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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 August, 2011
Award Alert: The IndieReader Discovery Awards
Friday, August 12th, 2011
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer BewareI've been getting questions about a new awards program: the IndieReader Discovery Awards for self-published authors.
"What do you get when you cross a bunch of great self-published books with extraordinary publishing industry professionals?" the Discovery Awards website asks. "IndieReader’s first annual 'Discovery Awards' (IRDAs), where undiscovered talent meets people with the power to make a difference." Sponsored by IndieReader (which describes itself as "a venue for discriminating book-lovers to find and purchase books published by the people who wrote them") the IndieReader Discovery Awards are open to self-published authors of print and ebooks with a valid ISBN.
Books can be entered in one or several of 51 different subcategories (there are just two main categories, Fiction and Nonfiction), and will be accepted until February 29, 2012 (here's the entry form). The large panel of judges includes reputable editors, literary agents, and other book people.
So far so good. But then we get to the entry fee. It's $150 (no, that is not a typo), with another $50 due for each additional category you want to enter. This is the highest entry fee I've seen recently--more than double the fees of some other self-published and small-press book awards programs. The Indie Excellence Awards, for instance, charges $69. Next Generation Indie Awards charges $75, as does the IPPYs. Even the stickertastic Readers Favorite Awards keeps it under $100.
(more...)
Tags: Writer Beware
Posted in SFWA Blog, Writer Beware | Comments Off
Quick Updates for 2011-08-11
Thursday, August 11th, 2011
- SFWA member@jenniferbrozek won the silver ENnie for best electronic RPG book for Shanghai Vampocalypse. http://is.gd/0OPoxA #
Tags: twitter
Posted in Excluded Categories | Comments Off
SFWA to Attend Baltimore Book Festival
Wednesday, August 10th, 2011
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) will host a booth at the 16th annual Baltimore Book Festival, September 23, 24, 25, 2011. Events will include author appearances, book signings, readings, talks, and panel discussions on science fiction, fantasy, horror, fandom, and the craft and business of writing in speculative fiction genres.
For more information, contact Catherine Asaro (asaro@sff.net).
Tags: Baltimore Book Festival, Signing
Posted in News, SFWA Blog | 3 Comments »
SFWA website outage
Wednesday, August 10th, 2011
Early in the morning of Wednesday, August 10th, the SFWA website was unavailable due to a hosting issue and service wasn’t restored until approximately 11:00 A.M. MST on the same day.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Posted in News, Public Relations, SFWA Blog | Comments Off
Indian Writers Beware:
Literary Agent Scams in India a Growing Problem
Wednesday, August 10th, 2011
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer BewareWhen Westerners think of major book markets, India may not be the first country that springs to mind. But India's publishing industry is the sixth largest in the world, and fully a third of it is devoted to English-language publishing.
Just as in the USA and the UK, the success of debut novelists in India fuels the dreams of legions of aspiring writers. And where there are aspiring writers, there are writing scams.
Reputable literary agents in India are still relatively rare. There's not a huge need for them, with most Indian publishers, and Indian divisions of overseas publishers, accepting submissions directly from authors. Questionable literary agents, though...apparently, that's another story.
(more...)
Tags: Writer Beware
Posted in SFWA Blog, Writer Beware | Comments Off
Guest Post: Exsanguinate! Exsanguinate!
Tuesday, August 9th, 2011
by Dr. Grasshopper
Dear Dr. Grasshopper,
How much blood can a character lose before they die?
Well, it kinda depends on the size of the character, to be honest. If a very large man loses a liter of blood, it’ll have a completely different effect than if a very small woman loses a liter. So the specific amount that a character can lose varies with the character. But I’ll try to give some general guidelines so you can figure it out for your character.
First of all, let’s figure out how much blood is actually in your character.
Blood is made of plasma, and blood cells, and all kinds of good stuff. (Remind me to write a post about blood composition.) Regardless, here’s a reasonable way to figure out how much blood your character is starting out with.
