Image of a coffee cup, piping hot!
Featured Author
Sara Creasy grew up in Australia and now lives in the USA. Her debut novel is SONG OF SCARABAEUS.
Featured Book
Sixteen science fiction writers speculate on climate change.
Nebula Awards Weekend
The Forty-Seventh Nebula Awards Weekend will be held Thursday through Sunday, May 17 to May 20, 2012 at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia, near Reagan National Airport.
We honor Connie Willis as our Grand Master!
To register, click on “Registration” in the menu to the immediate left. Then scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the “Register” button.
Tours, workshops and panels are available for registered attendees (the number of people who can be accommodated on the tours and workshops is limited.) Active and Associate SFWA members may nominate works, until February 15th, for the awards to be presented at the May 19th Nebula Awards Weekend Banquet. Hour long interviews and readings will be recorded by Jim Freund for his Hour of the Wolf radio show broadcast on WBAI (99.5FM) in New York City.
Jon Williams is our Toastmaster (he will also conduct a half-day Writers Workshop on Friday morning.) Mike Fincke is our Keynote Speaker.
The Mass Autographing Session on Friday, May 18th will be followed by a reception to honor the nominees and other honorees.
You don’t have to be a nominee, a member of SFWA, or even a writer to participate in the weekend. Registration for the 2012 Nebula Awards Weekend is open now. The cost for the Nebula Awards Banquet is $75.00 per person. The cost to register is $50.00 for a SFWA Member and $60.00 for a non-SFWA Member until February 29, 2012. Rates for registration will be higher as the date of the event draws closer.
Results from the 2010 Nebula Awards (presented 2011).
Search Site
Archive for December, 2010
Guest Post: Fairy Tales Reimagined
Sunday, December 12th, 2010
by Kate Coombs
Even as picture books based on folk and fairy tales are on the wane, the world of children’s books is seeing a rise in fairy tale retellings for middle grade and young adult readers. In fact, this corner of the fantasy market seems to be experiencing a golden age, to the delight of die-hard fairy tale fans like me. If the larger wave of children’s fantasy in the nineties was a product of Harry Potter’s popularity, I’d attribute this wave of retellings in part to a couple of other successes: Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine and the movie version of Shrek.
(more…)
Tags: Kate Coombs
Posted in SFWA Blog | 9 Comments »
Quick Updates for 2010-12-12
Sunday, December 12th, 2010
- SFWA member @Keffy's story "Advertising at the End of the World" is this week's Escape Pod episode. http://bit.ly/heFWnw #
- Welcome to SFWA's newest Active member Rhiannon Held, author of SILVER (Tor, 2012) #
- Odyssey Writing Workshop Announces Its 16th Summer Session http://bit.ly/eOHa82 #
- SFWA member @Norilana offers a "Hilarious parody NORTHANGER ABBEY AND DRAGONS by Jane Austen & Vera Nazarian" http://is.gd/izSK3 #
- Interesting post at NPR. Neil Armstrong talks about the first moon walk. http://is.gd/izWeZ #
Tags: twitter
Posted in Excluded Categories | Comments Off
Nebula Awards Interview: Rachel Swirsky by Larry Nolen
Sunday, December 12th, 2010
Rachel Swirsky was nominated for her novelette “A Memory of Wind”.
Instead of asking that tired question of why you became a writer, I’m curious if there were ever any moments in your writing career where you were tempted to set it aside for a while and do something else? If so, what kept you writing and submitting stories?
The only time I ever remember deliberately giving up writing for a period of time was when I was in my first (and last) year at Sarah Lawrence College. A “friend” and I went to a small writing group that someone was trying to start at the campus coffee shop (cow-print walls, rumors of occasional student sex on the tables, said sex never actually spotted) and I brought five pages of something fragmentary, because when I was eighteen, I only ever wrote things that were fragmentary. Everyone passed it around and my friend listed my many faults and compared me to a very unpopular hack writer–the story was basically literary, so the criticism wasn’t genre snobbery, just an attempt to insinuate hackishness. (These days, I have rather a lot of respect for hacks. At the time, I was in art college.)
(more…)
Tags: interviews, Nebula Awards
Posted in Nebula Awards, SFWA Blog | 1 Comment »
Quick Updates for 2010-12-11
Saturday, December 11th, 2010
Member News
- Welcome to SFWA’s newest Associate member Laurie Tom, with a sale to Writers of the Future XXVI.
- Welcome to SFWA’s newest Active member Stephen Blackmoore, author of CITY OF THE LOST (DAW, 2011).
- Welcome to SFWA’s newest Active member Anne Nesbet, author of THE CABINET OF EARTHS (HarperCollins/2012).
- SFWA member David Levine sold “Citizen-Astronaut,” which won 2nd Prize in the 2010 Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest, to Analog.
- SFWA member N. K. Jemisin was on the December 9th episode of Hour of the Wolf (WBAI 99.5 FM New York). You can listen here for the next 11 days.
- SFWA member Seanan McGuire sold 2 more October Daye books to DAW, titles ASHES OF HONOR and THE CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT.
- SFWA member Catherynne Valente will be guest of honor at CONTINUUM 2011 in Melbourne, Australia.
- SFWA member Ted Kosmotka has a new story, “In-Fall” at Lightspeed magazine.
- SFWA member Allan Cole presents BAD BOY BOBBY BLAKE: PART DEUX… New Hollywood Misadventure at his website.
Resources
- Excellent post by SFWA member Keffy R. M. Kehrli on the first impressions stories make to a slush reader on Shimmer’s blog.
