Longer thought pieces on books and publishing.
There are many, many incredible women writing epic fantasy—far more than I could fit in one spotlight—but here’s a shortlist of nine female authors whose adult epic fantasy works have heavily influenced me, and why you should read their books.
In 2025, I saw more and more fellow authors and readers go from simply expressing their frustrations with Amazon, major book retailers, and other titans of the publishing/book industry to actively making plans and taking steps to reduce their dependency on these corporations. I’m hopeful that 2026 will be the year where we’ll finally see readers buying and authors selling direct become mainstream.
In September 2024, fellow author Maya Darjani asked: “What do indie authors use Kickstarter *for*?” At the time, I was getting ready to launch Supplicant on Kickstarter so I chimed in with some thoughts.
In July 2023, fellow author Steven William Hannah’s quest to read the opening of all 300 SPFBO9 entrants collided with ongoing #booktwt discourse on DNFing based on the first lines/pages. Here are the lessons I’ve learned in reworking the opening to my debut fantasy novel, Petition.
If you’re here because you found me after reading Engadget’s article, AI might undermine one of the better alternatives to the Kindle, hello and welcome! Here’s some more context behind the quotes I provided to the article. —Delilah. On 29 May 2025, Kobo updated its Terms of Service to include a new section about the use of AI technologies. This change came completely out of the blue. There was no consultation, no detail, and very little thought given to stakeholder management and communications strategy. I asked a LOT of questions. Eventually, we got some answers. Here’s a video where I break down everything we know…
Readers, if you want to make a difference but feel a bit powerless as to how, I promise you it doesn’t take much. Just one tiny shift in your book buying habits can cascade into a life-changing impact.
I discovered Tamora Pierce’s books as a girl, in my library, after school. By then, I had read loads of epic and heroic fantasy…and I had internalized a pattern: boys got to be the Chosen Ones who would ride dragons and defeat evil, while girls—common-born or royalty or exotic foreigner—were merely the pretty (always, always, they were absurdly beautiful) trophies the hero collected at the end. That sucked. Here I was, fortunate enough to be born in the 1980s, living in a country and society where women had the same rights as men, demonstrably just as smart and capable as…