Archive for December, 2010

Guest Post: Blowing Up Planets

Doomsday scenarios are a dime a dozen. When a villain claims to be on the verge of ‘destroying the Earth’ he/she usually means killing everyone/everything on it. But sometimes simply killing all humans isn’t good enough. Unfortunately even the vast amounts of energy necessary to wipe out all civilization is woefully inantiquate to physically destroy the planet. To do that would take some serious power.

Nebula Awards Guest Post: Sex, Skin and Secret Messages

What is it that makes us entertain fantasies about mating outside our own species? Surely this can’t be in our DNA; the mule, sterile offspring of a horse and donkey’s mating, is an example of the evolutionary dead end that results.Yet since our earliest days we’ve apparently been fascinated by the non-human cultures we co-exist with, and the fantasy of strange creatures, able to shift from wild animal to human. Long before we could write, we told stories around the campfire about them, as lovers, not monsters.

Guest Post: Experiments with E-books

Earlier this year, I was studying my royalty statement from DAW, comparing my print and electronic sales. I’ve been hearing for years that print is dying and e-books are the future, so I was rather surprised to find that electronic sales made up only 3-5% of my overall book sales.

Quick Updates for 2010-12-24

Hugo Award Winner and SFWA member Will McIntosh On the Future of Spec Fic/Historical Mashups & Other Things http://bit.ly/e4gh3r # SFWA member @joannemerriam was just published at Every Day Poets. http://is.gd/jlfPV #

Holiday Hiatus

Because even watchdogs have to rest sometimes, the Writer Beware blog will be taking a break over the holiday season. Unless there’s a really juicy publishing story, this blog will be on hiatus until the new year.

Guest Post: Steampunk/Alt History Week
Living in Color

Picture this–it’s the 1870’s. An African American pharmacist in knee-breeches and a frock coat has just made a startling invention–a refrigeration device. Okay, it’s an improved model designed for corpses, which makes me wonder what other mad scientist stuff was going on in the background, but Thomas Elkins was a REAL GUY. And totally, thoroughly steampunk.