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The Last Dragon Princess is a young adult, fantasy novel by Cynthia Payne. I was honored to be a beta reader for an earlier draft, and I purchased and reread it in order to review the official version of the book. The story centers on a young woman named Danu, […]
The Healer of GuildenWood: The Soultrekker Chronicles by Mary F. Calvert is a YA portal fantasy in the tradition of the sword and sorcery novels most speculative fiction readers enjoy. It tells the story of a high school senior Margaret Ann who wants to blend in with the rest of […]
A new trend in fantasy is dealing with the aftereffects of visiting another world and then returning home. It’s no longer Edmund Pensieve’s exclamation of “Oh, I forgot my torch in Narnia!” The movie, Prince Caspian, dealt with this phenomena briefly at the beginning with Susan’s character. Wonderfully acted, the […]
Modi Ind0rum is an adult mystery suspense novel by Karma Lei Angelo, the first in a series. In it, a new detective, Ameena Jardine (AJ), former civil engineer turned geomorphologist, is called in to investigate a potential murder on September 2019. When she investigates the corpse, an overdosed drug user, nothing […]
The Lucifer Ego is an adult novel by author T. M. Doran. Full disclosure — I am the author’s brother so I won’t rate it or extol it as if I were a disinterested party. You wouldn’t believe me no matter what I write, but clearly I think highly of the […]
Fairytale characters get a bad rap. The heroes and heroines are looked at as weak, sexist, fetish-minded, duplicitous, and superficial. The current trend is to glorify the villains in these stories because, as the saying goes, the villains are the most interesting characters. Interesting, maybe, but I think people give […]
When writing fantasy sequels in a series, there are some basic guidelines to consider when putting your second together. Your first sets the tone of the world you’ve built, but your second sets the tone of the series. First, let me talk about what I mean by “series.” It’s not […]
I thought I would post a different type of blog this time. Did you ever watch (or watch again) a great movie and say to yourself “I wish there was another movie like that one?” For some great movies, I suggest a similar movie. Perhaps you’ve never seen my suggested […]
A few years ago, I was at a crossroads. I enjoyed writing, but what should I do with it? Should I continue writing novels and short stories and pass them around my family, or should I try to reach more people? I always wanted to publish a book and be […]
As my novel Kingdom Come is categorized as an adult fairy tale, I naturally read adult fantasies. There are the traditional swords and sorcery stories, offbeat fantasies, and then the ones like my novel, transporting fantasies. I’ve come across two adult fairy tales recently that I’ve enjoyed. The Book of Lost […]