Marc Aplin's Blog, page 155
December 26, 2015
Top 10 Most Popular Posts of 2015
2015 has been a wonderful year for me as the Editor of Fantasy-Faction. Thousands of you have been visiting the site on a daily basis and our team has been doing their absolute best to ensure a new article, interview or review is waiting for you each time you stop by. So, for today’s post, […]
December 24, 2015
Fantastic and Forgotten Christmas Stories
The holidays are always a time for stories of magic and miracles. Whether the stories are told at a place of worship, at home in front of the fireplace, or in a cinema, these stories have been told and retold for generations. “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” or Dickens’s A Christmas Carol are perhaps the […]
December 23, 2015
Luke Skywalker Can’t Read and Other Geeky Truths by Ryan Britt
I think it is fair to say that nerds tend to be obsessive completists who love to study things at a very granular level. And one of our favorite things to do with that knowledge is to show it off: we pontificate, we spout off, we rant, we theorize. And sometimes this ends badly. It […]
December 22, 2015
The Thief Who Knocked On Sorrow’s Gate by Michael McClung
When did I go from being a thief to some sort of hero? When exactly did that happen, and how could I possibly not have noticed? I was introduced to Michael McClung and the Amra Thetys series through Mark Lawrence’s Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off. McClung’s entry, The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble’s Braids, immediately caught my […]
December 21, 2015
Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens – Spoiler Free Review
Writer’s Note: This is truly a spoiler-free review. And while normally I’d never ask for anyone to censor themselves, allow me to issue this simple plea: don’t spoil the movie in the comments section. The Force Awakens is one of those watershed moments in nerd history that deserves to be experienced fresh, as the filmmakers […]
December 19, 2015
Elements of Fantasy: Brownies
Hidden in the forgotten rooms of a house and in cluttered corners are little supernatural children who perform chores in exchange for food and treats. Even though they are personable and happy on their good days, they are considered to be evil spirits called brownies. Brownies aren’t just the girls who knock on your door […]
December 18, 2015
Writing The Other Other
Writing the other can be a challenge, it’s often difficult to convincingly portray a character that greatly differs from your experiences. Without a personal frame of reference the writer is forced to work harder to make sure their character is accurate and believable. For many writers the challenge is writing in a different gender, a […]
Fantasy ‘One-Shots’
Fantasy. It’s our genre: we love it! But… trilogies… quartets… quintets… septologies… decalogies… and all those other ‘ets’ and ‘gies’, they take so much time to read, don’t they? Well, our good friends over at Reddit recently held a discussion on the best fantasy ‘one-shots’ – that is fantasy novels without any kind of sequel / spin-off / etc […]
December 16, 2015
The Shores of Spain by J. Kathleen Cheney
J. Kathleen Cheney’s trilogy about an alternate Portugal secretly populated by sereia (better known as sirens), selkies, and otter people comes to a conclusion in The Shores of Spain. The first book, The Golden City, introduced us to this world, bringing us into a tale of political intrigue and murder sprinkled liberally with magic and […]
Interview with Alison Littlewood
I first heard of Alison Littlewood back in 2012 when one of her Editors, Jo Fletcher, was proudly telling me that her debut novel – A Cold Season – had been selected for the Richard and Judy Bookclub (similar to Oprah’s Bookclub, for you readers from the US). Here in the UK that’s a really big […]
