Written by Kami L. Martin, Reviewer and YouTuber
https://twitter.com/KamisKorner

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I had the privilege of being contacted by Editor, Bre Stephens, about the opportunity to read and review a new venture she had started: The Dark Sire. As a regular reviewer of fiction in all forms, I thought, what a unique opportunity to try something new! And I am so grateful I did! What a delightful treat!

The debut magazine was released in the Fall of 2019. (Halloween for those of you like me that enjoy the extra shade of dark.) This venture was, at the time, only available online and collected works of stories, poetry as well as art of the darker persuasion. We were given a taste of these categories touching on gothic, horror and psychological works of fiction and poetry offering readers a nice balance no matter your tastes or interests.

Grave by W.C. Mallery was certainly a stand out short story, and Beneath These Boards by Michael Thomas Ellis offered a poem sure to make you shudder and shiver. The cover art presented by Christian-Rhen Stefani is by far my favorite of the entire year's worth of covers. It is a work of art that speaks to you well after you close your eyes.

A unique gift this magazine features is that of not one but two serializations: Vampyre Paladin by Brenda Stephens and Kyuuketsuki by S. M. Cook. Both offer exquisite detail and well-formed stories that have you turning the page to find what happens next. I was captivated immediately by both. Each will give you a reason to continue revisiting the magazine. Jam packed at 105 pages, this was one hell of a debut!

The Winter of 2019 offered us the second volume of The Dark Sire literary magazine. Now with 500+ readers, we were now able to both continue reading online as well as purchase a paperback copy through Amazon! (Prime membership ships free!) Writers are able to submit their dark works for consideration in fiction, poetry and art. The serializations continue to pack a punch as the stories progress but the stand out of this particular issue for me was the poetry! I loved every single poem included! Such texture, richness and deep, dark descriptions. The art was a nice mix of creepy, too!

Spring 2020 had us with volume 3 in our grasp. 6 months in, readership had grown over 2k and new subscription boxes were introduced. This is a great testament to a magazine that is rapidly growing with great success and positive feedback! Again, the fiction does not disappoint. Once Bitten: A Vampire’s Lament by Maureen Mancini Amaturo was a great gothic tale that was a top contender for my favorite. Poetry remained solid, especially with The Vision by Gregory E. Lucas and Progeny by Michael Walker. This issue also brought us some standout artwork by Shaun Power that any author of the macabre should want to snag up for future novels!! This particular issue was also made available in color print for the first time! B&W copies of all previous issues, including this one and its color copy, are also still available for purchase through Amazon.

The fourth and most recent volume was released in the Summer of 2020 and shows continued growth and promise. The cover and interior artwork continue to impress. Stephens certainly has a great eye! The artwork really seemed to flow well within this issue. One item of fiction I haven’t given much attention that I certainly feel deserves it has appeared in each of the quarterly magazines and can be considered a continued serialization of sorts: The Village Series by David Crerand. True horror broken down into parts 1-4. This is something you definitely want to devote some time to!

This is one literary magazine you’ll want to check out and won’t be disappointed you did! Writers are encouraged to take a look at the website for interest in submitting work for future volumes and being a part of this dark family of incredible talent. There wasn’t a moment that I was not entertained and delighted. This literary magazine is well-rounded for lovers of the macabre with a bit of something for everyone! Thank you, Bre Stephens, for the opportunity to share the contributions of many talented writers - yourself included! You are certainly the phoenix that rose from her ashes to share your gift with us eerie readers!

The TDS Staff would like to thank Kami for her wonderful review of The Dark Sire. We're overjoyed at how much she truly loved the reading experience and can't wait to bring the readership even more great content in Year 2. Thank you, Kami, for all you do to review fiction; and thank you for taking a chance on a new magazine that just needed an opportunity to prove itself.

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It may be our birthday, but the presents are all for you, our readers.
 
