Podcast

Pip: Blip Side Press is back with something that cuts through a very specific kind of fantasy writing advice — the kind that mistakes a sword for a personality. Mara: Today we're spending our time on what actually makes female characters in fantasy endure — the craft behind agency, consequence, and the worlds those characters…

Pip: Blip Side Press has been quietly building a reading list that would make any ancient god feel seen — or at least correctly cited. Mara: Today we're in the territory of mythology-inspired fantasy: what makes it work, which books earn the label, and why this corner of the genre keeps pulling readers back in….

Pip: James Israel Daniels — a site where the shelves go deeper than the algorithm, the genre lines get productively blurred, and somebody is clearly reading at a pace that should concern their optometrist. Mara: Blip Side covers a lot of ground here — overlooked fantasy, the worldbuilding that makes fictional cultures feel inhabited, the…

Pip: James Israel Daniels — a site that asks you to think seriously about why a ruined citadel on a book cover hits different than a generic cloaked figure, and then answers the question at length. Blip Side has been busy. Mara: This episode covers the craft of epic fantasy as a form, what makes…

Pip: James Israel Daniels has a site that apparently wants you to never run out of things to read — a noble and slightly dangerous ambition. Mara: That's the territory Blip Side covers across these posts: how to navigate release week, what high fantasy and epic fantasy actually mean as forms, and where Reddit's collective…

Pip: There’s a particular kind of writer who finishes one novel and thinks, reasonably, that they’re done. James Daniels is not that writer. Mara: This episode covers work from Blip Side on what it means to build multiple fictional worlds at once — the craft behind it, the questions driving it, and why none of…

A personal reflection on worldbuilding, symbols, memory, and the questions that shaped Liam Undercroft’s first novel.