Introduction to the Judges
Well, with The Fantasy-Faction Anthology website finally going live, it seems fitting that we tell you who is behind it and their reasons for wanting to publish it.
Marc Aplin
Marc Aplin started Fantasy-Faction after retiring as a title-holding Mixed Martial Artist in 2010. The idea of Fantasy-Faction was to create an online community that would provide fans’ with not only the latest Fantasy Book News, Reviews, Articles, and Interview, but also a place people could interact and share their love of the Fantasy Genre together.
Just 2 months after the site had launched, it was averaging around 200 hits a day and the forums were growing busier and busier. By the time Fantasy-Faction hit the one year mark they had over 6500 followers on Twitter and the site was ranging between 1000 and 1700 unique hits a day.
Fantasy-Faction continues to grow and whereas Marc works full-time as a journalist, in edition to his University Studies, Fantasy-Faction is a huge part of his life and he hopes the Fantasy-Faction Anthology & Fantasy Writing Contest will bring yet another exciting chapter in his life.
Paul Wiseall
Paul Wiseall joined Fantasy-Faction early on in it’s life. His light-hearted and yet scholarly style of articles struck a cord with the site’s readership. Paul Wiseall has great admiration for authors such as Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, China Mieville, which worked as a fantastic contrast to the founder of Fantasy-Faction; Marc Aplin. Marc had always been more of a traditionalist; J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, Brandon Sanderson for example being among his favourites.
Living in relatively close proximity, Paul and Marc were able to tempt each other to try books that they wouldn’t usually pick up. This started some very interesting conversations in regards to what Fantasy was and what it was becoming.
Subsequently, Paul Wiseall was made editor of Fantasy-Faction alongside Marc Aplin and the American; Jennie Ivins. Since then Paul has contributed to Fantasy-Faction on a daily basis by editing articles, giving inspiration and using his non-stop creativity to take Fantasy-Faction in new directions.
So… The Fantasy-Faction Anthology?
At the end of 2011 the bills, for running such a hugely known and accessed website, came in. The costs took Marc, Paul and the Fantasy-Faction users by surprise and only by the generosity of readers’, writers’ and general fantasy fans’ donations were they eventually covered. With their aim in 2012 to grow Fantasy-Faction even larger, Marc and Paul took a hard look at things and decided that if costs were going to rise, they needed to be proactive and do something to cover them.
This is when the idea of the Fantasy-Faction Anthology came about. With Fantasy-Faction now one of the biggest fantasy communities out there, it seemed a natural progression for the site to put something out there for others to read, judge, speculate upon and write about, just as they have done to other peoples’ work.
However, they didn’t want to do anything commercial. Just as important as covering costs is to contribute to the Fantasy Genre. Therefore, we decided to do something that involved not only published authors, but Undiscovered Writers and Fantasy-Fans throughout the world.
