Category Archives: fantasy novel
A year in books or, What I read in 2020
Overview This year, for the first time, I kept note of the books I read for pleasure or curiosity. As ever, it was mostly fiction. It’s been an odd year and, given external events, I tended towards books I thought … Continue reading
Banish misfortune (traditional music in fantasy)
Yesterday was the solstice, midwinter’s day here in the northern hemisphere. Dull it was too, a few cold spots of rain, and too overcast to see the Great Conjunction*, but this year is coming to its end and the dark … Continue reading
Book Review: ‘Of Kings and Griffins’ by Judith Starkston
A long time ago now I reviewed books for a now-mothballed website called Heroines of Fantasy. It put me in the way of books, I’d not otherwise have encountered. When the site shut down, I got on with other things, … Continue reading
Dawn Rising by A.F.E Smith
This isn’t so much a book review as a whoop of delight. A.F.E. Smith, author of the Darkhaven novels, has a new book out. It’s called Dawn Rising and is an absolutely fabulous read. I’ve been hoping it would appear … Continue reading
Fantasycon 2017
It’s been ages, I know, since I last posted here. I’ve ticking away in the background – revising a novel, reading up on Pliny the Younger as background for another, completing a teaching qualification – but all these are things easiest done … Continue reading
Imacah’s song
There are several songs in After the Ruin. Like the map, they’re there to give the impression of a world that is rather larger than the story between the covers of the book. The book was inspired by ballads so it felt … Continue reading
An end, maybe a beginning?
I’d like to say everything has sorted itself out, writing-wise, since my last post but I can’t, because it hasn’t. I’m in no part closer to finding the spark missing from my manuscript. Something has changed, however, as a result of a couple … Continue reading
Prologues revisited:This is what will happen
I’m in the throes of revision of a manuscript that will be the third, and final, book in the sequence set in and around the Later Lands. The story is pretty well worked out and now I’m now thinking about structure and … Continue reading
Songs behind stories
This started out as a blog about folk songs. It’s evolved since then into a more general blog about books and writing, but the songs are still there in the background to my work. The inspiration they provide is nothing … Continue reading
The Crooked Path, winding its way into the world
The Crooked Path is published today! Stories link together. What is done in one time and place spreads out across the world to shape the future: there is never a single beginning, never a simple end. But, since this tale … Continue reading
Folksong and Fantasy 