More website changes. As some of the more astute-eyed among you may have already noticed, I’ve decided to enable HTTPS site-wide, so if you want to feel security conscious while reading my stories, you can do so. This isn’t a significant change from your perspective, as there aren’t any data forms or fields with sensitive information anywhere, but still, some extra S vitamin might not hurt.
Something non-literary for today. I’ve decided to refresh the look and feel of The Lost Words, with a theme that should be more suitable for a wider range of user devices, including tablets and phones. The word the pundits love to use is – responsive.
I have some more goatsome news. Nya of Nya Reads, has agreed to publish a guest post featuring my own words. This fine piece of lunacy prose is titled Love Thy Goats, and it goes into vivid detail of my (and Dietrich’s) fascination with cuddly grass-eating quadrupeds. As we have just recently had the launch of You Are Here, an SFFWorld.com anthology, and its teaser story titled A Tale of Guns and Goats and Velvet Coats, what better way is there to continue the theme than with another goat story?
Dear readers, we have a new contest ahead of us! The format is very similar to the two previous contests that we had, the first one in 2013, which resulted in a lucky winner getting a Nexus phone, as the Ubuntu Phone was not ready yet then, and the one in 2014-2015, where I finally handed out an BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Phone to an entrepreneuring contestant. This year? The Ubuntu M10 tablet.
If the title of this post looks familiar, this is because my article today is a reference of another article. Namely, Wendell, the guy behind a very custhy book review and author spotlights website Bookwraiths, has just published a piece focused on older, overlooked, under-appreciated speculative fiction books. Better yet, he asked some – of his favorite – authors for their opinion.
Fancy winning a free copy of The Humbled, the freshly released fourth and last volume in The Lost Words series? Sure you do. Which is why you ought to head over to Goodreads, do a bit of furious mouse clicking, and maybe, when the giveaway ends, you could. Pretty self-explanatory, I guess. Four copies of the fourth book. Idyllic. Sep 28 till Oct 11. Enough said.
Admit it, some books are better than others. And not just because a certain author makes a better work with words than his or her fellow companions. Sometimes, it comes down to a purely emotional reaction to the setting. The Hobbit Shire, the Shannara world, Locke Lamora and his band of thieves. So if you had to choose, what is your ideal type of fantasy, as a reader and as a writer?
There, a hyperbole. A catchy title to, well, catch your attention. But the thing is, I believe I’ve read more books this year than any other year before, and most of those books were first reads. New books. And they came recommended by the Goodreads community, which is always a good thing.
Medieval castles are an inseparable part of any fantasy book. Whether it’s high or low, magical or not, steampunk, industrial or barbaric, eventually, you will come across a big, architecturally magnificent piece of human masonry, woodwork and physics that goes against all logic. Which is totally cool, because you’re not there to admire realism, you’re there to admire ancient buildings created by a bygone races exactly 3,000 years ago. Or something. So how about some castles?
As you may have noticed, if you follow me on Goodreads, most of my book reviews contain a nice little limerick, the true form of folk poetry. Of course, in the best tradition of British national humor, it’s all about balls and asses. In my case, slightly more related to the books at hand. Now, I wanted to share with you, and so, here’s a small collection of some of my finer limericks. For more, you will have to browse Goodreads, but here be an appetizer.
