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Lee Gimenez is a science fiction writer and member of SFWA. His book, The Tomorrow Solution, was published in 2009. For more information, visit his website, www.leegimenez.com.
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Hezbollah has obtained an atomic bomb and a would-be martyr eager to deliver it — and that’s the good news.
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 May, 2011
Contract Red Flag: Net Profit Royalty Clauses
Tuesday, May 31st, 2011
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer BewareIn the comments thread of a previous post, a reader asked whether there is a difference between royalties paid on net income and royalties paid on net profit. There most definitely is a difference--and, depending on the circumstances, royalties paid on net profit is a major red flag.
LIST PRICE
The ideal royalty is paid on list or cover price--the actual retail price of the book. So if your list price is $20, and your royalty is 10%, you'll get $2 for every book sold. For big trade publishers, including larger independents, royalties paid on list price is standard for domestic sales.
NET INCOME
Smaller publishers, on the other hand, are more likely to pay royalties on net income or net sales proceeds--the money they actually receive for the book (list price less any discounts charged by retailers or wholesalers). This means your royalties will vary, depending on where your book is sold--but they will vary in predictable ways. Again using a $20 book and a 10% royalty as an example, sales at full list price from the publisher's website would generate a royalty of $2; sales to physical retailers at a discount of 40% would generate a royalty of $1.20; and sales to wholesalers at a discount of 50% would generate a royalty of $1.
(more...)
Tags: Writer Beware
Posted in SFWA Blog, Writer Beware | Comments Off
Guest Post: Proprioception
Tuesday, May 31st, 2011
by Nnedi Okorafor
I’ve always been interested in people labeled as “abnormal” or “abomination”.
In my novel Zahrah the Windseeker, Zahrah is born with the “curse” of vine-laden dada hair. In The Shadow Speaker, Ejii is a “freakish” product of nuclear fallout and peace bombs. Who Fears Death’s main character is an “ugly half-breed” with skin and coarse wooly hair the color of desert sand. In my recent short story, “The Book of Phoenix” (which is linked to Who Fears Death), Phoenix was created in a lab. She is two years old but looks and feels 40 (she even has hot flashes!) and calls herself as an “abomination”.
I continue to explore physical abnormality in my two latest stories. “Wahala” is a short story published in the Life on Mars anthology and set in the world of The Shadow Speaker. Its main character Fisayo is a product of the nuclear apocalypse like Ejii. Fisayo is venturing across the Sahara Desert because her parents think she should not have been born. In my novel Akata Witch, Sunny is an American-born albino Nigerian girl who learns that she’s also a witch.
(more…)
Tags: Nnedi Okorafor
Posted in SFWA Blog | 4 Comments »
Key Conditions for Suspense:
Part 24 – Patterns for Struggle Elements 3 – 5
Sunday, May 29th, 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.
In my last post, I discussed options for trouble progression. In this post, I’ll discuss options for three more elements that affect the structure of the struggle phase.
Actions the antagonist takes to oppose the hero
Directly related to the progression of trouble are the actions the villain or opposition takes to thwart the hero. I made this its own topic because I’ve found it’s incredibly useful in coming up with great troubles to play the story cycle from both points of view, like a one-man chess game.
Just as I need to know my hero’s goal, motives, and plan, I also need to know the same things about my antagonist. In fact, in some stories the antagonist’s plans are what drive the story.
So my hero takes an action. I switch in my mind to the antagonist’s point of view and ask myself what I would do if I were this villain. How would I react given his goal, motives, and resources? This suggests a course or three of action. I select the one that sparks my interest the most. This action, of course, causes trouble for the hero. So I switch back to the hero’s point of view and ask myself how I would react as the hero. This causes trouble for the villain. So I switch back to the villain’s point of view, and back and forth I go.
In coming up with troubles, it’s sometimes helpful to think of how the antagonist’s actions might escalate. So when the hero pops up, maybe he sends a henchman to give him a stern warning. When that doesn’t work, maybe a smart villain might send the henchman back to quietly remove him. When that doesn’t work, maybe I call in some favors from the chief of police who I have dirt on. When that doesn’t work, maybe I decide to go take the hero’s family hostage. When he comes to save them, I’ll get him then.
