HARDCOVERS Months on list Last month
System Collapse, Martha Wells (Tordotcom) 1 –
Iron Flame, Rebecca Yarros (Red Tower) 1 –
Fourth Wing
(date: 2024-02-24 18:31:22)
date: 2024-02-23, from: Locus Magazine
Finalists for the 2023 Analog Analytical Laboratory (AnLab) Awards, and the 38th Asimov’s Readers’ Awards, have been announced, with many finalists available to read online.
Analog Science Fiction and Fact Analytical Laboratory Award Finalists
BEST NOVELLAS
“To Fight the Colossus“, Adam-Troy Castro (July/August 2023)
“The Tinker and the Timestream“, Carolyn Ives Gilman (March/April 2023)
“The Elephant-Maker”, Alec Nevala-Lee (January/February 2023)
“Flying Carpet“, Rajnar Vajra (November/December 2023)
“Poison“, Jay Werkheiser & …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/2023-analog-anlab-and-asimovs-readers-awards-finalists/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-23, from: Locus Magazine
Finalists have been announced for the 2023 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. Categories and works of genre interest follow.
Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction
Fiction
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/2023-l-a-times-book-prize-finalists/ Save to Pocket
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-23, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
A fun interview extract about the upcoming auction: https://youtu.be/wwCct125y7Y?si=9Ngipdq3C9WlQWpv
https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3km4k3me3p22m Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-23, from: Final Draft blog
“I think what’s unique about this biopic and about Bob [Marley’s] story is that it really wasn’t about his ego, it wasn’t about him trying to be the biggest star in the world. It was about him connecting with God. I mean, he would smoke weed to kind of lower his ego and raise his consciousness so that he could read scripture, right? He would take these basic concepts: love thy neighbor, all people are equal, and try and channel that and inhabit that,” says Frank E. Flowers, co-writer of Bob Marley: One Love.
https://blog.finaldraft.com/write-on-bob-marley-one-love-writers-terence-winter-and-frank-e.-flowers Save to Pocket
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-23, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
From the NYT:
Neil Gaiman on the Collectibles He’s Auctioning https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/23/arts/design/neil-gaiman-auction-collectibles.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Xk0.5PkB.9iQtuvn6Bwof&smid=nytcore-android-share
https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3km3xwkqidl2j Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-23, from: Locus Magazine
The Parliament, Aimee Pokwatka (Tordotcom 978-1-25082-097-6, 320pp, $28.99, hc) Cover by Jaya Miceli. January 2024.
Aimee Pokwatka leans into the absurdist, and refuses explanations in her fiction. Her debut, Self-Portrait with Nothing (2022), has an artist with the ability to bring variants of her portrait subjects into this world; how this works is never explained. Rather, the focus is on relationships: between the artist’s own variants, between the artist and …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/alexandra-pierce-reviews-the-parliament-by-aimee-pokwatka/ Save to Pocket
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-23, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
This thread…
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-23, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
The lovely LitJoy edition of STARDUST. (They have others lined up as well.)
https://litjoycrate.com/products/stardust-illustrated-special-edition
https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3km3sudgzm22y Save to Pocket
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-23, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
It’s from Litjoy: https://litjoycrate.com/products/stardust-illustrated-special-edition
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https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3km3sc46osv26 Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-23, from: Final Draft blog
Bob Marley may never have discovered his voice. Amid the turmoil in Jamaica, his life could have ended before he could ignite the world with songs of peace and freedom. Or he could have chosen an easier path, but then there likely wouldn’t have been a biopic created based on his life. Bob Marley: One Love shows how Marley’s success and determination for peace sparked a musical revolution and changed the world.
https://blog.finaldraft.com/what-bob-marley-one-love-teaches-you-about-writing-a-biopic Save to Pocket
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-23, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
Isn’t it pretty?
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https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3km3ncmdc6m2m Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-22, from: Locus Magazine
2023 wound up being a strange reading year for me. I started the year with a big move: from Chicago back to beautiful Buffalo, NY. While it’s wonderful to be back east and closer to the mountains, being so far from Chicago’s amazing literary scene has been hard. I’ve particularly missed the wonderful speculative book clubs I was part of there – Think Galactic and the Chicago Nerd Social Club …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/the-year-in-review-2023-by-jake-casella-brookins/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-22, from: Locus Magazine
The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced the final ballot for the 2023 Bram Stoker Awards:
Superior Achievement in a Novel
Superior Achievement in a First Novel
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/2023-stoker-awards-final-ballot/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-22, from: Locus Magazine
The Butcher of the Forest, Premee Mohamed (Tordotcom 978-1-250-88178-6, $18.99, 160pp, tp) February 2024. Cover by Andrew Davis.
