Maria Lewis

So it's not easily identifiable on the cover that they're a woman because there are all these stats about women

men being 62% less likely to pick up a fantasy novel if it's clearly stated on the cover that the author is a woman.

I think that's changing now, but it's something that publishers definitely think about when they're marketing books.

And so because of that, there is just an endless, endless, endless, endless catalogue of fantasy novels for people to dive into.

And that is when you tap into your friend who you know is a bit of a secret nerd and

or loves a bit of fantasy, whether that's in comic books or television or novels or anything, and you ask them, what's your recommendation?

Here are the things that I love.

Can you find me a fantastical version of that?

And they will probably give you 25 different options.

Cli-Fi is one, for instance, that's really sort of having a wee moment right now, obviously, because we're going through a climate crisis and have been for nearly a

35 years, but climate fiction is something that a lot of people are really digging into.

Things like Drowntown and so many different types of texts that fit within that sub-genre, sub-sub-genre, I should say.

I've been doing a lot of comfort reading.

I'll be honest, I think there's something about pandemic times that's

make you want to reread something where you're not necessarily going to have anxiety around what's happening with the plot or is your favorite character about to be killed off, which is often sometimes something I get a lot of angry letters about from people when I kill off characters in my books.

But I was rereading Alana, The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce, which is considered

a really pivotal fantasy novel in the genre.

I've been trying to switch up out of fantasy as well.

I've read Say Nothing, which is an incredible book about the IRA and the troubles through the 70s to present day, basically.

It's a nonfiction book, obviously, and I've been reading a lot of romance novels.