It’s time to celebrate!  Not just our first birthday but also the arrival of our latest issue.  THE DARK SIRE is proud to present Issue 5, the Halloween-aversary issue.  This may be the beginning of a new year for us but it is the continuation of our goal to present to you the finest in Gothic, Horror, Fantasy, and Psychological Realism.  The stories and poems that you will read in Issue 5 will make you shudder, make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and thrill you to no end.  Some of these works will so enthrall you that you will want to read them again just to see if you got it right the first time.  Yes, our authors are that good.
 
Issue 5 is a treasure trove of Horror featuring Unnoticed by V. Willows; The Deal by June Trop; Becoming by J. Pinaire; and Newton’s Law by Craig Crawford.  V. Willows is a student at Ashford University and this is her first published story -- an impressive beginning to what could be a long and storied literary career.  June Trop is an award-winning middle school science teacher and an active member of the Mystery Writers of America.  She is the author of The Miriam bat Isaac mystery series.  J. Pinaire lives in England and writes on death as a vehicle to explain the nature of reality.  Craig Crawford is a prolific horror story writer.  His imagination is sure to make you look over your shoulder.
 
Interspersed throughout the magazine, you will see the chilling art of Shaun Power and Kailey Reid.  Their works are the perfect counterpoint in our harmony of horror and fantasy.
 
Not to be outdone,  our poets have contributed their brand of horror to our banquet of creativity.  I Feel Your Pain by Michael Baldwin will oblige you in your pursuit of fear.  Mr. Baldwin is an award-winning poet and multi-genre fiction writer.  Blue Lips by Reagan Phelps teases you with a triptych of love, hate and sanity.  Ms. Phelps is another young writer beginning her career, another young writer to keep on your radar.  Self-Destruction by Dee Espinoza explores the pain behind the mask we all wear.  Ms. Espinoza is an eclectic artist whose photographs were featured in earlier issues of TDS.  Endlessly Callow, Gravely Shallow by Adam Garnett explores the trampling of hopes and dreams.  Mr. Garnett is another first time discovery to grace our pages.  Finally there is Unknown Fate by Gary Ford in which he explores the letting go of reality.  Mr. Ford is another prolific writer with a book of poetry and a Scifi novel under his belt.
 
For those of you following our serializations, we have continued with The Last Summer by Frances Tate and Kyuuketsuki by S. M. Cook.  If you are enthralled with these two stories and want to read what went before, then you will have to buy the back issues of TDS or wait until we publish them as chapbooks.
 
And finally, we offer you a taste of Camelot’s Reckoning by Caleb Kelly.  Camelot’s Reckoning is the first book of the Primis Vipris Saga, available for pre-order now on Amazon. It's official release date is Nov. 20, 2020. (Look for Caleb's interview on the Nov. 16 Creative Nook.)  We hope you enjoy Chapter 1.
 
So welcome to year two of THE DARK SIRE.  We have some great things planned for the future.  There will be more Creative Nook interviews, a dedicated podcast, and more of the great fiction that you have come to expect.  Enjoy Issue 5 and expect more.  Tell your friends.

This has been an incredible year for THE DARK SIRE literary magazine and it’s all thanks to you, the readers: the fans of Gothic, Horror, Fantasy and Psychological Realism.  We knew you were out there.  We knew that the corporate publishers were not satisfying your reading needs.  And that’s what we at TDS set out to do, because we, like you, are fans of that peculiar brand of fiction that graces our pages.  We want you to be as entertained reading our magazine as we are putting it together for you.  So with a new year of our publication just about to start, let’s take a quick look at the kind of stories that we set before you during this, our inaugural year.
 
In Issue 1, we gave you the Gothic stories of  W.C.  Mallery (Grave) and Mike Zimmerman (Chambers).  One was a classic gothic offering and the other pushed the envelope.  Tainted Love by Gina Easton was the kind of horror story you wouldn’t find in another magazine.  It’s subject matter would have upset too many corporate types.  And in The Village - Part One: The Squire by David Crerand, we gave you something unique, the first in a series of stand-alone vampire stories.
 
