Rambling Readers

Wendy Palmer

@adriabailton thank you for hosting #writephant this week 😊

I write fantasy fiction with queer romance and humour, available everywhere, including on #KoboPlus and #IndieDirect from my website.

https://wendypalmer.au/books/

My upcoming book, due out May 4, is Little Wolf and the Witch, a fake-married-to-the-barbarian monster hunt set in same world (different time) as Domesticated Magic. Sign up to my monthly newsletter or DM me here to be notified when it’s released.

#books #fantasy #LGBTQRomance

Infographic comparing upcoming book Little Wolf and the Witch with The Uses of Illicit Art, my most popular book. Both involve a little shit paired with a very patient man.

Michael Whelan

AMAZONS 2 (1981)
Acrylic on Crescent Illustration Board - 24" x 16"

Cover for a DAW anthology featuring women characters written (mostly) by female writers. 1/3

#fantasy #fantasyart #sff #illustration #anthology

Balanced on the bow of a slender boat, two dark haired Amazon warriors stand poised to attack. The point of the bow has splintered the rails of another vessel. The armored men aboard lurch back with the impact as the Amazons surge forward. One grips a spear two-handed overhead, ready to stab downward. Holding a round shield for defense, the other draws back her sword arm ready to swing. Her long green cape drapes down over her leanly muscular body as she pivots. Billowing mist obscures all but the tip of their ship. The sky above is gray, clouds tinged with red by a bloody gibbous moon.

Ergative Absolutive

Hey, friends! I've got a longish discussion of Alex Bledsoe's Tufa novels up on Nerds of a Feather today. In short, it's a really imaginative fantasy series, which does a very distinct thing very well

http://www.nerds-feather.com/2025/03/review-tufa-novels-by-alex-bledsoe.html

#bookReview @bookstodon #fantasy #sff

Nerds of a Feather

Review: The Tufa Novels, by Alex Bledsoe
Irish fairy Appalachian hillbillies playing bluegrass
Clara ( @ergative ) looks at the entire series over at the NOAF blog
http://www.nerds-feather.com/2025/03/review-tufa-novels-by-alex-bledsoe.html

#books #bookstodon @bookstodon #fantasy #review #bookreview

Kit Author

When he's pulled through a portal, Tye discovers a world where unicorns and magic are real and maybe he's more than he's ever thought.
https://kitauthor.com/story/through-a-portal-storm/
🪐💙📚

#romantasy #serial #fantasy #cozy #gay #transmasc #unicorns #horselit #portal #FoundFamily

Christina Anne Hawthorne

At last…

Trust in the Forgotten, Book 1 of the Kovenlore Chronicles seven-book series is live on...

KOBO

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/trust-in-the-forgotten

#AmWriting #WritingCommunity #Read #Reading #Readers #Fantasy #Fiction #FantasyFiction #Bookstodon

On the right is the book’s cover, the negative image a golden, hand drawn map showing mountains and rivers. On top of that is the title, Trust in the Forgotten, written in a stylish text that’s turquoise with black outlining. Between the first three words and the last below them are eyes that are the same color.

Below that, in the same font and color, but without shadowing, it reads Book 1 of the Kovenlore Chronicles. Near the bottom, and written in a more plain text, the color a dark yellow with a black outline, is the author’s name, Christina Anne Hawthorne.

The left, beside the cover, is the following text:

On the world of Ontyre…

Riparia Dellbane, a reclusive Keeper courier with a fractured past, blends into Carrdia’s dystopian landscape, yet dreams of a better future.

It’s about vision.

Then, over one grim night, routine becomes ruin as opposing fractions seek to exploit or capture her.

To survive, she must discover why.

She must also discover why the handsome seer reawakening her heart is aiding her.

Is he leading her to safety or to those wanting her life?

Is she brave enough to untangle the conspiracy wanting to consume, not just her, but an entire nation?

As a child, tragedy stole her trust. Now, her heart is begging her to trust again.

Michael Whelan

THE GATE OF ELURIA (2014)

This was originally created for a title page in THE LITTLE SISTERS OF ELURIA. I left the area under the gate blank for the title lettering, and later it seemed the perfect entry point for Roland. 1/2

https://www.michaelwhelan.com/galleries/dark-tower-gate-eluria/

#fantasy #fantasyart #sff #illustration #darktower #rolanddeschain #stephenking

Roland as seen mounted on a horse through an open gate with ornate ironwork above that features a stylized cross surrounded by flourishes. The low wall and curve over the gate suggests the style of a Spanish mission. The texture of the wall is smooth as if plastered over but shows mortar lines in the longer section to the left. Untended, plants are growing up the wall suggesting a desolate location. On the right, a mess of bloody handprints hint that there might be more horrors waiting inside the gate. The painting is limited to earthy tones with the immediate foreground incompletely rendered scrub grass with white showing through at the immediate edge. The sky is unfinished with the silhouette of birds (raven or crow) soaring as if scouting for carrion.

