Naughty or Nice?
Reading Time: 5 minutes A vampire, attempting to adapt to Western customs, sends her Christmas list to Santa.
Timestealer
Reading Time: 6 minutes Timestealing is an art. And a business. And a service. A good timestealer can predict what the next best-seller will be – most of the time.
Empty Sleeve
Reading Time: 4 minutes The vet said that my grief would modulate over time and eventually become a part of who I was, something I would cease to question, like the existence of my own arms.
Pip and the AI
Reading Time: 4 minutes In space, no one can hear you laugh…
Gods and Monsters Installment 1: Wherein we meet the three Fates
Reading Time: 7 minutes My love affairs ever end thus. I always long for them to turn out differently. It’s so disheartening. If only I didn’t fall in love so often with these warm-blooded vessels of nutrition. I constantly swear I’ll convert, become a celibate bloodsucker, a monastic mosquito, a vamp nun. But then I see some sun-glazed man smelling of day, and it begins again.
Half-baked Hero
Reading Time: 16 minutes When Janza, a bodyguard-for-hire meets a suspicious merchant, her personal code and memories of the oppression suffered by her people battle for her soul.
A Late Appearance by Death
Reading Time: 5 minutes I decided to go find Death myself. It was 2023, and a lady could do that. I didn’t need to wait around for someone to fetch me. I could do the fetching.
Making Time for the Kids
Reading Time: 2 minutes In this life, tragedy can help you create miracles.
Um
Reading Time: 4 minutes She wondered if she should even say it. She didn’t even want to think it. But Wyx definitely had to know, had a right to know probably. “There’s someone else on board.”
Counterfeit
Reading Time: 4 minutes A quick collision of rich space junk collectors, and an expert counterfeiter.
Thumbing to Sugar Daddy Oberon
Reading Time: 10 minutes In spite of interfering adults, a spoiled child is determined to claim her birthright in the court of Oberon and Titania.
Hungry for Love
Reading Time: 3 minutes He used to have choices; now, he has a hunger. He needs to find his fiancée.
Midnight Pickup
Reading Time: 4 minutes Android duty versus human excess
The Visitation
Reading Time: 8 minutes A secret government organization is fighting an unknown, but strange enemy.
Swimming in the Late Hereafter
Reading Time: 4 minutes Ken’ichi’s white hazmat suit shines like a beacon as he breaks over the ridge, even through all the rain. His gait is slow and uneven. I never expected to see him again.
Confederate Cavalry on a Plane
Reading Time: 15 minutes A physics professor and his student on a plane argue about the possibility of infinite alternate universes, while being robbed blind by a bratty kid. The professor bets the student that even the most unlikely event possible must happen, leading to three very confused Confederate Cavalry charging down the aisle.
Gods and Monsters Installment 4: Club Vamp
Reading Time: 5 minutes Gabriel arrives in San Francisco at dusk. He’s dropped off in the Tenderloin by a man desperate to be rid of him. Gabriel’s presence in his car is like the scent of mortality.
Talent & Culture
Reading Time: 4 minutes A distant relation is bequeathed to someone whose tenuous employment on the outskirts of humanity makes him a less than ideal custodian.
Stone Cold Beauty
Reading Time: 4 minutes Totally narcissistic, Electra loved admiring her herself in the mirror. One day a wish turned her to stone gazing in a mirror at herself for eternity. She was mostly happy with this situation, until her old, dying husband visits her and gets a wish of his own.
The Power We Give
Reading Time: 4 minutes Azabelle pulled the pins that held up her hair. Dark curls tumbled around her face. She felt Shadow’s presence, of course, but she’d felt it so long she barely registered the danger.
Home Delivery
Reading Time: 10 minutes Desperate for cash, Nick and his friend plot a home invasion. They picked the wrong house.
Gods and Monsters Installment 3: Music and Moths
Reading Time: 7 minutes At eighteen, when Gabriel leaves the orphanage, the sisters breathe a sigh of relief. He has never been any trouble. Never talked back; indeed, rarely talked at all. He is obedient, clean, and scentless. The nuns can find no fault in him, but neither can they feel affection. He makes them forget Christ and contemplate Gabriel. He induces guilt. His very silence screams for attention. He is a shadow in the soul.
