Planetside Full Archives
Planetside: The Online Magazine of SFWA
No post found!
The SFWA Blog
Guest Post: Writers and Families
My family has a strange attitude toward my writing, which I think is almost always the case unless the writer comes from a family of professional creators. (By professional, I mean people who actually make a portion of their incomes…
Confession of a Museum Bunny
by Deborah Walker Ideas for my stories come to me in museums, in galleries, in libraries. Find me upstairs (and it’s always quieter upstairs) in the British Museum trawling the past looking for future inspiration. Old books, paintings, objects are…
Guest Blog Post: In Praise of Ripening
The word has gone out that Kindle publishing is a great way to make money fast. Churn out a short novel or how-to text with series potential, follow up quickly with a sequel, price the ebooks at $.99 or $2.99,…
Guest Post: Panel Deportment and Demeanor
The problem with seeing one’s purpose on a panel as primarily that of speaking–“sharing” insights or regurgitating something recently read that relates to the subject–is that it turns panelists into lecturers. Speaking for myself, I’ve often found that the thinking,…
Guest Post: Writing And Courage
To talk about this, I need to talk about the scariest thing that ever happened to me. Bear with me.
In 1999, I was driving on the New Jersey Turnpike. The car behind me tapped my bumper, sending me fishtailing across…
Baltimore Science Fiction Society Hosts Writing Workshops
The Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS) is proud to announce the beginning of a series of day long writing workshops run by active and acclaimed professional writers in the genre of science fiction and fantasy. The first will be on…
Quick Updates for 2012-07-21
Member News for Allan Cole, Ken Liu, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Mike Allen.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America joins with the rest of our nation and the world in mourning those who were killed and injured in Aurora, Colorado early this morning, through the actions of a man whose motives…
Quick Updates for 2012-07-20
Resources and Member News for Edward M. Lerner.
Pearson Buys Author Solutions
Last March, word went out that self-publishing giant Author Solutions Inc (owner of AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Xlibris, Trafford, WordClay, Palibrio, and several others, and contractor for the self-pub divisions of several major publishers) was looking for a buyer.
It Came From Riverside!
The Eaton Collection of Science Fiction & Fantasy is the largest publicly-accessible collection of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and utopian literature in the world. For an inside look, check out the YouTube video.
Call for Guest Bloggers
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware
Would you like to be a guest blogger for Writer Beware?
To vary our subject matter and present differing points of view, we publish occasional guest blog posts on subjects relating to publishing, self-p…
Lazy Time Travel: Five Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Out
Graduation season has come and gone, but we’ve seen lots of great commencement speeches around, from Neil Gaiman’s to Aaron Sorkin’s. They made me mildly nostalgic.
Guest Post: When Did “Science Fiction” and “Apocalypse” Become Interchangeable?
Our society and technology is hardly the epitome of endeavor; to believe we’re at our pinnacle is mild hubris at best. So why should our future be worse?
Guest Post: Chasing the First Sale–Becoming a Student of the Job
Short stories are a proving ground. They let you get out there, try a bunch of things out, and make your mistakes small so you don’t have to make all of them big. When I hear an unpublished writer talking…
Guest Post: Really, Your Outline Does Not Have to Be Perfect
An outline is a roadmap. It helps you decide the overall shape of the novel. It does not lock you into that structure if you stumble upon something interesting.
Rights vs. Copyright
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware
You may have noticed that there were no posts last week. Apologies! I’ve got a humongous workload, and have had to cut myself off from the web almost entirely in order to deal with…
Andre Norton Award Jury Announced
The 2012 Andre Norton Award committee has been chosen, and will begin accepting books for consideration. Any young adult/middle grade prose or graphic novel first published in English in 2012 is eligible.
Guest Post: Presenting the Cultural Imperialism Bingo Card
If you think colonialism is dead… think again. Globalisation has indeed made the world smaller–furthering the dominance of the West over the developing world, shrinking and devaluing local cultures, and uniformising everything to Western values and Western ways of life
Finalists for the Sunburst Award Announced
The Sunburst Awards for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic are presented annually to Canadian writers with a speculative fiction novel or book-length collection of speculative fiction published any time during the previous year.
More Money-Wasting "Opportunities" For Writers
Following on my last post about how authors can waste money on promotional strategies, here are some more cash-sucking “opportunities.”
Guest Review: Prometheus–The Horror!
PROMETHEUS is the most frightening horror movie of the past 20 years. And the horror is that this is what American science will look like after a century of teaching Creationism in our schools.
Quick Updates for 2012-06-20
Resources and Member News for Jennifer Brozek, David Brin, Robert J. Sawyer, David D. Levine, Eugie Foster, Karen Azinger, and Adam Christopher.
Author Solutions Introduces BookStub
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware
Author Solutions has just introduced a new marketing service called BookStub, which it describes thusly:
Loyalty card-sized BookStubs display your cover on the front side and ordering instructions on t…