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Tags: Dr. Grasshopper
Posted in Information Center, SFWA Blog | 2 Comments »
Nebula Awards 2010 Interview: M.K. Hobson
Monday, August 8th, 2011
by Marshall Payne
- Photo by Kelly Robson
M.K. Hobson was born in Riverside, California, but grew up in Portland, Oregon. She attended the University of Oregon, where she ran Catalyst Films (the campus film society), helped launch The Student Insurgent (a radical progressive ‘zine that’s still being published) and drove night-shift cab in nearby Springfield, Oregon. After graduating with a degree in English and Communications, she moved to Hiroshima, Japan to teach English. Returning to the United States two years later, she purchased The Northwest Neighbor, a community newspaper founded by legendary Portland mayor Bud Clark. She ran the paper for several years before moving on to a career in the field of corporate communications, working with Fortune 500 clients in the fields of retirement and healthcare.
Currently, she is one of the co-hosts of Podcastle, the acclaimed short fiction podcast. She lives in Oregon City, Oregon with her husband and daughter.
Her novel, The Native Star, was a Nebula nominee for best novel, and the sequel, The Hidden Goddess, is now available in bookstores.
When did you first get the idea for your novel The Native Star. What inspired the worldbuilding? The character of Emily?
I learned a lot about worldbuilding in writing THE NATIVE STAR. I came into it with the idea that since it was based on an actual historical period, that the worldbuilding wouldn’t be quite as difficult as it might be if I were creating something from scratch. Boy was I wrong! It turned out to be a lot harder and more challenging than I thought. I wanted to use historical elements, but I didn’t want to break history. That was probably the biggest challenge.
I suppose it’s a universal truism of all writers that their characters are just aspects of themselves put down on paper. So really, the character of Emily is just a certain part of me. Same with the character of Dreadnought. Thus the book is kind of a chymical wedding of aspects of my own psyche, which is just way too deep to contemplate.
Could you tell us a bit about the writing process for this novel? How long did it take to complete?
Once I had the concept and outline completed I was able to write the first draft very quickly — probably about three months. Then there was a lot of rewriting after that. That is my usual process. It takes me a very long time to write an outline (they’re usually incredibly detailed), from which I write the first draft at an exceedingly rapid rate of speed. Then, once the first draft is completed, there’s a long period of time where I contemplate how to make the huge vomitous mass my subconscious has disgorged into something readable.
(more…)
Tags: interviews, M.K. Hobson, Marshall Payne, Nebula Awards
Posted in Nebula Awards, SFWA Blog | 1 Comment »
Quick Updates for 2011-08-07
Sunday, August 7th, 2011
- SFWA member Kari Sperring has signed a two book deal with DAW for a pair of linked fantasy novels #
Tags: twitter
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Contest Alert: WriteOnCon
Friday, August 5th, 2011
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer BewareI've gotten some questions over the past week about a fiction contest currently being conducted by WriteOnCon, a "totally free, interactive online Writer’s Conference held annually during the summer."
The contest, which is being conducted in association with TheReadingRoom.com, offers a grand prize of $1,000, an author profile page at TheReadingRoom, and evaluation by literary agent Catherine Drayton of Inkwell Management for the winning 500-word excerpt of a YA or middle-grade novel.
So far, so good. However, contestants must register with TheReadingRoom in order to enter--and that's where the problem arises, in the form of the following clause in TheReadingRoom's Competition Terms (my bolding):
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Tags: Writer Beware
Posted in SFWA Blog, Writer Beware | Comments Off
Quick Updates for 2011-08-05
Friday, August 5th, 2011
Member News
- SFWA member Paul S. Kemp has signed a deal to publish two sword and sorcery novels with Angry Robot Books.
- Here's the ToC for SFWA member Jennifer Brozek's forthcoming anthology HUMAN FOR A DAY, featuring many SFWA members.
- SFWA member Eugie Foster sold a short story reprint "Biba Jibun" to Pseudopod.
- New anthology END OF AN AEON includes stories by SFWA members Amanda Downum, Eugie Foster, David Levine and more!
- SFWA member Jennifer Brozek has been promoted to managing editor of Black Room Publications.
- You can now hear SFWA member David Levine's story "Zauberschrift" on PodCastle.
Tags: Amanda Downum, David Levine, Eugie Foster, Jennifer Brozek, Member News for Paul S. Kemp, twitter
Posted in News, SFWA Blog | Comments Off