by Annaliese Avery

There is a reason why in times of darkness and troubles we turn to fantasy fiction, and it is not just for the escapism but for the light that it shines on complex issues that we find ourselves dealing with in the real world.

When reality is full of issues that we feel too close to and that are too big for us to digest, placing them in a fantasy world can help us shine a light on these dark troubles. Within the epic landscape of a fantasy novel these issues somehow don’t feel as overwhelming, they appear more manageable and by viewing them in a fantastical setting they also feel removed so that we can see them with an objectivity that we can’t when we encounter them in reality,

In the dark days of the early twentieth century, fantasy spread its wings. Writers like Tolkien and Lewis took the broken post war world around them and to make better sense of it all they placed it in a fantasy setting that had enough room for them and their readers to hold these troubles at arm’s length and examine them. Fantasy fiction often feels like past wisdom, truths and knowledge from a time out of time from a people out of our reality – wisdom that is available to us all if we are willing to step through a wardrobe or join a wizard on an adventure.

In the later twentieth century fantasy fiction’s sister, science fiction, did something similar – taking the cold war and threat of nuclear annihilation and placing it in a galactic setting, one with the scope of stars and a wisdom ahead of our time, or from another place entirely, most likely a galaxy far far away.

If history is doomed to repeat itself then science fiction looks ahead at the inevitable repetition and questions is there another way? Do we have to wait till we can trave the stars to find out how to quell the darkness, or could we do it here and now?

Towards the end of the twentieth century, while we were living through a reality of relative peace and stability, another of fantasy fictions sisters, dystopia explored thoughts about this, shining a light on the fragility of peace and progress.

Dystopia spoke mostly in fiction for a young adult audience, specifically young women readers, women who had relatively recently in the grand history of the real world gained their liberty and stepped into their power. These stories where mostly female protagonists looked upon the horrors of a world that did not learn from the past, that suffered the same mistakes or worse, and in these worlds young women like Katniss, Triss, Cassia, to name a few, fought for a better world because the one they found themselves in was not only wanting, but it was fragile and had so far to go in order to be mended.

In the dark days of the early twentieth century, fantasy spread its wings, writers like Tolkien and Lewis took the broken post-war world around them and, to make better sense of it all, they placed it in a fantasy setting.

As we stand at the beginning of the twenty-first century, fantasy fictions youngest sister romantasy is shining brightly. Coming out of a time where COVID restrictions saw us all in need of comfort and company, the need for connection helped to drive the romantasy trope into a genre.

Led mostly but women, read by women and written for women; giving voice to those who would not have been heard as readily as they are today when fantasy and science fiction emerged. (Or course there were female voices in those waves: LeGuin, Atwood, Butler, Wynn-Jones, but the vast majority of the voices in this space were men.) Romantasy writers have created a space for themselves and they are holding it and growing it.

The romance genre has historically been seen as a space for women and by bring it more actively into the fantasy genre we are being given that expansive space to look at the darkness that is growing in our world but also to examine what it is to be a woman. Female leads charge the way with their strength and skill and ability, the fate of the world is on their shoulders as they must restore the magic, bringdown the corrupt king, fly the dragon – even become one, and they must do so while building friendships and saving the boy too.

The light that Romantasy is shining in the darkness of our world shows that we can not only kill the creatures and save the world, but we can save our shadow daddy too – mostly from himself.

After all women have been told for decades that they can have it all, that with a little girl power we can have the career we want, and the homelife too, saving the world on top of this is a small ask.

In a world where women have fought hard to have their voice finally heard, a world where rights are under threat it is no wonder that romantasy with its resonating themes of overcoming oppression, and its strong female character who are giving all they can to save the world as well as their own relationships, strikes a chord with many readers.

We are looking for heroes, and the ones we find in romantasy are real and flawed, they care deeply, they want the same thing we all do, they want to be happy, and they want their family (whatever that looks like) to be safe, and for their world to prosper. Violet Sorrengail, Feyra Archeron, Iris Winnow, Aurelia Wycherley, and so many more are all facing the darkness of their worlds, are all leveraging their skills, and going above and beyond to make their world better, something that we can all resonate with – especially in times like these.

Fantasy fiction provides readers with a light that can be shone in the darkness and with characters that tell us that we can overcome the troubles around us.

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The Wycherleys: Love and Other Curses

For the Kingdom. For the magic. And for love . . .

Aurelia Wycherley has found someone to tether her magic to – her enigmatic former enemy, Jules Nightly. Now, they are heading off to coven college to learn advanced magic. But they are also on a secret mission: to discover the Lost Quarter of the college, create their own coven of twelve and try to discover a way to bring back the Old Magic.

