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.
Industry News and Member News for Will McIntosh, Joanne Merriam, Maureen K. Power, and Anne M. Pillsworth.
Today the board of directors of SFWA unanimously voted to add Highlights for Children to the list of SFWA qualifying markets. This venerable magazine began publishing in 1946 publishes short fiction for children. It has served as an early gateway to reading for many science-fiction and fantasy writers. Speculative fiction short story sales to Highlights may be […]
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.
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.
With this post we begin looking at the key conditions that build reader suspense. Stories are made up of four main ingredients: character, setting, problem, and plot. All of these are important, but problem is the engine that makes suspense go.
Angry Robot will be accepting unagented manuscripts for the month of March, 2011. http://is.gd/jnBbB #
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 #
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.
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.
Carter’s a homicide cop in Titanshade, an oil boomtown where 8-tracks are state of the art, disco rules the radio, and all the best sorcerers wear designer labels. But unless Carter can find an elusive killer, the entire city may fall into chaos.
Julie C. Day has published over 30 stories in magazines such as Interzone, Podcastle & Black Static. Her collection UNCOMMON MIRACLES is forthcoming from PS Publishing this October. Julie’s fiction reflects her relish for the surreal and esoteric.
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