Tag Archives: novels

Having been racing my way through many SFF book series, I started to note the differences amongst how they approach certain issues of construction – how they deal with the continuing story, individual novels as part of a larger whole, and ...

I can’t be the only one despairing at the lack of imagination in the countless numbers of YA dystopian novels. They have become so generic and formulaic a computer could easily write one. While I have enjoyed my fair share ...

To the disappointment of most of my fantasy-loving friends, I am not generally a fan of fantasy in the Tolkien tradition. That being said, I do enjoy a good deal of fantasy writing. While Tolkien’s style of high, epic fantasy ...

Urusla Le Guin’s speech at the National Book Awards last year reminded me of the long-standing snobbery when it comes to genre fiction, especially SFF (if you haven’t seen her speech, you can watch it here). When I first started ...

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 ...

Ben Peek is the author of the upcoming novel, The Godless. His previous novels include, Black Sheep, Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth, and Above/Below. His short story collection, Dead Americans and Other Stories, was released earlier in the year by ChiZine Publications. He ...

Sometimes being a writer is hard going. Like many, writing is almost a compulsion with me, but that doesn’t mean it brings me endless joys. There are plenty of nights where I stare at the blank screen or piece of ...

A lot of writers who hope to find success have an idealized dream of their novels bringing in enough cash to make a living. The reality is, very few authors ever achieve that. Most of us will be relegated to ...

Last week, Will Self wrote a frustratingly arrogant piece in The Guardian on the death of the serious novel. Arguments like his have a tendency to get my goat, as they use broad, sweeping strokes to dismiss 90% of written endeavors ...