Tags: Allan Cole, Anne Nesbet, Catherynne Valente, David Levine, keffy r.m. kehrli, Laurie Tom, n. k. jemisin, Seanan Mcguire, Stephen Blackmoore, Ted Kosmotka, twitter
Posted in News, SFWA Blog | Comments Off
Odyssey Writing Workshop Announces
Its 16th Summer Session
Friday, December 10th, 2010
Since its founding in 1996, Odyssey has become one of the most respected workshops in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror writing community. Odyssey is for developing writers whose work is approaching publication quality and for published writers who want to improve their work. The six-week workshop combines advanced lectures, exercises, extensive writing, and in-depth feedback on student manuscripts. Top authors, editors, and agents have served as guest lecturers, including George R. R. Martin, Harlan Ellison, Jane Yolen, Terry Brooks, Robert J. Sawyer, Ben Bova, Nancy Kress, Elizabeth Hand, Jeff VanderMeer, Donald Maass, Sheila Williams, Shawna McCarthy, Carrie Vaughn, and Dan Simmons. Fifty-three percent of Odyssey graduates go on to professional publication.
(more…)
Tags: Odyssey Writers Workshop, workshops
Posted in News, SFWA Blog, Workshops and Critique Groups | 1 Comment »
The 2011 Indie Publishing Contest
Friday, December 10th, 2010
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware
I've been getting questions about a brand-new writers' contest: the 2011 Indie Publishing Contest, sponsored by (among others) the San Francisco Writers Conference.
Write, Win AND Publish!
New ‘Indie Publishing Contest’ Revamps the Traditional Writing Contest with the Benefits of Indie Publishing.
Since when can a writing contest turn the winner into an author with a published book...and provide a staff of book marketing professionals to help get the book into bookstores and publicized? This is the new reality of combining a traditional writing contest with the myriad advantages of indie publishing.
By "indie publishing," they don't mean true self-publishing, or publishing with an independent publisher, but the kind of publishing provided by print-on-demand publishing services--in this case, Author Solutions, Inc., which is one of the contest sponsors. This is not, in fact, independent publishing--but since I've already done two blog posts on that subject, I'm not going to belabor the point.
Tags: Writer Beware
Posted in SFWA Blog, Writer Beware | Comments Off
Quick Updates for 2010-12-10
Friday, December 10th, 2010
- SFWA member @nkjemisin is on the air now for Hour of the Wolf. WBAI 99.5 FM #
- Excellent post by SFWA member @Keffy on the first impressions stories make to a slush reader. http://is.gd/iqEuX #
- SFWA member @seananmcguire sold 2 more October Daye books to DAW, titles ASHES OF HONOR and THE CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT. #
- Welcome to SFWA's newest Active member Stephen Blackmoore (@sblackmoore), author of CITY OF THE LOST (DAW, 2011). http://is.gd/isdDZ #
- Welcome to SFWA's newest Active member Anne Nesbet, author of THE CABINET OF EARTHS (HarperCollins/2012) #
- SFWA member @catvalente will be guest of honor at CONTINUUM 2011 in Melbourne, Australia. #
- SFWA member Ted Kosmotka has a new story, "In-Fall"at Lightspeed magazine. http://is.gd/isPte #
Tags: twitter
Posted in Excluded Categories | Comments Off
Amazon.com now offering BookScan to Authors
Thursday, December 9th, 2010
Amazon.com is now offering BookScan information to authors enrolled in their Author Central program. For authors, previously one had to subscribe to BookScan or to get their sales numbers through their agents or publishers.
Amazon says:
We’re happy to announce that – for the first time ever – authors can see weekly sales trends of their print books as reported by Nielsen BookScan. On the new Sales Info tab you can view your print book sales geographically, as well as by paperback or hardcover. These features are on the same page as the existing Amazon Bestsellers Rank History so that you can view all your sales-related activity in one place.
Note that BookScan doesn’t report every book sold. Though it’s still widely regarded as the industry standard for tracking print book sales. And now, through Author Central, you have access to this data for free. Check out Sales by Geography and Sales by Week now!
SFWA member Jim C. Hines reports Amazon is offering the information as a four-week window. Which means that an author who wished to track their books over a longer span would need to check in regularly and take screenshots or otherwise record the trends.
Tags: Amazon, Bookscan
Posted in Building a Career, News, SFWA Blog | Comments Off
Guest Post–Information Wants to Be Free
Thursday, December 9th, 2010
by Nelson Minar
The phrase information wants to be free is one of the most important observations of the information age. Dating to Stewart Brand in 1984, the statement is often misunderstood and sure to piss people off.
The phrase is a simple observation, like saying “a compass wants to point north.” Information intrinsically has a tendency to spread. Controlling information, bottling it up and keeping it limited, is difficult. There’s a bit of a poetic turn in saying “wants,” since of course information has no agency. The underlying truth is really a statement about human nature: people tend to share information.
(more…)
Tags: internet, Nelson Minar
Posted in SFWA Blog | 5 Comments »
Quick Updates for 2010-12-09
Thursday, December 9th, 2010
- Welcome to SFWA's newest Associate member Laurie Tom (@writerrat), with a sale to WotF XXVI. http://laurietom.blogspot.com/ #
- @HanaMoonfire I'm trying to find you in the member directory so I can link your twitter account to your membership but could use some help. #
- SFWA member @daviddlevine sold "Citizen-Astronaut," which won 2nd Prize in the 2010 Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest, to Analog. #
- @HanaMoonfire Ah so. Grand I won't add this one then. Congrats on the membership. #
Tags: twitter
Posted in Excluded Categories | Comments Off