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Fusion Fantasy – Reaching Beyond Genre

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This article is by Bets Davies.

I always felt straight jacketed by fantasy’s strict genre expectations.

Got a little too much romance or sex in your fantasy novel? Sacrilege. That is Romance.

Wait. What if I am talking about two guys? Gay and Lesbian, then. All the way.

Got frat boy zombies who want to play foosball all day? Hey. That’s Horror!

It seems that Fantasy, a genre whose very name suggests the ability to explore and expand, has become too confined. For me, this disillusionment is married to the fact that I like to explore a lot of different areas.

Why Harry Potter Rocked

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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince — Farewell Harry

This article is by Brian Wood.

The Harry Potter era is over.

The final movie has entered theaters and I, for one, am more than a little bit sad. I figured there was no better time to talk about the genius of JK Rowling and the Harry Potter series. I have never read a series of books that was more overwhelmingly loved by all different kinds of people. So, if you’re reading this article, I hope you loved Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the rest of the characters as much as I did. If you didn’t, then I would think you can at least admit that Rowling must have done something right to sell so many books.

Dreaming about Dreamworld

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This review is by Frank LaVoie.

I was around since the inception of Dreamworld, Book 1 in Brian Wood’s The Chronicles of Trayvian James.

I’d like to take some credit, but I can’t. I’d like to say that I gave him this idea, or offered an inspiration for that character, but I didn’t.

What I did do was serve as a backboard for high school basketball coach Wood to bounce ideas off of. It was a fun process, listening to him conjure his world and dribbling through ideas as he created one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, a humorous and intriguing Young Adult Fantasy that makes me jealous that his ideas weren’t my ideas first.

Is YA the Death of Epic Fantasy?

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This article is by Frank LaVoie.

For those of you not familiar with the YA moniker, it refers to the genre of Young Adult literature. In the realm of publishing, it is most often coupled with the word ‘fantasy’, thus denoting a fairly specific breed that has proven its popularity in the form of the Harry Potters and Percy Jacksons of the literary world. The growing scope of YA Fantasy has been wholly responsible for an entire generation taking to books. Even medical science has had to pay attention; they credited Rowling’s works with the highly contagious Hogwart’s headache, onset by nonstop reading of the author’s seven-hundred-word whoppers.

But does the rising fashion-ability of YA Fantasy come at a price?

5 Tips for Inspiration

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This article is by Laura Jorgensen.

What is the impetus that gets a writer writing? Why do people even start writing? And after they’ve decided to make that plunge, how do they keep coming up with new ideas?

For me, I love stories. I studied English Literature in college so that I would be able to read books and have it count for something. I started writing because I felt like I had my own stories that needed to be shared. It’s fun to make and meet new characters, build worlds, and live a life that you probably couldn’t otherwise. When an idea comes easily (i.e. not forced) it is referred to as inspiration, and it can strike anywhere. I’ve gotten ideas while driving (little scary writing them down), in the middle of church, in the shower. My writing journal is packed with little one or two sentence, or even word, reminders of ideas that I tried to preserve to use in my story later, or even start a new story.

Balance – at Least 80% of the Time

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This article is by Sean Keefer, author of The Trust.

I’m really happy I can say my first book, The Trust, is done. People can buy it and hopefully some are even reading it.

So now it is on to book two. Well, at least when I can find time to write.

There are authors who earn a comfortable living working only as writers. However I venture to say if you have 100 writers and create two groups – the first, writers who ply their craft fulltime and the second, those who have to write when they can find the time. I believe the second group will be exponentially larger than the first.

Why is this?

Dragon Age 2: The Rise to Power Review

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This review is by Megan Kayne.

The lights were dim. Chinese food had arrived. Friends had been told that unless there was an emergency of epic proportion to not bother calling me for the next week. Dragon Age 2: The Rise to Power had come out and I fully intended to dedicate my time to the game. I had already picked up my Signature copy during lunch and had downloaded all the extra content available to me, so that when I got off of work for the day – I would be ready to play without pause. The gentle hum of the Xbox increased my anticipation. I settled in for what would be one of the longest weeks of my gaming life. And Bioware didn’t fail to deliver another epic story.