Ilona Andrews, the pseudonym for husband-and-wife Andrew and Ilona Gordon, writes the hugely popular Kate Daniels series.From their Q & A with Diana Biller for The B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog:
I’m always fascinated by your description of post-Shift Atlanta. How do you both approach your worldbuilding? How much of it is pulled from real life Atlanta (for example, do you guys take trips to Atlanta and look at skyscrapers and think, “Huh, that would be fun to destroy in our next book”?)--Marshal Zeringue
I guess we try to make it interesting and original, but still believable. We lived for several years in Georgia and we both traveled frequently to Atlanta for our jobs. I feel like we knew the city well enough to realistically turn it into a post-apocalyptic landscape. Yes, Ilona did turn the building she went to for corporate training into one the skyscrapers we…mutated, I guess would be the word. We also use Google Maps to make sure we’re putting stuff where it’s supposed to be, or where it was before we wrecked it.
World mythology is such a frequent thread in your books. If you could each pick one mythological figure/deity/whatever to have dinner with, who would it be?
For Ilona it would be Loki; she says he would have the best stories. Along the same vein, for me it would be...[read on]