It seems to me that I’ve read more books that have to do with weird forests over the last couple of years (some kind of Otherness, other land, or strange and inimical powers deep within the woods) than I have in a long while: Hannah Whitten’s fantasy-romance For the Wolf comes …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/liz-bourke-reviews-the-butcher-of-the-forest-by-premee-mohamed/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-21, from: Locus Magazine
The Deluge, Stephen Markley (Simon & Schuster 978-1-98212-309-3, $32.50, 896pp, hc) January 2023.
I won’t lie. I balked at reading Stephen Markley’s second novel, The Deluge. At nearly 900 pages, I knew it would take me two weeks to read, time I could spend working through a backlog of 2023 books that I’ve been meaning to pick up (including new novels from Francis Spufford, Daniel Mason, Emily Habeck, …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/ian-mond-reviews-deluge-by-stephen-markley/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-21, from: Literature & a Latte blog
<p>In addition to being a powerful, flexible tool for writing long-form documents, Scrivener is a great app for storing information. <a href="https://www.literatureandlatte.com/blog/use-scriveners-research-folder-to-store-information-about-your-project" target="_blank">The dedicated Research folder in the Binder</a> of Scrivener projects is designed for writers who want to have research materials and other information handy when working on a project.</p>You're not limited to storing additional content in the Research folder; you can store information and files in other folders as well. You can even create a Scrivener project to store all sorts of information and to serve as your second brain. Here's how to use Scrivener to store all types of information, and access it quickly.
What's a second brain?
You deal with emails, texts, and articles every day, and you attend meetings and seminars, and take classes. Your brain is constantly digesting new information, but forgetting most of it. If you can store much of that information in a single repository, so you can search for it when you need it, you won’t have to try to remember things you don't need to know often.
The idea of the second brain was developed by Tiago Forte, as a "method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential." The principle was to create "an external, centralized, digital repository for the things you learn," because "Our brains […] can only store a few thoughts at any one time. Fundamentally, our brains are for having ideas, not storing them."
This sort of data repository has been around for a long time; many productivity books have been written explaining different methods of dealing with this glut of information, and hundreds of productivity apps offer ways to store information. But if you're a Scrivener user, why not create a Scrivener project as your second brain?
Creating a second brain Scrivener project
If you've used Scrivener, you're familiar with the Binder, the sidebar at the left of the app's window which you populate with files and folders. When writing a book, you may set up folders for chapters and use files for scenes. When creating a second brain project, you can use the folders for anything you want: notes, emails, ideas, PDFs, links, photos, videos, and more. By default, Scrivener suggests that you use the Research folder to store all these items so they don't get in the way of your project, but there's no reason why you couldn't use any folder in the Binder to store information. (One exception is media files; see below.)
Once you've created the project, you can start adding content to it as you find things you want to restore. Much of the content you'll add will be text you've copied from the web, from articles, emails, or documents. For this type of text, you can create new files in any folder in the Binder, or you could just paste the text at the end of one larger file, which may contain a specific type of content, such as emails, articles, or reviews.
Importing content into Scrivener projects
In addition to manually pasting text into your project, Scrivener lets you import a number of file types:
RTF, or rich text documents
RTFD, a proprietary Apple rich text format
DOC and DOCX word files
ODT, Open Document Text documents
TXT, plain text documents
PDFs
HTML files
Final Draft files
Fountain plain text files
OPML, Outline Processor Markup Language Files
Files with no extensionFor many of these file types, you can just drag them to a folder in the Binder. Exceptions are PDF files and media files, such as audio and video files, which can only reside in the Research folder. However, you can make sub-folders in the Research folder for each of these types of files.
Scrivener has a built-in PDF viewer, with controls in the window footer that make it easy to flip through pages in these documents. See Chapter 8.1.3 of the Scrivener manual for more on viewing PDFs and other media files.
