Marc Aplin's Blog, page 109
June 18, 2017
The Blood-Tainted Winter by T. L. Greylock
“Dark are the hearts of men, and easily tempted.” Raef Skallagrim is not a happy bunny. All he wants to do is go on a sea trip with his mates. He’s been looking forward to all it entails for ages: drinking, raiding, pillaging, ‘boys will be boys’ fun and games. Making memories, y’know? But Raef […]
June 16, 2017
Monthly Short Story Winner: Potions and Elixirs
Outside of RPGs and adventure games, potions hadn’t been very popular until a certain professor humiliated a little wizard student lesson after lesson in his potion class. This month our entrants were to show us there is more to potions than Severus Snape, Felix Felices and Polyjuice Potion. Rules: 1. This must be prose or […]
June 15, 2017
Evil is a Matter of Perspective: An Anthology of Antagonists
In 2016 Grimdark Magazine successfully ran a Kickstarter to pull together Evil is a Matter of Perspective: An Anthology of Antagonists. It’s full of authors Fantasy Faction readers will love and the public release paperback is dropping on the 16th of June. The full list of authors is impressive, featuring R. Scott Bakker, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Michael R. […]
June 13, 2017
A God in the Shed by J-F. Dubeau
Saint-Ferdinand’s cemetery is far too large. It’s a quiet and idyllic village with a small police station, family owned diners and a grocery store but for the last twenty years an elusive killer has butchering the locals. It’s Inspector Stephen Crowleys job to stop the murders and when an old hermit is discovered to have […]
June 12, 2017
Magic, Mutants, and Machines: The Nifty Bits Reviews
Are you tired of reading lengthy, critical reviews that leave you even more confused about what to read next? Daniel Potter’s Nifty Bits – brief summaries of his past month’s reading – are the perfect remedy! Steal the Sky by Megan E. O’Keefe is a prelude to a high skies adventure-story. The plot, world, and economy […]
June 11, 2017
UK Games Expo 2017 Recap
Recently (Friday 2nd of June 2017 to Sunday 4th of June 2017) I attended the UK Games Expo, which was held at the NEC near Birmingham. As expected for a board game fair, most of the popular games could be bought there, from the Pandemic series to Fantasy Flight Games’ franchises to slightly lesser known, […]
Wonder Woman – Spoiler Free Movie Review
Alright, before I start this review, I should make a few things clear. I am not a big fan of DC’s Extended Universe thus far. Which is a polite way of saying I think Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Suicide Squad were all awful awful films. I could very easily write a week’s […]
June 9, 2017
Monthly Short Story Winner: Based On A Random Wikipedia Article
I don’t think we ever had a prompt that was so not fantasy related and so open. We were really curious about the stories this prompt would produce and the wide variety of themes: steampunk, portal, grimdark, military, parallel universe – depending on the article you got, anything was possible. Writer’s had to take the […]
June 8, 2017
The SPFBO: Introducing Round One!
So, here we are again. The Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off (#SPFBO) 3 is set to begin on July 1! Read all about it on Mark Lawrence’s blog, or check out our own announcement here. For now, here’s a rundown of how Fantasy-Faction will be handling Round One. As you know, 300 competing titles have now been […]
June 7, 2017
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
Recently, it seemed that no matter where I turned on the internet, someone was mentioning—and praising—Angela Carter. Maybe it was because of the recent biography, or maybe it was just the universe’s way of pointing me to a new writer and a crucial text I somehow hadn’t read yet. And after a little digging, I […]
