Category: fantasy
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Palliative Care for Imprisonism Literature
In the last few decades it grew popular for critics to predict and mourn the death of the novel. The death of the novel is really the death of their particular kind of novel: imprisonism literature. It’s as if someone said at their father’s funeral: “Fatherhood is dead to me” or before their own suicide…
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Introducing the Vale Megacosm : The Universe in which I Write
I’m writing this post about the Vale Megacosm for those of you that have followed me from the beginning. I mean the very beginning. As a beta reader myself for a handful of authors — and as someone well familiar with the slow output of many epic writers — I know it can take forever…
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Brand Story : My Love-Hate with “Story”
It took talking with two self-proclaimed “story marketers,” a bombardment of “brand story” during the superbowl, and a self-proclaimed (though unordained) “pastor” who said, “It’s all about stories, man, just stories,” for me to realize how fully I had fallen out of love with the word “story.” It also helped that three different large organizations…
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Of Making Many Books There is No End ?
I grew up in a fairly conservative religious community that abhorred study and praised ignorance, in a way. They believed along with what Asimov said of many Americans: that my ignorance is as good as anyone else’s knowledge. I understand that the rational capacity of any given person is up to the task of puzzling…
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Felling and Man Waiting to Die : The Name of the Wind Prologue
We’re reading The Name of the Wind for the 10th Anniversary Edition in preparations for Doors of Stone. Today we’re focused on the prologue’s use of Felling and a man waiting to die — if you haven’t grabbed ahold of my 13 assumptions for any Kingkiller Reread, you might want to do that. Spoilers inside, of course, but as…
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The Name of the Wind Tenth Anniversary Reread : Appendices and Details
Well the last post on my The Name of the Wind Tenth Anniversary Reread accidentally blew up Google Alerts for some folk but it also got John Granger (the literary critic) to buy a copy of The Name of the Wind, so I consider it a net good. This one will focus on some new…
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Doors of Stone release prep : Kingkiller Reread Intro
Ten years ago, I read Name of the Wind and felt captured by a kindred spirit who cared deeply about the state of the world, the fantasy canon, and the capacity of prose to be poetry and myth. Five years later, I read Wise Man’s Fear and the feeling compounded as I started noticing layers:…
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Worldbuilding Checklist for Writers
Every story needs a small, believable world but when you’re worldbuilding for an epic fantasy or historical saga, what can you do? You can apply a simple checklist to the other worlds and cultures that interact with the small, knowable world of your main character — both his foreign and his familiar. I’ll elaborate on each…
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251 Fantasy Literary Agents : an Address Book
As I’m finishing up my fifth novel, the time has come for me to search once more for Fantasy literary agents. It seems kind of pointless for me to put in all of this work to find fantasy literary agents and share it with no one. So I made an address book — a phonebook…
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The Best 40 Tor Online Stories since 2008
Went through the Tor online archive today. While there, I drummed up what I think are the best forty stories published at Tor online since 2008. They move from the most recent to the least recent, with #1 published in 2017 and #40 published in 2008. The best Tor online stories includes tales written by…
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Follow Your Bliss : Results of Joseph Cambell’s Advice
Featured tool: I use this tool to discover new authors through whom I follow my bliss. Let me share it with you. Seldom do I mention this here, but I minored in ancient literature and mythology in college. In my last semester, the academic dean helped me build a one-on-one class with him that featured…
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Small Stories for Kids: SCARY DRESS UP by 8-year-old Harry Neuenschwander
It was a cold night when suddenly Jack heard something. So he went downstairs. “It was coming from the kitchen,” he said as he walked in. Then he screamed and ran out of the kitchen. “Ahhh!” But it was actually his big brother Sam dressing as a ghost. “I just wanted to scare you so…