When malevolent magic interrupts their first night at college, Aurelia and Jules discover that Jonathan and his coven of untethered witches has escaped and now they are after her magic, curse and all…

Can they save the magic and the world – or will Aurelia lose her magic for good?

by Finbar Hawkins

When people discover that my new novel GHOST  is set at Christmas, I’m often met with a slightly puzzled look. Ghost stories? At Christmas? Aren’t we supposed to be writing about snow, carols, and the triumph of goodwill?

But scratch beneath the surface of our festive traditions and you’ll find that ghosts and Christmas have been companions for centuries—and for good reason.

I’ve always been fascinated by our impulse to gather in the darkness and scare ourselves witless. Not at Halloween, when we might expect it, but in the depths of winter, at the year’s darkest turning point. The Winter Solstice—that moment when the sun hangs lowest in the sky and the nights stretch their longest—has been a threshold time for as long as humans have told stories. It’s when the veil between worlds grows thin, when the dead draw close, when ancient things stir in the shadows. 

This is why, when I set out to write GHOST, Christmas felt like the only possible setting. The novel weaves together three young women across different time periods, all confronting an ancient evil that lurks in the woods. That evil is timeless, but it makes itself felt most powerfully when darkness reigns—and there’s no darker time in the British calendar than the dead days between the Solstice and New Year, when time itself seems suspended and the normal rules don’t quite apply. 

Our ancestors understood this instinctively. Take Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, that strange and unsettling medieval masterpiece. It begins at Christmas, at the height of Arthur’s Yuletide feast, when a monstrous green knight crashes the party and sets in motion a tale of magic, fear, and the supernatural. The poem is steeped in midwinter unease—the sense that something other is abroad when the world is frozen and dark. The Green Knight himself seems to embody the wild, unkillable force of nature at its most hostile and alien. He’s a Christmas ghost in all but name. 

Fast forward several centuries and we find M.R. James, that master of the antiquarian ghost story, making a conscious art form of the Christmas tale of terror. As a teacher at Eton, James would gather his pupils around the fire each Christmas Eve and read them a new ghost story he’d written especially for the occasion. Can you imagine it? The oldest, most prestigious school in England, and here was a distinguished scholar frightening boys in the darkness with tales of ancient curses, malevolent spirits, and things that should not be disturbed. James understood that Christmas wasn’t just about comfort and joy—it was about acknowledging the darkness, facing our fears communally, and emerging into the light together. 

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Can you imagine it? The oldest, most prestigious school in England, and here was a distinguished scholar frightening boys in the darkness with tales of ancient curses, malevolent spirits, and things that should not be disturbed.

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For me, though, the book that truly crystallised this tradition was Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising. Reading it as a young person was a formative experience—I can still remember the visceral sensation of cold that emanated from its pages, the way Cooper made me feel the bite of winter and the weight of ancient evil pressing against the fragile warmth of Christmas.

Will Stanton’s battle against the Dark unfolds across the twelve days of Christmas, and Cooper understands implicitly that this is when such battles must be fought—when the year is at its most vulnerable, when the old magic is strongest, when everything hangs in the balance. The book showed me that Christmas stories could be more than cosy—they could be mythic, terrifying, and profound. They could matter. 

And then there’s Dickens. A Christmas Carol is so embedded in our festive culture that we sometimes forget how genuinely spooky it is. Yes, it ends in redemption and generosity, but it earns that ending through four ghostly visitations, a journey through death and regret, and the terrifying vision of what Scrooge himself will become.

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is as frightening as anything in M.R. James—a silent, hooded figure of absolute dread. Dickens knew what he was doing. His story works precisely because it harnesses that ancient connection between Christmas and the uncanny. 

Why does this tradition endure? I think it’s because the Christmas season, for all its manufactured jollity, sits on something much older and darker. It’s a festival of light precisely because we’re surrounded by darkness. We feast because winter was always a time of potential starvation. We huddle together because the world outside is hostile. And we tell ghost stories because, in the darkest part of the year, we need to acknowledge what scares us—and then, together, we need to survive it and emerge into the growing light. 

In GHOST, I wanted to honour this tradition: to write a story that embraces the darkness of midwinter and asks what might be lurking there, waiting. Because some stories are best told when the nights are long, the fire is burning low, and we’re not quite sure what’s out there in the shadows. 

GHOST

60AD A blackbird calls a warning. Aine, a slave girl running away from her Roman masters, pauses to listen as she lifts a totemic, druid carving she’s found in the tunnel where she’s hiding. The last thing she sees is a tangle of matted fur, a sheaf of claws, a flash of fangs, as she unleashes a hungry animal presence.

1783 AD Centuries later, white witch Sarah Gibson wanders the woods in search of refuge. She’s at ease here with the changing seasons, the plants and animals, until one moonlit night, she senses Aine’s terror. The blackbird calls a warning, but Sarah wants to help Aine’s restless spirit.