But did we stop there?  No.  We looked for and found the kind of poetry that exemplifies the dark nature of our publication.  You love the dark.  So do we, and it’s there in these poems:   The Dice Throwers and Haishutsuryou (Output) by Gregory Kimbrell; Vampyre by Sarah Brown Weitzman; Beneath These Boards by Michael Thomas Ellis; Hell’s Love of Heaven’s Hatred by S. M. Cook; and Standing Watch by Katherine Nelson-Born.
 
We also included art work: Shadow Still by Christian-Rhen Stefani and Preston Castle Play Room by Dee Espinoza. 
 
And to cap off that first issue, we added the serializations, Vampyre Paladin by Brenda Stephens and Kyuuketsuki by S. M. Cook in an attempt to fill your plate with the kinds of literature you relish, but can’t find on the magazine racks.
 
But Issue 1 was so good, how could we better ourselves?  We didn’t have to.   There was more than enough quality writing coming from quality authors to insure that we had another issue packed full of horror and gothic for those genres aficionados.

In Issue 3, we were fortunate enough to feature the art work of Shaun Power.  His pastel paintings were truly haunting: We Have the Power in Our Hands (cover), Never Speak to Strange Psychopaths, Leave a Light On, The Grove, The Way to Merriaden, Somehow I’ll Find My Way Home, One Dark Night, Ring a Ring O Roses, You Have No Idea What You Have Done, A Fleeting Glimpse, and Just a Walk in the Rain.

These paintings were interspersed throughout the masterfully crafted stories and poems of the issue. For the first time, all four genres were represented. David Crerand returned with The Village - Part III: The Baroness, the only Horror story in the issue. Representing Gothic was Once Bitten: A Vampire's Lament by Maureen Mancini Amaturo. Psychological Realism was alive and well in Sharps by Ian Richardson and Lifetime Guarantee by Andrea Goyan. That leaves Fantasy for Gregory J. Glanz and his story Shroud of Darkness.

Ironically, and not to be confused with the former, we also printed a poem called The Path of Darkness by Andrew Oram. That poem set the tone for the others, which included Bone-Man by Jessica Van de Kemp, The Vision by Gregory E. Lucas, and Progeny by Michael Walker.

Of course, the serializations by Brenda Stephens (Vampyre Paladin) and S. M. Cook (Kyuuketsuki) brought the issue to a strong end, making the reader thirst for more vampire fiction.
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Our birthday is coming soon: the end of the month, to be exact.  During that first year, THE DARK SIRE literary magazine has been privileged to present our readers what we feel are the best stories poems, and pieces of art in Psychological Realism to be enjoyed either on the internet or in print.  Our Psychological Realism authors do more than just tell a story.  They delve into the chaos of the mind.  They examine the inner thoughts of the characters as those characters try to rationalize their actions to make those amoral/immoral actions acceptable and justifiable to themselves.  This is a realm in which no cut and dry final answer exists.  The readers themselves must make up their own minds whether or not a character is justified in what they do. 
 
In Lifetime Guarantee by Andrea Goyan (Issue 3), the reader is confronted with an unusual conundrum:  if you had the chance to do it over again, life that is, would you? Ms. Goyan’s narrator is the victim of an automobile accident which he survived but suffered extreme brain trauma.  He has quite literally forgotten who he was.  Not that he doesn’t remember who he is.  But he has forgotten the little puzzle pieces that made up his former self.  Ms. Goyan takes us into his mind as he not only rediscovers his past persona, but realizes that he didn’t like that persona despite the people who want his old self back.
 
“For eight months she’s been saying the same thing, and it makes me crazy.  There isn’t a reverence point inside for me to compare.  It’s not like I lost a limb, there aren’t any phantom feelings to draw upon.  When I look at my reflection, it’s me looking back.  Inside and out.  How can I fix something that doesn’t seem broken?”
 
