My Favorite Bit

 Rachel Swirsky is one of the best short story writers working in speculative fiction. At least, that’s my feeling about her. Her work has a beautiful use of language and is thought-provoking. I’m very happy that she’s joining us today to talk about her novelette “Portrait of Lisane da Patagnia,” which is available on Tor.com So […]

For full disclosure, Shanna Germain is one of my best friends. This is, in part, because she is a writer who thinks deeply about her craft and can articulate what it is that she does. In fact, we just had her on a live recording of Writing Excuses at Gencon, so you can look forward

The Grass King’s Concubine caught me on the first page with the language. Kari Sperring has managed to create this… epic fantasy is not right. It’s a mythic fantasy, in that it feels like I was reading a story much, much older than it was, but it’s all original. It’s a novel that is very

In the interests of full disclosure, I love Kat Richardson’s Greywalker series that when I heard she was working on a new one I begged to be one of her beta readers. I love the series, in part, because Kat never repeats a trick. Harper Blaine, her protagonist, is constantly growing as are the characters she

Jim is one of those very smart people who not only writes good books, but also understands how the industry works. He looks at the larger picture around him and that shows up in his fiction, too. I should tell you that I basically read Libriomancer in one sitting and came away with feeling three things.

This week’s book is vN: The First Machine Dynasty  by Madeleine Ashby. Amy Peterson is a self-replicating humanoid robot known as a VonNeumann. For the past five years, she has been grown slowly as part of a mixed organic/synthetic family. She knows very little about her android mother’s past, so when her grandmother arrives and

I’m going to get out of the way on this one and give you the publisher blurb because it does a better job of setting up the latest Nightrunner book, Casket of Souls, than I can. The Nightrunners are back in this gripping novel full of Lynn Flewelling’s trademark action, intrigue, and richly imagined characters. More than

I’m very happy to have my first guest in to speak about a short story.  I often feel that short story writers don’t have enough opportunities to talk about their craft. So the My Favorite Bit feature is a place where they can. My first guest is Gregory Frost. He writes both short fiction and

What happens when you take your urban fantasty and hand it to a registered nurse? You get a secret ward at the local hospital which caters to vampires, were-things, and zombies. Cassie Alexander’s debut novel follows the newest nurse on the ward, Edie Spence, as she tries to treat with the world of the paranormal

What I particularly like about J. A. Pitts is that he doesn’t take the easy route. Forged in Fire is the third book in the Sarah Beauhall series, which are what happens when you take epic fantasy and set it in modern day Seattle. Seriously. Dragons in Seattle. What could be better? He takes it up

I’m very excited about the newest installment in the Books of Chantments universe. I so enjoy the way magic is handled as something that is both powerful and can embue ordinary objects with extraordinary properties. So what is the author’s Favorite Bit? Let’s see. A. M. DELLAMONICA: I had to think a fair amount about

Here we have a debut novel by Mike Underwood for your consideration. For Geekomancy he’s basically turned geek culture into a magic system. Let’s see what his favorite bit is, shall we? MIKE UNDERWOOD: I have a lot of favorite bits in Geekomancy – weaving geek language into conversation, Geekomancy as a literalization of the power of

It’s no secret that I like Dan Wells’s writing. A lot. So I was nervous about The Hollow City because I had high expectations. He totally lived up to them. We talk about the writing process on Writing Excuses all the time. Today, Dan is going to tell you about his favorite bit. DAN WELLS: I

Do you like dragons? You know you do. James Maxey who I’ve been a fan of since I discovered his book Nobody Gets the Girl has two different series with dragons. Today he’s going to tell us a little bit about Hush.

For full disclosure, I blurbed this book and loved it. It feeds all of my historical fantasy jollies, as well as being an interesting detective story. What’s particularly great about D.B. Jackson, which his bio doesn’t say, is that he’s a history professor. The man knows his stuff and in this case, his stuff is