Writing

writing themes

First off, the cover is gorgeous. Kudos, Mark. The artists you found did *right* by Pawly and that scene. Anyway, off to the actual review of WERECATS RESURGENT. “‘Mission Impossible’ grows fangs and claws! For lynx werecat Pawlina Katczynski and her loved ones, meeting their isolated Forest Brethren cousins in eastern Poland was both liberating…

Read More Review: Werecats Resurgent, by Mark J. Engels

This is a very long post! Scroll to the end to see a finished book art sculpture! A month ago I found this carved wooden bird in a plastic bag (with some other oddities) hanging on a wall hook at Goodwill. $3.49 for the whole bag. Stupidly, I walked away and left the bag on…

Read More A Bird, a Dream, a Book

Tldr: WERECATS EMERGENT is a great book if you like military adventure fantasy and kickass heroines coming of age, with *shapeshifting* feline humans.  The author’s homepage is here: mark-engels.com The book’s main Amazon page is here. Look at this cover. It’s subtle but it gets the point across. I had nothing to do with this…

Read More Review: WERECATS EMERGENT by Mark J. Engels

Since I’m doing this within a couple of months, here’s the cover art for my *terrible horrible cringefest* 1987 fantasy novel SILK OVER STEEL, soon to be on Ream.ink. As befitting something that at at the time was a juvenile pastiche (I was 22, c’mon) of Patricia McKillip, Elfquest, Tanith Lee, Jack Vance, and Steven…

Read More Silk Over Steel cover reveal

My writing platform on Ream.ink has launched! I write sweet to scorching sword & planet and space opera fantasy. https://reamstories.com/page/lfr7ennrzk There’s a Lonhra Sequence short novel already up on Tier One. That’s BLOODSHADOW. This is in prep for launching the sequel SOULBINDER in a month or so, chapter-by-chapter. My Ream site will start with two…

Read More The Lonhra Sequence on Ream!

Two claims / discussions in #BookTwitter converged in my mind recently. 1. ‘Copyright has to be truncated so authors are forced to create more work, instead of resting on their past achievements.’ 2. ‘If authors (commercial or self-published) want go get ahead or even get noticed, they must write quickly and to-trend.’ First, on author-copyright.…

Read More Trends or Treadmills?

I just learned of fantasy author Patricia A McKillip’s passing last week. She was a poet, wordsmith, and major inspiration of mine since 1977. That was the year I discovered a paperback copy of ‘The Riddlemaster of Hed’ in my junior high school library. It changed my life. The high fantasy of Tolkien, but with…

Read More In memoriam: Patricia A. McKillip

Tl;dr…Why ‘Outsider Artists’ *should* enter prestigious contests, and why many marginalized artists either give up or never even consider these opportunities. Every year I apply for every reputable art-related grant or show opportunity I might remotely qualify to enter. I usually don’t pay, unless the entry fees are modest (under $35 per entry). I do…

Read More Genres, Grants, and Outsider Artists

…And hi, Filigree’s Rule! I’d hoped to leave all my Filigree’s Rule writing posts up on this blog, but a stipulation of Amazon means I have to privately publish them now. Effectively hiding them from internet search. I’ve taken those posts, condensed some, expanded others, and updated everything I could into a more-easily read book…

Read More Bye, Filigree’s Rule…

I’m spiffing up some older stories…foundational myths, if you will…from my Lonhra Sequence space-fantasy universe. One of the fun/infuriating things about hobby-crafting a universe for nearly 40 years, are all the small stories that make up those secondary worlds and their histories. Side-characters and historical footnotes who would very much like to tell *their side*…

Read More More Lonhra Sequence stories