Author, Futurist, Wordsmith for Hire
I hope it’s no secret to many reading here that I don’t consider myself wholly white. Some of you reading since 1998 may know a thing or two about me, but since I’ve become published in novel form more people are coming to the blog and reading and finding out about me online and express…
Angry Black Woman gets heated discussions going in her comments about diversity in fiction markets. Nick Mamatas weighs in as well. As for myself, online I keep seeing the same repetition. Someone says SF/F isn’t diverse, people respond by chanting “Hopkinson, Butler, Delany, Barnes” like it’s a magical phrase that dispels the +10 diversity attack…
Mfitz in the comments says: I don’t get the appeal of zombies. It’s a weird twist for me, I didn’t use to like them, but I started researching and watching them all for a story I was doing and ended up getting hooked on them. Why zombies work: 1) guilt free action/adventure mass killing and…
The results of my survey concerning how many books a published writer wrote before they sold their first are in. This survey came about because not too long ago I overhead a newer writer talking about the fact that he had been submitting his first novel to publishers and was growing quite discouraged by the…
I invited blog readers to post questions that I would do my best to answer in this post. Kenneth asks: I’m sure you’ve covered this at some time, but when did you “decide” you wanted to be a writer? I know you read a lot growing up”¦was it something you just came naturally to, or…
Douglas Blaine has a response to Pam Noles’ essay Shame. He writes: For a brief time in the third grade of the Catholic school I went to in Kansas (from what I hear not the same as Catholic school back east) there was a girl named Rochelle Ramsey that I was good friends with the…
In 2005 and 2007 108 science fiction and fantasy authors replied to a survey I did asking what they got for an advance for a book. Basically I put up a survey on my website that people could fill out who were SF or Fantasy authors (sorry other genres, I don’t log your data, even…
Sartorias and Justine Larbalestier dish about whether young writers can get published. Justine: Recently I’ve had a number of letters from teenagers wanting advice on how to get their novel published and wondering whether their age will make it harder for them to get it into print. Specifically, would they be discriminated against because they…
Paperback Writer (or also known as SF Writer S.L Viehl) corrects herself here about the advice that you sell a book to a publisher first and then get an agent. An agent popped in to negate that, and I added that I’d also acquired my agent who then sold the book to a publisher, but…
Over at Tangent Online SF fan/critic Dave Truesdale jumps the shark as he decrys the evil Liberal conspiracy to force short fiction magazine editors to buy metrosexualized short stories and so forth and so on. Nick Mamatas has his usually sharp retorts on his livejournal. Anyway, Dave wonders if SF is going soft these days….