Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis
Jo Niederhoff
In my life, I’ve found that there are a few different sorts of books I wind up reading. Some are gifts. Some are books I explicitly sought out. And some…
fantasy
Learning from Script and Screen
Aaron Miles
It’s important for a writer to learn about their craft wherever they can, for most this takes the form of studying the work of successful authors or flicking through a…
The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson
Jonathan Thornton
Tor’s novella series was started in 2015, with the aim of promoting this shorter medium. The line includes both established authors and those just making their debut, and has included…
Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off #2: Cover Up?
Geoff Matthews
We’ve had a look at the covers to all 30 books on the Fantasy-Faction list for the Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off and picked our favourite three. Why did we do…
Foundations of Fantasy: The Epic of Gilgamesh
Ryan Howse
More than any other genre, fantasy tends to examine ancient epics. Whether it’s the study of archetypes and ectypes, or a historical understanding of narrative itself, or simply a desire…
Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off #2: The Self-Pub Strikes Back
Last year’s Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off gathered a lot of interest across Twitter, Facebook and forums. At Mark Lawrence’s request, ten influential websites, bloggers and over 250 authors got together and…
Languages In Fantasy
Leo Elijah Cristea
Language in fantasy: is it an outdated, often academically-gratuitous addition that bogs down a story and its world, or a clever quirk of setting that adds a sprinkle of the…
Fantasy and the Collector Mentality
Zachary A. Matzo
Raise your hand if own more than one copy of Lord of the Rings. I own four: the ebooks, my first mass market paperbacks from when I was 7 or…
Diverse Fantasy Is Better Fantasy
Eric Christensen
I recently I submitted a story to my writing group for critique. It was a secondary-world fantasy set in a pre-industrial port city. Of all the comments I received, the…
The Paper Menagerie And Other Stories by Ken Liu
“Time’s arrow is the loss of fidelity in compression. A sketch, not a photograph. A memory is a re-creation, precious because it is both more and less than the original.”…
Berserkers In Fantasy
Nicola Alter
In fantasy, we see a lot of magicians, shape-shifters, werewolves and all manner of humanoid characters with supernatural qualities. One type of powerful character that crops up more rarely, however,…
Hereville: How Mirka Caught a Fish by Barry Deutsch
Mirka of Hereville has defeated a troll in a knitting contest and won her home back from a meteorite that tried to take her place in her family, but now…