Melody Writes

Cinderella has always been one of my favourite fairy tales. It’s classic and comforting. A beautiful girl in a difficult situation endures hardship and eventually, escapes to a better life. People often reduce it to being “rescued by a man”, but it is Cinderella’s kindness, strength, and endurance that make this story timeless. One consequence of being such a popular tale is that the adaptations and retellings are infinite, which is why I get excited when I find a retelling with a fresh, new take on this age-old story, like Freya Marske’s Cinder House. Cinder House opens with tragedy. Ella’s father is dead, murdered by his new wife, Patrice. Moments later, Ella follows in his footsteps, but instead of fading into oblivion, Ella becomes a ghost, bound to the house in which she was murdered. In the classic tale, Cinderella is abused by her stepmother and stepsisters; she is forced to complete all their chores and is treated like a slave in her own home. Ella’s plight is similar, but with...

For my final post featuring the 2025 SSBA Artists, I present Evan J. Peterson, the winner of the Fantasy category. Spoiler alert for the upcoming review - I am halfway through this book and loving it! As usual, more information on the SSBA can be found here , and links to all of my other SSBA posts can be found here . Side note, nominations are open for the 2026 awards - so send them in ! On to the author spotlight!    Evan J. Peterson - Author Biography Evan J. Peterson is a game writer, novelist, and poet. His first novel, Better Living Through Alchemy, won the Small Spec Book Award for fantasy fiction, and other works include METAFLESH: Poems In the Voices of the Monster; Drag Star!, the world’s first drag performer RPG; and The Road to Innsmouth: Arkham Horror. His writing has appeared in Weird Tales, PseudoPod, Queers Destroy Horror, and Nightmare Magazine. POSTHUMAN, his next RPG, is coming in 2026 from Choice of Games. Evanjpeterson.com can tell you more. Where ...

Today's feature is the second last one for the SSBA Finalists of 2025! I bought this book, forgetting it was an SSBA Finalist book based on the awesome title,  The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits , and I cannot wait to dive in! As usual, more information on the SSBA can be found here , and links to all of my other SSBA posts can be found here . Side note, nominations are open for the 2026 awards - so send them in ! On to the author spotlight!   Ben Berman Ghan - Author Biography Ben Berman Ghan is the author of The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits (Buckrider Books, 2024), as well as Behold the Dead (Anstruther Press, 2025), Visitation Seeds (845 Press, 2020) and What We See in the Smoke (Crowsnest Books, 2019). His prose, poetry and criticism have previously been published in Clarkesworld Magazine, Strange Horizons, The Ex-Puritan and Ancillary Review of Books, and have been reprinted in such anthologies as Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction and Year’s Best ...