The Creatrix. The Mother Goddess, presiding over life, death, and rebirth, associated with the Milky Way, with the Sun in the Underworld,...

In my first essay in this series, I mentioned that reading Sarah Chorn’s The Necessity of Rain  was a particularly emotional experience...

In the first post in this series, I mentioned I am out of my depth when it comes to feminist studies, but I am commenting on this one...

I probably shouldn't be writing this post. I am learning from Donald Maass how little I know about emotions. At 57 years old, I would...

Preface: I'm out of my depth here, having no background in feminist studies or feminist history. If I say something naive or offensive,...

The most emotionally intense book I ever read is Sarah Chorn's The Necessity of Rain . In fact, the experience of reading Chorn's...

The second chapter of Farah Mendlesohn and Edward James's A Short History of Fantasy covers the pre-1900 transition from myth to...

This week Polly Schattel posted the following on Facebook: "Nouns turned into verbs joist me." I replied, "I mirror your sentiment." I...

I'll be giving brief summaries and comments on the chapters of Farah Mendlesohn and Edward James's A Short History of Fantasy (2009,...

If they're good. And that's the rub, isn't it. I haven't conducted a survey or searched for statistical data on reader preferences, but I...

Grimdark. In the 1st issue of Grimdark Magazine, Layla Cummins says the subgenre usually is characterized by "war-torn worlds, grim...

I am not the best qualified person to list examples of tropes in Quest Fantasies because I tend not to remember a lot about novels unless...

Wonder. It's not me who thought of that answer. David Farland did in his outstanding little book, Writing Wonder. In case you're...

How can you not love the name of this ancient city? Eridu sounds like the invention of a wickedly talented fantasy author. Founded in...

For a moment of intense terror she paused upon the giddy pinnacle, as if in contemplation of her own sublimity, then trembled and...

Is it grimdark? Reader tastes have drifted toward a kind of gritty realism. Heroes are somewhat evil and villains are decent people,...

While perusing The A to Z of Fantasy Literature today my eyes came to rest on an entry for "The Moon." My own stories are set in a world...

Ursula Le Guin introduced me to fantasy when I was a third grader (back in 1975). Ged the Archmage amazed me and the world he inhabited...

In Part 1, we looked at an example using The Great Gatsby to demonstrate how much more captivating prose is when it "shows" us things...

Renni Browne and Dave King ( Self-Editing for Fiction Writers ) hilariously rewrite the beginning of The Great Gatsby , as if F. Scott...