-fi obsessed host Mookie Spitz sits down with science educator, technologist, and multi-genre author Ingrid Moon to dissect writing and self-publishing — and why it’s so damn hard to do it well. They start with Ingrid’s journey from tech marketing to science classrooms to building reference books for sci-fi authors who don’t know enough science. Astrofiction, Biofiction, Robofiction — yes, those are real, and they’ll save your story from embarrassing “space magic"... Then it’s all in ...

Step back inside The Science Fiction Factory, where host Mookie Spitz joins fellow indie author Greg Sorber as they transform vivid imagination into great storytelling. Recorded fresh off LA Comic Con 2025, this episode dives into what it means to build worlds, fight algorithms, and write science fiction without a corporate mothership. Greg opens up about the making of his Mechhaven saga—a gritty space opera he describes as “Transformers meets Braveheart”—where 200 sentient robots struggle fo...

We can't get enough science fiction! But why...? Science fiction isn’t just a genre, but the way we see the world and ourselves. Great science fiction is where philosophy meets spectacle, where we project our fears, fantasies, and future selves into strange new worlds to see reflections of our possibilities. After talking to die-hard fans, veteran writers, and creators across the sci-fi spectrum, I started noticing patterns — emotional, intellectual, even spiritual. Beneath the la...

What makes science fiction & fantasy great? Step onto the shop floor where imagination meets machinery. The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory is where writers, artists, filmmakers, and dreamers reveal how the genre gets made—story by story, world by world, effect by effect. Join your host Mookie Spitz to talk about the craft and chaos behind your favorite futures: from character arcs to cosmic engines, from special effects to imaginary and planetary-scale ideas. Think of the sho...