David Burrows is a British fantasy author. He is the author of Prophecy of the Kings Trilogy (Legacy of the Eldric, Dragon Rider and Shadow of the Demon) and Drachar's Demons.

Click here to visit David Burrows' official website.

In this guest post David Burrows tells about writing a fantasy novel.

Writing a Fantasy Novel

Jay Bell's Hell's Pawn was published in 2011.

Here's information about Jay Bell:

Jay Bell never gave much thought to Germany until he met a handsome foreign exchange student. At that moment, beer and pretzels became the most important thing in the world. After moving to Germany and getting married, Jay found himself desperate to communicate the feelings of alienation, adventure, and love that surrounded this decision, and has been putting pen to paper ever since.

Click here to visit Jay Bell's official website.

Here's a description of Hell's Pawn:

John Grey is dead... and that's just the beginning.

Purgatory should have been a safe haven for souls that belong neither in Heaven nor Hell, but instead John finds himself in a corrupt prison, one bereft of freedom or pleasure. Along with his decedent friend Dante, John makes a brave escape, only to fall straight down to Hell and into the arms of Rimmon, a handsome incubus. John is soon recruited as Hell's ambassador, visiting the afterlife realms of other cultures to enlist an army strong enough to stand against Heaven. As interesting as his new job is, John's mind keeps returning to Purgatory and the souls still trapped there. Somehow John must stop a war he doesn't believe in and liberate Purgatory, all while desperately trying to attract the attention of an incubus whose heart belongs to another.

A REVIEW OF JAY BELL'S HELL'S PAWN

Helen Lowe's The Gathering of the Lost was published in the USA in March 2012 by Harper Voyager and it was published in the UK in April 2012 by Orbit. The Gathering of the Lost is the second book of The Wall of Night series. The first book, The Heir of Night, is the winner of the 2011 Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Novel. It is also a 2012 David Gemmell Morningstar Award nominee.

Helen Lowe lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. She is a novelist, poet, interviewer and lover of story.

Click here to visit Helen Lowe's official website and click here to visit her blog.

Here's a description of The Gathering of the Lost:

Garrisoned by the Nine Houses of the Derai, the towering mountain range called the Wall of Night is all that separates the people of Haarth from the terrible Darkswarm.

Five years have passed since the Wall was breached and the Keep of Winds nearly overrun. Five years since the Heir of Night, Malian, and her friend and ally Kalan went missing in the wild lands of Jaransor.

Now, in Haarth's diverse southern realms, events are moving. From the wealthy River city of Ij to the isolated Emerian outpost of Normarch, rumors of dark forces and darker magics are growing. As the great Midsummer tournament at Caer Argent approaches, Haarth will have one opportunity to band together against an enemy in which few believe... or be lost forever.

A REVIEW OF HELEN LOWE'S THE GATHERING OF THE LOST

David A. Colón's The Lost Men: An Allegory was published by Elsewhen Press in March 2012. The Lost Men: An Allegory is David A. Colón's debut novel.

Here's information about David A. Colón:

David Colón is an Assistant Professor of English at TCU in Fort Worth, Texas, USA. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, he received his Ph.D. in English from Stanford University and was a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in English at the University of California, Berkeley. His writing has appeared in numerous journals, including Cultural Critique, Studies in American Culture, DIAGRAM, How2, and MELUS..

Here's a description of The Lost Men: An Allegory:

In a world where the human population has been decimated, self-reliance is the order of the day. Of necessity, the few remaining people must adapt residual technology as far as possible, with knowledge gleaned from books that were rescued and have been treasured for generations. After a childhood of such training, each person is abandoned by their parents when they reach adulthood, to pursue an essentially solitary existence. For most, the only human contact is their counsel, a mentor who guides them to find 'the one', their life mate as decreed by Fate. Lack of society brings with it a lack of taboo, ensuring that the Fate envisioned by a counsel is enacted unquestioningly. The only threats to this stable, if sparse, existence are the ‘lost men’, mindless murderers who are also self-sufficient but with no regard for the well-being of others, living outside the confines of counsel and Fate.

Is Fate a real force, or is it totally imagined, an arbitrary convention, a product of mankind’s self-destructive tendency? In this allegorical tale, David Colón uses an alternate near-future to explore the boundaries of the human condition and the extent to which we are prepared to surrender our capacity for decisions and self-determination in the face of a very personally directed and apparently benevolent, authoritarianism. Is it our responsibility to rebuke inherited ‘wisdom’ for the sake of envisioning and manifesting our own will?

A REVIEW OF DAVID A. COLÓN's THE LOST MEN: AN ALLEGORY

[Re]Awakenings: An Anthology of New Speculative Fiction was published by Elsewhen Press in 2011. Elsewhen Press is a small publisher independent publisher specialising in speculative fiction.

Here's a description of [Re]Awakenings: An Anthology of New Speculative Fiction:

[Re]Awakenings are the starting points for life-changing experiences; a new plane of existence, an alternate reality or cyber-reality. This genre-spanning anthology of new speculative fiction explores that theme with a spectrum of tales, from science fiction to fantasy to paranormal; in styles from clinically serious to joyfully silly. As you read through them all, and you must read all of them, you will discover along the way that stereo-typical distinctions between the genres within speculative fiction are often arbitrary and unhelpful. You will be taken on an emotional journey through a galaxy of sparkling fiction; you will laugh, you will cry; you will consider timeless truths and contemplate eternal questions.

All of life is within these pages, from birth to death (and in some cases beyond). In all of these stories, most of them specifically written for this anthology, the short story format has been used to great effect. If you haven't already heard of some of these authors, you soon will as they are undoubtedly destined to become future stars in the speculative fiction firmament.

Remember, you read them here first!

A REVIEW OF [RE]AWAKENINGS (COMPILED BY P. R. POPE)