Wyrd and Wonder is back this May for another month of celebrating the fantastic! We’ll be reading, watching, listening and gaming our way through every nook and cranny of the fantasy genre, and sharing our enthusiasm online through our blogs and social media feeds.

Make your mark

What’s that? You want to join our intrepid band of bookworms and other fantasy fans as we set our course for other worlds? You’d be very welcome – we love to adventure with old friends and new.

Please sign up to let us know to expect you. Don’t worry – we won’t give your name to wyverns if you don’t make it, it just lets us know to watch for you in the tavern.

Quest rewards

There’s no deadline for signing up – you can wander in and join the fun on the last day of May and be perfectly welcome – but let me tempt you into showing your interest early. Those who  sign up before May 1st and make a Wyrd And Wonder post in the first week of May can enter our sign up giveaway. I’m offering a choice of three of my favourite fantasy reads for one lucky winner:

• The Goblin Emperor – Katherine Addison
  • When a hobgoblin prince inherits the elvish throne, he must master court politics and make the most of his own kind nature to survive
• The Bone Ships – RJ Barker
  • A great bone ship crewed by the condemned sails in search of the last sea dragon in this masterclass of world-building
• The Library of the Unwritten – AJ Hackwith
  • A world-hopping adventure as angels, devils and librarians race to lay their hands on a fabled tome that could reignite the war between Heaven and Hell

…tempted? Damn right.

Plots and shenanigans

Wyrd and Wonder is a fandom pot luck, bring what content you like to the party! Expect a joyous cacophony of reviews, interviews, guest posts, top tens, favourite fives, essays, discussions, livetweets and read-alongs.

If you’re looking for some inspiration to get your creative juices flowing, we’re here to help…

Top Tens / Fave Fives

• Fantastical beasts
• Secondary worlds
• Terrible character choices (what can possibly go wrong? Except that. And that. And that)
• Happy ever afters – or Ships you’d go down with
• Superpowers, spells or magical abilities
• Debuts (or series)(or stand-alones)(or trilogies)
• Heroic archetypes
• Magical retellings
• Screen adaptations
• Villains you can’t get enough of

(what, that’s not enough? Fine, here’s last year’s list if you need a few more)

Book Tags

We don’t have a Wyrd and Wonder specific tag this year (although feel free to dust off prompts from previous years and have at them, they are evergreen), but here’s a few that look tasty:

• The fantasy bucket list
• 5 star books in 5 words (fantasy edition)
• The (fantasy) literary dinner tag
• The bookish adventure tag
• The Get to know the fantasy reader tag

…and I’ll be throwing down the gauntlet for a round of Six Degrees of Fantasy Separation at the beginning of the month (but feel free to set your own Six Degrees challenge).

Last but not least – keep your eyes peeled for full details of this year’s read-along / buddy read: Lisa will be hosting a read-along of The Goblin Emperor.

Want to bounce around some ideas or ask us a question? Fancy hosting another read-along or other group activity you’d like us to boost over the next month? Contact us at @WyrdAndWonder on Twitter.

Everybody likes a map

Already got some posts planned? The master schedule is open and ready to take your links –  feel free to start adding details of your posts (don’t worry, it’s fine not to add things until they actually go live). Once May starts, Lisa, Jorie and I will use the schedule to track what is going on – if you add your links, your posts will get promoted on our Twitter feeds and included in the weekly Quest Logs.

 

IMAGE CREDIT: Flaming phoenix by Sujono Sujono | Decorative phoenix by Tanantachai Sirival – both from 123RF.com

If you’d like to raise the banners over on your blog, you’re welcome to! You can download this year’s graphics from our archive over here.