Interview with Maria Campos, voice-over artist

Narrating The Rose Guardian I recently exchanged emails with Maria Campos, the talented voice-over artist I commissioned to narrate my magic realism novel, The Rose Guardian. She did such a remarkable job, I thought it would be interesting to introduce her to my community of readers and followers, as well as offer some insight into the world of voice acting. Lorina: This may be a commonly asked and obvious question, but whatever motivated you to get into…

Review: Shadow Matter, by S.W. Mayse

Shadow Matter S.W. Mayse ISBN 9781989407554 508 pages Release: November 7, 2023 Publisher: Tyche Books S.W. Mayse comes with a pedigree, having received the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction, and the Arthur Ellis Award for Best True Crime for Ginger, as well as another Ellis award for first novel first runner-up for Merlin’s Web. She was also shortlisted for the Georgette Heyer Award for Historical Fiction for her novel, Awen. Her most recent novel, Shadow Matter, was recently released by Tyche…

Untold Stories wins First Place

The BookFest The BookFest is an online community connecting reading, writing and publishing communities with online events, panels, chats, virtual booths and more. Every quarter they award accolades in various genres from small press and independent books. This spring, Untold Stories won first place for Best Fiction Anthology. Why this is relevant to me is my alternate history story, “For a Cup of Tea” is part of that great collection of fantastika. Untold Stories is available in…

Supporting Canadian publishers

I am pleased to be an editor and reviewer at OnSpec Magazine, a quarterly journal of Fantastika fiction, featuring Canadian and International authors. The journal consistently wins genre literary awards, pays professional rates, and generally is a high-quality publication. Like many publications, periodically cash flow becomes difficult, not through mismanagement, but because of rising costs of production and distribution. It’s always a struggle. Yet despite that, OnSpec continues to hold to very high standards. At…

Observations on the current state of publishing

Let’s talk about AI There are some among my creative colleagues who view AI as simply a tool, nothing about which to be concerned. I cannot begin to express my disbelief, little say outrage, regarding this blind, uninformed view. AI is a huge genie released into the world, now rampaging through not only the creative sphere, but the business and academic world, and to think for a moment it isn’t going to affect every aspect…