Rob Horning in The New Inquiry says publishers will not only use data collected from eReaders to track your buying habits, they’ll use it to track your reading habits. Did you skip to the end of the book? They’ll know. Did you give up on page 28? They’ll know.
I don’t often write posts like this, because it’s really like shooting fish in a barrel. And there are so many red flags here that savvy writers may wonder why I bother. But there are a lot of new writers searching for agents, many of whom are probably new to Writer Beware, and may not yet be clear on what to watch out for.
For the past year, I’ve been working with dancers from Netherlands Dance Theatre in The Hague on creating a tool that translates text into simple choreographies. A user types a word in a typesetting-like application that plays back this word as an uninterrupted dance sequence where dancer’s body temporarily makes positions recognizable as letters.
The Banff Centre, located in Banff National Park of Canada, has issued a press release that indicates they are accepting applications for upcoming courses.
I’m behind the eight ball with this post, because home renovation insanity has kept me more or less offline for the past few days. Many other bloggers have beaten me to the punch with commentary on this contest, so there’s already quite a bit of information out there.
I have also heard some use “piracy” as a low-price argument. My two cents: Pricing your products at a lower price because you think they’re going to be stolen is not a business model. Why? Because you are defining your sales goals on either making more than nothing or generating revenue to cover losses you have not experienced.
Sympathy starts when we see someone in trouble. That’s not the only thing that’s required. Some people who are in terrible trouble only evoke pity or even antipathy. So there’s more to this than trouble, but trouble is where sympathy starts. So what kind of trouble are we talking about?
Writing is a rewarding and fun gig, but finding the time to write can be a challenge. The only commodity an author has are her words, and the only way to produce that commodity is to get some quality butt-in-chair action. Contrary to urban legend, stories don’t write themselves or grow on Novel Trees. So how do you find the time to make the magic happen?
Resources and Member News for Paolo Bacigalupi, Laurie Mann, Patty Jansen, Jenny Moss, Eugie Foster, Lou Antonelli, and Vonda N. McIntyre.
I’ve never been inclined to play the “what genre is it?” game or to take part in the oftentimes bloodier “that’s not such-and-such genre!” debates. Genre lines are so arbitrary and, in many regards, subjective. Like, to me, horror is more contemporary in setting, mood, and character than dark fantasy, but at the same time, urban fantasies are essentially defined by their modern settings, and they tend to be quite dark, yet I don’t consider them horror.
Val Vega is an ordinary Puerto Rican high school student until she gets drafted by aliens to serve as ambassador of the primitive planet called Earth! Two Galactic empires are on the brink of war, and only Val can salvage interstellar peace.
Myna Chang (she/her) is the host of Electric Sheep SF. Her work has been selected for Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton), Best Small Fictions, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Small Wonders, and Daily Science Fiction.
Register now for the 2024 SFWA Nebula Conference--A weekend of professional development, panels, and networking for ALL genre writers!
