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Sara Creasy grew up in Australia and now lives in the USA. Her debut novel is SONG OF SCARABAEUS.
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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).
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Archive for January, 2011
Angry Robot is SFWA’s newest qualifying market
Monday, January 10th, 2011
The board of directors of SFWA unanimously voted to add Angry Robot to the list of SFWA qualifying markets. Angry Robot Limited is a British-based limited company, wholly owned by The Osprey Group of publishers. Although based in the UK, AR publishes books in the US as well as UK, as a distributed client of Random House. Their mission is to “publish the best in brand new genre fiction – SF, F and WTF?!”
Congratulations to the entire editorial staff at Angry Robot and their writers!
Posted in News, SFWA Blog | 1 Comment »
Nebula Awards Interview: Christopher Barzak by Charles Tan
Sunday, January 9th, 2011
Christopher Barzak is nominated for his novel The Love We Share Without Knowing.
Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. First off, what’s the appeal of speculative fiction for you?
What I love most about speculative fiction is its wealth of ideas, symbols, and metaphorical structures that simply aren’t available if a writer is committed to writing in the realm of strict realism, where only the observable, material world and a sort of consensual social reality must be paid heed to in order to succeed. Realism is more about a writer’s skill at matching whatever reality looks like to a given readership in a given point of time in a given place, whereas speculative fiction, while certainly wanting to get its own worlds made rightly, has the ability to stretch our notions of what is real, to break through to new ideas, if a writer is willing to go there, and new structures, new kinds of stories, new ways of telling of them.
Tags: Christopher Barzak, interviews, Nebula Awards
Posted in Nebula Awards, SFWA Blog | Comments Off
Quick Updates for 2011-01-09
Sunday, January 9th, 2011
Member News
- SFWA member David Levine‘s “Finding Joan” was the second-most-popular story on DailySF in October! Read it here.
- SFWA member Laura Anne Gilman offers Practical Meerkat’s 52 Bits of Useful Info for Young (and Old) Writers, week 1 here.
Tags: David Levine, laura anne gilman, twitter
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Key Conditions for Reader Suspense:
Part 4 – Uncertainty
Saturday, January 8th, 2011
by John D. Brown
The following is part of a continuing series. If you wish to start at the beginning, head to “It’s All About The Reader.”
Surprise
In my last post, I talked about the fact that for readers to feel suspense our character’s problem has to be hard to solve. But that’s only part of the equation. It has to be hard, sure, but the outcome has to also be uncertain. Otherwise, there’s no worry.
The character must have a chance to solve the problem up until the end, but for no extended period of time can it look like winning or losing is assured, because the moment the reader can predict the ending and the major turns along the way, that’s the moment they will lose interest.
Think about this. It’s the first quarter of a football game, and the score is 64 to 0. Anybody sticking around for that one to play out?
(more…)
Tags: John D. Brown, writing advice
Posted in Advice for New Writers, Information Center, SFWA Blog, The Craft of Writing, Tips for Beginners, Writing Technique | Comments Off
Quick Updates for 2011-01-08
Saturday, January 8th, 2011
- SFWA member @LAGilman offers Practical Meerkat’s 52 Bits of Useful Info for Young (and Old) Writers, week 1 http://j.mp/dSIMAD #
Tags: twitter
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Mad Skills
Friday, January 7th, 2011
“The literary equivalent of a syringe full of adrenaline.” –Publishers Weekly
Tags: Greatshell, Walter Greatshell
Posted in Featured Book | Comments Off
The Importance of Context (Part 1)
Friday, January 7th, 2011
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware
A couple of recent news items have me thinking about the importance of looking at information in context.
The first is an article from the Los Angeles Times entitled "Book Publishers See Their Role as Gatekeepers Shrink." The article covers a number of writers who are bypassing trade publishers to publish their work themselves--such as Joe Konrath, who has had a great deal of success self-publishing his backlist on the Kindle; Seth Godin, who last year decided to become his own (and apparently other people's) publisher; and Greg Bear and Neal Stephenson, who are serializing a collaborative novel online.
The second is a cluster of information about ebook sales. According to USA Today's latest Best-Selling Books list, ebook sales for the week after Christmas were higher than print sales for 19 of the top 50 sellers. Amazon reported similar news in October, when it revealed that for top-selling books, Kindle ebooks were outselling both hardcovers and paperbacks; and in December, Barnes & Noble announced that ebook sales had surpassed print sales on the B & N website.
Everyone loves a juicy news bite. But before you decide that ebooks rule and print is dead and it's time to self-publish your magnum opus online, there's a bit more to be said about all these stories. (more...)
Tags: Writer Beware
Posted in SFWA Blog, Writer Beware | 2 Comments »
Guest Post: Advice for Teen Writers
Friday, January 7th, 2011
by Kate Elliott
I love teen writers.
Why? because I was one.
There’s nothing like writing during adolescence. The intensity, focus, and emotional strength that such a writer brings to her/his work is, like a map frozen in time, sharply delineated and can’t be captured except as a memory of once walking in those lands.
In some ways (although not in others) I’m always trying to recapture the feeling I had then, the excitement, sense of exploration and possibility, the freshness and just how new and exciting and empowering it is to write.
A lot of things can get between me and that sheer flying feeling these days, but I love those moments where I’m writing in the impulse, skating on the now.
So here’s the deal: Work written by teens is invaluable to their development as writers.
By that I don’t mean people who didn’t start writing as teens aren’t going to be good writers; quite the contrary; I’m just speaking to a situation in which a lot, even most, of what is written by teen writers is not necessarily going to be ready for publication. In fact I would hesitate to suggest to any teen that they write “for publication” rather than “for yourself.” In fact, I’d never suggest to any beginning or inexperienced writer that their main focus be on publishing rather than the experience of writing, finishing, and revising.
(more…)
Tags: Kate Elliott, writing advice
Posted in Advice for New Writers, Information Center, SFWA Blog, Tips for Beginners | 2 Comments »
Quick Updates for 2011-01-07
Friday, January 7th, 2011
- @listener42 Congratulations! #
- @listener42 Actually, we just need proof of the sale. The contract would work for that. In other words, you could apply today if you wanted. #
Tags: twitter
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Quick Updates for 2011-01-06
Thursday, January 6th, 2011
Member News
- Welcome to SFWA’s newest Affliate member Lia Keyes Co-editor, Flying Pen Press.
- Welcome to SFWA’s newest Active member Mari Ness. Read one of her qualifying stories at Fantasy Magazine.
- Congratulations to SFWA member Jim Hines who sold his story “Epilogue” to Jennifer Brozek for the DAW anthology HUMAN FOR A DAY.
- SFWA member David Levine sold short story “Into the Nth Dimension” to anthology HUMAN FOR A DAY.
- Wonderful interview with SFWA member Michael Chabon about his “wrecked” novel FOUNTAIN CITY here.
- SFWA member Yasmine Galenorn has a contest on her blog through noon tomorrow for 2 copies of HARVEST HUNTING.
- Happy release day to SFWA member Stephanie Dray‘s historical fantasy LILY OF THE NILE: A NOVEL OF CLEOPATRA’S DAUGHTER.
Industry News
- SFWA qualifying market Strange Horizons has raised their payrate to .07 per word. More information here.
- SFWA member Ellen Datlow issues a call for Submissions for The Best Horror of the Year volume Four (2011).
Tags: David Levine, Jennifer Brozek, Jim Hines, Lia Keyes, Mari Ness, Michael Chabon, Stephanie Dray, twitter, yasmine galenorn
Posted in News, SFWA Blog | Comments Off