Website Review:

Mythical and Fantasy Creatures:
Where Fantasy Comes to Life

By A. G. Weyland
Copyright © 2008 by A. G. Weyland All Rights Reserved

http://www.mythcreatures.co.uk/index.asp  

There are a million and a half reasons writers develop the hated and feared Writer's Block. For a writer, accepting you've hit that wall is similar to accepting you are paralyzed from the waist down, and by writing standards, you are. Your pen freezes, you lay your fingers on the keyboard and they refuse to type coherently. It's an illness, and if there was a medication to fix it, every writer in the world would line up and pay any price for the prescription. Writers from different genres undoubtedly suffer from different symptoms and levels of blockage. And if there ever is such a breakthrough as medication for writers, there would have to be different doses or different medications all together for each genre.

The highest dose would easily go to fantasy writers. Aside from developing characters and plots, fantasy writers build cities, empires, and worlds. And sometimes, worlds are built only to tear them down three hundred pages later. It's a sad reality but a reality nonetheless. Writer's block within the fantasy realm comes in many forms. Most notorious may be in choosing monsters. Your protagonist is saving the princess from an evil….. An evil what? A dragon? Too cliché. A ghost? This isn't paranormal fantasy! What could possibly be lurking at the end of the dark corridor if not a dragon or a ghost?

The poor forlorn writer could phone a friend, poll the audience, eliminate two choices (undoubtedly leaving only dragon and ghost), or Google "fantasy monsters." Aha! Google! Google has become an international beacon for the Age of Reason and it can lead you anywhere from to the monster you've been looking for or fluffy pink socks with dragons on them. Yet Google isn't the life-saving website of the future; it is merely a means to an end. The perfect website is different for every writer and every person, but there is one for fantasy writers that is instrumental for those staring at the end of a dark corridor and begging for something other than dragons and ghosts.

Mythical & Fantasy Creatures: Where Fantasy Comes to Life is the godfather of all other imaginary creature databases. There are creatures most writers never knew existed. You can scroll through the many categories, ranging from plant-like creatures to Egyptian creatures and gods. Mythical and Fantasy Creatures (http://www.mythcreatures.co.uk/index.asp) is an impressive database for not only fantasy writers but historical fiction writers.

Any work with a basis in history has the opportunity to reference mythology, either directly or indirectly. In today's world, Achilles' heel not only survives but is a popular saying. With a mythology list that includes (but is not limited to) Norse, Mayan, Egyptian, and Celtic mythology, Mythical and Fantasy Creatures proves itself as a worthy competitor in a cyber world dominated by Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers. Or rather, it is the competitor for fantasy and historical writers staring at a dead-end. And besides being a great source of fantasy and mythical dead-end solvers, Mythical and Fantasy Creatures is easy to navigate. No matter your level of Internet finesse, this site is beginner friendly and pretty self-explanatory.

But one of the greatest features of Mythical and Fantasy Creatures is that for a writer juggling a million things at once, the simplistic layout of the site allows you to get in and get out. There are no pictures to distract you, no flashing images, no pop-ups, and most importantly, no advertisements muddling the page. It's a straight-forward, professional site that can quickly and effectively help a writer in need. Your protagonist is saving a princess from a monster at the end of the corridor, not a dragon or a ghost… A manticore is roaring at the end of the darkness, ready to devour your hero. Hey, he might not win, but at least now your novel has a villain, all thanks to a little site known as Mythical and Fantasy Creatures.