Goodness, is it February already? It is! How the time does fly. I hope everyone who is in the path of the latest polar vortex is slowly defrosting. We didn’t get too hard hit here in North Carolina, but we did have several days below freezing, which is pretty dang cold for us. Things have […]
Read more "Sometimes Dragons are Real. Plus Giveaways and Excerpts"The first real fantasy story I wrote was called “Winter of the Gods.” In what was either a harbinger of future glory, or a cruel joke, it promptly won an award and was published in an anthology. Now, more than 10 years later, Bardic Tales and Sage Advice is bringing out a kind of “Greatest […]
Read more "Happy Memories, New Beginnings: Bardic Tales and Sage Advice Volume X"Bring Out the Dog Will Mackin Different wars generate different types of literature. This seems obvious, but it’s interesting to note the differences between wars that are happening simultaneously, and even involve some of the same countries, but nonetheless produce stories of different flavors. Case in point: Western literature on the recent war in Iraq […]
Read more "“Bring Out the Dog” by Will Mackin"The Rusalka Ritual and Other Stories Freya Pickard “The Rusalka Ritual and Other Stories” is a selection of 5 short fantasy stories, all featuring the formidable Dracomagan, in some places a warrior woman in a fantasy world, in others an apparently normal(ish) woman in this world, but always an important and powerful figure. The stories […]
Read more "“The Rusalka Ritual and Other Stories” by Freya Pickard"Hi All! For the past few weeks I’ve been working away on putting together a collection of my old stories that are sort of prequels/alternative timelines to “The Zemnian Series,” with a general introduction and little intros for each of the stories. I’m thrilled to say that the book is now ready and can be […]
Read more "New FREE Book Release! “Winter of the Gods and Other Stories” is here!"China Girl: And Other Stories Ho Lin “She hates the David Bowie song…How could anyone think of that as a beautiful Chinese girl?” So thinks May Lee, the exotic dancer whose story is told in the eponymous opening story of the collection “China Girl,” whose characters move, often ambiguously, between East and West, belonging to […]
Read more "“China Girl: And Other Stories” by Ho Lin"Redeployment Phil Klay In “Redeployment,” Phil Klay gives us a collection of short stories, all about the recent war in Iraq, mainly but not entirely featuring Marines who are or have been deployed there. Despite being Marine-centered, this polyphonic collection–and Klay masterfully writes with different voices–shows the diversity of experience that Americans deployed in Iraq […]
Read more "“Redeployment” by Phil Klay"In this collection of tales, in turns lyrical and brutal, Oleg Ermakov, probably Russia’s foremost writer on the Soviet war in Afghanistan, depicts the war from multiple points of view: a boy on a date a couple of days before he heads off to basic training, a raw recruit forced to commit an act he […]
Read more "“Afghan Tales” by Oleg Yermakov"“The New Voices of Fantasy” is an eclectic mixture of diverse fantasy authors, featuring a multitude of subgenres in stories set around the globe. Although the short story format means that the worlds and cultures the authors have created appear only in snippet form, which is not normally my favorite way to experience fantasy, this […]
Read more "“The New Voices of Fantasy”"Ursula K. Le Guin has moved from the fringes of sci fi to the mainstream of literary fiction, finally garnering the respect that she deserves. This collection of essays and reviews, while in places repetitive, gives the reader some of the nuts-and-bolts of Le Guin’s thinking, and is beautifully written and often breathtakingly insightful. It […]
Read more "“Words Are My Matter” by Ursula K. Le Guin"
E. P. Clark: Author, Book Reviewer, and All-Around Literary Handiwoman 