Author: Melody E McIntyre

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Epeolatry Book Review: Find Him Where You Left Him Dead by Kristen Simmons

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: Find Him Where You Left Him Dead 

Author: Kristen Simmons

Publisher: Tor Teen

Genre: Horror

Release date: September 2023

Synopsis: Four years ago, five kids started a game. Not all of them survived.

 

Now, at the end of their senior year of high school, the survivors―Owen, Madeline, Emerson, and Dax―have reunited for one strange and terrible reason: they’ve been summoned by the ghost of Ian, the friend they left for dead.

 

Together they return to the place where their friendship ended with one goal: find Ian and bring him home. So they restart the deadly game they never finished―an innocent card-matching challenge called Meido. A game without instructions.

 

As soon as they begin, they’re dragged out of their reality and into an eerie hellscape of Japanese underworlds, more horrifying than even the darkest folktales that Owen’s grandmother told him. There, they meet Shinigami, an old wise woman who explains the rules:

 

They have one night to complete seven challenges or they’ll all be stuck in this world forever.

 

Once inseparable, the survivors now can’t stand each other, but the challenges demand they work together, think quickly, and make sacrifices―blood, clothes, secrets, memories, and worse.

 

And once again, not everyone will make it out alive.

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How to Write a Myth

How to Write a Myth:

 

World-building is one of the most important and complex aspects of writing fiction. It’s the home for your story, the place where your characters live, die, lose, and win. One way to enrich the world of your story is to create mythology. Even if you aren’t writing fantasy, mythology can benefit your story. Consider creating urban myths for your fictional town or a dark past for your haunted house. Myths permeate every culture and without them, your fictional ones risk feeling hollow. This article will help you get started constructing your own mythology for your story’s world.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: Eyes of the Void (The Final Architecture #2)
Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Genre: Science Fiction
Publisher: Tor
Release Date: 14th June, 2022

Synopsis: The epic space opera adventure continues in this follow-up to Shards of Earth. Battle lines will be drawn, loyalties will be tested, and devastating decisions must be made, as the race to save humanity begins.

After eighty years of fragile peace, the Architects are back, wreaking havoc as they consume entire planets. In the past, Originator artefacts – vestiges of a long-vanished civilization – could save a world from annihilation. Yet the Architects have discovered a way to circumvent these protective relics. Suddenly, no planet is safe.

Facing impending extinction, the Human Colonies are in turmoil. While some believe a unified front is the only way to stop the Architects, others insist humanity should fight alone. And there are those who would seek to benefit from the fractured politics of war, even as the Architects loom ever closer.

Idris, who has spent decades running from the horrors of his past, finds himself thrust back onto the battlefront. As an Intermediary, he could be one of the few to turn the tide of war. With a handful of allies, he searches for a weapon that could push back the Architects and save the galaxy. But to do so, he must return to the nightmarish unspace, where his mind was broken and remade. What Idris discovers there will change everything.

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Epeolatry Book Review: The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: The Crane Husband
Author: Kelly Barnhill
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Tordotcom Publishing
Release Date: 28th February, 2023

Synopsis: “Mothers fly away like migrating birds. This is why farmers have daughters.”

A fifteen-year-old teenager is the backbone of her small Midwestern family, budgeting the household finances and raising her younger brother while her mom, a talented artist, weaves beautiful tapestries. For six years, it’s been just the three of them―her mom has brought home guests at times, but none have ever stayed.

Yet when her mom brings home a six-foot tall crane with a menacing air, the girl is powerless to prevent her mom letting the intruder into her heart, and her children’s lives. Utterly enchanted and numb to his sharp edges, her mom abandons the world around her to weave the masterpiece the crane demands.

In this stunning contemporary retelling of “The Crane Wife” by the Newbery Medal-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon, one fiercely pragmatic teen forced to grow up faster than was fair will do whatever it takes to protect her family―and change the story.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: Shards of Earth
Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Genre: Science Fiction
Publisher: Orbit
Release Date: 3rd August, 2021

Synopsis: The Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author of Children of Time brings us an extraordinary space opera about humanity on the brink of extinction, and how one man’s discovery will save or destroy us all.

The war is over. Its heroes forgotten. Until one chance discovery . . . Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade him in the war. And one of humanity’s heroes now scrapes by on a freelance salvage vessel, to avoid the attention of greater powers. After earth was destroyed, mankind created a fighting elite to save their species, enhanced humans such as Idris. In the silence of space they could communicate, mind-to-mind, with the enemy. Then their alien aggressors, the Architects, simply disappeared—and Idris and his kind became obsolete. Now, fifty years later, Idris and his crew have discovered something strange abandoned in space. It’s clearly the work of the Architects—but are they returning? And if so, why? Hunted by gangsters, cults and governments, Idris and his crew race across the galaxy hunting for answers. For they now possess something of incalculable value, that many would kill to obtain.

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Epeolatry Book Review: The Face You Wear by Faith Pierce

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: The Face You Wear
Author: Faith Pierce
Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
Genre: Horror/Mystery
Release Date: 12th August, 2022

Synopsis: Jana overcame a bleak, poverty-stricken childhood to achieve her version of the American dream. She has her own home, a successful career, and a new husband who offers everything she hoped for in a normal life. However, her tight grasp on stability begins to slip when she starts having disturbing dreams about her husband Michael. A figure in the bedroom doorway watching her sleep, night-time conversations Michael claims never happened, someone lying beside her at night when Michael later says he wasn’t there. Old anxieties and paranoia begin to surface as Jana becomes increasingly desperate to discover if the true threat is her mind, her husband, or something darker.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Evil Whispers By: Owl Goingback

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Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: Evil Whispers
Author: Owl Goingback
Genre: Horror
Publisher: Cemetery Dance Publications
Release Date: June 5th, 2023

Synopsis: Robert and Janet Patterson and their young daughter, Krissy, went looking for the perfect getaway vacation spot. They found it in a backwoods Florida town. Far away from civilization. Quiet and peaceful. And terribly isolated.

 

Robert and Janet should have listened to the local legends. They should have heeded the warnings about the black water lagoons. And they should have listened to their daughter when she told them about the whispers in the woods. Because now, it’s too late. Krissy’s disappeared, and whatever took their little girl is coming back for more….

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Writing Advice from Stephen King

 

Stephen King is one of the most prolific and successful writers of the modern world. How did he get that way? What makes Stephen King’s work so enjoyable? How can we, as growing writers, emulate him? Luckily for us, Stephen King has long been open about his writing process and the lessons he’s learned over his lengthy career. The best way to learn about King’s process is to pick up a copy of On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. But here I’m going to look at eight pieces of writing advice from Stephen King that resonated with me.

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