I was pulled into the hype surrounding The Fire Sermon by its clever marketing campaign – well, clever and prolific. It sounded like a fun (can we call dark dystopias ‘fun’?) premise and I was excited to read a novel ...
Read More »Hard questions: What makes a great writer? What makes a great novel?
When I hear people fawn over their favourite writers or novels I often notice giant blind spots mixed in with their idolization. That isn’t to say there is necessarily a problem with that, no one should need to justify their ...
Read More »Joe Hill’s NOS4R2: You can’t let facts get in the way of the truth
After reading Joe Hill’s brilliant comic book series, Locke & Key (review here), I couldn’t wait to try one of his novels. Having seen the film adaptation of Horns (and I really enjoyed it, review here), I thought I’d try ...
Read More »Erotic fiction’s bad reputation
Erotic fiction has long been popular amongst readers, though it may not always have been so unashamedly read on the public transport commute to work. With the rise in popularity of erotic works, I find it sad that people dismiss ...
Read More »My Favourite Things: 2014 edition
Every year there are so many new additions to the creative world. No one could ever keep up with all of it. And this uber-consumer of popular culture products is no different. That said, I have consumed an awful lot ...
Read More »Veronica Mars and The Thousand Dollar Tan Line
The Thousand Dollar Tan Line is the first book in a new mystery series based on the Veronica Mars television series and film. The series is written by the show’s creator Rob Thomas with Jennifer Graham. The second book in ...
Read More »The Invisible Library: Saving books in a place out of time and space
Discovering new voices in SFF writing is always exciting. Tor UK has acquired a new series from debut author Genevieve Cogman, the first in the series being The Invisible Library, due out in ebook form on December 18th, 2014 and in ...
Read More »Creating a James Frey universe: An interactive novel and augmented reality
Authors and their publishers (and marketing people) are always coming up with new ways to encourage readers to buy their books. You go on any writing course and ‘promotion’ of you and your work will be included in some way, ...
Read More »Getting pumped for NaNoWriMo through music
NaNoWriMo is all about quantity over quality. Quality comes later. As any writing course will tell you, your first draft won’t be good. No matter how awesome you think you are, you just aren’t that good. Sure, I wish everything ...
Read More »To the Edge of Shadows by Joanne Graham
Back in 2012, Joanne Graham won the Luke Bitmead Bursary for her debut novel, the largest bursary for unpublished writers in the UK, run by Legend Press. Lacey’s House received a lot of praise and made its way to the ...
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