Some astronauts and cosmonauts have reported a cognitive shift in awareness during spaceflight–often while viewing the Earth from orbit or from the lunar surface. It has come to be known as The Overview Effect.
As authors increasingly explore way to promote their work, one question that occurs when launching a book concerns giveaways, things like bookmarks, pens, postcards, or sometimes more complex or costly items, used to promote the book.
We have now nailed down the dates and hosts and some of the readers for all the SFWA Pacific Northwest Reading Series events in 2013, so mark your calendars:
When my first novel came out – in 2000 – by all weights and measures, I had “made it” as a mid-list fiction writer. I’d secured a two book deal (the second: a collection of short stories, the most elusive prey on the planet), a tidy first-timers advance, and a round of positive reviews from all the usual suspects.
Although the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult* Science Fiction and Fantasy relies on nominations from SFWA members just as the Nebula Awards do, the Norton also employs a jury of qualified volunteer SFWA members to help round out the ballot and ensure that outstanding works are not overlooked.
Have you heard of the Andre Norton Award? Ever wonder how the books are nominated? What books qualify? Who picks the winners? Or maybe you’ve just been curious to learn more about young adult (YA) fiction or middle grade (MG) fiction. Well, you’re not alone.
Here, I’d like to list out my last five of ten truths about professional jealousy (as I see it), which concern how you can deal with the green-eyed monster when it will not simply be slayed.
I knew I’d found a keeper when my boyfriend-at-the-time barely flinched the first time he saw one of our fights, word-for-word, in print. “You writers,” he said. “You air your dirty laundry. That’s how it is.”
Bear, the award-winning science fiction and fantasy author and purveyor of the delicious salt caramels currently gracing my desk, knows that food and cooking are key to worldbuilding. In many of her 23 novels, you’ll find reference to, if not outright instructions for, how a particular culture feeds itself.
There’s a tendency for writers to obsess over rules. If you’re reading my blog series “Chasing the First Sale,” you know I’m the chiefest of sinners; it’s packed full of rules, and there’s a good reason for that: rules are helpful. They give shape to good tendencies and bad.
SFWA Middle Grade and Young Adult Writers is a special interest group supporting SFWA’s middle grade and young adult author members. Formed in June 2012, the group is currently in the midst of a six-month trial period.
As a professor of astronomy, which is considered a “hard science,” I worry that the classification “hard SF” is off-putting to many readers. It makes it sound like any story labeled as such will be hard to understand, which is not necessarily true.
