Eliza Crewe on her Crushed protagonist, Meda
Overlord
Regular readers of Fantasy-Faction will remember that following the closure of Strange Chemistry – an event that saw many writers thrust into the unfortunate position where they were unexpectedly out…
Guest Blogs
The Villain with a Thousand Faces (Part Two): The One-Line Backstory
Stephen Deas
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…
Taking a Dark Turn
Sean Cummings
Regular readers of Fantasy-Faction will remember that following the closure of Strange Chemistry – an event that saw many writers thrust into the unfortunate position where they were unexpectedly out…
Writing In Someone Else’s World
Richard A. Knaak
I began my career writing in someone else’s world, but I gained that opportunity by utilizing my own work. TSR (then the publisher of Dragonlance) was not publishing independent novels,…
A Matter of Perspective by Jeff Salyards
Jeff Salyards
A few months back, I was lucky enough to be sent a review copy of Jeff Salyards’s first novel, . As well as an excellent premise, what really struck me…
Money Makes the World Go Round
Tom Pollock
I missed The Desolation of Smaug movie when it was in cinemas, but my wife and I just watched it on Netflix, and while she was all ‘look at the…
The Changing Face(s) of Fantasy – Guest Blog by Adam Dalton
Adam Dalton
It’s obviously blasphemy to criticise Tolkien, even indirectly, but for me his work is more important in historico-cultural terms than modern literary terms. Before you send me a load of…
Spotlight on Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets – Guest Post by David Thomas Moore
David Thomas Moore
So, hey. I’m David Thomas Moore, commissioning editor at that there Abaddon Books and editor of Abaddon’s first ever anthology, Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets. And your Marc has…
Crossing the Borders – Guest Post by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Adrian Tchaikovsky
When I write a fantasy setting, it stays written. Ten books now, in the Shadows of the Apt series, and I’m still trading on the world-building that took place before…
Alternative History’s Distorted Mirror
Aidan Harte
If the discussion panel on Alternative History (AH) at this year’s Octocon was an exercise in navel gazing, I can only say that the view proved illuminating. Like every other…
The Importance of Multiple Structures
Tim Ellison
For the last few months I’ve been serving as an advisory editor for short fiction at Strangelet, a new speculative fiction journal based in Boston (first issue September 2014!). Submissions…
Creating Shanghai Sparrow: Guest Post by Gaie Sebold
Gaie Sebold
The germination of a novel is a peculiar process. It seemed particularly so, for me, in the case of Shanghai Sparrow. When I first considered the possibility of a steampunk…