The Fantasy Writers' Toolshed

In our first-ever Christmas special, we welcome two guests to the Writers' Toolshed - EA Robins and Douglas WT Smith, two fantastic writers who make up the rest of the Of Metal and Magic Publishing Team.We reflect on what's been a challenging year for a lot of us, as well as our writing journeys up to this point. And we take a look at what 2021 holds, including the release of JM William's novel, Call Of The Guardian, and Richie Billing's debut epic fantasy, Pariah's Lament.We also discuss opportunities that OMAM Publishing will have for writers like you!As always, if you have any questions, queries or curses, please head over to ofmetalandmagicpublishing.wordpress.com/podcast.And to get some free fantasy books to keep you entertained during the cold winter months, just head here > https://ofmetalandmagicpublishing.wordpress.com/free-reads/

In this episode, we're wading into the deep and murky waters of author and book marketing. We tackle every writer's least favourite job—marketing. And in this particular episode, we're dealing with setting yourself up for success—building a website and the debate around doing so, putting content on your website, SEO and blogging, creating and growing a mailing list, and making money from your writing, so you can spend more time doing the thing you love!We'll return to marketing in later episodes, so if you have any questions at all, please get in touch by clicking here.Links mentioned in the episode:Of Metal and Magic Publishing - don't forget to join our reading group to get a free book, Ancient Heritage! > https://ofmetalandmagicpublishing.wordpress.com/Richie's Privacy Policy > https://richiebilling.com/privacy-policy/

In this instalment, we're departing from our fantasy focus and getting down and dirty with dialogue—one of the key components of any great story. We tackle the do's and don't's of dialogue, ways you can write effective dialogue, saidisms, and answer the most common formatting questions, such as should you use speech marks or not. As always, we want to hear from you! Drop us an email by clicking here.

In our ninth episode, we're taking a look at TIME magazine's recently published list of the top 100 fantasy books of all time. Click here to see the list. We take a look at the books on the list, discuss our favourite books, some of our least favourite, the influence some books have had on the genre, and the direction that fantasy is moving toward in the years to come. As always, we'd love to hear from you. What are your favourite fantasy books? Do you agree with the list, or perhaps you disagree? Write to us and tell us by clicking here.

Anthology: a collection of selected literary pieces or passages or works of art or music.In this not-so-mini episode, JM interviews the editors of Transmundane Press, who have made a name for themselves by publishing sci-fi and fantasy anthologies. Their current project is ON TIME, which JM was fortunate enough to get a story in. Here we discuss the appeal of the anthology, the benefit of writing and reading short stories, and the editors provide their tips for submitting your work to anthology calls. You can find Transmundane here: https://www.transmundanepress.com/And you can read one of JM's flash fiction pieces on the Transmundane blog, here: https://transmundanepressblog.wordpre...

Magic systems play an important role in fantasy. Many people associate wizards, witches, magical weapons, creatures and worlds with the genre. In this episode, we look at what magic systems are and how you can build them and utilise them in your own stories. We look at ways to introduce the background detail for your magic system, the extent to which it's necessary to do so, and also explore magic's relationship with religion, the latter also playing a major role in many fantasy systems. We look at a range of examples of different magic systems found in fantasy too, and debate whether your story needs one at all. What are your thoughts on magic systems? Drop us an email or a comment. And if you enjoyed this episode, why not follow and subscribe for more?

In this episode, we're thrilled to have Chris Herron from Tall Tale TV in the Shed! And we're talking all things audiobooks - trends, how to make your own, how to convert your novels, plus an exclusive audio snippet of Richie's upcoming novel, Pariah's Lament.There's been massive growth in the audiobook market. Last year they turned over money money than eBooks. We chat about what that could mean for writers, and how you could take advantage of this new lucrative market.Chris tells us all about making your own audiobooks. He talks us through ways to get your novels turned into audiobooks, discussing prices and all the different ways you could potentially fund a project. Chris also tells us all about Tall Tale TV and what the future has in store for this thriving audiobook platform.And as a little bonus, Richie previews his exclusive audiobook snippet of the first chapter of Pariah's Lament. Start listening to Tall Tale TViTunes -http://bit.ly/TTTV_iTunesPodcast -http://talltaletv.com/subscribe/Twitter -https://twitter.com/TallTaleTVYoutube -https://www.youtube.com/c/talltaletvWebsite -http://talltaletv.comWatch the YouTube video of Pariah's Lament, Chapter Onehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDydWpyw3fI&t=84sListen to some of Richie's and JM's stories narrated by ChrisNoodlin - Richie - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htu-Q9wNnic&feature=emb_titleThe Adventures of Jaron and Bren - JM - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3v19jC-YyY

In this episode, Richie is joined by the hilarious Scouse comedian, Ant Campbell. Ant has developed a significant following on social media over the past few years, at one point having more followers on Twitter than a small town, and that was all down to his ability to write great content.Richie and Ant discuss writing humorous stories, scenarios, dialogue and jokes, as well as their experiences of writing their sitcom, "Stalled". Ant also shares some priceless insights into how he built up such an enviable following and how you can do the same.As always, get in touch with us on Facebook, or drop us an email at thefantasywriterstoolshed@gmail.com!

So-called writing rules have been a touchy subject in the writing world of late. It all exploded after a list of rules by Jonathan Franzen re-surfaced, provoking a wave of ire not just against Franzen, but against so-called writing 'rules', the do's and don't's of the craft.Around the same time, Richie conducted some research on the rules that writers hate most of all, and in this episode, we chat about some of them, namely passive voice, showing instead of telling and using adjectives and adverbs. This is a topic in which people aren't short of an opinion, and as always we want to hear from you. Get in touch by emailing thefantasywriterstoolshed@gmail.com!