Kaitlin Bellamy's Blog

The following is a companion tale to "Disasters 'n Danger," my current Dungeons and Dragons campaign, which is live-streamed every Monday night on Twitch. This story follows the current struggle of my character "Fable Frost," an Ice Genasi Phoenix Soul Sorcerer. In short, a character who is quite literally both fire and ice. In a recent adventure, a new ability manifested itself as Fable was about to be slain by an enemy, and the phoenix spark within brought her back to life. But, all magic com...

The Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Utterly enchanting from start to finish.

The premise is simple: Morrigan is cursed. But in this return to the childhood nostalgia of special, talented, or "chosen" children, Jessica Townsend absolutely shattered my expectations. I went in hoping to be caught up in something comforting and familiar, something reminiscent of when I discovered the Harry Potter books or picked up Artemis Fowl for the first time. What I received, ho...

It is no secret to anyone who knows me that I adore Young Adult Fantasy. I am a grown-ass adult woman in my 30's, I run two small businesses and have a full-time job with a specialized skill, I am divorced, and I've buried both of my parents within the space of five years. So, why do I prefer to sink into adventure stories about youthful and chaotic protagonists? Both as a writer and a reader?

Simple:  magic .

There is a sort of spark that comes from losing yourself in a good book, and nowhere is th...

Happy Friday, friends and readers! It's been quite a long few weeks since I released  Kingmaker  into the wild, and I am thrilled with the love and support it has received. To everyone who has already bought, downloaded, read, or reviewed the latest installment in The Mapweaver Chronicles , I thank you. And to everyone who hasn't? I still love you!

Now, however, it's time to turn a different page. Time to start a new chapter, as I fill the hours between novels. And while...

The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Never have I fallen so completely in love with a book from the moment the dedication began. When I started thumbing through the opening pages, I found a charming and delightful list of the best places to read. Immediately I knew: this is not just for readers. This is for readers like me.

Jenny Colgan's The Bookshop on the Corner is a love letter to all of us who love books, but perhaps a little more to those of us who had forgotten ...

In October 2005, my mother was part of the launch of something incredible: Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show. She spent ten years, up until her death in 2015, as managing editor. And in my entire life, I had never seen her so excited about a work project.

She had always loved her job, despite the fact that she dreamed of being a stay-at-home mom. In fact it was, in part, her passion for reading and her constant work with the written word that put me on my path toward an author...

Friends, what a rough year it has been. And hey, it's only ... *checks calendar* ... APRIL. 

Most of you are probably stuck at home right about now, enjoying the panic and anxiety of Covid-induced quarantine. And for those of you that aren't, all those in essential lines of work, I would like to THANK YOU for all you do. Genuinely, from the bottom of my heart.

Now, whether you are safe in isolation or out in the field, I thought a little sneak peek of my next book would be just the thing to...

There are very few times when internet trolls will so enrage me that I go off on a proper, thought-out, written rant. But, here we are. Recently, I came across a thread on Twitter that brought my afternoon to a full stop. In it, the poster stated with absolute certainty that audiobooks were not REAL books. He then went on to imply (and, later, to outright state) that anyone who listened to a book rather than read it was stupid, lazy, and couldn't possibly grasp the actual story at the...

When I was about fifteen, my dad sat me down before school one morning and asked me, "So, who's the boy?" I was not allowed to date until I was sixteen. I knew that. But for weeks now, I'd been up, dressed, and ready for school hours early. And I was (am) not a morning person. All of this added up to, in my parents' eyes, "Kaitlin is secretly sneaking out to meet a boy."

Oh, how I wished I were that cool. My father probably did, too. But no, the answer was much, much more frighteni...

A few months ago, I published a blog post over at Random Encounter Productions about the art of storytelling, and how it relates to roleplaying in Dungeons & Dragons. I have always believed in the power of storytelling. It is so much more than simply words on a page or on a screen. The art of storytelling celebrates such a grand and ever-shifting piece of magic within all of us. Even as children, we want to tell our parents EVERYTHING that happened to us each day, as if it were some grand adventure. I have...