How Acclaimed Debut Novelist Isa Arsén Writes

Critically acclaimed debut novelist, Isa Arsén, spoke with me about humanizing machines and the creative process, how to write soft sci-fi, and her genre-bending, “timey-wimey” literary debut SHOOT THE MOON.

Isa Arsén is an author and audio engineer based in South Texas and has published several short stories and pieces of experimental interactive media.

Shoot the Moon is Arsén’s debut novel, inspired by her own childhood in New Mexico. Named a BookBub Best Book of Fall and Shondaland Best Book for October 2023 among others, it has been described as “...a puzzle box time travel story,” about an “... [intelligent] but lonely NASA secretary and her relentless drive to live a big life in a world that would keep her small.”

Publishers Weekly called it an, "Innovative . . . [novel that] navigates the back-and-forth of the story’s time-travel events, threading them into the highlights of women’s scientific achievements."

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In this file Isa Arsén and I discussed: 

• Studying music composition and blending the organic and machine
• Why “music is how we decorate time”
• Her unique blend of interests, including Dr. Who
• What it means to write in the age of genre-benders
• Why storytelling is a quirk of evolution
• And a lot more!

Show Notes:

• inarsen.com
• Shoot the Moon by Isa Arsén [Amazon]
• Isa Arsén on Instagram
• Kelton Reid on Twitter

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