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Tabletop Tuesday: Player Characters Keep It Interesting
Not long ago, I wrote about how important it is to be able to improvise when running a tabletop roleplaying game, whether the genre is fantasy, sci-fi, or something altogether different. This is because players are, above all, mad creatures who do not listen to either reason or instructions. If there is room in your […]
How The Other Half Successfully Self-Publish
Uncle Mike has some things to say, people, and you’re not prying this karaoke mic from his hand until he’s done. Is this thing on? Right, okay. Hello. My name is Michael McClung, but for the duration of this little talk, you can think of me as Uncle Mike. In the self publishing world, I’m […]
Monthly Short Story Winner: Corpses
Corpses. Still trickling blood or ancient and dusty. Result of a horrible crime or a fatal accident. Left where they should be or somehow missing. Stone-dead or fake and still alive. Anonymous or well-known. Pumpkin-spiced or…okay, I think you got it. There’s a lot one can say or write about a corpse and our entrants […]
On Character Development
A broken soldier overcoming his failings to make a stand for his home, a powerful sorceress corrupted by her magic and falling into darkness, a boy embarking on a journey and reaching its end as a man. Character development is one of the core aspects of fiction, many readers love watching their favourite protagonist grow […]
Worlds Within Worlds – Part Two: Magic Warfare
Fallout taught fans that war…war never changes. Military historians, however, argue otherwise. Case in point: the stirrup. Before firearms dominated the battlefield, it’s generally agreed that the stirrup was the most important innovation in warfare for a couple centuries. Fans of the Rohirrim will recognize why: cavalry is fast and maneuverable, and the stirrup allows […]
Monthly Short Story Winner: Pirates
Ahoy, me beauties!!! Be prepared and polish up your pirate lin’o! Pirates have a tradition on this here site, so get your hooks polished and start spinnin’ some yarn! Only bilge rats and land lubbers don’t take part! Rules: 1. This must be prose or poetry. 2. PIRATES! 3. Prose must be 500-1500 words long. […]
Cover Reveal for PATERNUS by Dyrk Ashton
Hello everyone! Some of you may be familiar with my novel, Paternus, from last year’s SPFBO competition hosted by Mark Lawrence (Archsaint of self-published authors). Paternus was Fantasy-Faction’s pick for the final round and ended up taking third place out of three hundred entries. Even with that success, I’ve decided to give the book a new cover. […]
Small Press, Big Stories: Fox Spirit Books
Small Press, Big Stories is a monthly column focusing on small and independent presses from around the world. This month’s featured publisher is Fox Spirit Books. This month on #smallpressbigstories we’re talking with Auntie Fox, aka Adele Wearing, who heads up one of the best known independent presses in the genre today – the award-winning […]
Writing A Successful Query Letter
If you’ve heard about query letters, no doubt you’ve heard how annoying, infuriatingly difficult, and soul-sucking they are to write. And every word of that is true. Writing my query was a brutal process, but if you want to get an agent; there’s no getting around it. It’s commonly assumed a query is a novel’s […]
Tough Travels: Adepts
At the start of every month, Fantasy-Faction will lead you (yes, YOU!) on a tour of the fantasy genre. From high to low, from classics to new releases, from epic to urban; each month, we will guide you in search of a different trope, theme or cliché. Lest we become lost, we’ll be referring to The […]
Putting It Right, At Last: Must Read Women Authors in Fantasy
My first article, sent ‘on spec’ to Fantasy-Faction, and written when I was feeling my mortality quite keenly, was a simple affair. I’d written The Stone Road and put it out for the hundreds of thousands of people to read (more the hundreds than the thousands really), and I was starting to reconnect with the […]
Worlds Within Worlds – Part One: Writing a Good Game into a Good Book
Humanity has played games for as long as we’ve been able to make up rules and keep score. As we’ve developed as a species, we’ve created thousands of games, and gaming isn’t just something we do out of boredom. In many ways, games are a survival mechanism, a way to recharge our brains and spirits. […]
