Category: fantasy
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Elizabeth Bear Interview
Elizabeth Bear — The Hugo Award winning author of Ancestral Night and other books — sat down for a wide ranging interview about Rockapella, DOOM mods, RPGs, and death or glory stands to defend this run. Elizabeth won the 2005 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the 2008 Hugo Award for Best Short Story for “Tideline“,…
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Schaubert’s Laws of Fantasy Religions
Author’s Note: this post on fantasy religions was originally drafted for a handful of local writing friends with a more thorough catalogue. That piece was lost and due to some life circumstances, I rushed out this much less thorough piece for those friends assuming (wrongly) it would not circulate widely. I realize there’s a lot…
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LIVE NOW with John Wiswell, Nebula Award Winner
John Wiswell is an American science fiction and fantasy author whose short fiction has won the Locus and Nebula Awards and been a finalist for the Hugo, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy Awards. His debut fantasy novel, Someone You Can Build a Nest In, was released in April 2024 by DAW Books and Quercus. Wiswell’s…
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Grady Hendrix Interview
Grady Hendrix writes fiction, also called “lies,” and he writes non-fiction, which people sometimes accidentally pay him for. He is the author of Horrorstör, the only novel about a haunted Scandinavian furniture store you’ll ever need. It has been translated into 14 languages and is being turned into a movie. His novel My Best Friend’s Exorcism, is…
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Worldbuilding Ideas: stone sling slurs, Swiss arrows, Athletels
We have a segment of our writers critique circle Discord that’s exclusively reserved for worldbuilding ideas and this morning we ended up delving into stone slings, the slurs upon them, Swiss arrows, Dutch arrows, and Athletels. I sort of kicked it off with showing this image of a bullet for a stone sling: which is…
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Halloween Coloring Book Pumpkin by Brandon Goostree
My earliest and most favorite collaborator — Brandon Goostree — released this coloring book pumpkin on the front cover of his halloween coloring pages for adults and kids. There’s a great blend of scary halloween coloring and funnier stuff for kids. I asked him a few questions as the artists and kids from our Third Saturday event…
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In Memoriam Zoe Kaplan, requiescat in pace
Zoe Kaplan, whom I interviewed here a few months back and who placed a story in Of Gods and Globes III, passed away the night of Wednesday, October 9th. She was just 28 years old, the age of my kid sister. She was Jewish — in the middle of #ReadsofAwe, worked at a Jewish boarding school…
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Kerosene Cauldron on Standard Oil building in NYC
Those who have read Overmorrow know that the WORKING kerosene cauldron on the Standard Oil building in NYC — Wall Street — is featured heavily near the end of the book. It’s obvious why: it’s like someone took the most boring play out of a supervillain handbook and build a tower with it. It’s almost…
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Science Fiction 101 by Robert Silverberg
Thanks to Emily Munro for enlightening me about Science Fiction 101 (formerly Worlds of Wonder) by Robert Silverberg. Also double thanks to Emily for lending this book to me literally years ago and waiting all of that time for me to return it. This volume is a must-have both for superfans of the genre and…
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Spanish Lacemaker Weaving
Tara found a video of a Spanish lacemaker, which is a kind of weaving. As you know the art of weaving is important to her, but the metaphor for magic metaphysics is important to me:
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Matthew Kressel Interview
Lancelot Schaubert — Hey there, Matthew Kressel! So when did you first dip your toe into the genre? Or into make believe? Matthew Kressel — The first time I wrote anything with the hope of it being published was in college after I had one of the most incredibly vivid dreams of my life, and…
