Eugen Bacon’s Novic is a dark and lyrical story of the journey of a young man figuring out why he is immortal. Bacon’s prose is a character in itself—a poetic and unsettling force that wraps the reader in a haunting atmosphere. This is a background story for Novic, who appears in Bacon’s novel Claiming T-Mo, Read More …
By Carla E. Dash You are commander Shepard, a decorated military officer, Lieutenant Commander of the Systems Alliance frigate SSV Normandy, a new, state-of-the-art stealth ship, and the first human Spectre, an elite group of agents given wide authority to maintain stability in the galaxy through any means necessary by the Citadel Council, a multi-species Read More …
Welcome Ziggy Schutz to the blog! Ziggy’s latest novella, Twice-Spent Comet is out now and it is absolutely beautiful. Such a heartwarming story of found family and romantic love. The structure is so well-done with snippets of an omniscient narrator at the beginning of each chapter introducing elements of the story. There is a big Read More …
Seb Doubinsky’s THE SUM OF ALL THINGS is the latest novella in his City-State Cycle. It is a standalone story set in New Samarqand, one of the various City-States in his series. Since the world-building is such a key aspect of these books, we thought we’d ask Seb which of the City-States is his favorite! Read More …
This book floored me. A dystopian novel with two unlikely companions. Ysmany is a young girl fleeing her community in order to save a baby from a military grade twitch (human who voluntarily chose a technologically advanced “secondskin” suit making them essentially hybrid tech/human) who leads the community and rids them of any perceived threats. Read More …
I just finished Calvaria Fell by Kaaron Warren and Cat Sparks, a wonderful collection of stories that range from dystopian to fantasy, but all on the dark and weird end of the scale. I felt all of the stories were very good, not always the case with collections or anthologies, and a few stood out Read More …
Welcome Kat Hausler, author of What I Know About July: Writers usually have a lot to say. Otherwise, we wouldn’t fill up whole manuscripts. Somehow, though, the moment someone asks what your book is about, you may find yourself floundering for ideas, wishing you had the back cover so you could hastily plagiarize from the Read More …
Dark Park is Kathe Koja’s follow-up to her novel Dark Factory which was out last year. Dark Factory was an absolute trip, of the good kind. A near future story of a group of characters who are involved in the club scene and discover (or maybe set loose) an energy at a rooftop rave that Read More …
I am resistant to the idea that a writer’s work must be autobiographical in some way, that their characters and stories are conduits for the author’s personality or desires rather than invented fiction. Amidst the excitement of promoting my newest book, I must admit to some dread that I’ll get questions asking me if I’ve Read More …
By Steve Simpson Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try. —Homer Simpson I don’t find writing clearly easy, so I invented these self-serving reasons to do the opposite. Impenetrable words allow the reader to focus on the prosody This applies to poetry and prose. Here is an example Read More …