Why do people read fantasy?

The typical answer is that people are searching for 'escape.' Fantasy represents, many would say, a retreat from the harsh world of competition and commerce. Another answer is that fantasy provides, like much fiction, a specific kind ...

Nobody was more surprised than the author that WARCHILD came out the way it did. I was working on a fantasy novel when a character’s little voice propelled me to the computer one day and strung out what eventually ...

It's a nightmare.

Your world is forged and designed, documented and mapped. You have characters and histories and mysteries and ecologies. Everything's perfect, right? It's time to write, and . . .

. . . what are you going to write about? Wait a second, you've got a world, but where the heck's the story? It was there when you started this . . .

Or, you have your world, and you've written a story and . . . the well is dry. You know your world, but there aren't any tales to tell! What happened?

A strange paradox ...

Metaplanetary Stew

Metaplanetary's initial conception was a lot like sailing on a pitching boat in the midst of a mental storm for me. I had always wanted to do ...

In One of Tolkien’s widely recognized essays "On fairy stories" he emphasized that the happy ending, the "eucatastrophe", is an essential element of Fantasy, necessary for it to fulfill its major functions: Recovery, Escape, Consolation. It is ironic ...