Still playing catch-up, squiders! We’re doing May this week. May’s prompt: What genre scares you the most? So much interpretation on the prompts this year. Oh well! This one I’m going to say means what genre scares you the most
The Fluidity of Genre
We’ve been going through genre conventions at my storycraft meetings, Squiders. We were supposed to do all three speculative fiction genres at a single meeting–horror, science fiction, and fantasy–but we started with horror and two hours later were still happily
Is it Worth it to Know About Sub-genres?
If you’ve been around here for awhile, Squiders, you remember we spent about a year going through different science fiction and fantasy subgenres. As might be expected from going through such an activity, I sometimes find myself being really particular
Reading in 2013
Happy 2014, Squiders! I hope your holidays were lovely, or at least non-stressful. For those of you just joining us, or those who have joined us recently, I am a nerd, and I like statistics. And at the end of
Urban Fantasy versus Paranormal Romance
You know, despite all the subgenre studies we’ve done here, I still have a hard time differentiating between urban fantasy and paranormal romance. I mean, logically, I can spout off definitions but I have a hard time with actual books
The Debate on Genre Separation
My friend Sarah is a librarian at an elementary school. She’s been working on this big project, suggested by the kids, to separate all the books into their respective fiction genres. She even let the kids pick out what genres
The Future of Fantasy
Well, now that we’ve spent six weeks exploring some common fantasy races, we can start to look at fantasy trends instead. If you guys are familiar with fantasy, you know it goes through trends. We’ve been in an urban fantasy
2013 Blog Direction
First, a little horn-tooting: I’ve got a new story up over at Turtleduck Press, a haunting tale of family secrets. You don’t have to take my word for it, though–here are a couple things readers have said to me about
A Protest Against Unnecessary Darkness
It’s entirely possible this is going to come off as fandom rage. If so, I apologize in advance. I try to stay pretty level-headed about such things, but I am not always successful. I’ve noticed this trend, probably over the
What Did I Read in 2012?
Each year I keep track of what I read, genre and publication year, and what I thought of each book. And then I do nerdy statistics with said data. Books read in 2012: 52 Change from 2011: -1 Of those:
