by Laurence Raphael Brothers Introduction Short fiction submissions can be challenging. There are many factors to juggle in deciding what to submit, and where. “Submission Tetris” is the game of matching your available stories with magazine and anthology slush calls. Markets and Market Lists The two leading short fiction market and submission trackers are The […]
Writing ‘POC’ is not enough. It doesn’t merit applause, or points for diversity. What does merit applause and accolades is acknowledging and depicting unreduced minorities—especially marginalized voices—in writing. We are not a monolith. Our stories are as complicated and intersectional as anyone else’s.
by Cat Rambo,
I’ve talked about how to work with a mentor previously, so I wanted to follow-up on that by talking about something that overlaps a bit with that: asking for favors.
by Katherine Quevedo
Looking for unconventional, potentially striking ways to explore what it means to be human in your writing? It may seem counterintuitive, but personification—ascribing human qualities to inanimate objects—can open new avenues to plumb the depths of human experience.
by Martin Jenkins
One of the pleasures of genre is that it lets us identify a type of writing that we know we like. We’d feel short-changed if a crime novel didn’t feature a crime, after all, or if a romance didn’t put the travails of a relationship front and center. What we don’t want to see, however, is a mere repetition of genre tropes and clichés – it’s what is fresh and different in a work of fiction that keeps us turning the page while still being identifiably a genre work.
by Amelia Wiens
One of the best parts of science fiction and fantasy is the worldbuilding. A key part of creating interesting worlds is creating diverse cultures that vary in some way from our own norms. That being said, it can be so hard to get out of our own culture’s point of view and redefine elements that we unconsciously take for granted.
by Hunter Liguore
What do you fear when you sit down to write? Fear can be the debilitating emotion that prevents us from getting into the chair in the first place. It’s the force that makes lengthy excuses for why we can’t write. Next to procrastination, fear can cause us to abandon projects, call it quits, or worse, abandon the writing completely.
by Wendy Nikel
According to Forbes and other market researchers, audiobook sales are currently experiencing a major boom. With Science Fiction & Fantasy being the third-most-popular genre for this format, I decided a few months ago that I was going to try my hand at getting my books – a time travel novella series originally published in 2018-2019 by World Weaver Press – into this market. Here’s how it went.
by Setsu Uzumé
From Kickstarter to ko-fi to patreon, the search for funding can be a huge challenge. I recently attended a lecture provided by the St. Louis chapter of the Volunteer Lawyers and Accountants for the Arts on the subject of applying for grants. Some of the most basic hurdles include finding grants that might be a good fit for your work, and how to prepare your materials in a way to make it easy for the folks reading your submission.
by Eva Scalzo
There are things you want to be sure you’re asking beginning on that first call, when you’re trying to see if an agent will be a good fit for you
Reprints a number of Jane Yolen’s dark short stories where the frisson of terror reigns. Yolen is a past president of SFWA, winner of 2 Nebulas and 3 World Fantasy Awards. Her 400th book will be out in 2021.
Cath Schaff-Stump writes speculative fiction for children and adults, from humor to horror. You can find her at Facebook, Goodreads, Amazon, @cathschaffstump, and cathschaffstump.com.
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