<figure class="article__image">
<img src="https://www.literatureandlatte.com/assets/image/blog/article/blog-images/second-brain2-imageoptim.png" alt="" />
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<p><em>Tip: if you create a folder to store PDFs, you can switch to Corkboard view when examining that folder to see all the PDFs as index cards.</em></p>You can import web pages to your Scrivener project, and you can view them the way they appear on the web. This is another type of content that cannot be stored in the Binder. To import a web page, choose File > Import > Web Pages, then paste the URL in the dialog.
<figure class="article__image">
<img src="https://www.literatureandlatte.com/assets/image/blog/article/blog-images/second-brain1.png" alt="" />
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<p>When you import web pages, Scrivener stores them as they are at the time of the import; these are not live web pages, but you can click the link that displays in the footer at the bottom of the window to access a current version of that page. Note that Scrivener can't import web pages that require you to log into an account, such as Google Docs. But you can copy the text from that type of document and then paste it into a file in your Binder.</p>Scrivener can convert web pages and PDFs to text documents, so you can edit their text if you want. Select a document and choose Documents > Convert > Web Page to Text or PDF File to Text. If you always want Scrivener to convert web pages when you import them, go to Settings / Options > Sharing. On the Import tab, enable Convert imported WebArchives and web pages to text. Note that you will lose much of the formatting when you convert these files.
Accessing your second brain in Scrivener
It's one thing to store a lot of information in a Scrivener project, but you need to also be able to access that information. Scrivener's powerful find feature lets you search your entire project, and even search text in PDFs (if the PDF files aren’t just scans of documents). You can also create search collections to return to specific searches with just a couple of clicks.
You can also view multiple items at the same time, by splitting the Scrivener Editor; this way, you can view two or more files at the same time to gather information or compare them.
While it may seem complex to set up a second brain Scrivener project, don’t forget that it’s just a repository and that you’re not meant to remember everything you add. As you build your second brain, you’ll get used to searching this project for something that you recall having added, but without remembering its specifics. The whole point of a second brain is to allow you to forget details and call them up when you need them.
<p>Kirk McElhearn is a <a href="https://kirkville.com" target="_blank">writer</a>, <a href="https://kirkville.com/podcasts/" target="_blank">podcaster</a>, and <a href="https://kirkville.com/kirks-photos-2/" target="_blank">photographer</a>. He is the author of <a href="https://www.literatureandlatte.com/store" target="_blank">Take Control of Scrivener</a>, and host of the podcast <a href="https://podcast.scrivenerapp.com" target="_blank">Write Now with Scrivener</a>.</p>
https://www.literatureandlatte.com/blog/how-to-create-a-scrivener-project-to-use-as-your-second-brain Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-21, from: Locus Magazine
Author Steve Miller, 73, best known for the Liaden Universe series co-written with wife Sharon Lee, died suddenly on February 20, 2024, as reported by Lee on Facebook.
Steven Richard Miller was born July 31, 1950 in Baltimore MD. He attended the University of Maryland, where he worked on college newpaper The Retriever and founded the science fiction club. He was the curator of the UMBC Albin O. Kuhn Library …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/steve-miller-1950-2023/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-20, from: Locus Magazine
The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has opened applications their 2024 career mentoring program, seeking both mentors and mentees. The program is “is an all-volunteer service provided free of charge… with the objective of providing community, sharing knowledge, and offering networking opportunities.”
Applications are open from February 13 to February 27, 2024 at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time.
For more information, or to apply, see the announcement on the …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/sfwa-career-mentorship-program-open-to-applications/ Save to Pocket
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-20, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
That’s her day ruined.
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date: 2024-02-20, from: Locus Magazine
The Parliament, Aimee Pokwatka (Tordotcom 978-1-250-82097-6, $27.99, 320pp, hc) January 2024.
Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film The Birds was based, a bit, on a Daphne du Maurier short story of the same name which itself was inspired by du Maurier’s experience seeing a farmer attacked by a flock of seagulls. (If you never saw The Birds, head to YouTube for the phone booth scene.) Author Aimee Pokwatka takes the …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/colleen-mondor-reviews-the-parliament-by-aimee-pokwatka/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-20, from: Locus Magazine
Once upon a time, bad things happened and eventually, things got better. While this might be true for certain stories, real life, plagued by ongoing pandemics and genocides, rarely offers such neat conclusions. Perhaps that is why we repeatedly turn to art – not only to find escape and solace, but also, wisdom, empathy, and more urgently so, the will to resist and survive, despite the odds. And as the …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/the-year-in-review-2023-by-archita-mittra/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-20, from: Locus Magazine
The Locus Bestsellers for February include top titles: System Collapse by Martha Wells (Tordotcom), Dune by Frank Herbert (Ace), Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree (Tor), and Star Wars: The High Republic: The Eye of Darkness by George Mann (Random House Worlds).
