Marc Aplin's Blog, page 239
March 24, 2014
Brandon Sanderson Stormlight Interview
A couple of weeks back our good friends at Gollancz got in contact and asked if we’d like to interview one of our favourite authors, Brandon Sanderson. Of course, we said ‘YES!’, but because Brandon is busy we knew we’d only have a very limited amount of questions we’d be able to ask, so we […]
March 23, 2014
Red Rising by Pierce Brown
Every year there are a number of debut authors that are so enthusiastically hyped by publishers that, as a reviewer, have you whispering a small prayer under your breath each time you receive a parcel: ‘please, Lord, let this envelope contain [insert name of book here]‘. This year has been no exception; Den Patrick’s The […]
March 22, 2014
Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed
You know when you first read or watch something, and you’re like, “Can’t believe how crap that was” or “Did not like that at all”, but then, by some fortuitous turn of events, you watch or read that same thing again, and you’re like “That was awesome” or “hilarious” or “actually not that bad”. “What […]
March 21, 2014
Elizabeth Bear signs 2 book Space Opera deal with Gollancz!
We here at Fantasy-Faction do like to dip our toes into a bit of Science-Fiction from time-to-time, so we were excited when Gollancz books announced earlier today that they have obtained World Rights to a two-book Space Opera from one of our favourite fantasy authors, John W. Campbell and Hugo-Award-winner, Elizabeth Bear. The series is […]
Fantasy: The Blueprint of the World
Fantasy sinks its figurative talons into us all. Its origins are ancient, with roots in the epic Icelandic Eddur and Old English poems like Beowulf. It owes a debt to Shakespeare, to the adventure narratives of the eighteenth century, to the Gothic movement, Romanticism, the medievalism of the Pre-Raphaelites and to the fin de siècle. […]
March 20, 2014
New Harry Potter Covers for New Generation
It seems that reissuing books with new covers is all the rage right now… Just a few weeks ago we reported that Robin Hobb was getting some cool new covers for her original Farseer Trilogy and that George R.R. Martin was getting some travel-guide looking covers for those who didn’t want to hold a book […]
Elements of Structure
The Hero’s Journey or ‘Monomyth’ is one of the most pervasive and well known formulas in fiction, yet many writers have never even heard of it. The Hero’s Journey is essentially a collection of common structural elements that recur in stories, and they have been used to create a formula for the narrative of a […]
March 19, 2014
Winner of the October 2013 Writing Contest
We’ve been getting such good feedback for the short stories our members have submitted in our Monthly Short Story Competition that we have decided to post them on the main sit at a rate of about one a fortnight. We will begin with a tale that was entered last year as part of October 2013′s competition. […]
Balancing Wit & Grit In Fantasy Fiction
The Mender of Soles Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is a tragic play fraught with intrigue, betrayal, and murder that makes us question the very foundations of human nature. It starts with a joke. To be more precise, the first scene is a series of puns in which a nobleman is made ridiculous to the audience by […]
March 18, 2014
The Truth About -Punk
There is something that really gets me thinking (well, there are many things, really, but this is a big one) about the genre and its tendency to label things, to pigeonhole authors and books into categories with ‘helpful’ titles. In a sense labels can be useful; they can separate and advise. But when they’re misused […]
