Our last #SPFBOXI cut of the week is Joel Flanagan-Grannemann's fairy fantasy, Talia, reviewed here by Angela Boord: beforewegoblog.com/spfboxi-revi... Joel is a friend, so I abstained from reviewing this one, but I do plan to read outside #SPFBO! (: #SPFBOReviews @marklawrenceauthor.bsky.social

I'm a huge fan of Godless! I found it to be a really compelling, fresh take on the genre with a lot of cool moments I wasn't expecting. It left me really excited for the sequel!

Our third #SPFBOXI cut of the day! Catherine and I review L. Lyons's The Black Bane, which I read in basically one sitting: beforewegoblog.com/spfboxi-revi... #SPFBO #SPFBOReviews @marklawrenceauthor.bsky.social

This was such an inventive and interesting take on the werewolf genre!

Our second #SPFBOXI cut of the day is live! This time it's one from my own pile, Justin Greer's The Servant: beforewegoblog.com/spfboxi-revi... If you love Good vs. Evil type fantasy and The Wheel of Time, this one may be worth a look! #SPFBO #SPFBOReviews @marklawrenceauthor.bsky.social

I'm excited to announce Ben Moxon's The Redstone Rescue as BWGB's next #SPFBOXI semi-finalist! You can learn more about his secondary world fantasy mystery here: beforewegoblog.com/spfboxi-revi... Congrats, Ben! #SPFBO #SPFBOReviews @marklawrenceauthor.bsky.social #booksky

I enjoyed this one so much! It's got some really cool characters in a really interesting world that kept making me read "just one more chapter" every time I picked it up.

I had fun reading this one! I'm a sucker for the concept (give me all the books about weird magical children) and I loved the voice in it!

It's unfortunately time to say goodbye to another #SPFBOXI book! This morning, we're highlighting V. Ananya's The Young Foreigner, beforewegoblog.com/spfboxi-revi... I'll spread out our posts throughout the day, so this is the first of 5! #SPFBO #SPFBOReviews @marklawrenceauthor.bsky.social

!!!

Though our team did make the decision to cut this book, I will say I quite liked it! It's a fast paced and witty feminist rethinking of not just Grimms' Fairy Tales, but the very logic that undergirds them. Very worth checking out!

Woah, I'm a SPFBO judge! Looking forward to starting reading tomorrow 👀👀👀

He wants food but he hates my nail polish.

#SFFChat Q4: I didn't have time to hunt too long for one, but here's one from TETK

#SFFChat There are many such scenes in my horror WIP Apocrypha, many of them involving bugs being in places they're not supposed to be. Here's one that shows what happens when you lie to (and for) a god! TW: vomiting up bugs

#SFFChat Stephen Chbosky's Imaginary Friend did creepy scenes really well. A lot of what happened esp. in the first half wasn't explicitly horrific but even the prologue following a normal boy through his normal life is done in a way that was so creepy I had to pause reading it a few times.

#SFFChat I'm a big fan of the old spooky standby "things being where they shouldn't be." Who put that houseplant in the rotting old house? Why are those moths on the shopkeeper's eyes? Why is that boy sitting on the ceiling? Bonus points if the same object/person shows up in several wrong places!

If you like gay erotica, BDSM, and/or demons, I have a new short story: Asher's Cage is about a sexy demon, his sexy master, and the sexy sorcerer he has a crush on (having sex [and plotting to take over the world]) a.co/d/4czJ23X You can grab parts 1 and 2 here: a.co/d/a9y4hN1 a.co/d/itRd98m

Writing some people making out Accidentally misspell "clung" as "clongue" Time to go make supper probably

30. Every single one of my books takes place in the winter 😂But here's a peek at my favourite passion project where the summer will happen in the future (in a sequel [the sequel takes place in spring]). #SFFChat Thanks so much @sffchat.bsky.social for hosting this all month, it was really fun. :)

28. Surprisingly Enzo, who despite not being that good at anything, really wants to help. #SFFChat

27. To actually do some writing. 😅I've been super busy this year and haven't had much time, but I'm hoping to finally finish revising/preparing Wizards in Space for publication this summer, and then getting back to finishing Apocrypha! #SFFChat

26. Floyd: Most likely to fail upwards Enzo: Most likely to reenroll next year Yancy: Most likely to be catastrophically important to all of history and champion the cause of light across the cosmos in the unending war against the plague of evil (abbreviated as "most likely to be cats") #SFFChat

25. For Milo, a utopia would be a world where there are no doors and everyone can go wherever they want and nobody is ever mean and the sun doesn't cast any shadows and everyone is, consequently and also necessarily, happy all the time. :)

24. The antagonist of the Bone Boy knows exactly what he'd change, which would be to make sure that all four of the spunky kids who decided he was their worst enemy got trapped in the eternal prison behind the invisible door, not just one of them. 🦴

23. For Envy, Enzo manages to make admiring how hot a woman is extremely gay. #SFFChat

Some thoughts on genAI I wanted to share more openly #noAI

22. When a wizard dies, it can be hell for the investigators, and it was definitely hell for Lieutenant Floyd McCaffery when one died on his ship, the Humbolt. 1/2

"Too smart for his own good" So very true ahaha. I love this book!