Thinking about the situation from the antagonist’s point of view always helps me come up with lots of troubles for my hero. Again, as with all troubles, the one thing you want to keep in mind is that you want the antagonist to gradually escalate the measures used to remove his problem, which translates to a trouble progression for the hero.
(more…)
Tags: John D. Brown
Posted in Advice for New Writers, Information Center, SFWA Blog, The Craft of Writing, Tips for Beginners, Writing Technique | Comments Off
PublishAmerica Will Be Your Literary Agent…For $199
Friday, May 27th, 2011
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware
Literary agencies becoming publishers? Screw that trend. PublishAmerica, always a trail blazer, is swinging the other way.The email from which I've quoted below was sent out today by the PA "Author Support Team." (All bolding is PA's.) Just imagine the hearts that are leaping and the pulses that are pounding at the sight of the title:
From: noreply@publishamerica.comAuthors are encouraged to visit www.publishamerica.net/MyAgent.html, where they discover that, to take advantage of this matchless opportunity, they must fork over $199.
To: [email address redacted]
Sent: 5/27/2011
Subj: A literary agent wants to talk to you
Dear author:
PublishAmerica now has a Literary Agency department.
Sign up, and we will market your book to big ticket publishers such as Random House, Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins, Penguin, the new Amazon publishing company, but also university presses and independent publishers, and to a host of foreign publishers all over the world. We also work with Hollywood studios and producers...
Over the past year, while attending trade shows all over the nation and in foreign countries, we have built a very extensive Rolodex with industry contacts. We have talked to so many publishers at home and abroad, and to so many agencies and movie producers that today we feel confident that our Literary Agency can make a serious difference for our authors...Most authors are not very good sales people, least of all when it comes to selling themselves. Therefore most books need an agent if and when an author seeks to find greener pastures for their book.
Sign up today, and have an agent for your book tomorrow!
The fact that PA has an exclusive claim on authors' print and digital rights does pose a bit of a hurdle in terms of licensing--for those big-ticket US publishers, anyway--but never mind, we aren't supposed to be thinking logically here.
PublishAmerica, fee-charging literary agent. I only wonder why it took this long!
Tags: Writer Beware
Posted in SFWA Blog, Writer Beware | Comments Off
John E. Johnston, III, Awarded SFWA Service Award
Thursday, May 26th, 2011
John E. Johnston, III, was the recipient of this year’s SFWA Service Award, presented at the Nebula Awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. The SFWA Service Award is given at the discretion of the President and with Board approval to a member of SFWA who best exemplifies the ideal of service to his or her fellow members. Read more here:
http://www.sfwa.org/nebula-weekend/nebula-awards/sfwa-service-award/
Tags: Nebula Awards
Posted in Nebula Awards, News, SFWA Blog | Comments Off
Quick Updates for 2011-05-26
Thursday, May 26th, 2011
- Congratulations to SFWA member @RobertJSawyer whose novel WWW: WATCH won the Hal Clement Award for Best YA SF Novel. http://bit.ly/kkxK8i #
- SFWA member @alcole123 To commemorate Memorial Day: Wars Of The Shannons E-book for $1. http://is.gd/qKl1pO Coupon: TH82M. 'til June 1. #
- @aislinn_mac @USNessie Yes, that's how SFWA memberships work as well. #
Tags: twitter
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Guest Post: The Watcher and the Weird
Wednesday, May 25th, 2011
by Ann VanderMeer
The Weird, as opposed to horror or dark fantasy, has a slippery quality of “you know it when you read it,” with an element of terror, perhaps, but more likely unease. Weird stories don’t necessarily have pat resolutions and the creepiness or intensity of them is part of the journey.
Although weird fiction has a strong and proud tradition in the UK and North America, it’s not exclusively an Anglo phenomenon. As we discovered when reading for The Weird: A Compendium of Strange & Dark Fictions (Atlantic, November 2011), you can find weird all over the world. That anthology contains work from fourteen countries and every continent except Antarctica.
