More Strange Than True
Reading Time: 19 minutes After an epically shitty day, Jewell Jamieson unknowingly eats a magic-spiked meal and makes a certain wish – and that’s why she awakes the next morning to discover a beautiful naked man in her bed.
Reading Time: 19 minutes After an epically shitty day, Jewell Jamieson unknowingly eats a magic-spiked meal and makes a certain wish – and that’s why she awakes the next morning to discover a beautiful naked man in her bed.
Reading Time: 5 minutesThirteen haunting tales from MetaStellar’s archives that remind us why we should fear the dark — and why sometimes the most terrifying monsters are the ones we create ourselves.
13 scariest stories to get you through Halloween Read More »
Reading Time: 5 minutesPsychic magicians must fight off a enemy who is trying to break the spells protecting their academy. Family and romantic relationships complicate things.
Reading Time: 9 minutesMike grabs Ashley from her quilted comfort. Her head droops back like a wilted flower. Her neck shows white in the night. Mike’s canines grow long with desire and need.
Gods and Monsters Installment 36: Stained Glass Soul Read More »
Reading Time: 9 minutesWhen their mother dies, a pair of precocious twins are placed in the care of their father, a conservative and stern man with whom their Wiccan practices immediately clash.
Reading Time: 6 minutesThrough showing, not telling, you provide a more immersive experience for your readers. Here’s how.
Reading Time: 10 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes space battles, magical mysteries, and a sexy orc.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Oct. 25, 2024 Read More »
Reading Time: 3 minutesIn the face of a devastated climate, humanity’s last hope is to relocate to another planet, but not everyone sees it that way.
Reading Time: 7 minutesWhen Hephaestus emerged clubfooted and malformed, Hera tossed him off Mount Olympus. He fell for nine days and nine nights, landing in the sea with a splash so big it caused a tsunami. No wonder then, that he prefers Earth to Olympus and children to gods.
Gods and Monsters Installment 35: Gods and Circuses Read More »
Reading Time: 7 minutesIn a near future of fast-paced social media likes and internet lurking, anonymity has a price…
Reading Time: 8 minutesLimited word counts in flash stories require you to make careful and judicious choices of what to keep and what to revise away because in flash fiction, there’s little room for coyness or ambiguity.
Reading Time: 9 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes pirates — both the space and the ocean kind — as well as mages and mediums.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Oct. 18, 2024 Read More »
Reading Time: 11 minutesRuth is an android robot nanny, designed to protect the two young children in her care. She has come to realize that she loves protecting the children so much, she feels compelled to put the children into danger so as to enjoy saving them.
Reading Time: 7 minutesNow, after the advent of dreams and the appearance of color, when Gabriel reads of a killing, something inside him screams. When he looks upon a charcoal figure that so recently possessed unearthly beauty, he mourns. He wants to create, not destroy. He doesn’t like the role in which he has been cast.
Gods and Monsters Installment 34: The Fault Line Within Read More »
Reading Time: 6 minutesFiction is unique to human communication, which is fascinating on its own. But why do we still look to fictions? What do they do for us in the modern age? Why does fiction matter? And what considerations must go into crafting culturally honest fictions?
Reading Time: 3 minutesThe book is dynamic and fast paced, with flashbacks and cliffhangers to keep you reading along. It is hard to put down, and I never say this lightly.
Friendship Is at the Forefront of Shaun Hamill’s The Dissonance Read More »
Reading Time: 10 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes a shifter romance by a New York Times bestselling author, a book about a space pirate, and a thriller about climate change.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Oct. 11, 2024 Read More »
Reading Time: 5 minutesA derelict spaceship turns out to be a trap for a space pirate and his very unusual copilot.
Reading Time: 8 minutesVampires followed the deluge of fluid and fear, tracking the lonely, homeless, and lost to the city, drawn by the need for belief, as well as blood.
Reading Time: 5 minutesStory structure is the framework around your literary jigsaw puzzle, the order into which you organize the events in your story to create a beginning, a middle, and an end. So let’s talk about some common story structures you may encounter while researching storytelling techniques.
Reading Time: 10 minutesNine favorite space opera series with kick-ass female leads.
Reading Time: 10 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes dark magic, ancient evils, and serial killers — just in time for the spooky season.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Oct. 4, 2024 Read More »
Reading Time: 4 minutesA day at the beach turns into something unexpected for a young couple.
Reading Time: 7 minutesThanatos never kills. He’s just the messenger.
Gods and Monsters Installment 32: Time Before Time Read More »
Reading Time: 2 minutesDeep Black goes deeper into human-alien relationships and what it means to explore the vastness of space. It also questions whether AI should be trusted or not.
