By Rachael K. Jones Work-for-hire writing jobs are common in novel-length work, especially in the world of tie-in fiction, but rarer in short fiction. If you’re primarily a short fiction author, you might be caught off-guard if approached with this kind of work. You may not have an agent who can give you advice. You […]
by Jelena Dunato When my publisher prepared the marketing strategy for my upcoming novel Dark Woods, Deep Water, one of the obvious labels proposed besides “fantasy” and “dark” was “Slavic.” It’s clear why—I’m Croatian; I’ve written a book featuring Morana, the Slavic Goddess of Death. And yet, this label caused me intense discomfort. It took […]
By William C. Tracy Congrats! You’re an indie author! You’ve written a book, (hopefully) had critiques and edited it, put it all together, and thrown it up on Amazon. Time to watch the money roll in, right? Well, not exactly. Amazon books don’t sell themselves. Especially in these waning years of the golden indie author […]
By The Safety Committee Many sites, subscriptions, and tools require a login to function, and in most cases (we’ll get to that later), those logins require a password. So, in the shifting landscape of online security, what’s the best way to handle passwords? The answer depends on a few different factors. Let’s start with some […]
By M.K. Hutchins Soft magic has been with us since humans had stories: it’s in our fairytales, our folklore, and continues to be popular today, appearing in everything from Studio Ghibli films to the writings of Terry Pratchett, to Axie Oh’s The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea. Soft magic usually gets defined by what […]
By Jason P. Burnham Climate change is the top public health emergency of the twenty-first century. Naturally, you may be inclined to write a story somewhere on the dystopia-to-solarpunk spectrum that mitigates your burgeoning existential climate dread. Perhaps one of your characters works in healthcare and is struggling with an ever-increasing burden of antibiotic-resistant infections […]
By Cat Rambo You have been told, like so many writers before you, that you must have a social media presence. That nowadays, agents and publishing houses look to see how many Twitter followers you have before opening your manuscript. That it’s all about connection with readers, and the only way to manage that is […]
By Kelly McClymer Do you dream of seeing your indie book in your local library catalog? You are not alone. Many a traditionally published author shares your dream. Here are a few hard facts: Libraries generally purchase hardback library editions (volumes that have had the spines reinforced to hold up for multiple reads). Shelf space […]
By Gideon P. Smith Getting the science right in SF can make the difference between writing cute stories and great science fiction. If you are a non-scientist writing SF and want to know how to do that, then this blog post is for you. Doing Background Research If science is critical to the overall plot, […]
by Hunter Liguore Creating new characters takes a careful eye. When an idea comes, we might rely on familiar images to fashion characters that aren’t truly our own, but rather influenced through media images or by people we’ve encountered or known well. What is often missed in the early drafting of characters is the up-close […]
In these tales you’ll find heart-pounding excitement, deadly perils, baffling perplexities, complex conundrums, dread mysteries, deceptive hallucinations, fantasy landscapes, far planets, distant futures, evil menaces, and unlikely heroes.
Tlotlo Tsamaase is a Motswana author. Tsamaase’s debut adult novel, Womb City, comes out in 2023 from Erewhon Books. Tsamaase’s novella, The Silence of the Wilting Skin, is a 2021 Lambda Literary Award finalist. You can find xem at tlotlotsamaase.com
