This post is linked to the next one on Life in Sci-Fi, a guest piece by novelist Jane Davis, whose new book At the Stroke of Nine O’Clock explores the motivations for female violence in the twentieth century. It’s interesting to compare how historical fiction and SF deal with this theme, because Jane’s story looks […]
I have just finished a punishing second draft of Beautiful Gun following edits, and the book has now gone off to beta readers to prepare for draft three. Draft two is pretty much a digital remastering already, with a whole new third, although the story spine is the same. It’s so much better, with the […]
I knew there was a reason I’ve never liked plague sci-fi: it’s because it’s always dull and not really sci-fi. Just substitute the plague for any other calamity and it’s just a set of standard disaster tropes. Plague is a tedious antagonist because it don’t make choices based on opportunities afforded by technology, it simply […]
The Princess & The Orrery is Book Three of FD Lee’s bestselling fantasy series, The Pathways Tree. The books subvert familiar fairytale tropes using clever twists on genre conventions, and have established a loyal following since the first book was published independently in 2015. Since then, FD has got a doctorate in mythological analysis and its […]
This video was recorded at the BSFA earlier in the year and features me and fellow author Stephen Oram chatting about the writing process, structure and inspiration. Click here and press play to watch Chad Dixon’s Periscope recording.
This discussion between science fiction authors Drew Wagar and Stuart Aken at FantastiCon 2017 became a mini-masterclass in speculative writing, while also demonstrating there is no ‘right’ way to create genre narratives. The two authors appear to have much in common. They both write politically-informed science fiction, although Stuart also writes in other genres and […]
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