Marc Aplin's Blog, page 206

Final ‘Interstellar’ Trailer Released

We’ve seen a number of trailers for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming movie, Interstellar, but none of them seemed to give a true feeling of what the film was about or the kind of atmosphere it would have. Well, this latest one just released by Fox looks to change that. We find out that the plot will […]

The Magic of Our Day to Day Lives: Snowflake Vignettes

I. So many times I have sat down at my laptop (or typewriter) recently and found the words I wish would flow just do not emerge in a fashion I would like. Esoteric poetry, snippets of my next novel, a bit of dialogue for a screenplay, but not the words that I need to write […]

Taking a Dark Turn

Regular readers of Fantasy-Faction will remember that following the closure of Strange Chemistry – an event that saw many writers thrust into the unfortunate position where they were unexpectedly out of contract – we offered our site to those authors who were going to pursue the self publishing route. Because the closure of Strange Chemistry was so sudden, a […]

Writing In Someone Else’s World

I began my career writing in someone else’s world, but I gained that opportunity by utilizing my own work. TSR (then the publisher of Dragonlance) was not publishing independent novels, but the editor with whom I met agreed to read my manuscript nonetheless. Upon doing so, he was impressed enough to ask me to submit […]

Vicious by V. E. Schwab

V. E. Schwab’s Vicious is built around a handful of characters with superpowers, but precious few – if any – superheroes. That’s part of what makes it so much fun. Schwab’s dialogue crackles with sharp edges and gallows humor, drawing the reader in with a dark story whose tone is established through the voice of […]

Magician by Raymond E. Feist

Now, I must say that I am approaching this review with a certain amount of trepidation. For one thing, FF has reviewed it once before. For another, Magician by Raymond E. Feist is, without a doubt, one of the core foundational novels of the fantasy genre. In the BBC’s 2003 list of the top 100 […]

‘The Dinosaur Lords’ Cover Reveal has us excited!

So, I wanted to make a shout out to a book I’m pretty excited about. Now, how many times does the world have to tell you ‘do not judge a book by its cover’ before they give up already, huh? Cause this one – like so, so many others – I’m judging and that judgement […]

Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy heading to TV

I can’t be the only person thinking there isn’t enough Sci-Fi on television these days (we miss you Star Trek…), so I won’t be the only one excited to hear that yet another Science-Fiction show has been picked up by a major network. This time the Science Fiction show is ‘Mars’ based on the hugely […]

Fantasy Book Club – October 2014: Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

For October, I asked our members to find a great Halloween read. We voted to read Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. I’m really looking forward to spending my October reading and discussing this one. Hope you can join us! A masterpiece of modern Gothic literature, Something Wicked This Way Comes is the […]

City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

City of Stairs is the story of spies, murder (of both men and gods alike), hidden histories and the resulting lies that are taken as gospel, politics, finance, miracles, colonization and conquest, and more. While I’m listing this as epic fantasy, it has elements of noir, urban fantasy, and the new weird. I know this […]