One of those countries is Finland, and the writer in question Leena Krohn, whose Tainaron is one of the finest short weird novels of the past fifty years. Works by the excellent Johanna Sinisalo, Boris Hurtta, and many other writers also exist in this visionary, hard-to-classify gray area. (more…)
Tags: Ann VanderMeer, Boris Hurtta, Johanna Sinisalo, Leena Krohn
Posted in SFWA Blog | 2 Comments »
Quick Updates for 2011-05-25
Wednesday, May 25th, 2011
Member News
- Welcome to SFWA’s new Associate member Jakob Drud. Read his qualifying story at Flash Fiction Online.
- Welcome to SFWA’s new Associate member Patrick O’Sullivan, with a sale to Writers of the Future Volume XXVII.
- Welcome to SFWA’s new Active member, Matthew Sanborn Smith, with three short story sales. Read one of his qualifying stories on Tor.com.
- Welcome to SFWA’s new Active member Erin Hoffman author of SWORD OF FIRE & SEA (Pyr 2011).
- Welcome to SFWA’s new Active member Dave Freer, author of DOG AND DRAGON (Baen).
- Interview with fashionpunk novelist & SFWA member Jon Armstrong at The Daily Monocle.
- Congratulations to SFWA member Brandon Sanderson on his Whitney Award win for THE WAY OF KINGS.
- CHARLES WAVERLY AND THE DEADLY AFRICAN SAFARI by SFWA member Anna D. Allen is now available here.
- You can read excerpts from Locus’s interview with SFWA member David Levine at Locus Online.
- SFWA member Allan Cole‘s STEN IN HOLLYWOOD: THE NEXT TO THE LAST MISADVENTURE is here.
- SFWA Member Karen Azinger is thrilled to announce that THE STEEL QUEEN, the first book of The Silk & Steel Saga is now published on Amazon.
- SFWA member Ferrett Steinmetz‘s religious-squids-in-a-moat story “As Below, So Above” is in audio format at PodCastle.
Industry News
- Lovely writeup of the Nebula 2011 weekend by Monica Hesse in The Washington Post.
Tags: Allan Cole, Anna D. Allen, Brandon Sanderson, Dave Freer, David Levine, Erin Hoffman, Ferrett Steinmetz, Jakob Drud, Jon Armstrong, Karen Azinger, Matthew Sanborn Smith, Patrick O'Sullivan, twitter
Posted in News, SFWA Blog | Comments Off
Frozen Sky Celebration
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011
To celebrate the milestone of Lucky 13,000 ebooks sold of his 99-cent novella “The Frozen Sky,” Jeff Carlson is giving away free copies of his other short story collections as Mobi or ePub files. You can choose your freebie at http://www.jverse.com/blog/
Posted in Press Book | Comments Off
Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner: Betrayer of Worlds
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011
Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner are pleased to announce the mass-market re-release of Betrayer of Worlds, the latest installment of their collaboration in Known Space.
Trapped in the Wunderland civil war, all Louis Wu wants is a way home. What Nessus, the insane Puppeteer scout, offers Louis instead is a way out — through unknowable danger. Because someone must prevent catastrophe for the Fleet of Worlds.
And in this crisis, the winner takes . . . worlds.
“Rescues, captures, kidnappings, reluctant temporary alliances, backdoor negotiations, propaganda campaigns, bluffs and double-bluffs, alien and cross-species politics, and, of course, betrayals. Lots of betrayals … One hopes that Niven and Lerner come up with some additional twists and turns.”
– Locus
Betrayer of Worlds is Lerner and Niven’s fourth novel together. The opening book in their series, Fleet of Worlds, was the “Sci Fi Essential” novel for September, 2007. Fleet of Worlds went on to be named a finalist for the 2008 Prometheus Award. (Books two and three of the series are Juggler of Worlds and Destroyer of Worlds.)
Unofficial website of Larry Niven
Betrayer of Worlds
Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner
Tor Books
ISBN-13: 978-0765364982
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