Promoting Your Personality, A.K.A. Marketing For Authors In 2017
Overlord
I stumbled across a Facebook status by an author friend who posted that he was about to start work on the ‘0.01% of being a writer’ that was building his…
writing advice
The Dreaded Adverb Problem
Amy Rose Davis
The poor adverb. No part of speech is more maligned than this little modifier. When authors want to insult each other, what do we do? We accuse each other of…
Exploring Rural Landscape
Adrian Faulkner
The quest is a hallmark of great fantasy fiction and some of the best quests see our heroes traverse a variety of locations before reaching their goal. When done well,…
Plotting – What Happens Next?
Aaron Miles
“What happens next” is a question that has the power to freeze a writer’s hand over the keyboard, paralysing them with potential issues. Which route should your characters take? How…
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson: Or…A Search For Heroes
Geoff Matthews
Everyone has a book in them. At least, that’s what they say. I’m not sure who they are, but it is a truism as much as anything else. What if…
Holidays In Fantasy Fiction
With the arrival of the Christmas season I’ve been thinking about the effects of holidays on our lives. The influence of Christmas is incredibly far reaching; I doubt most people…
A Question Of Technology
When people think of the fantasy genre the concept of technology isn’t usually at the forefront of their minds. They’ll be thinking of the magic, the monsters, the castles and…
Ten Tips For Short Story Writing
Short stories can be great fun to write, but sometimes tough to get the knack of. For anyone who wants to try their luck at this form, I’ve come up…
Surviving NaNoWriMo 2016
Trent Cannon
Ah, National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo for short (or NaNo for shorter)). We meet again. For the…I don’t even know. How many times is it now? Five? Six? It’s…
Human Stories
I’ve been working my way through the Honorverse by David Weber, a military science fiction series focused on the life and career of Captain Honor Harrington. The books centre on…
Worldbuilding: Using The Creation Story To Help Design A Belief System
B. Pine
Is a faith system vital to any fantasy story? Definitely. Even in a fictional setting, people need a raison d’être and comforting explanations for the mysteries of life. Religion is…
A Different Kind of Hero
The heroes in our novels come in all shapes and sizes. Their nature and actions are crafted at the whim of the author. Some heroes are larger than life, giant…
