by Grant Faulkner When I first became a writer, I marveled at the magical worlds my favorite authors created—their lyrical prose, their riveting plots, their piercing characterizations. They wrote with such grace, such ease, that it seemed as if they’d been born to it, blessed with a talent and anointed by a higher power. They […]
Read More How a Month of NaNoWriMo Can Lead to a Lifetime of Better WritingBy Judith Tarr To the non-horse person, a horse is pretty much just a horse. There’s the really big one like the beer-wagon Clydesdale and the really little one like the Mini doing therapy at the hospital. Then there’s the one that races and the cowboy one. And the wild one. The rest are black, […]
Read More Fantasy Equines: Where There’s a Form, There’d Better Be a FunctionIt’s my pleasure to share with you the complete playlist of the Virtual Fantasy Con’s 2017 panel discussions. I had the honour of hosting three of them: Gender Issues in Fantasy, Realism in Fantasy Warfare, and Fantasy Mashups; you’ll find those ones near the end of the list. I’d like to thank all of the […]
Read More Virtual Fantasy Con 2017: Complete Panel Playlist #VFC17Shift by Hugh Howey My rating: 4 of 5 stars Read for the Apocalypse Now! Reading Challenge. Method of the world’s destruction: Nanobot plagues and nuclear weapons. I really loved the first book in the series, Wool Omnibus, more so because this was an indie writer who’s become mainstream. So when I discovered there were […]
Read More Book Review: Shift by Hugh HoweyThe last of the three panels I had the honour of hosting for the Virtual Fantasy Con this year! In this one we discuss fantasy mashups. What happens when you blend fantasy with another genre? What are the benefits and the drawbacks? And at what point does a blend become a genre of its own? […]
Read More Virtual Fantasy Con 2017: Fantasy Mashups PanelThis is the second of three panels I had the privilege of hosting for the Virtual Fantasy Con 2017, and this one just might be my favourite. I was honoured to have a truly expert panel at my disposal, whose background and expertise included both studied and practical, hands-on experience. From logistics experts to medieval […]
Read More Virtual Fantasy Con 2017: Realism in Fantasy Warfare PanelIt was my honour and pleasure to host three panels for the Virtual Fantasy Con this year! Our first panel was on Gender Issues in Fantasy, and we had so much to say that it had to be broken into two parts! Here they both are: You can watch the entire Virtual Fantasy Con 2017 […]
Read More Virtual Fantasy Con 2017: Gender Issues in Fantasy PanelBy Kate Kershner In July 2012, the whole world came face to face with the Higgs boson: a sparkly, little light that danced across our screens like Tinker Bell. Wait, that’s not right. While physicists jumped for joy to “see” the Higgs boson — that elusive particle that composes the Higgs field, which allows particles […]
Read More What Does the Higgs-Boson Look Like?Dragonwriter: A Tribute to Anne McCaffrey and Pern by Todd J. McCaffrey My rating: 3 of 5 stars Read for the Genre Non-Fiction Challenge. This is a tribute to Anne McCaffrey, author of the Pern series, the Acorna series, the Pegasus series, and the Crystal Singer series, among many others. McCaffrey has long been a […]
Read More Book Review: Dragonwriter by Todd McCaffreyBy Judith Tarr Here we have our two contestants for this week’s match, the first in SFF Equines history (but not, perhaps, the last): on this side the tall, white, shining, magical, beautiful king of stallions who deigns to carry the great Wizard; and over on that side, the short, brown, fuzzy, unromantic, pretty definitely not-a-stallion who […]
Read More Middle-earth Cage Match: Bill the Pony vs. Shadowfax
