Marc Aplin's Blog, page 147
March 2, 2016
The Malice by Peter Newman: Cover Reveal & Author Video
Fantasy-Faction were such big fans of Peter Newman’s work that we made sure he was at our last Grim Gathering event (which was amazing btw!). We truly believe that Peter is doing something unlike anyone else in Fantasy. He is writing a novel that could be considered ‘Grimdark’, which is fully on trend, but he […]
March 1, 2016
Black City Saint by Richard A. Knaak
Prohibition is in full swing. The cops are scrambling around, closing down speakeasies, and arresting gangsters whenever they can – those that aren’t on the take that is. And in Chicago, Al Capone is about to make his move. To Nick Medea this is all background noise, a fact of life in the roaring 20s. […]
Fantasy Titles On Our Radar: March 2016 Edition
Here we are then… It’s another ‘On Our Radar’ post, this time covering the month of March! Because, our to-be-read lists are never quite long enough, right? This month we’ve included all the titles that have us excited or that we’ve seen and thought readers would find interesting. We’ve probably not included ‘every’ big fantasy […]
February 29, 2016
Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword by Barry Deutsch
Library book swapping is almost a habit among my family. My mom has borrowed the copy of Girl Waits with Gun that I checked out last week, and I’ve been hovering over my sibling’s shoulder for Ms. Marvel. I did the same for Welcome to Night Vale and The Lunar Chronicles, and it’s a generally […]
February 28, 2016
5 Tips For Writing A Swashbuckling Scene by V.E. Schwab
V.E. Schwab is an author comfortable writing all kinds of stories. Over the years, these tales have included those for young readers within secondary worlds, a dark story of super villains on a collision course, a supernatural exploration into personal legacy beyond death and plenty more besides. Whereas V.E. Schwab’s previous novels had been successful and highly regarded, A Darker […]
February 27, 2016
Interview with Louisa Hall, author of Speak
We’ve featured a fair amount of Science-Fiction on Fantasy-Faction lately, far more than we usually do, and that has opened doors to chat with some fantastic authors writing within that genre. Today I’m speaking with Louisa Hall, who is an American novelist with a phD in Literature from the University of Texas at Austin. Our discussion will focus on […]
February 26, 2016
CITY OF BURNING SHADOWS by BARBARA J WEBB
Today’s review features another one of Mark Lawrence’s Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off Finalists. This will be Fantasy-Faction’s ninth review of the ten finalists and means we’ve got just one left to score over the coming days. Here’s the blurb for City of Burning Shadows, Book 1 in Apocrypha: The Dying World. Joshua “Ash” Drake is a […]
February 25, 2016
The Diversity of Today’s Cutting Edge Sci-Fi
When we talk about science fiction we divide it up. It’s too big for a single shelf, we have to break it into subgenres and swallow it in pieces. There’s hard sci-fi, which typically deals with complicated scientific concepts. I usually call this technical sci-fi, since it’s often predicated on the idea that the science […]
Monthly Short Story Winner: Broken Empire FanFic
The challenge this month was to write fanfiction, which means the story should be set in an already existing fantastical universe. Writers could choose from the following book series as the setting for their story: Pratchett’s Discworld, Rowling’s Harry Potter, Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Lawrence’s Broken Empire, Lynch’s Gentleman […]
Catchup Interview with Jen Williams
Today, on the release day of The Silver Tide, Fantasy-Faction has been able to catchup with one of our favourite authors, Jen Williams. For anyone who hasn’t yet picked up Jen’s books, you probably want to check out this review and this interview and skip this one for now (it contains a number of book […]
