Browsing all articles by Stephen Deas.
Is Fantasy for Gardeners?
At some convention in the distant past on some panel about something or other, someone once asked me whether I was an architect or a gardener. I had really no idea what they were talking about but replied that, as a physicist and an engineer, I was probably more of an architect with everything laid […]
The Villain with a Thousand Faces (Part Two): The One-Line Backstory
About the author: Her Holiness the Dragon Queen Zafir, Speaker of the Nine Realms, has played both pro- and antagonist roles in her career as a fictional character. She is either the aloof fist of authority to be respected and feared, a liberator of the oppressed and enslaved, or a dragon-riding genocidal psychotic tyrant bitch-queen […]
The Villain With A Thousand Faces – Part One: Cardboard Cut-Outs
About The Author: Her Holiness the Dragon Queen Zafir, Speaker of the Nine Realms, has played both pro- and antagonist roles in her career as a fictional character. She is either the aloof fist of authority to be respected and feared, a liberator of the oppressed and enslaved, or a dragon-riding genocidal psychotic tyrant bitch-queen […]
John Hornor Jacobs Interview
John Hornor Jacobs, author of Southern Gods and The Twelve-Fingered Boy, recently debuted the first book in his first fantasy series, The Incorruptibles. In-between his busy release, con attendances, and of course work on the next book in the series, he was nice enough to answer a few questions about his worlds, his writing, and […]
Have we made Dragons and Demons too cute and cuddly?
To celebrate the release of Stephen Deas’s The Dragon Queen coming to paperback, we have for you today a very cool article on the emasculation of dragons in contemporary fantasy writing and why – in Stephen’s opinion – this is a bad thing, taking away from the ‘formidable or dangerous’ beasts that have featured in stories over […]
I Don’t Need No Women In My Fantasy
My Twitter stream regularly expresses a variety of opinion on the treatment of women, or of people of colour or unconventional sexuality, in genre fiction. This is, I presume to imagine, a reflection of the treatment of women, or of people of colour or unconventional sexuality in the wider world. It’s also a consequence of […]
Authors, Reviews and Commenting
Most of the advice I’ve seen for authors is not to read reviews, although by no means all. I’m going to disagree and say it’s a useful practice but you’d be wise to put on your armour before you do and remember that a review is an opinion. One person’s opinion, and that person could […]
NaNoWriMo Type Along with Stephen Deas – The Finish
Follow along as Stephen Daes shares his week by week experience doing NaNoWriMo. If you missed Stephen’s intro article, you can read it here. If you missed any of the previous weeks you can read them here: week one, week two, week three, and week four. November 30th Wordcount target: 100,000 Words written: 75,664 Completion anxiety […]
NaNoWriMo Type Along with Stephen Deas – Week Four
Follow along as Stephen Daes shares his week by week experience doing NaNoWriMo. If you missed Stephen’s intro article, you can read it here. If you missed any of the previous weeks you can read them here: week one, week two, and week three. November 18th Wordcount target: 80000 Words written: 72934 The real world […]
NaNoWriMo Type Along with Stephen Deas – Week Three
Follow along as Stephen Daes shares his week by week experience doing NaNoWriMo. If you missed Stephen’s intro article, you can read it here. If you missed week one, you can read it here. And week two is here. November 18th Wordcount target: 55,000 Words written: 52,899 The first time I tried to draft a […]
NaNoWriMo Type Along with Stephen Deas – Week Two
Follow along as Stephen Daes shares his week by week experience doing NaNoWriMo. If you missed Stephen’s intro article, you can read it here. If you missed week one, you can read it here. November 11th Wordcount target: 30,000 Words written: 23,240 A third of the way through and after a poor start, the gist […]
NaNoWriMo Type Along with Stephen Deas – Week One
Follow along as Stephen Daes shares his week by week experience doing NaNoWriMo. If you missed Stephen’s intro article, you can read it here. November 1st Wordcount Target: 0 Words Written: 0 I bring this up, and the next few days, mostly so I have all my ducks in a row for making excuses. I […]
