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Guest Post: Fantasy Writer’s Use of History
Since Morris’s time, many fantasy writers have created fictional worlds using history as their foundations. Each writer has had to decide just how much history to use. I mean, and this is where it gets fascinating, where does one stop?
Quick Updates for 2011-02-02
Member News for Yasmine Galenorn and Jana Oliver.
Update on Strategic Book Publishing / Writers Literary Agency / Robert Fletcher
Many of you may already be familiar with the names in the title of this post. If you’re not, have a look at this Alert on the Writer Beware website, and at my September 2009 post about the Florida Attorney…
Call for candidates for SFWA board of directors
As we prepare to make our recommendations for the Nebula Awards ballot, SFWAns everywhere are no doubt pondering that annual question, “should I toss my hat into the ring for SFWA office?” Yes, it’s time once again to prepare for…
Conditions for Suspense: Part 7 – Character draws 1-4
In my last two posts I discussed the fact that readers are not going to hope and fear for a character unless that character raises their sympathy and sense of deservingness. But is that enough? Do readers stick around if…
Quick Updates for 2011-01-29
Member News for Eugie Foster, Tobias Buckell, Eric James Stone, David Levine, and Allan Cole.
Tidbits
New language in the termination provision of the Harper’s boilerplate gives them the right to cancel a contract if “Author’s conduct evidences a lack of due regard for public conventions and morals, or if Author commits a crime or any…
Guest Post: The Greatest Challenge Agents Will Face
The unpublished often believe that agents exist because of the publishing funnel, and to be sure, that has helped cement agents’ central importance to the publishing business. But what really enables agents to exist is the fact that up until…
Renovation Deadline
Renovation, the 69th World Science Fiction Convention, today issued a reminder that the deadline is fast approaching to gain the right to nominate for the 2011 Hugo Awards and John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.
Conditions for Suspense:
Part 6–Character deservingness
All of us have an automatic scale of justice inside of us. We can’t turn it off. Nor can we ignore it. It’s very simple. If someone’s bad outweighs their good, then we think they don’t deserve good things. Conversely,…
Quick Updates for 2011-01-22
Industry News and Member News for Sara Creasy, Dan Gollub, Karen Sandler, Jess Haines, Seanan McGuire, and Laura Anne Gilman.
Five for Friday
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…
Best Solution Author Agency (or, Beware of Agent Solicitations)
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…
Guest Post: What is Typography?
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…
The Banff Centre: Call for Applications
The Banff Centre, located in Banff National Park of Canada, has issued a press release that indicates they are accepting applications for upcoming courses.
Contest Alert: First One Publishing’s Writing Contest
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…
Guest Post: Your Business Model Is Not Your Neighbor’s
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…
Key Conditions for Reader Suspense:
Part 5 – Character troubles
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…
How to be a Writer and Have a Life: or, Livin’ the Dream
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…
Quick Updates for 2011-01-14
Resources and Member News for Paolo Bacigalupi, Laurie Mann, Patty Jansen, Jenny Moss, Eugie Foster, Lou Antonelli, and Vonda N. McIntyre.
Nebula Awards Interview: Eugie Foster by Charles Tan
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,…
The Mail I Get
Received in email this morning via Google Alerts: this press release from an outfit called 3L Publishing, announcing publication of a book called Vanity Circus: A Smart Girl’s Guide to Avoid Publishing Crap.
Angry Robot is SFWA’s newest qualifying market
The board of directors of SFWA unanimously voted to add Angry Robot to the list of SFWA qualifying markets.
Nebula Awards Interview: Christopher Barzak by Charles Tan
A teenager is inherently an outsider, because they’re in transition, unformed, changing quickly from childhood to adulthood. They’ve been given a lot of cultural freedom as a child, because they are children. You often hear people say, “They…