Marc Aplin's Blog, page 40
October 26, 2020
Tales of the Thief-City by Gareth Lewis – SPFBO #6 Semi-Finals Review
We close out the sixth annual Self-Publishing Fantasy Blog-Off with four semifinalists, the highest rated books in our batch. We will share the scores when we name the finalist on Friday, October 30, and the order of the reviews posted this week should not be taken to imply the rankings of our final four. Today […]
October 25, 2020
The Stone Knife by Anna Stephens – Exclusive Excerpt!
Today on Fantasy-Faction we are thrilled to bring you an excerpt from Anna Stephens’ new series, Songs of the Drowned! For those of you who don’t know, Anna Stephens’ is the author of the highly acclaimed (including by us) Godblind series. The first book in that series, also called Godblind, came out in 2017, with […]
October 23, 2020
Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off #6: The Fifth Five Fall + Our Picks for Semi-Finalists
Now is the winter of our discontent… All right, it’s not winter, and whether contented or not with today’s outcome, the nine authors still in the Fantasy-Faction batch can stop biting their nails, for today they learn their fate—or at least whether they’ve made the semifinalist cut. Once again, the experience of art is subjective, […]
October 21, 2020
Bards and Scribes: The Druid – Guest Blog from Jesse Teller
Jesse Teller is mentally disabled. He suffers from PTSD from an abusive childhood. He is bipolar, suffers from daily to hourly hallucinations, and has DID (multiple personality disorder). He has been a member of the self-published fantasy community for four and a half years now, has published fourteen books, with plans to publish countless more. […]
October 20, 2020
The Worth of Hair by A. A. Freeman
In their original forms, fairy stories were often bloody and almost always filled with grim suffering. The grimmest of all were not the folk tales captured by the famous brothers of that name, but rather Hans Christian Andersen’s original fables. His “Little Match Girl” isn’t rescued by a fairy godmother or industrious talking mice from […]
October 19, 2020
Seven Deaths of an Empire by G. R. Matthews – Cover Reveal + Excerpt
Seven Deaths of an Empire, from Solaris, is one of the hotly anticipated debut fantasy novels for 2021. Here is the stunning cover!
October 15, 2020
Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off #6: The Fourth Five Fall
The last month of Phase I of the SPFBO is always a nail-biter for authors who remain in the competition, and it is with great sympathy that we say goodbye to our next five from the Fantasy-Faction batch. This week’s titles feature cool magical animals and shifters as well as some classic struggles between good […]
October 12, 2020
Words of Wisdom from Comic-Con@Home
In a move that probably shocks no one, I went to yet another virtual convention—this time Comic-Con@Home back in July. But this time instead of waxing poetic about how awesome this shift to virtual is or exclaiming how this could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for some like I did before, this time I wanted to […]
October 8, 2020
Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off #6: The Third Five Fall
The third group to be eliminated in this year’s SPFBO includes some really creative and ambitious explorations of intriguing themes, from gender roles to capitalism, to the nature of power and love. As we say with each batch we let go, just because a book appears on this page doesn’t mean it’s unworthy of love, […]
October 5, 2020
A Wizard’s Sacrifice by A. M. Justice
Spoiler Warning: This review contains mild spoilers for A Wizard’s Forge. Please read with caution if you have yet to finish book one. Conquering fate takes sacrifice. Victoria of Ourtown believes two things: the bright, wandering star in the heavens is an abandoned spacecraft which brought her ancestors to this world and that destiny and […]
