Back in the 00s when Kickstarter began operations, only a few people knew about what came to be known as crowdfunding. Over the next 20 years or so, it became more and more understood and used among w...
How to Write a Standalone (but Interconnected) Fantasy Novel
As a reader, I love a long string of books set in the same fantasy world. As far as I can tell from experience, these types of interconnected books seem to come in two varieties. Sequels Vs Series: Wh...
How To Escape Your Reading Slump: A Practical Guide for Book Lovers
You’re determined to dive into the top book on your teetering TBR pile, so you grab the paperback (or fire up your kindle), sit down in your favourite reading-nook, open the front page and… …your eye...
If you agree that reading diverse benefits your brain, you’re probably open to reading novels in translation. Why Should I Read Translated Works? If language affects thought, there can’t be a better w...
Good climate fiction, in my mind, should enchant you. Draw you in. And then scare the shit out of you. With a little hope, there will be enough scared readers out there to protest, take up public offi...
Good near-future climate fiction isn’t preachy. It isn’t pandering. It’s anxious and desperate and begs you to pay attention, lest it becomes prophecy. Dystopian post-apocalyptic fic...
As with eBooks, Audiobooks are simply a different way to enjoy stories. Just when we thought the ‘eReader versus paperback’ debate was losing steam after almost twenty long years, the new clash seems ...
A lot of the best speculative climate fiction feels like it belongs to the non-fiction shelf. Anxiety-inducing, because it speaks the truth and invites us to take a peek around the corner, at what’s c...
Flash Fiction provides an appealing alternative to longer forms of literature, offering readers the opportunity to experience a complete narrative in a short amount of time. As a result, the genre has...
Monsters can take many forms in literature and popular culture, but what’s interesting about them is that they often represent the beliefs of an era or appear as metaphors for human fears. Monsters ha...
While the e-book was (incorrectly) hailed as “the death of the paperback”, many readers still love to see a well-stocked bookshelf standing pride of place. There’s just something about a friendly disc...
What Should I Read Next? 7 Strategies to Choose Your Next Read
We’ve all been there — you finish the last page, you close the book you were reading, and a feeling of emptiness crashes over you. You hopefully enjoyed the book, and if it was a particularly good one...
Most readers have a TBR pile, even if they don’t know what a TBR pile is. In book lingo, a ”TBR Pile” is your to-be-read pile. It’s all those books that you’ve stacked up with the honest intention of ...
Before I began writing fiction, I was an academic living in a publish-or-perish world. I submitted articles to journals that accepted them, rejected them or (most often) asked me to revise and resubmi...
Over the last decade, buying books online has become commonplace thanks to big-name stores. And we’re not just talking about that online-only store, either. For any reader who’s trying not to default ...
Avid readers know how book can be an incredible form of escapism where almost anything is possible and you never quite know what’s going to happen next. This is especially true when we look at graphic...
Books to console, inspire and escape into… With all but essential workers on lockdown, and our social lives on hold, the time seems ripe for a (lockdown) reading revolution. But this is no holid...
Magic and the fantasy fiction genre, they go together like Bert and Ernie – or should I say Frodo and Sam? Wherever you look in fantasy, you’ll see examples of magic. Lord of the Rings, of cours...