Táltos
Reading Time: 4 minutes A Hungarian folktale about young girl seeking to rectify injustice done to her sisters.
Affordable Resurrection
Reading Time: 6 minutes Lightly amusing modern-feel fantasy mashup about an unlikely partnership between a budget-price necromancer and his student locked in an unusual business model.
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our latest VIDEOS
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REVIEWS
5 Upcoming Fantasy Books Inspired by Wuxia, Xianxia, and East Asian Mythologies
Reading Time: 6 minutes Check out Melissa Ren’s most anticipated fantasy books inspired by wuxia, xianxia, and east asian mythologies!
NightBirds by Kate J. Armstrong
Reading Time: 3 minutes I’d say that anyone who enjoys well-written feminist fantasy should jump on this series now.
Threadneedle by Cari Thomas
Reading Time: 2 minutes Mix the dark academia of Victoria Lee’s A Lesson in Vengeance with some anti-witchcraft hysteria and a little dose of secret curses and magical communities, and you begin to have a grasp of Cari Thomas’ debut YA contemporary fantasy novel, Threadneedle.
Learn the story of the founding of Valdemar in Lackey’s new series
Reading Time: 4 minutes Two new Valdemar books have just been released — perfect timing for holiday gift-giving for the fantasy fan on your list.
Tiger and Del Return in Jennifer Roberson’s Sword-Bearer
Reading Time: 3 minutes The adventures of Tiger and Del continue!
Into The Broken Lands: Where Magical Radioactivity Forges Leaders and Liars
Reading Time: 4 minutes Family pride and power draw Ryan and his great-uncle Garrett into the Broken Lands — a land ravaged by magic that lingers like radioactive waste.
BookTok’s Top Fantasy Romance Books for 2022
Reading Time: 8 minutes Get the skinny on Booktok’s most highly recommended Fantasy Romance books from 2022!
Tripp Preview for Meta Quest 2
Reading Time: 2 minutes Tripp bills itself as a new way to meditate. Meditation apps are nothing new in the technology landscape, but this one aims for a more sensory experience.
Writing Advice of the Week
Writing Advice of the Week: The Craft is in Drafts
Reading Time: 11 minutes When you write your first draft, you’re telling yourself the story, as you need to hear it, to make the best sense of it. That first draft is typically when you learn about your main character’s goals and motivations, the barriers or villains that hinder their success, and what the ultimate stakes are if they don’t succeed. You also meet the rest of the cast and get to know them, understand them, see them moving about in your story world. But when you tell your story to your reader, you begin to uncover what the reader needs.
Writing Advice of the Week: Write Your Way Out of the Slump
Reading Time: 9 minutes During February, making time to write can feel extra difficult. Prioritizing your writing, getting the right pieces in the right places, and speaking to your readers are the goals.
Writing Advice of the Week: Climb Your Success Ladder
Reading Time: 10 minutes Regardless of industry metrics and analytics, regardless whether you’re established or debuting, through thick and thin, writers write. And in this bizarre, yet hopeful, publishing landscape, writers create their own success.
Writing Advice of the Week: Rejection is a Beginning
Reading Time: 9 minutes Writing and storytelling are skills anyone can learn with a little practice, the right mindset, and a bit of help. And rejection isn’t the end of your literary road as long as you keep driving ahead. That’s because rejection is a powerful tool for growth — if you let it be one.
ESSAYS
Distant star TOI-700 has two potentially habitable planets orbiting it – making it an excellent candidate in the search for life
Reading Time: 5 minutes NASA recently announced the discovery of a new, Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone of a nearby star called TOI-700.
ChatGPT is great – you’re just using it wrong
Reading Time: 5 minutes So it doesn’t have facts, per se. It just knows what word should come next. Put another way, ChatGPT doesn’t try to write sentences that are true. But it does try to write sentences that are plausible.
