The Seventh Annual Self-published Fantasy Blog Off opens for entries tomorrow, May 14, at 6 pm GDT. As I wrote in my last blog, this is a free-to-enter competition for self-published fantasy novels conceived by author Mark Lawrence. You can find the full set of rules and the entry link here on Mark's blog. In … Continue reading More Thoughts on #SPFBO
I went a little mad in 2017, but I'm going to get better.
I knew more about the lives and history of elves, dwarves, trolls, and ogres than I did tribes in Africa or the Mayan Civilization. So when I wrote my first fantasy novel was it full of these paragons of high fantasy? No.
A talking ring, rampaging trolls, and a secret society of mages and warriors all conspire to lure heroines Prudence and Josephine away from the typical and into the extraordinary. While Aune revels in the fanciful, she keeps her prose firmly grounded in the historical. Beautifully written in Austen-like language, the novel is filled with authentic details, from the delicate choreography of early waltzes to the gory horror of an amputation without anesthesia or antibiotics.
Despite the risk of inaccuracies, however, there’s value in having someone else write the book description. As authors we can be blinded by our own vision, where another person can see through the forest to the particular trees that will hook readers’ interest.
People tried it and stopped reading before the halfway point. By swallowing my pride and asking those who gave up, I discovered why, and then I got to work.
AM Justice 