20. Lust! Everyone in all my (adult) books is horny all the time so I'm spoiled for choice. Here's my favourite moment of Castor being horny in Apocrypha. #SFFChat Bonus excerpt from my gay demon BDSM erotica novella Asher's Collar, which is available on Amazon 🐈‍⬛ www.amazon.ca/Ashers-Colla...

19. The only visual thing that matters to me is accessibility. I'm visually impaired so the covers I like are the ones where there's good colour contrast and the font is clear so I can read the title and the author's name clearly. That and, you know, it was made by a human being.

18. In Wizards, the weather forecast for all planets is "Identical to southern California or perhaps Toronto" In the Bone Boy, the forecast is "cloudy with a chance of the sun turning blue" In Apocrypha, weather isn't real unless you make the correct offerings to the correct gods. #SFFChat

#SFFChat D17: For most of my disabled MCs in current WIPs, their antagonists are, collectively, the worlds they come from. As a dating show this could look like them going out on a self-care day & actually getting the accommodations & support they need (😭)💕 I'd watch that tbh.

17. For a rival (kind of, not really), I'm going to put Floyd and sagacious old wizard Yancy. Floyd didn't read the paperwork and though he was winning the hand of a hot lady (or guy) and didn't realize he was 80 years old and thinks robes are fashion... Cont. because this matters #SFFChat

16. Gluttony...honestly food and eating are huge weaknesses of mine because I place basically no value on food and don't understand the appeal of food culture, so, uh, here's Floyd having no taste. #SFFChat

15. Children! A lot of SFF that I've read contains little to no children, which I get because it's for adults, but I love adult books with child protagonists. I love children's POVs on complicated situations they shouldn't be in. I love children being places adults don't want them to be.

14. As a teacher, I would not trust...any of my MCs to teach anything! But! Castor, the MC of Apocrypha, would probably teach a workshop on how not to get scammed, either by fake temples trying to steal your money, or by real temples trying to steal more of your money than they're entitled to 🐛.

13. For Friday the 13th I've gone into my adult horror novel Apocrypha, starring a scary little god who breaks into your apartment, feeds your cat, and threatens to murder your friends and family if you don't get him a long list of weird things very quickly. #SFFChat

Love it when none of my students show up and I get paid to sit here and write about cat burglars.

12. #SFFChat Like everyone else who's answered this my reading doesn't change based on the season, but this summer I've been reading one of my most important influences again: www.goodreads.com/book/show/96...

10. Floyd's most major flaw is his impulsive behaviour! He decides things at the drop of a hat and then commits to them, which often leads to his making stupid mistakes like arresting innocent people for murder. It also means all his relationships fail because he cheats on his partners. #SFFChat

Okay it's time for another Elliott Threads About Porn, i guess -- so heads up for, um, well, obviously this is NSFW. No images, though. Radfems, particularly anti-porn/anti-kink radfems, love to claim that nobody wants to analyze their kinks or that we're "not allowed to criticize porn" now.

9. Snippet Share: Sloth Think about how many people can feasibly turn into or be turned into cats in one book before it becomes ridiculous. Wizards in Space has more incidences of people being turned into cats than that. The cats people turn into are my old cats Theo and Leon ❤️

My student just now pulled the "So you were born in the 1900s, right?" card on me 💀

8. At a university that isn't a military academy, Floyd would major in sociology on the assumption that it's easy and then accidentally get really into it. The Wizards in Space deuteragonist Enzo is currently a university student studying Magic, but if he did a real subject he'd choose photography

#SFFChat Day 7: What would your MC protest? With Tyler? Honestly, All The Things!™️He's pretty socially conscious and there's a lot going on right now that he'd feel compelled to protest for/against (climate, queer rights, anti-genocide, against AI, etc). For anyone who's read the book, you'll know

Looking for horror for #Pride? The Erstwhile Tyler Kyle is a queer horror comedy for fans of Twin Peaks, It, Ghost Files, & RHPS! If you're looking for a book by a #transauthor, why not try something new? #indiehorror #queerhorror steve-westenra.itch.io/the-erstwhil... books2read.com/u/boB9YL

7. Milo is nine years old so he's prime to protest the atrocities of the eight-thirty bedtime (also the fact that he's not allowed to go on adventures alone even though he's never alone 🦴) Floyd is a cop so uh, the less said about his opinions on protests the better. 😅 #SFFChat

#SFFChat Day 6: Snippet: "wrath" In the Rome-based nation of Lorar in The Wings of Ashtaroth, Marianus is the senatorial leader of Red Faction (one of four coloured factions that vie for power in the country). He's certainly wrathful (as Kirin, the POV character, has witnessed already), but the