Books in the Media
Check out which of our authors have been featured in the press this week!
Lit Hub published a piece on May’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy books and featured L.R.Lam’s DRAGONFALL!
“The first installment of the Dragon Scales trilogy sees a wary partnership between two people existing on the fringes of society in Vatra: Arcady, a thief who steals an artifact that conjures the mysterious Everen. Except that Everen is actually a male dragon in human form, the last of his kind after humanity banished dragons beyond the Veil and disingenuously worship the expelled creatures as gods. In order to regain his true form and his destiny, Everen must trick Arcady into bonding their bodies, minds, and souls… and then kill them. Dynamic dragon/human conflict wrapped up with a smoldering queer romance? Hell yes.”
Jen Williams has written an article for CrimeReads on storytelling and human fear, entitled ‘Urban Legends, True Crime, and the Threads that Bind Them’.
‘It’s an urban legend, a story passed from person to person, often with the ‘this happened to a friend of a friend’ tag. They can be scary, and they usually carry a warning and almost certainly a twist. When I was a kid I was obsessed with these sorts of stories, and when I started writing Games for Dead Girls – a book that partly follows a ten year old girl during one fateful summer in 1989 – I took a lot of myself at that age and put it into Charlotte Watts, a girl with an overly active imagination and a morbid fascination with scary things.’
Paste Magazine have offered a glowing review of Jennifer Saint’s ATALANTA:
‘The story of the famous female warrior who journeyed with Jason and his Argonauts on their quest to find the Golden Fleece, Atalanta seems set to introduce an entirely new generation of readers to a woman who’s never really been given her due, historically speaking… Atlanta is a tale about legacy and memory, and the ways that women and women’s successes are often erased and marginalized, even in their own stories.’
The Library Journal reviewed Stephen Aryan’s THE JUDAS BLOSSOM:
‘Written with heart and cunning, this is a gripping tale of revenge with complex political intrigue, harrowing battles, and masterful infiltration. Every character has their own violent and unforgiving agenda, and even as they confront harsh realities, their spirits are never crushed. Their stories are beautiful and terrifying in equal measure, capturing the brutality of war and questioning what it means to have worth and power.’
Rajasree Variyar shares some of her techniques for story writing in this article she has written for Writer’s Digest. Raj writes:
‘I have found the big leap from short story to novel form to be primarily about maintaining the tension over 60,000 words or more. Many authors will talk about the dreaded sagging, soggy middle: that second third of the book that, without careful attention, can drag, putting the brakes on the story. This is where thoughtful structuring is essential in novel-length works. Deliberately following a model such as the three-act structure is a good way to avoid tension-draining pitfalls.’
BookBub also included Rajasree Variyar’s THE DAUGHTERS OF MADURAI on their list of ‘16 New Hidden Gems to Read This Weekend’.