Ahead of the season finale of HBO's Game of Thrones this coming weekend, Nuno Battencourt (Extreme), Tom Morello (Rage against the Machine & Audioslave), Scott Ian (Anthrax), Brad Paisley (singer/songwriter), Dan Weiss (HBO's Game of Thrones' showrunner) and Ramin Djawadi (composer) got together with Fender Custom Shop's made-to-order electric guitars (dubbed House Stark Telecaster, House Lannister Jaguar and House Targaryen Stratocaster) and re-interpreted Djawadi's GoT opening theme. It's actually amazing to watch Djawadi (who also composed for films and TV shows like Pacific Rim, Clash of the Titans, Westworld and Prison Break) shred along with the guitar rock gods.

If you prefer to download this compilation, click here.

There have been several discussions on how long fantasy authors usually take in finishing their sequels after the debut of a series. While authors themselves do not owe their fans a deadline (or an explanation for any delay), fans do grow weary if they wait too long, and well, they just gotta learn to move on with life or read another book instead of waiting or complaining.

There should also be a clear distinction between when an author finishes his or her sequel and when that sequel gets published, as there is still a time gap between those two - so a caveat here is that it may not entirely be the author's fault if the eagerly anticipated book reaches the shelves or your e-store late. However, yes, it is highly likely that the long gap in time is due to the author's turnaround. So what I've done is basically scour the web and put together a sort of reference to some of our favorite fantasy authors and how long each of them took to complete (and publish) sequels to their famous fantasy series.

So some dude who loves to animate called FXitinPost, decided to put some gaming time aside (if he plays games), to recreate the lightsaber duel between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader from Star Wars IV: A New Hope. The seven-minute video, available even in 2160K resolution (if your screen's up for it), is reimagined because the animator wanted to match up the fight sequence to the ones in Empire Strikes Back and subsequently Return of the Jedi and the three prequel films.

With all the hullabaloo over Avengers: Endgame in the cinemas (you did catch it on IMAX right...right?) and the last season of Game of Thrones on television, I thought I just drop a note on this low- (or mid?) budget fantasy horror film called The Head Hunter.

Having seen bigger budget fantasy films like The Lord of the Rings and so-so ones like The Seventh Son, The Head Hunter is a refreshing take on the fantasy genre focusing on just one dude, played by Christopher Rygh. Having lost his daughter to some devilish looking bad guys (and I don't mean this guy, I mean really horrible orc-faced wraith-like zombified meanies), the Head Hunter has to follow his king/lord/whoever's-upstairs' orders to take down one meanie at a time.

UPDATE 3 May 2019: So the Washington Post also has an article ridiculing the battle tactics the living made at Winterfell. No surprises there.
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Saw episode 3 from Season 8 of HBO's Game of Thrones and had many concerns with the battle tactics employed by Jon and his band of merry brethren in the defense of Winterfell. Well, if you haven't seen it, best get going before clicking the next link.

The following link is an article from Vox.com where they interview several military experts on what went right (not many), what went wrong (too many) and what went silly (downright slap-in-the-forehead moments) in how the living defended their castle. Seriously, I'm tempted to do a comparison with the Battle of Helm's Deep from The Two Towers. Anyway, the article interviewed Ryan Grauer, an associate professor of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, and Mick Cook, an Australian combat veteran who fought in Afghanistan.

Since I've completed my debut novel and am working on my next project, I thought I'd share some of the music scores I've been listening to that helped inspire some of the scenes in my novel. These scores can either serve you as a reader or a writer. For me, they were definitely helpful when I wanted to complete a particular scene (eg. battle, duel, a chase, escape, etc.). I'm embedding some of the tracks I'm referencing from Spotify. Hopefully, they can play on your platform as well.

Allastria.com has officially launched on 23 April 2019. It's also the official release of her Facebook page here and Twitter channel here. On and off, I will update the site and its social media channels as regularly as I can - preferably on a daily basis. I'm working on my next novel, so yeah, will juggle between the two. 

I've just set up a Patreon account here and updated the page link in our Contact section. It also includes our own Bitcoin public address (if anyone wants to contribute to our cause as a show of support and gratitude). The Novel section has just been completed, with a historical look on the genesis of ALLASTRIA the novel and MORTALISSAR the fantasy world. It's an interesting hero's journey of sorts (or 'story's journey') where I take the reader on a trail on how the story of Allastria first came about, the transitions it went through before becoming the novel it is today. Similarly, for Mortalissar, it was originally created as part of a role-playing game world I've created, but through many different iterations, it eventually became the fantasy world in which Allastria the novel, and her characters reside in.

Got a few comments from the Writers' Groups on Facebook about the first 500+ words of the Prologue and made several amendments to the first page of the Prologue. There have been several inputs on change in points-of-view, repetitive adjectives and descriptions, and names of characters. I suppose when the genesis of the novel stemmed from the fact that it was written as a screenplay originally, where the scriptwriter has to 'describe' what is happening from a visual point-of-view, it is hard to move away from a visual style of writing. Not only that, you need to also get into the details a little bit more (defining character features, flaws, tics) and smells (we always lose that in a screenplay, but not in a novel).

I've just gotten accepted into several fantasy writers' groups on Facebook today. Most of these groups will accept you if you read their house rules, obey them and answer a few questions related to being a fantasy writer or at least a fan of fantasy writing. The great thing about being in a closed-group writers' community is that you can ask questions related to your work, writing, characters and get honest feedback as just about everyone else in the group are writers. The key part about posting a snippet of your writing is to keep it short and succinct, so that the group can read it without having their eyes glazed over (yelp! walls of text!). Here are links to the three that I've joined.

• Fantasy Writers Support Group
• Fantasy Writers forever!
• Fantasy Writers