She has a wonderful joke about halfway into her story that sums up the whole problem:
 
“Knock, knock.
 Who’s there?
 Don.
 Don who?
 See, you don’t remember either.”
 
The reader is present in the mind of the narrator when he is offered a kind of salvation.  When presented with the 100% guaranteed option of getting his old self back, our narrator must decide whether or not to fix something he doesn’t consider broken.
 
Then we have Pigeon by Darlene Eliot (Issue 4). If you enjoyed the Psychological Realism novel The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, you will love Pigeon. Ms. Eliot’s narrator, the victim of a serial killer, gets into the mind of that killer as she plots her revenge in the afterlife.
 
“I know you have no fear.  Not even getting caught.  If the thought intrudes, it’s smothered before it surfaces, disappearing with a toss or your hair, a change of contacts, and two coats of mascara...”
 
The narrator gets inside the killer’s head.  But does she?  By trying to think like the person who killed her, does our victim suddenly become an unreliable narrator by assuming that the killer thinks this way.  Are we actually privy to the killer’s fears or merely the projection of the victim’s fears if she were the killer?  In one sense, she has to become like her victim (the killer) in order to plot her revenge.  An afterlife role reversal.
 
C. Christine Fair takes a similar approach in her poem,  A Brother’s Revenge (Issue 2).  The narrator, the victim of a murder, consoles her brother who has avenged her death. 
 
I am
     The song you play driving to buy the gun...
     The voice that guides you to a place you have never been...
     The exhilaration you feel as you walk up to him...
 
The poem goes into the mind of the narrator who has gone into the mind of the brother.   In this poem, the reader is not only looking into the mind of the first victim, but also into the mind of the revenging brother.
 
But, perhaps, the most intriguing piece of Psychological Realism that THE DARK SIRE presented in its first year was In Service by Jeremy Zentner (Issue 4).  In it, we confront the mental state of a woman who has lost her husband to war and her unborn child to a automobile accident.  She tells us, right up front, that she believes that the Lord “would want me to have another child” which is why she feels that it was “divine intervention” that led her to having an affair with Father Williams at the convent.
 
Mr. Zentner meticulously takes us on a journey in his narrator’s mind as she chronicles the death of her husband, her child, her best friend, the rise of her religious feelings and the final sexual conjunction with Father Williams.  The narrator has us in the palm of her hand both sympathetically and empathically right up until the last lines of the story:
 
“Now, I truly cannot tell if a demon has given me these thoughts or if they are my own.
 
And I don’t care.”
 
With these words, she reveals herself to be an unreliable narrator.  The brilliance of Mr. Zentner’s story is that he takes us in the whole way only to reveal at the last moment that virtually everything she has told us is a lie.  We have been caught up in her hallucination, accepted it as real until the last lines of the story reveal her deception.  This is a masterful piece of Psychological Realism in which the author has played hardball with the reader’s mind and forces him or her to reread the story from a new and different perspective.
 
All the Psychological Realism works published in THE DARK SIRE play out in real world circumstances.  The characters are driven by need, revenge, and emotional loss.  They beg the question of how the reader would react if confronted by the same circumstances.  What is the mental state of someone who has lost a loved one?  What is the mental state of someone who has been deprived of Life?  How do you go about justifying what you know to be wrong?
 
These stories are dark and, well, we are THE DARK SIRE after all.  In the coming year, we are committed to brining you this kind of dark, satisfying fiction, poetry, and art.  If this is your cup of tea, then consider subscribing so as not to miss a single issue.

Challenging our grasp of reality with Psychological Realism, THE DARK SIRE presents an interview with Jeremy Zentner.

 
If you have read Jeremy Zentner’s short story In Service (Issue 4) once, you have probably read it twice, maybe even three times.  It is a masterful piece of Psychological Realism that challenges the readers grasp of reality.  When seen through the eyes of an unreliable narrator, the reader is compelled to question everything.  What is real and what is not?  The story begs the question.  Dostoevsky would be proud.  THE DARK SIRE found this story so intriguing that we put together some questions for the author that we thought you, the readers, might also like answered. 
 
