Author: Sarah Elliott

Articles / Interviews

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Let’s talk ‘Supernatural Noir’ with Steven S DeKnight

Let’s talk ‘Supernatural Noir’ with Steven S. DeKnight

In his own words, Steven S. DeKnight has a “love of two-fisted, hard-boiled detective stories and matinee creature-features of days gone by”. HARD BARGAIN, his debut graphic novel, is a dream thirty years in the making.

Time to close those blinds, grab a glass of something smooth, dim the lights even further and let’s get into some supernatural noir with Steven S. DeKnight.

“Tough talking P.I.’s and double crossing dames, along with demons, magic and monsters, both the inhuman and human kind. Steven S. DeKnight’s HARD BARGAIN, loaded with hairpin turns, crackling dialogue, humor, horror and tragedy…James Ellroy meets Stephen King, with a healthy splatter of Sam Raimi.”

–       Eric Kripke, creator of the hit show The Boys

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Articles / Interviews

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Migrating to a Whole New Water World with Eliza Chan

Migrating to a Whole New Water World with Eliza Chan

An interview with Eliza Chan 

By Sarah Elliott

 

Hold your breath. We may be spending some time underwater. Let’s dive in and find out about Eliza Chan, author of Fathomfolk No1 Sunday Times Bestseller. Bring arm bands if you must and remember to pack a snorkel. We could be going deep.

Eliza Chan is a Scottish-born Chinese-diaspora author who ‘writes about East Asian mythology, British folklore and reclaiming the dragon lady, but preferably all three at once.’ Eliza’s work has been published in The Dark, Podcastle, Fantasy Magazine and The Best of British Fantasy, and her non-fiction has appeared on Tor.com. She lives in the North of England with her partner and young child. Fathomfolk is her first novel. @elizawchan

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Articles

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Don’t touch that! Magical objects – a blessing or a curse

Don’t touch that! Magical objects – a blessing or a curse

By Sarah Elliott

How many times have you gazed at a mundane object in your environment and longed for it to do or be something magical? An iron that would press all your clothes, keeping them miraculously wrinkle-free? A self-filling coffee cup? Clothes that walked to the washing machine and then hung themselves up to dry. A vacuum cleaner that works without being pushed (wait we have that already!). Does that mean that the tech of our present would have been the magical objects of the past?

 

Maybe, you approach this with caution. After all, so many of us have watched Fantasia. Perhaps we should learn from the apprentice!

 

If magical objects aren’t part of our everyday lives, we can find them in stories. Fairy tales and folk tales are rife with them. Let’s flick through the pages of the magical object encyclopaedia and refamiliarise ourselves with some of the most popular.

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Articles / Interviews

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Getting into the Groove with Andrea Hairston

Getting into the Groove with Andrea Hairston

An interview with Andrea Hairston 

By Sarah Elliott

 

Would you like to dive into the night-riding, bear-meeting world of an award-winning fantasy writer? Put on your dancing shoes and get ready to meet the music-loving author of Archangels of Funk. Drop the needle to the record – let’s go!

 

Andrea Hairston is a novelist, essayist, playwright, and the Artistic Director of Chrysalis Theatre. She is the author of Redwood and Wildfire, winner of the 2011 Otherwise Award and the Carl Brandon Kindred Award, and Mindscape, shortlisted for the Phillip K Dick and Otherwise Awards, and winner of the Carl Brandon Parallax Award. In her spare time, she is the Louise Wolff Kahn 1931 Professor of Theatre and Afro-American Studies at Smith College. She has received the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts Distinguished Scholarship Award for outstanding contributions to the criticism of the fantastic. She bikes at night year-round, meeting bears, and the occasional shooting star.

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Articles

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Perfectionism: the monster in the closet

Perfectionism: the monster in the closet

By Sarah Elliott

 

Or, as described by Anne Lamott (1994), “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people.”

 

Perfectionism can also be the cause of writer’s block – too scared to start. Petrified to commit to that first word, lest it be less than, not enough or worth nothing at all. Perfectionism truly is a monster, and we are not always cognisant of its influence from the shadowy, damp closets in the recesses of our creative minds. It sends out poisonous waves of discontent, despondency and despair rendering us utterly useless at times. Its bulging luminous eyes sear the creativity from our hearts, and craven claws of chaos shred our courage. Bleak (to say the least).

 

But could Perfectionism become a protagonist? Reimagined as an anti-hero? Or does this shapeshifting entity always elude capture? Like much in life, it depends upon perspective. Oxford languages describe perfectionism as,

 

“refusal to accept any standard short of perfection.”

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Interviews

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Check out the second part of our interview with Stacey Thomas!

Stacey Thomas is a contributor to Bad Form Review. She is an alumna of the Curtis Brown Creative novel writing course where she was awarded the Clare Mackintosh Scholarship for Black Writers. In 2021, she was announced as one of the three winners of HarperCollins’s inaugural Killing It Competition for Undiscovered Writers.

The Revels is her debut novel.

Below, you can watch the second part of our interview with Stacey:
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Interviews

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Check out the first part of our interview with Stacey Thomas!

Stacey Thomas is a contributor to Bad Form Review. She is an alumna of the Curtis Brown Creative novel writing course where she was awarded the Clare Mackintosh Scholarship for Black Writers. In 2021, she was announced as one of the three winners of HarperCollins’s inaugural Killing It Competition for Undiscovered Writers.

The Revels is her debut novel.

Below, you can watch the first part of our interview with Stacey:
(more…)

Articles

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Avoid Being Turned into a Toad: what you need to know when you’re writing the Witch

Avoid Being Turned into a Toad: what you need to know when you’re writing the Witch 

By Sarah Elliott

From Winnie to Willow to Wanda, women with magical powers feature in films, TV series and stories throughout the ages. Synonyms for the witch rise or wane in popularity over time including enchantress, sorceress, hag, necromancer, wiccan, and crone.

 

I met my first witch in a storybook. I can’t remember which story it was, but I do remember that she was old, hag-like, cruel, crooked-nosed and had an evil cackle. Every witch I ever came across since then was the same, until Glinda, the Witch of the North portrayed in the film musical The Wizard of Oz (inspired by the books by L. Frank Baum). Glinda was a witch with a serious glow-up!

 

(Fun fact: The Wicked Witch of the West was named Elphaba in Gregory Maguire’s novel Wicked (1995). Her name was based upon the initials of L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), The initials “L.F.B.” each gave one syllable to the name: El-pha-ba.)

 

Our wonderful writerly imaginations have spawned a whole spectrum of witches. Like many things in society, perceptions and definitions change over time. This is certainly the case with the witch. Look at the definitions below. Which one fits the witch in your story?

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