Character Development: Character Death and the Ultimate Sacrifice
Carlyn Atkinson
Killing a character in your novel is a tried and true method for advancing your plot. Allegiances are torn, revenge is sought, kingdoms fall apart. Character death feels as essential…
Articles
Chasing Graves by Ben Galley – Cover Reveal & Guest Blog
Ben Galley
I’m a firm believer that cover art is part and parcel of the book – conjoined twins impossible to separate. The cover plays an important role. It represents the words…
Monthly Short Story Winner: Maiden, Mother, Crone
Xiagan
The depiction of women in fantasy is a controversial, fascinating, and ongoing topic. This month we had our entrants write a story about women. Specifically, we wanted a story with…
Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off #4: The Fall of the First Five
Geoff Matthews
* Disclaimer * Writing and reading are subjective arts. What some folks will absolutely love, others will dislike. It is a bit like Marmite in the UK – normal people…
Fantasy Worldbuilding: From the Bottom Up – Guest Blog by Cameron Johnston
Cameron Johnston
Falling down wiki-holes of research in the cause of plausible worldbuilding, and why magic shit is such an important resource. We’ve all seen those hefty articles on building fantasy worlds,…
Once Upon A Time: Fairy Tales and Fantasy
Jo Niederhoff
Once upon a time… Just about anyone familiar with the Western literary canon knows that phrase. It opens familiar fairy tales we’ve grown up with, like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty,…
Monthly Short Story Winner: Letters
This month we had our entrants try their hand at writing a letter. Sounds boring and not fantasy-ish at all? We hope not! We didn’t want them to just write…
Weaving A Narrative
Aaron Miles
A story is more than its central plot tenants. It is more than the broad strokes of its grand events and dramatic moments. It is a woven tapestry of differing…
Darius Hinks Joins Angry Robot Books with The Ingenious – Guest Blog
Darius Hinks
Today we have author Darius Hinks with us to talk about his upcoming release, The Ingenious, due out February 2019, from Angry Robot Books! Waaay back in 2011 I wrote…
Monthly Short Story Winner: Writing In A Subgenre You Don’t Like
We chose this topic to achieve two things: First, to acquaint entrants with something new, and second, to help entrants identify what they normally don’t like about their chosen subgenre.…
A Fantasy Geek’s Guide to YouTube: Weapons and Warfare
Richard Marpole
YouTube is an app, a website, and a cultural phenomenon. It’s also a vast and barely-explored wilderness full of content that ranges from dynamic to dire. Whatever your interests are,…
The Lost Puzzler by Eyal Kless – Cover Reveal
Overlord
There aren’t a huge amount of fantasy/science fiction hybrids and probably for good reason; it’s a very hard balance to strike. If the reader feels for even a moment that…