13 free AI detectors tested, why they don’t work, and what to do instead
Reading Time: 9 minutes In the battle against AI-generated spam, some people are turning to AI detectors to weed out AI-generated content. Unfortunately, they don’t work.
7 top misconceptions about ChatGPT and writing
Reading Time: 10 minutes There are a lot of myths and misunderstandings about what ChatGPT can do and how it works. Most people tend to fall on one of two extremes — either that it’s all-powerful and will destroy the writing profession, or that it’s completely useless. The actual truth is somewhere in the middle.
NEWS
Authors Guild proposes new AI training use clause
Reading Time: 2 minutes Authors Guild proposes contract clause to block AI training use without permission.
Flash Fiction Submissions Open March 1
Reading Time: 2 minutes The spring 2023 submission cycle for original speculative fiction begins on March 1 and closes at midnight on March 31.
5 best free alternatives to Midjourney for writers who need marketing or cover images
Reading Time: 12 minutes The top five free, easy-to-use alternatives to Midjourney: Lexica, Canva, Playground AI, Mage Space, and Dreamlike.
Sci-fi magazine editors wary of AI spam, reluctant to charge for submissions
Reading Time: 7 minutes Sci-fi and fantasy magazine editors are discussing charging submission fees, changing submission schedules, limiting submissions to known authors, using AI-detection tools, and other means to combat AI spam.
Clarkesworld swamped by AI spam, temporarily stops accepting submissions
Reading Time: 2 minutes Clarkesworld has temporary stopped accepting new short story submissions because of a flood of AI-generated spam.
Apex Magazine launches Kickstarter for robot anthology
Reading Time: 2 minutes Apex Magazine launched a Kickstarter today for a new anthology of fiction about robots, called Robotic Ambitions. The anthology, to be clear, is about robots, not written by robots. It’s written by humans.
P.E.A.N.U.T.: 6 steps to staying ahead of AI as a fiction author
Reading Time: 11 minutes If you want to be successful as a human author in an age of AI-generated content, you will need to make your writing Personal, Emotional, Authoritative, New, Unique, and Trustworthy — PEANUT, for short.
New Edge Sword & Sorcery Kickstarter two-thirds to goal, with 20 days to go
Reading Time: 2 minutes New Edge Sword & Sorcery magazine launched a crowdfunding campaign at the beginning of February and is already two-thirds of the way to its US $14,940 goal with 20 days to go.
ON WRITING
Book editing with AI: Code Interpreter vs. Claude — there’s no contest
Reading Time: 8 minutes Anthropic’s Claude beats ChatGPT hands-down when it comes to analyzing full-length books.
Best free Canva fonts for sci-fi, fantasy, and horror
Reading Time: 6 minutes More than 70 great free fonts for Canva ebook covers for sci-fi, fantasy, and horror genres.
Midjourney’s new zoom out feature great for book covers
Reading Time: 7 minutes Midjourney adds zoom out feature, which is great for creating art for book covers.
Adobe will indemnify customers against lawsuits
Reading Time: 2 minutes Adobe promises to cover any legal costs that companies might incur as a result of using their AI-powered image generation tools.
Claude AI can read and analyze an entire book at once — here’s how to use it
Reading Time: 19 minutes Claude can read a 75,000-word book and identify structural and style problems. It can also create outlines and character sheets.
Authors can now use WordPress to create newsletters — and get paid for them
Reading Time: 3 minutes WordPress.com now lets authors get paid for their newsletters.
Adobe adds Firefly’s AI image generation to Photoshop
Reading Time: 7 minutes Adobe has added Firefly’s AI image generation to Photoshop so that you, or your cover designer, can create book covers using commercially-safe AI image generation.
How to use the new Midjourney ‘describe’ function to create great book covers
Reading Time: 6 minutes A week ago, Midjourney, which is the best AI generator on the market today, added the “describe” function, which lets you upload any image and get some suggestions for prompts that could have created it. It’s a great shortcut for creating images for book covers — or anything else you need graphics for.