Capital Letters

A writing blog dedicated to speculative fiction.

Why Capital Letters?

It’s a speculative fiction trope. Writers of fantasy and sci-fi are known for making up strange, exotic sounding names for people, places, and races… and are almost equally as well known for, well, their laziness in doing the exact same thing.

Way, path, force, or light aren’t particularly interesting or thought provoking words, but capitalize them and throw a THE out in front and you’ve got some of the most recognizable phrases from speculative film, literature, and video games.

Capital Letters discusses tropes like this one, as well as book reviews, submission advice, industry news (like awards and new publications), and general writing tips. Unlike most writing blogs this one is solely dedicated to speculative fiction. Some writing skills are transferable across genre (like spelling and grammar) but the real key to good writing is knowing your audience and knowing your genre.

Speculative fiction is an umbrella term — a really big umbrella. Some of the genres it includes…

Space Opera, Steam Punk, Post-Apocalyptic, Horror, Super Heroes, Supernatural, Alternate History, Futuristic, Dystopian, Epic Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Punk, Military SF, Dark Fantasy, Magic Realism, Sword and Sorcery, and anything else that can be classified under Fantasy or Science Fiction.

What do you write? Is your niche on the list? If not, drop me a line in the comments.

About the Owner

Mckayla Eaton is a fantasy and science fiction author living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She has been a slush reader for Strange Horizons speculative fiction magazine and Augur Magazine, an editor for a small university press, and a judge for the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia Short Story competition. She earned four honorable mentions on her short stories submitted to the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future competition, has had her flash story, Bound in Shallows and in Miseries, featured in Flash Fiction Magazine, and her story, Stiff published in the Dalhousie University press, Fathom.

Her debut fantasy novel Summoned is available from the Parliament House Press.

You can find her on Instagram or at mckaylaeaton.com.