No doubt many of you are familiar with Clarke’s law:  any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.  It’s been speculated that one reason why science fiction as a genre has lost some ground to fantasy is that we seem to be living in an age of magic.  With all of the extraordinary technologies at [...]

One of the questions I’m frequently asked is how you go about creating, not a single book, but a coherent series. Fantasy readers love series books.  Once they get excited about a world and its inhabitants, they like to go inside and shut the door, living in there for book after book:  as long as [...]

Part of the fun of writing historical fantasy is seeking out historical events and combining them with my own ideas to create something new, and hopefully, engaging for the audience.  I once heard a historical fiction author describe the work as like “doing card tricks in the dark.”  The trouble with historical fiction is that, [...]

I suppose it should come as no surprise that the best way to attract attention for your blog is to be controversial.  Talk politics or religion, suggest doing something playful but unpleasant to animals, take on whatever juggernaut is dominating the opinion pages of the paper. I have, on my own blog, done my share [...]