By Susan Defreitas The Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz, highfalutin’ literary author though he may be, has famously mourned the fact that there will be no more Octavia Butler books. The iconic Black author, who won both a PEN Lifetime Achievement Award and a MacArthur “Genius” grant—not to mention the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Locus—died in 2006, leaving […]
Read More Octavia’s Daughters: Meet the New Queens of Spec FicNo Plot? No Problem! Revised and Expanded Edition: A Low-stress, High-velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Chris Baty My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book is an excellent guide for anyone who does National Novel Writing Month and anyone who ever wanted to write a book but had no idea […]
Read More Book Review: No Plot, No Problem by Chris Baty (Revised/Expanded)Originally posted on s a gibson:
I confess, I occasionally fantasize about writing a book which completely panders to an audience just for fame and money. However, will the Faustian bargain result in having to discard my personal pleasure in storytelling, can I have it both ways. We all know of big best selling books…
Just to note: size representation is a big deal to me. I am an ex-anorexic/bulimic. Thank you to Ms. Jackson for this great article. Please share any good fat characters you can in the comments on the article, where people will read it! Image above is fan art for Miles and his somewhat-larger brother, Mark […]
Read More A Small List of Large Characters: Fat Representation in SFFBy Mandy Wallace So I’m working on this short story I started for some Glimmer Train contest or other. But it grew like a weed all unwieldy, and now it’s burst through its word count limit and its deadline. And I wish that was this story’s biggest problem. Its biggest problem is that I’m still struggling to balance ye old show versus […]
Read More Show Don’t TellWelcome to our first live #SpecWomenChat Podcast! In this monthly show, a panel of both indie and traditionally-published women speculative fiction authors will discuss issues about all things fantasy, science fiction, and issues of interest to women in the field. Some of us you’ll have heard of, others will be new discoveries for many, but […]
Read More #SpecWomenChat Podcast Episode 1: Women in Speculative FictionUPDATE: Date and time has been set at 11:45 am PST on Saturday, December 2! Join the broadcast HERE. It’s happening! For the past couple of months I’ve been talking about it, and it’s finally going to be a thing! The #SpecWomenChat Podcast will be happening LIVE on my YouTube channel on Saturday, December 2 […]
Read More #SpecWomenChat Podcast & Live YouTube Show!Fleshing out characters with believable human qualities is an art. Indirect characterization is writing that paints in character detail by showing rather than telling. Rather than only tell readers about characters’ personalities and values, you can reveal them subtly through dialogue, actions and appearances. Read these tips and examples from books: Read the full article at NowNovel.com.
Read More Indirect CharacterizationGold: The Final Science Fiction Collection by Isaac Asimov My rating: 5 of 5 stars Read for the Genre Non-Fiction and the Collections! Reading Challenges. This collection represents the last batch of stuff that Isaac Asimov gave to us. Half of it is stories, and the other half is a collection of essays about science […]
Read More Book Review: Gold by Issac AsimovBy Megan Hunter I can chart the progress of my life through the types of apocalypse I have feared. As a child, the endings I imagined were natural, even cosmic: the land swallowed by the sea, the sun swallowing the earth. When I was an adolescent the man-made came to the fore, as I searched […]
Read More The Hopeful Side of Post-Apocalyptic Fiction
