The Kobalos Trilogy by Ty Johnston
Jesse Flohrs
Kron Darkbow seeks vengeance, and he plans to have it no matter the costs. Returning to the city of his birth after 15 years, he hunts down the wizard responsible…
Avoiding the “Instabond”
Amy Rose Davis
Making Your Characters Fall In Love on the Page Last week, I got a little wordy talking about things to remember when creating compelling romantic relationships on the page, and…
Nights of Villjamur by Mark Charan Newton
Overlord
If you didn’t live through the Golden Age of Speculative Fiction (I didn’t) and haven’t gone back and read some of the fantastic 1930’s-1950’s novels (I have), you are certainly…
Writing Fantasy Gender Stereotypes – Part Two: Writing the Opposite Gender
Faith M. Boughan
This is Part Two of a series on Writing Fantasy Gender Stereotypes. If you missed Part One you can read it here. This past July, I attended Polaris, a sci-fi…
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J. K. Rowling
ChrisMB
So, after my previous Harry Potter review, I had another look at my copies of Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Yeah, turns out…
Mark Tufo Interview
Month of the Living Dead (aka October) featured two novels by independent novelist Mark Tufo – a former Marine turned regular working man who took his life experiences, a few…
Incarceron by Catherine Fisher
Ben Galley
First, a word on the author. Catherine Fisher, unbeknownst to me before spying the glittery cover of Incarceron at my local bookstore, is a veritable factory of fiction. Her writing…
Hammered by Kevin Hearne
Kit
Alright, folks. It needs to be said. Kevin Hearne is a genius. There! I’ve said it! While not all of you may agree with my labeling of Mr. Hearne’s intelligence,…
Worldbuilding for Fantasy Writers
Leo Elijah Cristea
Worldbuilding: that old mainstay of fantasy that is as much like Marmite as…well, Marmite. Some writers live for worldbuilding, for the meticulous crafting of worlds and settings which they subsequently…
Writer’s Den: What’s in a Name?
Thomas A. Knight
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Or so wrote the great William Shakespeare. But would it really? Names are important in fiction. It’s hard to identify…
Anno Dracula by Kim Newman
Alister Davison
Of all the fiction I’ve read over the years, it’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula that I’ve returned to the most. Sure, it’s not perfect; one can argue long into the night…
Fantasy As Mythology
Let’s take a leaf from Tolkien’s book and consider the fantasy genre as a collection of mythologies representing a variety of fictional worlds. How do writers create these worlds and…