Deep Black Has Everything You Need: Action, Aliens, and Conspiracies Read More »
Reading Time: 4 minutesMastering story edits isn’t easy, but there are a few books I’ve recommended to my clients repeatedly to assist them during edits, and these are also books I use myself when editing my work. The good news: Once you’ve absorbed the material covered in these books, you’ll be able to apply the lessons over and over without really thinking about them. They’ll become second-nature to your writerly process.
Reading Time: 9 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes a romantasy by a USA Today bestselling author, a space opera box set, time travel, and a gaslamp mystery.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for September 27, 2024 Read More »
Reading Time: 5 minutesIn a future where the continents are gone, the oceans are dead, and humanity survives atop the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a man goes on a dreamquest to rediscover cold and snow.
Reading Time: 7 minutesEver since he found Gabriel in the field, River has been cut off and alone. Separated from humanity by a knowledge that he didn’t even realize he possessed, a perception deep within his bones. An understanding that though fairy tales may come true, they are written in blood and lies.
Gods and Monsters Installment 31: Small Time Gods Read More »
Reading Time: 6 minutesWhether you are looking for a new story idea, developing an existing story, or beta reading a story for another author, identifying the protagonist’s goal, motivations, and conflicts is important to understand the story’s message to readers.
Reading Time: 3 minutesMiles Cameron’s space opera Artifact Space opens with a very action-forward sequence that sees Marca Nbaro, the protagonist, running away from space cops to board a huge cargo ship called the Athens because her dream has always been to work and serve at that ship.
Artifact Space by Miles Cameron Takes You for an Interstellar Ride Read More »
Reading Time: 9 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes a demon who cost a witch her job, time-traveling tourists, and so, so much fantasy romance!
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Sep. 20, 2024 Read More »
Reading Time: 2 minutesThe fall 2024 submission cycle for original speculative fiction begins on October 1 and closes at midnight on October 31. We’re looking for your best enthralling, imaginative, or bone-chilling original fiction stories, as long as they’re 1,200 words or fewer.
Fall 2024 Original Fiction Submissions Period Opens October 1! Read More »
Reading Time: 8 minutesThe door is heavy, about four inches thick. A long narrow staircase leads down into darkness. He is in total darkness. Feeling his way slowly along the wall, carefully tapping his feet to see where the stairs begin, he finds a light switch. Harsh fluorescence floods the stairwell. This light would make anyone look dead, River thinks.
Reading Time: 4 minutesMagic circles, incantations—could this be enough to bring back Amelia Earhart?
Reading Time: 6 minutesMost of you will have heard the phrase: When one door closes, another one opens. But that doesn’t mean closing the one door is easy or without its challenges, and it doesn’t mean the door that opens will open up to sunshine and rainbows. In fact, many of the most rewarding learning experiences are borne of loss, grief, even tragedy.
Reading Time: 4 minutesDavid volunteers for NASA’s Body Donor program, where human corpses are exchanged for advanced knowledge of an alien species.
Reading Time: 9 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes two box sets — military sci-fi and romantasy — and urban fantasy by a USA Today bestselling author!
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Sep. 13, 2024 Read More »
Reading Time: 7 minutesPamela stands in the doorway. River stops stirring and opens his arms. Pamela doesn’t even need to cross the room. She melts into him, soft as butter into flour. She is cold, damp as night fog.
Gods and Monsters Installment 29: Beautiful and Strange Read More »
Reading Time: 8 minutesAs fun as it is to conceptualize, philosophize, and ‘what if’ oneself through astrophysics, it’s important to know what the scientific and literary rules are for space travel so you can either use them to your story’s advantage (and please your readers with your knowledge) or disregard them intentionally in pursuit of imaginative creative expression.
Traveling Through Space-Time: Physics VS Fantasy Read More »
Reading Time: 11 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list is all about magic women falling in love both in the modern day and in fairy tale settings.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Sep. 6, 2024 Read More »
Reading Time: 5 minutesPolaris Dawn pushes the envelope of civilian space travel in 2024, but at what cost?
Reading Time: 3 minutesThere’s an aswang on the loose and it’s up to us to deal with it. Don’t forget to bring trash bags…
Reading Time: 4 minutesWhen Gretel grew up, she left the Sugar-Candy House and the forest behind her, but some stories won’t allow you to walk away.
Reading Time: 8 minutesThat night, Jackson does not come to Bert’s.
Reading Time: 7 minutesRegardless of genre, tropes, and intended audiences, every novel you pick up has three things in common: structure, character, and plot.
Structure, Character, Plot: The Big Picture of Story Read More »
Reading Time: 11 minutesWe read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list is a nice mix of space battles and fantasy romance — something for everyone.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Aug. 30, 2024 Read More »
Reading Time: 4 minutesFirst dates are always scary, but sometimes fear can be delicious.