Author: Justin Blazier

Book abuse confessions

Today’s topic is for all the page benders, cover creasers, dog earers, and even the “books as a drink coaster” people. It’s time for the book abusers to come clean and confess their destructive natures. I’ll start first by outing my family. My mother, bless her, is pure evil to paperbacks. She’ll be engrossed in a novel and the front cover will slowly get rolled around behind. It obliterates the spine,and after one reading the pages are nearly unglued, and the book will never fully shut.

I’m pretty darn careful with my books. I abhor loose pages and creased covers.

September 8th, 2011. Justin Blazier | Thoughtful Thursday | 24 comments |

WWW: September 7, 2011

A bit of a slow news week outside of DragonCon, and I’m not even going to try to cover all of that. If you have something particular interesting from DragonCon, please share. In the coming weeks, if you find something interesting you think everyone should read, drop me a line via the contact form and let me know, or just post it below. Let’s get started:

1) Dragon*Con Mania has Ended: I will someday make it to this Con…. someday

2) Real Life Stories that Sound Like Fantasy: A fun and interesting article from one of my favorite sites,

September 7th, 2011. Justin Blazier | World Wide Wednesday | 4 comments |

Southern Gods: Gave me serious nightmares

Southern Gods by John Hornor Jacobs

Bull Ingram is a very big fellow. He’s a former Marine who is still a little raw from the war like most men in the early 1950s. Bull works as paid muscle and his primary job is finding people who owe his employers money. When he finds them, he “convinces” them to pay back their debts. He is very good at his job. A folk music dealer wants Bull to locate a mysterious blues man by the name of Ramblin’ John Hastur. Hastur’s music has strange effects on those who listen to it,

Shadowplay: Exciting sequel

Shadowplay by Tad Williams

On the surface, Volume 1 of Shadowmarch has all the makings of a fully realized epic fantasy: maps, appendix, a rich background history, excerpts (Book of Regret, The Book of the Trigon, Revelations of Nushash) to preface each chapter, a huge cast of characters, races, locales, gods, goddesses and much more to bring the world of Shadowmarch to life.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot more involved in making a great fantasy and I felt that Shadowmarch was sorely lacking in some areas.

Thoughtful Thursday: Rename this horrible cover!

I felt it was time we do another cover rename segment. The cover I have for you today is form Death’s Daughter by Amber Benson. We gave this book a good review, and if you dig Urban Fantasy you should probably give it a read. It’s not the book, but the cover that is my target today. It’s quite awful, and I would love to rename it.

The first thing my eyes are drawn to on this cover is the creepy puppy photobombing in the corner.

September 1st, 2011. Justin Blazier | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 10 comments |

WWW: August 31, 2011

All kinds of good stuff today. Everything from beautiful illustrations to feminist rants, hope you all enjoy. In the coming weeks, if you find something interesting you think everyone should read, drop me a line via the contact form and let me know, or just post it below. Let’s get started:

1) Tolkien Library Interviews Benjamin Harff: A nod to John Ottinger over at Grasping for the Wind for finding this link. Benjamin is hand-illustrating The Silmarillion, and it looks stunning.

2) Joe Abercrombie’s Work in Progress: Joe blogs a bit about his upcoming novel,

August 31st, 2011. Justin Blazier | World Wide Wednesday | 6 comments |

Best weapons in fantasy

Today’s topic of discussion is rather simple. What is the coolest weapon you have ever seen grace the page of a fantasy story? I have a couple in mind I’d like to share:

The Speaking Gun: This weapon comes from Simon R. Green‘s Something from the Nightside. It was created at the dawn of time and is self-aware. It has the power to know the “true name” of all things, and if it “speaks” the name backward, that thing ceases to exist. There is nothing in the universe the Speaking Gun cannot kill.

August 25th, 2011. Justin Blazier | Thoughtful Thursday | 22 comments |

WWW: August 24, 2011

Lots of good stories today. Be sure to check out the Hugo Awards and let us know what you thought. In the coming weeks, if you find something interesting you think everyone should read, drop me a line via the contact form and let me know, or just post it below. Let’s get started:

1) The Hugo Award Winners: Congratulations to all the winners and nominees. 2010 was a good year for speculative fiction. I need to read Connie Willis‘ book, like now.

2) Tor and NASA Publishing Collaboration: This could prove to be an interesting relationship.

August 24th, 2011. Justin Blazier | World Wide Wednesday | 5 comments |

Thoughtful Thursday: 2011, The Best Year for Fantasy Ever?

Fellow Fanlit staffer Ryan and I were discussing what a stellar year it has been for the fantasy genre. In fact we were so bold as to say this may very well be the best year of fantasy ever. I thought for today’s Thoughtful Thursday I would build a case for 2011 being the best year for fantasy ever, and then see if you readers could provide other years that might be contenders. There is also the possibility that you agree with Ryan and me, and if you do, then just say so.

Releases: George R.R.

August 18th, 2011. Justin Blazier | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 16 comments |

WWW: August 17, 2011

A fairly busy news week for genre fiction. The award season is pretty much over. Seems like there are quite a number of authors who are between projects and are out in the blogosphere, so it wasn’t too difficult to find you a few things worth taking a look at. In the coming weeks, if you find something interesting you think everyone should read, drop me a line via the contact form and let me know, or just post it below. Let’s get started:

1) The Final NPR top 100 Science Fiction Fantasy Poll Results: Quite a few were expected,

August 17th, 2011. Justin Blazier | World Wide Wednesday | 3 comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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