Tactical vs. Tactile: Writing Fantasy Battles
Aaron Miles
Like many people who read fantasy novels, one of the reasons I love the genre is because it contains epic battles with vast armies fighting it out. Whether it’s more…
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Monthly Short Story Winner: Time Travel
Jennie Ivins
It’s time again to reveal the winner of our monthly short story contest. Each month we pick a theme and ask our members to write a story based on that…
Fantastical Creatures of Greco-Roman Mythology: The Vrykolakas
Faith M. Boughan
In exploring a number of lesser-known creatures from Greco-Roman mythology, we’ve seen how some of the modern monsters we’ve come to know and love originated in ancient myth and folklore.…
Rats and Cats in Fantasy
Victoria Hooper
Two animals that have, throughout history, built up a lot of superstition concerning them are rats and cats. So it’s not surprising that these creatures also pop up a lot…
The Broken Empire Trilogy: The Allure of Jorg
Overlord
The following is a guest post I wrote last year for Harper Voyager on the allure of Mark Lawrence’s protagonist Jorg Ancrath. Although most of my references were to the…
The Chaotic Champion – Part Five: The Outlaw Hero
Nyki Blatchley
In a scene early in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, when the duo have barely started on their criminal career, they come across a family sitting by the roadside…
10 Things New Writers Should Be Doing
So I’m in full writing mode at the moment, and I can’t help but kick myself for not starting some things sooner. Here’s a short list of things I wish…
YA Science Fiction and Fantasy – Part Three: Why YA Is Important
Leo Elijah Cristea
Instead of looking at the themes and aspects of YA and what makes it what it is (as suggested in the previous article), it felt somewhat redundant to too closely…
Fantastical Creatures of Greco-Roman Mythology: The Hippalektryon
For the fourth instalment of this series about lesser-known creatures and beasts of Classical mythology, we’re going to take a little bit of a lighter spin on things. While this…
The Fantasy Assassin
Assassins seem to have been steadily rising in popularity, wrapped in dark hooded cloaks and lurking in the pages of sword and sorcery, epic and urban fantasy, and YA, as…
Monthly Short Story Winner: The City
Idlewilder
Every month in the Fantasy-Faction forums we have a themed writing contest. It’s run throughout each month, and voting on the winner takes place across the month thereafter. Anyone can…
Mom Doesn’t Get Dragons
Zachary A. Matzo
My mom doesn’t understand my reading habits. I believe the exact quote was, “I would think science fiction would be the last thing you’d be interested in.” The fact that…