TDS:   First off, we want to say how brilliant we think In Service is.  We were completely shocked and surprised by the story, in the best way. It is a perfect psychological realism story. That being said, we were curious to see how you first started writing in this genre and what has helped you curate such a wicked story?
 
Jeremy Zentner:  Thanks for the kind compliments! To answer your question, I guess, I started writing in the genre because of my interest in similar stories. For a short story, I believe In Service is rooted in creating a strange reality out of a realistic background. I always had an interest in mind bending stories that may be grounded in a sort of normalcy and then turned into something a bit more fantastic. I like things like The Twilight Zone and The Black Mirror, Chris Nolan films and Palahniuk novels, so I have often written about stories that challenge our grasp on reality. In addition, stories about possession have always held a special interest for me, so that also led to a thing like In Service.
 
TDS:  As the narrator is a woman, we felt like we were reading a story written by a woman as well, and was surprised to see it was written by a male as it was written so well from her perspective. Was it challenging to write as the opposite gender or was it easier than might be expected?
 
Jeremy Zentner:  Well, again, thanks for the high praise. To be honest, it's sometimes more fun writing a story about a female narrator. Sometimes writing can be a dull process, so doing things like writing from a different perspective spices up the grind of writing. It also helps me truly create a fictional, fleshed-out character instead of installing my own personality into the written avatar. In simple terms, it forces me to think more. I also enjoy women authors like Laurell K. Hamilton, Rachel Harrison, Marge Piercy, and Aimee Bender, so their books have certainly influenced how I may better write a story as if I were a woman. So, I would say it was fairly easy because it was simply so fun.
 
TDS:   When thinking of what you want to write, do characters normally come to you first or the storyline and then they develop?
 
Jeremy Zentner:  I usually have a story I want to tell first, no matter how undeveloped it might be, and then characters quickly populate it and drive the story on. Sometimes a character can be the story, but the story is usually the origin point. This goes back a little to the question about writing about the opposite gender.  In Service only works if the narrator was female, so she was characterized as such early on. The original idea was about a nun being exorcized by a priest she had an infatuation with, so naturally the protagonist was female and her background fleshed-out later.
 
TDS:  Something that stuck out to me was the story of how they received their "miracle" baby. Why was this significant?
 
Jeremy Zentner:  I think this part of the story illustrated the protagonist's secular background, while also showing how she actively joins into her husband's heavily Catholic background. Infertility is often an unspoken struggle for a lot of families and it can test the core of everything they are, so it's only natural for it to expose who people are and also change who they are.
 
TDS:  What are some of the themes you like in psychological realism works and how do you use them in your writing?
 
To preface, I am not an expert in psychology and consider some of my writing to be closer to magical realism or surrealism when I’m writing about the mind, though In Service is closer to psychological realism, in my opinion. Psychological realism can bring up some rather fantastic internal imagery and apply that imagery into unique action. I think psychological horror/realism blurs the line with reality and makes the world a bit more fantasy-driven and fear-driven according to the character’s thoughts. It’s also an interesting way to explore magical realism when that line with reality is blurred. As far as a theme goes, I enjoy blurring that reality line and asking if something actually happened or if it was a product of the character’s fantasy, which can also merge into surrealism. Slaughterhouse V reminds me of this as Vonnegut created a character dealing with time travel, aliens, and/or dealing with the horrible effects of WW2 and the bombing of Dresden. Even though it may not be too psychologically descriptive, I think the story tells a great deal about the state of mind and questions how unreliable our own reality can be. When it comes to these types of stories, I almost like to believe that the fantastic is happening, if only for a brief period of time. I’m not sure if that answers the question, but maybe it explains a bit about me.
 
TDS:  Can you tell us what the meaning of this story is to you? 
 
Jeremy Zentner:  To me, the story represents how bizarre of a place our hidden desires can lead us.


