Posted in Book Review, Fantasy Writings, tagged anthology, Book Review, Carlton Mellick III, China Mieville, Christopher Fowler, Elizabeth Hand, Eric Schaller, fantasy, Haruki Murakami, horror, Kathe Koja, Kelly Link, Luis Alberto Urrea, M. Shayne Bell, Peter Dickinson, Terry Dowling, Theodora Goss on April 28, 2008 | No Comments »
Time for another Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror book review. I’ve done one for 2004 and 2006, and today’s review will focus on the 16th annual 2002 book. I’m beginning to see a theme to these anthologies. The 2004 had lots of vulgarity and warped ickiness to it that truly turned me off, while the [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Book Review, Fantasy Writings, tagged "The Mists of Avalon", Arthurian legend, Book Review, books, Christianity, fantasy, fiction, Marion Zimmer Bradley, paganism, religion on March 10, 2008 | 4 Comments »
All right, all right already. I finished the book. It took me two months to do it, but I read it, so I might as well sit down and write this review. You guys been bugging me about it, so I guess I have no choice.
What did I think of the book?
I don’t know. I’m [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Fantasy Writings, Genre: Fantasy, LaShawn's Work, Short Stories, Writing, tagged Writing, Short Stories, LaShawn M. Wanak, fantasy, short story, fiction, Ideomancer, fairies, African-American fantasy, black fantasy, "Crowntree" on March 1, 2008 | 4 Comments »
And yet another story of mine is up to read! Yippee! And it’s at Ideomancer, of all places!
This one has a special place in my heart. It’s based off an actual tree and stone ring I saw in someone’s backyard. Seeing the tree took me back to the days of when I was a kid, [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Fantasy Writings, Genre: Fantasy, LaShawn's Work, Prayer, Short Stories, Women's Stuff, Writing, tagged "Daughters of Sarah", angels, Christian, LaShawn M. Wanak, short story, speculative fiction, Writing on February 7, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Yeehaw! A new story!
I’m proud of this one because this was the first short story I worked on when I started writing again after Daniel was born. Actually, ’short’ is pretty subjective. This one’s a bit on the long side.
I got the idea for this story back when I was at Roosevelt University. One of [...]
Read Full Post »
Over at Fantasy Magazine, there’s a very interesting interview of Carole McDonnell and Alaya Dawn Johnson, two fantasy authors who are both black and female. Seeing that I’m both, I found it quite liberating to hear two women like me talk about their work, Christianity and the changing state of speculative fiction to a more [...]
Read Full Post »
We’re going back to the basics here. I wanted to get a feel for what standalone fantasy novels would be like, so I picked up Wheel of the Infinite by Martha Wells. When I came across this book, I like the picture of what looked like a black woman on the back (why she wasn’t [...]
Read Full Post »
It’s been quiet at the Cafe. Real quiet. It’s not that anything’s happening. On the contrary…there’s a lot.
I’ve been spending most of my time working on an article that I want to get out by the end of this week. It’s taken up quite a bit of time, but it’s something I’ve been wanting to [...]
Read Full Post »
This is going to be a sloppy review. Just to warn you. I will probably ramble on and on about stuff. That’s because I can’t seem to get my thoughts in order. There’s so much to this book, and even if I put down everything I know about the book down here, there’s probably a [...]
Read Full Post »
I was a little leery of picking up another anthology of Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, especially after the 2004 stinker I read in October. But when I saw the 2006 collection at the library, I had to pick it up. It’s the most up-to-date version I’ve read.
I was pleased to see that the stories [...]
Read Full Post »
So when people call me up and talk to me (assuming that I’m not chasing after my son at that moment or the phone’s not being hogged by my hubby), they usually ask, “So…what you’ve been writing lately?”
I usually mumble something how I got a couple of short stories in the works (which isn’t true now [...]
Read Full Post »