Present day Marie has dropped out of art college and is staying with her aunt for a while. But the woods nearby are hiding something. Marie can feel it. She hears the local gossip about tragic happenings there. Hopelessly caught by the ghostly voices of the past that echo uneasily in her present, Marie must pit her wits against powerful old magic..

by Miranda Moore

Let’s picture a professional author. They sit down in their hut at the end of the garden, sipping their favourite tea from their favourite mug, a beatific smile forming as they pen a perfect draft of a perfect novel. They type ‘The End’ and hit send. Job done!

They amble back across the lawn to their Edwardian townhouse, where their secretary awaits. Steven Spielberg’s on the phone, wanting to make a movie of their latest book. Would they like to take the call?

OK, let’s make that scene a bit less Hollywood and a bit more reality TV.

Here’s another professional author. She’s sitting in her messy study in her dressing gown, a hot water bottle shoved up her jumper. Three emails ping in from her kids’ school – forms needing filled in.

The doorbell rings and she listens politely as a man and woman tell her that unless she repents her sins, she’s heading for eternal damnation, and wouldn’t she like to save her soul from this fate? Then she finds her cat toying with a terrified vole in the kitchen. She manages to banish the cat and save the vole. Hurray!

Her phone rings. No, she doesn’t need loft insulation, thanks.

Finally, she gets to work. She picks up the latest draft of her novel – she’s not entirely sure how many drafts she’s done, but it’s a lot more than one. She slashes paragraphs, scores out phrases, adds in better ones and scribbles notes down the margins. The paper is a shambolic mess of marks but she is curiously pleased. It’s progress.

Most writers don’t just sit down, struck by inspiration, and produce perfect novels on a first attempt. Most of us have sweated, sighed, sobbed and sworn for years before we become published novelists.

I wrote the first draft of my debut novel in 2016. Nine years later, that novel has just been published, having changed title twice and been though many revisions.

When I first sent it out, it had a long way to go. I queried a few agents and got several full manuscript requests. None of those turned into an offer of representation, but the feedback was invaluable. It simply wasn’t properly baked yet.

I also entered national novel competitions, and was quickly shortlisted for one in 2017, the first of many longlistings and shortlistings. Each time I got listed but didn’t make it further, I went back to my manuscript and asked myself: what can I improve? What’s not quite there yet? What more does it need?

And each time, with several months’ break from it, that distance provided clarity. I was able to see things I had been unable to see when I was too close to it. Feedback from critique group friends, beta readers and a manuscript appraisal service helped enormously. All along, I kept my eye on my goal: publication with a traditional publisher.

Most writers don’t just sit down, struck by inspiration, and produce perfect novels on a first attempt. Most of us have sweated, sighed, sobbed and sworn for years before we become published novelists.

What I didn’t do was sit for seven years, waiting. I got on with other things. I took freelance writing commissions and editing jobs. I wrote gift books about mindfulness. I returned to the manuscript from time to time, read it, listened to it while doing yoga (I’m not joking – I got the Speech function on my computer to read it out to me). This way, I could hear passages that dragged or felt underdeveloped. And I wrote a second novel.

In all, I was longlisted six times, shortlisted three and won twice. That’s eleven competitions. There’s a pattern. Each time, I was inching closer. Each time, I had to go back to the factory floor and examine my work with a critical eye, to try to find the weaknesses; to see where it needed refining. Each time, I returned to the text and interrogated it. There was always something that could be tightened.

Of course, there’s inevitable disappointment when you get listed and don’t make it. You’ve poured your heart and soul into this. Who wouldn’t be temporarily crushed? But you pick yourself up and think: OK, the winning book is simply better than mine. I still have work to do. My time will come.

Overnight successes are rare. Most authors have honed their craft over years. So if your dream is to become a published writer, I recommend seeing it as an apprenticeship.

First, you need to learn the craft, with a dose of humility. You need to be able to listen to feedback. When people give you constructive criticism, they’re only trying to help. Some things they say won’t chime with you, so stick with your gut. Other times, their comments will illuminate something for you and help to highlight the scenes or characters that need work.

Beyond that, you need perseverance, a willingness to keep improving, a decent dollop of self-belief, and an unshakeable desire to reach that goal. There is nothing wrong with a little healthy ambition. It just means you’ll keep grafting until you get there.

Good luck and enjoy the trip!

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A Beautiful, Terrible Thing

When Nathan meets Cara, sparks fly.

Her smile lights him up, and he falls for her fast. Being with her is like taking a deep breath, after the terrible thing that happened three months ago.

Cara feels the same. And this joy is a gift – because her life is shattered, too. Nathan feels like a new start.

But they’re both hiding a secret. And the secrets intertwine in a way neither of them could imagine.

There’s no way Cara and Nathan can be together. But, despite everything, they find it impossible to be apart.