TDS:  Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions. I only have one more question. It seemed that the ending and story overall was left open to interpretation by your readers. What can you say about how you'd like them to interpret this and what you'd like them to take away from it?
 
Jeremy Zentner:  That's difficult to answer. As far as interpreting it goes, I suppose I would keep in mind that the narrator is very cognitive of her background, but she still ends up in a bizarre situation. As far as taking anything away, I kind of just want the reader to have a good time.
 

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Keep the conversation going!  If you have any questions for Jeremy, please leave them in the comment section.  We will get you the answers.
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Here at THE DARK SIRE, we not only publish works in Gothic, Horror, and Fantasy genres, but we also publish works of Psychological Realism. You might say that it helps assuage our literary voyeurism. Psychological Realism does more than just tell a story; it takes us into the minds of the main characters to explore their thoughts and motivations.  It begs the question, “Why?”
 
Think of the opening of Moby Dick:  “Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and brining up the rear of every funeral I meet... then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.” On the surface this tells us why Ishmael went to sea to eventually encounter the White Whale, however, in the context of Psychological Realism, we would want to know why he was grim about the mouth, what made it a damp, drizzly November in his soul, and what his fascination was with death that made him stop before coffin warehouses and bring up the rear of every funeral procession he met.
 
At TDS, we look to Fydor Dostoevsky. His writings focused on the inner lives of his characters and what made them tick. What was the motivation for their actions? How did they rationalize distasteful and criminal acts to make those unacceptable crimes acceptable? He explored themes of suicide, murder, morality, and human manipulation. It is this latter part that TDS loves the most. Being a dark-themed publication, we want the twisted sense of mind and the decay of the human psyche. Dostoevsky delivers the subject matter we look for in our stories while our authors, poets, and artists take his cue and amp up the twistedness to create truly darker sentiments of the founding father.
 
Psychological Realism also includes the element of “polyphony,” or the simultaneous presence of multiple voices and perspectives which may or may not gel with each other giving us unreliable narrators, forcing the reader to choose which reality to accept.  Writers in this genre take us into the chaos of the human mind as it struggles with nature vs. nurture and reaches a conclusion that may be more surrealistic than real. Morticia from The Addams Family outlined this perfectly when stating, “What is order to the spider is chaos to the fly.”
 
This leads us to an interesting point. In Psychological Realism, there is no such thing as “the final word.” With each individual narrator expressing THEIR particular point of view, which one is right, and which one is wrong? Film director Akira Kurosawa used this element to perfection in his film, Rashamon, in which the murder of a samurai and the rape of his wife is examined from four different points of view. Each character reveals their ideal self through the dishonest retelling of the events.
 
Some superb examples of Psychological Fiction, well worth your time include:
 
Crime and Punishment by Fydor Dostoevxky
Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
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With our first anniversary quickly approaching, THE DARK SIRE would like to commend the fantasy authors who we have published over the year. Fantasy is not an easy genre in which to write. You know the old adage: If it were easy then everyone would be doing it. It takes skill, perseverance, and a willingness to take the time to create not just a storyline for your characters but also a world in which characters must perform. That world can be as far out as the imagination will take it, but it must adhere to its own set of immutable rules.
 
In Shroud of Darkness by Gregory J. Glanz (Issue 3), the author takes readers into a world much like J.R.R. Tolkien.  His protagonist is a half-breed Orc/human who lives in caves ruled by a sadistic Orc chieftain. Glanz creates a world by immersing the reader's senses into a realm in which they would never venture on their own. “The myriad smells of shit, blood, tears, urine, sweat and other hints of olfactory disgust that he could only guess at, nudged at this flat nose and narrow nostrils, mere aromatic wraiths of their real strength in his half-breed nose...” Glanz not only creates as sense of place, he makes the reader experience it with all five senses. 
 
