Marc Aplin's Blog, page 242

The Gospel of Loki by Joanne M. Harris

Laughter disarms the fiercest of men. – Lokabrenna A child’s fascination with something can last a long time and spark great ideas; ideas that can be turned into books. As a little girl, Joanne Harris found Thunder of the Gods by Dorothy G. Hosford in her local library. She loved the book so much that […]

Elspeth Cooper adds her thoughts on Industry’s Sexism Problem

Fantasy-Faction is lucky enough to have a good number of talented published authors – especially female authors – posting in our forums. Perhaps I am being presumptuous, but I’d like to think that each of these wonderful ladies are friends of mine and so am very interested in their opinions and experiences revolving around the […]

Jonathan Ross Withdraws from Hugos

Twitter has been alight with the news that one of the UK’s biggest and best known talk show hosts, Jonathan Ross, has withdrawn from his role as Master of Ceremonies at this year’s Hugo Awards. For those who don’t have a clue who he is, he isn’t too far from the mould of Jay Leno […]

A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin

After years of making us wait, 2011 rolled into town and so did Mr. Martin’s long awaited book, number five in a planned seven book series. It is safe to say that many of you were patiently waiting with dread as to whether it would be more of the same crawling to useless strings in […]

Robin Hobb’s Fool’s Assassin Cover revealed!

Well, earlier this week we revealed the cover redesigns of Robin Hobb’s original Farseer series. If that wasn’t enough excitement for one week, her American Publishers (Del Ray books) have just released the cover for Fool’s Assassin! Pretty cool and if that is indeed Fitz on the cover (we presume it is) then he looks […]

Orleans by Sherri L. Smith

I find the post apocalyptic genre simultaneously interesting and frustrating. I think that it has a lot of interesting potential to comment on social trends and social experimentation, but I find that it is frequently bogged down by the same story arcs over and over again. Someone who once was an elite is cast down, […]

Jen Williams responds to opinions on Bookshops’ perceived SFF Prejudice

So, yesterday we published a piece on Fantasy-Faction highlighting the observations made by three of British fantasy’s female authors suggesting that UK Booksellers are selling them and their contemporaries short. A number of comments and tweets came flooding in, and Forum Members even started a topic; the overwhelming feeling was that ‘yes, there is a […]

Sam Sykes Finally Gets an Awesome Cover

I’ve been saying for years that Sam Sykes’s books need some awesome covers. Don’t get me wrong, Sam’s covers for his original series weren’t ‘terrible’, but I did feel that his work deserved so much more. For those who have read Sam’s work you will know that there is something very unique about his voice, […]

David Gemmell Awards – 2014 Longlist Revealed & Voting Open

The Longlists for the David Gemmell Awards has been revealed and voting has opened!!! For those unfamiliar with how The David Gemmell Awards work, the first stage (that has resulted in this longlist) is where publishers nominate titles they think should be considered for the three award categories: best book, best debut and best cover. […]

I Don’t Need No Women In My Fantasy

My Twitter stream regularly expresses a variety of opinion on the treatment of women, or of people of colour or unconventional sexuality, in genre fiction. This is, I presume to imagine, a reflection of the treatment of women, or of people of colour or unconventional sexuality in the wider world. It’s also a consequence of […]