Exploring Social Themes in Strange Worlds With Austin Shirey

Austin Shirey's City of Spores is a weird and wonderful novella that combines noir tropes, weird horror imagery, and social commentary in an altogether unique package. In this discussion, we chat about his inspiration for the book, his love for genre fiction, and his awesome plans for other books in the future.

 

Go buy City of Spores NOW!

 

City of Spores Synopsis:

There’s something wrong with this city.

Welcome to Madripol, city of artists and madmen, city of mushrooms.

There’s something wrong with this city.

When a strange plague infects Old Town, Johanna Kolibrik thinks the graffiti messages scrawled all over the city might be right. Kolibrik’s got her own problems, though—like paying the bills and keeping her PI business afloat—so when a well-dressed man from New Town offers to double her fee to find his missing wife, she ignores her gut and takes the case.

There’s something wrong with this city.

But when she stumbles across a manuscript that shouldn’t exist, Kolibrik finds herself caught up in a vast web of conspiracy that will challenge everything she believes—a conspiracy that could shake the city of Madripol to its very foundations.

There’s something wrong with this city.

Because in Madripol, everything is connected …

 

Author Bio:

Austin Shirey writes strange and fantastic fiction. He is the author of the novella CITY OF SPORES, and his stories have appeared in several publications and anthologies including The Saturday Evening Post, MetaStellar, and The Dread Machine. When he’s not writing (or pretending to moonlight as an IT systems analyst), he’s probably reading, watching movies, listening to music, or playing guitar. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife, their daughters, and two cats.