In The Heart of Living Flame (Issue 4), author Anthony Santiago skillfully blends fantasy with noir as he introduces his readers to a realm that exists with more than just a little touch of magic. His world is not real, yet we recognize it immediately as a mirror of our own.  “The man who exited the squat concrete building moments later looked like no one in particular. Dressed as he was in drab olive khaki, it would have been tough to guess that the unassuming person and the hero known as Phoenix were one in the same...” Only moments before, we had experienced his grandiose flaming entrance into the kind of park that most of us have seen at one time or another. This is truly a hero story that takes a turn from the norm, and then twists expectation into non-existence. 
 
Gregory J. Glanz returned to our pages with his story, Descent into Darkness (Issue 4), a continuation of the adventures of Wank, the half-human/half-orc creature he introduced us to in Shroud of Darkness (Issue 3). Although dealing with a dark underworld, both stories represent the epitome of the kind of High Fantasy that TDS seeks to publish. Mr. Glanz has created a fictional setting that is totally independent of the real world. His dark, underground world is extensively detailed with extravagant characters. A cavern may be shaped like an arrowhead; the underworld moss torches burn blue; reflections of light and shadow flicker from some unknown power. It's a story that impacts the reader long after the ride stops, keeping everyone hungry for more.
 
Over the past year, THE DARK SIRE has sought out fantasy stories that embody magic systems that are completely unique and imaginative. Those that draw you in with their well-developed settings filled with unparalleled depth and detail of sights, sounds and even smells, engaging the five senses. The kind that have characters who most of us can identify with, encouraging our empathy with the hero or heroine in their struggle on their quest. 
 
In the coming year, THE DARK SIRE is committed to bringing our readers more of these engaging stories. We want to take our readers on the magic carpet ride of excellence with the kinds of stories that they can’t get enough of, stories filled with intricate, complex worlds. The next issue of TDS will be available on October 31st. Feel the anticipation and get ready to escape reality.

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What makes good fantasy fiction? Writers and readers alike have been asking that question for thousands of years. Play-goers watched the performance of a fantasy piece when they saw The Birds by Aristophanes in 400 BCE; or when they watched Bottom become half-man, half-donkey in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Whether you are reading Beowulf, Game of Thrones, or The Lord of the Rings, a great fantasy fiction story can immerse readers in worlds untethered from the world in which they live, a world bound by scientific and social laws unique to that particular fantasy realm. 
 
As Poe is to Gothic and Shelley is to Horror, we look to Tolkien as our guide to demonstrate what makes an enthralling fantasy. First and foremost, a great fantasy story needs to have a great setting. Ernest Hemingway once said that if you could get the reader to accept the place, they would then accept anything that happened in that place.  Tolkien gave us Middle Earth with all its dragons, orcs, wizards, and malevolent spirits that were all bound by specific laws and moors unique to that place. Once the reader accepted the Shire with its furry-footed Hobbits, what couldn’t they accept?
 
The fantasy world is not the modern world in disguise. The modern world may exist side by side with the fantasy world as it does in the Harry Potter series. It may even bleed over into it; however, the fantasy world is unique itself. The beautiful thing about a fantasy world is that through it, a reader may explore all kinds of contemporary themes like love, loss, death, prejudice and political corruption through a new lens.
 
At TDS, we look for the kind of fantasy that fuels the imagination, speaks to our readers’ dreams and deepest desires, where they can cheer for the hero and thrill to read the evil vanquished. In a world of pandemic lockdowns and limited social contact, fantasy allows us to daydream our way out of our problems. The people in the stories are not perfect (who is?) and yet they use their skills to succeed on whatever quest they have undertaken. Fantasy stories speak to our inner selves, to those desires that are buried deep in our hearts. 
 
Underneath it all, fantasy is about the struggle. What does the hero or heroine go through to reach their goal? What obstacles do they have to overcome? Would we have dedicated ourselves to achieve the same thing? Was it all worth it?
 
If you like fantasy, here is a list of books that may tickle your fancy:
 
Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
Eragon by Christopher Paolini
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffery

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