Jasper Nicolaisen

Ich habe eine Novelle von ca. 100 Manuskriptseiten geschrieben, die in #Aventurien spielt, der Welt von "Das Schwarze Auge". Vielleicht hast du Lust, sie probezulesen? Mich interessiert ganz einfach, ob sie dir gefällt. Vielleicht bist du Fan von DSA und sagst mir, was ich alles falsch gemacht habe :). Vielleicht liest du gerne Erzählungen und sagst mir, ob du diesem ganzen Fantasykram folgen kannst. PN mit Email an mich reicht.

#pnpde #dasschwarzeauge #literatur #fantasy

Michael Whelan

BUFFO (1982)
Acrylic on Watercolor Board - 32" X 22"

Reading a novel by M. John Harrison always leaves me with the feeling that I've experienced some vivid, chaotic dream full of important but indecipherable symbols and images. 1/3

#fantasy #fantasyart #sff #illustration #mjohnharrison #viriconium

A man wearing the skull of a horse skull with antlers clasps the long tube of a telescope tightly to him. One sleeve of his tattered white garments is rolled up past the elbow. Ridges of veins are raised in the tense grips of his hands. Red orbs fill the sockets of the skull while green ribbon twists around the bone until loosely draping over antlers. Filaments sprout, oddly feathery, from the curling rack. On the dingy shelves behind, a small assortment of hardbound books lean with more stacked haphazardly on the long shelf below. Charts tacked to the wall curl with age. Points of light, more like street lamps than stars, gleam in the cracked glass of a many-paned window.

Nerds of a Feather

Book Review: The Tomb of the Dragons by Katherine Addison
A third round of walking places and drinking tea, amidst the horrors.
http://www.nerds-feather.com/2025/03/book-review-tomb-of-dragons-by.html
@chloroform_tea has our review for your Friday at the NOAF blog

#books #bookstodon @bookstodon
#fantasy #review #bookreview

Juliet E McKenna

Book Quote Wednesday's word is 'middle'. #BookQW

Dan Mackmain's spent his life with the mundane world on one hand and the supernatural on the other. Now he has enemies and allies on both sides.

The Green Man's War ebook is on special offer with Amazon UK
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Green-Mans-War-Juliet-McKenna-ebook/dp/B0DKFT293X/ref=sr_1_1

and Kobo until the end of March.
https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/the-green-man-s-war

#writing #books #SFF #Fantasy

Cover art shows a lethal, pale-scaled serpent-dragon or wyrm lurking in woodland. It looks straight at you as its forked tongue flickers between open, sharp-toothed jaws.

Book extract reads: ‘You can make yourself useful with that other paddle, as long as you do exactly what I say, as soon as I say it.’ She was completely serious now. ‘One hand on the top, and the other one halfway down the shaft. Don’t try anything you think you’ve seen on TV. Just use the paddle on your right-hand side and stick to a steady rhythm. I’ll follow your pace. But wait until I’ve turned us around.’
‘No problem.’ I would do whatever she said. I can swim because I had to learn at school. I didn’t want to have to prove that today, especially when I couldn’t see what might be in the water.
Witta is more at home on the water, salt or fresh, than I – or any other human – was ever going to be. She’s a nereid, the daughter of a river spirit and a merman. A lot of families who’ve lived in the Fens for generations have had regular dealings with the uncanny. Witta’s had plenty of experience adjusting her outward appearance to pass as human. If anyone gets close enough to see the webbing between her middle and ring fingers, most visitors are too polite to mention it. She tells curious kids it’s because her grandmother was a mermaid. They think that’s a brilliant joke.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Live right now in BCS #427: "Bind the Herbs to Bring the Shift" by R.Z. Held @rhiannonheld .

"Even if Lyrene tried to explain, she doubted a shifter so young, secure in her band, could understand what drove her to try one more time for another baby. Despite her efforts, her magic flared up with her frustration, catching at the herbs in the mortar until she set it safely farther down the table."

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/bind-the-herbs-to-bring-the-shift/
#fantasy #sff #shortstory

DThoris

#JustFinished River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

What happens when you need to choose between love and duty? in a world where grammar is magic, maybe the answer lies in riddles. This gorgeous, lyric fairy-tale gives us the answer in song. The audiobook is just under 3 hours long and so worth listening to.

#books #bookstodon #SFF #fantasy #fairytale @bookstodon

noco｜Flower Photographer

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

BCS #428 ebook out early today @WeightlessBooks & Kindle Store and for subscribers, featuring stories by Jonathan Olfert, and Matt Hornsby, behind cover art by Tyler Edlin.

(Buying BCS ebooks or an ebook subscription at Weightless Books gets you BCS stories a week early on your e-reader and helps us pay our authors a pro rate and our First Readers an honorarium worthy of writing all replies personalized. Thank you!)

https://weightlessbooks.com/fiction/beneath-ceaseless-skies-issue-428/
https://www.amazon.com/Beneath-Ceaseless-Skies-Issue-428-ebook/dp/B0DZV5B5MY/
#fantasy #sff #litmag #ebook