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Category Archives: Guest Post

On the flight of bats | Does Writing Style Matter When It Comes To Fantasy? by MD Lachlan

How does a bat move? I had an interesting discussion with one famous fantasy writer recently when I said no decent writer should describe a bat as ‘flitting’. ‘Why?’ he said. ‘Bats do flit.’ Yup, they do and, were I sitting in a pub garden watching a bat fly overhead I might think ‘There flits a bat’. However, when we come to writing, more is required. Anyone can say a bat flits. A writer has to be more inventive. So I set my mind to it – and came up with this, which pleased me greatly. ‘A bat, bouncing on…

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Stories of the Frontier a guest post by Ed McDonald

“In science fiction, we’re always searching for new frontiers. We’re drawn to the unknown.” – Ridley Scott There is something primal and timeless within us when it comes to borderlands. They may be physical divides – a wall, an ocean, a gulf of empty space – or they can be lines drawn across maps by men in suits. They can be brief areas of no-man’s land, or they can be vast expanses of endless plain. But whatever they are, the frontier is a place where stories happen. The old west, a place of lawlessness, where eager pioneers have moved far…

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IT’S THEIR WORLD NOW a Guest Post by C. Robert Cargill

Or at least, it might be soon . . . We extend a warm, human welcome to C. Robert Cargill, whose book SEA OF RUST is out today. A post-apocalyptic robot Western that is action-packed, adrenaline-fueled science fiction, and far timelier than we realized . . .  I didn’t set out to write a timely novel, really I didn’t. When the idea for SEA OF RUST came to me several years ago, the goal was to write a fun, pulpy yarn about robots set after the fall of mankind, with a post-apocalyptic flair and plenty of Robot PEW-PEW. But as…

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The Number of the Book: A Guest Post by Greg Bear

Today we’re over the moon to have one of the world’s leading hard SF authors, Greg Bear, guest blogging for Gollancz. KILLING TITAN, book two in his War Dogs trilogy, is out in paperback and Greg is reflecting on the incredible body of work he’s amassed so far… As I put the final touches on TAKE BACK THE SKY, the third book in the War Dogs sequence, I look back and realize I’ve never actually counted the novels and collections I’ve published in the last thirty-seven years… And to my amazement, that’s how long it’s been since HEGIRA was published…

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The Passage Readalong: Chapters 16-20

Welcome back to our worldwide The Passage readalong with Fantasy Faction. This week we’ve been busy reading (or re-reading) The Passage in the bright spring sunshine because things have gotten very dark. Virals are on the rise and its the end of the world as we know it . . .  Warning for spoilers for everything in the first twenty chapters of The Passage. Don’t forget to join us in our Goodreads group for all the discussion as we continue our readalong.  Over to Marc Aplin from Fantasy Faction . . .   Chapter 16 – Recap We pick up…

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