Gef Fox's Blog: Wag The Fox, page 4

Nothin' Fancy About Necromancy: an interview with Nicholas Kaufmann, author of "In the Shadow of the Axe"

About Nicholas Kaufmann's In the Shadow of the Axe: The year is 1847, and Kasch Möllhausen has returned to the small German mountain village of Helmburg in disgrace. Kicked out of the Swiss boarding school where he was unforgivably abandoned by his father, Luther Möllhausen, his humiliating homecoming is further complicated by the news that Luther has died. Worse, Kasch learns that the father he has come to despise instructed the village elders not to inform Kasch of his death or invite...

Sixth Month Anniversary Giveaway for Somer Canon's "Vicki Beautiful" (Enter to win a $25 Amazon gift card)

Vicki Beautiful Celebrates Six Months with Giveaway.
Have You Ate Dinner Yet?By Somer Canon Do you know what happened on April 26, 2016? Yes, that was six months ago. Surprise! It was the day that my novella, Vicki Beautiful, launched. Yay! It has been a wonderful six months wherein I was welcomed into an amazing community of writers, editors, reviewers, readers, and publicists. Having my little story that barely made it to press be published has been one of the most satisfying experiences of...

Down the Hatch: a guest post by Amber Bird, author of "Peace Fire"

In 2050, the world is a little denser, a little greyer, and a little more firmly under the corporate thumb. Wriggling carefully under that thumb, in their dimly lit flats, Katja and her friends have tended to walk the fine line between cyber criminals and cyber crusaders. For them, no physical reality compares to their lives built on lines of aggressive code.

But then somebody blows up the office where Katja is pretending to be a well-behaved wage slave and jolts them into the concrete and clo...

Be Careful What You Search For Because You Just Might Find It: a review of Amy Stuart's "Still Mine"

Still Mine
by Amy Stuart
320 pages
Simon & Schuster

If you want an American backdrop that is otherworldly, and quite separate from what most folks think of when they think of America, you can't do much better than Alaska. It's about as close to Narnia as you're going to get with its terrain that's as perilous as it is pretty.

The protagonist, Clare, arrives in the remote town of Blackmore posing as a photographer and asking questions about a young missing woman named Shayna. Blackmore's reside...

Exploring Darkness in History: a guest post by Jason Parent, author of "Wrathbone and Other Stories"

Terror follows those who let it into their hearts.WrathboneGuests of President Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln, Major Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris attend a showing of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865. On that fateful night, a great man falls, but he is not alone. For Henry and Clara, the night is only the beginning of lives wrought with jealousy, madness, and horror.The Only Good LawyerBradley is a savvy defense attorney with no scruples. Under his representati...

Never Tell Me the Odds: a guest post by Gregory A. Wilson, author of "Grayshade"

NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS by Gregory A. Wilson
I admit to being a sucker for the “one against the world” story: the idea of an overwhelming array of resources brought to bear by a large organization or government against one individual—an individual who, to quote Liam Neeson, has “special skills,” skills good enough to counterbalance that overwhelming resource disadvantage. As a kid I occasionally watched a strange show in reruns on PBS called The Prisoner, about a top secret agent (played by Pat...

An excerpt of James Carpenter's "No Place to Pray"

Two young men, one bi-racial and the other white, meet in an overnight lockup and begin their shared twenty-year downward spiral into alcoholism and homelessness. LeRoy and Harmon work together, drink together, brawl together, and as Harmon suffers from his final illness, they both bed Edna, a wealthy widow who, out of pity, curiosity, and loneliness, takes them into her vacation home by the river. Through episodes rendered from shifting, multiple points of view, a series of flashbacks, and L...

Stories with a Secret, Never to Be Told: an interview with Robert J. Wiersema, author of "Seven Crow Stories"

In his debut collection Seven Crow Stories, best-selling novelist Robert J. Wiersema draws on myth and folktale, ghost stories, and fairy tales to share a glimpse of the worlds bordering our own. With his short fiction, Wiersema explores the mysterious realms of the shadows, the mirrorlands where time runs strange.




Gef: What is the allure to folktales for you? Was there a specific mythology that influenced you in your writing early on?
Robert: Folk tales are alluring to me on a couple of level...

Why Writing Fantasy Books is like Cricket: a guest post by AJ Smith, author of "The Black Guard (The Long War)"

Why Writing Fantasy Books is like Cricket: Writing the Long War, Part Four.by AJ Smith
Being a lover of English cricket, I have spent much of my young life in various states of extreme disappointment. It’s something I’m used to, something I even enjoy, for the endless disappointment makes the moments of elation all the more acute. That is what it means to be a lover of English cricket - constantly hoping for the best, against history and cynicism. We were always the underdog, the underachiev...

Keeling Me Softly With His Words: an interview with Ian Donald Keeling, author of "The Skids"

They're called the Skids. They've got three eyes, tank treads, and a bucket-full of attitude. They play the games and the few that don't get vaped in the first weeks still die at five years old. Game over, thanks for playing. Johnny Drop's the best skid the Skidsphere's seen in generations, but he won't get to enjoy it. Because his world is going to die.



Gef: What was the impetus behind The Skids?
Ian: This is going to sound ridiculous, but…it came to me in a dream. No really. About 20 years ag...