


Emailing a Book Blogger About a Review and Why First Impressions Matter
One of the primary benefits of reviewing books on a blog is that people will work hard to get you to give their book a chance. Now if you have a big publisher behind you, […]

Spin by Nina Allan – review
Nina Allan’s Spin is the second in a new series of novellas published by the Third Alternative Press, home of leading UK genre magazines Interzone and Black Static. I should mention that the book was […]

Erring On the Side Of Love: A Review of The Melancholy of Mechagirl by Catherynne M. Valente
Catherynne M. Valente’s new collection teems with floating lanterns and fox spirits, gods and baku and bears and animated calligraphy brushes, all revolving around the recurrent figure of a Western woman dreaming about a country she can never quite reach, even when she’s there.

Demons of the Night: Early Stories by Seabury Quinn
Demons of the Night Seabury Quinn Gene Christie, ed. Black Dog Books Tpb $19.95 182 p. Ebook During the heyday of Weird Tales in the 1920s and 1930s, there were four authors whose work was […]

ASM Blog Horde Interview with James Palmer
Welcome to the Amazing Stories BLOG HORDE INTERVIEWS! The ASM Blog Horde is a diverse and wonderful species. I have the privilege of talking with all of them, and I get to share those chats with […]

The Peacock Cloak by Chris Beckett
Chris Beckett has been publishing short stories since 1990. His debut novel was The Holy Machine, followed by Marcher, and last year, Dark Eden, which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for the Best SF […]

Microcosmos (Imaginings Volume: 5) by Nina Allan
In the Forward to Microcosmos Nina Allan explains that, having forgotten the finer details of the requirements for the collection, with her stories tending to ‘run away with themselves’ and being rather long for short […]

Fantastic Stories of the Imagination Returns
Fantastic Stories of the Imagination Warren Lapine, ed. Wilder Publications $29.99 hardcover $14.99 trade paper $6.59 Kindle $7.99 Nook In one of its prior incarnations, Amazing Stories® had a sister publication, Fantastic Stories of the […]

Growing Pains by Ian Whates – book review
Growing Pains is a new collection from the highly talented British author and editor Ian Whates. Whates is the author of the Noise series of space operas and the urban fantasy trilogy City of 100 Rows. He […]

A Review of Blue November Storms
Blue November Storms Brian James Freeman Cemetery Dance Publications Trade Paper $9.99 Electronic $2.99 I haven’t reviewed any horror fiction in my posts here. Considering that I’m focusing on small press and indie published works, […]

Fiction River Debuts
Fiction River WMG Publishing Six times a year Electronic $6.99 Trade Paper $15.99 I interviewed Kristine Kathryn Rusch two weeks ago about the experience of launching Fiction River via Kickstarter. Fiction River is a new […]

I am a Reader
Before I was a writer, I was a reader. My mother tells me I’ve been reading since I was four, and I accept that, because I don’t remember a time when I couldn’t read. By […]

Crowdfunding Fiction River: An Interview with Kristine Kathryn Rusch
My post on crowdfunding a few weeks back generated some really great discussion and seemed to tap into something of interest to a great many people. This topic, like the rest of publishing these days, […]

Epic Fantasy Analysis April 8, 2013
This is the sixth in the series and is from data as of 4/08/2013. Links to review previous data: 01/03/2013 01/24/2013 02/17/2013 03/03/2013 03/14/2013 As always this data comes from the Amazon Kindle Epic Fantasy Bestseller […]

Book Review: Skull Island, by Will Murray
This is going to be a first for me- I’m going to review a book BEFORE I finish it. Hold on! You might be thinking. How can I pass judgement on a book without finishing […]

The Dreaded M-word
A recent conversation about self and independent publishing led to me voicing my thoughts on what to do once the book is released. This will also hold true even for the traditionally published, as the […]

ASM Blog Horde Interview with Alex Kane
Welcome to the Amazing Stories BLOG HORDE INTERVIEWS! The ASM Blog Horde is a diverse and wonderful species. I have the privilege of talking with all of them, and I get to share those chats with […]

Epic Fantasy Analysis March 14, 2013
This is the fifth in the series and is from data as of 3/14/2013. Links to review previous data: 01/03/2013 01/24/2013 02/17/2013 03/03/2013 As always this data comes from the Amazon Kindle Epic Fantasy […]

A Good Old Fashoined Alien Invasion
The Battle for Eden Mark E. Burgess Wildside Press tpb $15.99 ebook $2.99 Kindle Nook Last week we looked at one half of a double novel. If case you aren’t familiar with the format, they […]

Epic Fantasy Analysis March 3, 2013
This is the fourth in the series and is from data as of 3/03/2013. Links to review previous data: 01/03/2013 01/24/2013 02/17/2013 As always this data comes from the Amazon Kindle Epic Fantasy Bestseller […]

In Brackett’s Footsteps Under the Ember Star
Under the Ember Star Charles Allen Gramlich Wildside Press tpb $15.99 electronic $2.99 Kindle epub Unless Stephen Haffner has an unpublished manuscript tucked away somewhere, there will be no new stories from Leigh Brackett. Fortunately, […]

Amazing Stories from Mexico – Book Review: Three Messages and a Warning – edited by Eduardo Jimenez Mayo and Chris N. Brown
Three Messages and a Warning – Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic – edited by Eduardo Jimenez Mayo and Chris N. Brown Small Beer Press 2011 Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-193152031-7 I was drawn to […]

Publishing Primer
Contrary to what they tell you when you take “Author 101” in college, writing a book isn’t necessarily the most difficult part of producing a book. Publishing is a creative industry. What does that mean? […]

Why Piracy is Never Okay
Since the bloggers on this site are mostly authors who no doubt believe in the concept of copyright (because presumably they’d like to get paid for their work), I thought I’d go through the arguments […]

Swashbuckling with Morticai
Morticai’s Luck Darlene Bolesny Dark Star Books Trade ppb, 245 p., $15.95 Ebook, $5.95 Ever gone to a con and come home with more books than it’s humanly possible to read in a reasonable period […]

A Kepler’s Dozen
NASA’s Kepler mission has been watching a swath of the Milky Way watching for the signs of stars being eclipsed by planets in orbit around them. This takes patience and favorable geometry, but Kepler has […]

Objects in Dreams (Imaginings Volume 4) by Lisa Tuttle
Lisa Tuttle has long been one of the masters of the deeply unsettling tale. Last year her short story Objects in Dreams may be Closer than they Appear opened Jonathan Oliver’s excellent anthology, House of Fear, […]

Dead Cosmonauts and Other Eldritch Horrors
Space Eldritch Nathan Shumate, ed. Cold Fusion Media Tpb $13.99, ebook $5.99 Kindle Nook Smashwords Two of the most popular subgenres of the fantastic are space travel (with its myriad sub-subgenres) and cosmic entities with […]

Publishing Options – Many Choices Now Viable
Many fans of fantasy & science fiction have dreams of joining the ranks among their favorite authors someday. But as little as five years ago the publishing landscape was much different than it is today. […]
Michael J. Sullivan
Michael J. Sullivan is a speculative fiction writer who has written twenty-five novels and released nine. Eight of his fantasy books (The Riyria Revelations, and The Riyria Chronicles), were published by Hachette Book Group’s Orbit imprint. Hollow World, a science-fiction thriller was released by Tachyon Publications. The first four books of his new series, The First Empire, has sold to Random House’s Del Rey imprint, and the first book is scheduled to be released in the summer of 2016. He can be found on twitter, through his blog www.riyria.com, and on his facebook page and his publisher’s page for the series.
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