HARDCOVERS Months on list Last month
System Collapse, Martha Wells (Tordotcom) 1 –
Iron Flame, Rebecca Yarros (Red Tower) 1 –
Fourth Wing
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/locus-bestsellers-february-4/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-20, from: Locus Magazine
Albert, Melissa: The Bad Ones (Macmillan/Flatiron 9781250894892, $19.99, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 02/20/2024)
Young-adult contemporary thriller/dark fantasy novel. Nora looks into the disappearance of four people who vanished in a single night, one her estranged best friend, in a town with a sinister magical history.
Armentrout, Jennifer L. & Salvador, Rayvn: Visions of Flesh and Blood (Evil Eye Concepts/Blue Box Press 9781957568324, $31.99, 578pp, formats: hardcover, trade paperback, …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/new-books-20-february-2024/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-20, from: Final Draft blog
In my article “You’ve Finished Your Screenplay. Now What?”, I discussed the various steps a screenwriter should take when they’re ready to present their screenplay to the industry: researching the business, entering screenwriting contests, submitting your script to agents and management companies, etc.
https://blog.finaldraft.com/how-to-presenting-your-screenplay-to-the-industry Save to Pocket
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-20, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
This is monstrous.
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date: 2024-02-20, from: Locus Magazine
“Lolo’s Last Run” by Emma Kerkman is the winner of the 2024 Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing.
The complete list of honors is:
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/2024-dell-award-winners/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-20, from: Locus Magazine
Nominees have been announced for the Splatterpunk Awards, “honoring superior achievement for works published in 2023 in the sub-genres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror.”
Best Novel
Pedo Island Bloodbath, Duncan Ralston (Shadow Work)
Along the River of Flesh, Kristopher Triana (Bad Dream)
Best Novella
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/2024-splatterpunk-awards-nominees/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-19, from: Locus Magazine
Sarah J. Maas’s House of Flame and Shadow slips out of first place on the four print lists compiled here, but remains in the top 10 on all of them, and ahead of the two Rebecca Yarros novels.
Title Debut / #wks on any list NYT 02.25 LAT 02.18 USAT 02.11 PW 02.19 Amz (02.19) UK: Amz UK (02.19) Canada: Amz.ca (02.19)
Items on list -x- number of lists surveyed …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/weekly-bestsellers-19-february-2024/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-19, from: Locus Magazine
Kinning, Nisi Shawl (Tor 978-1-25021-269-6, $28.99, 432pp, hc) January 2024.
Nisi Shawl’s 2016 Everfair was one of the more provocative alternate histories of the past decade, with its steampunk Africa giving birth to a safe-haven country called Everfair, carved out of the oppressively brutal Belgian Congo of King Leopold and financed in part by British socialists and African-American missionaries. It was a sprawling, ambitious narrative, covering some 30 years …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/gary-k-wolfe-reviews-kinning-by-nisi-shawl/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-19, from: Locus Magazine
2023 was a bummer: We published our final issue of Fantasy Magazine in October. All the same, it was a wonderful issue, and a strong way to go out. But there was no shortage of excellent short fiction to be found elsewhere. Besides the many intriguing magazines regularly putting out stories, there was a wealth of books that folks who love short fiction should consider picking up.
My caveat: These …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/the-year-in-review-2023-by-arley-sorg/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-18, from: Final Draft blog
“I always go back to theme. Why are you writing this story? What is that final couple of minutes of the movie and what do you want the audience to feel? I kind of always build backward from that in some ways. In a movie, how do I make the 118 minutes preceding those two minutes build to those last two minutes? To me that’s a really good film. And anything that’s not helping build to those last two minutes, throw it out!,” says John Orloff, co-executive producer and writer of Masters of the Air, the new nine-part series streaming on AppleTV+.
https://blog.finaldraft.com/write-on-masters-of-the-air-showrunner-john-orloff Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-18, from: Locus Magazine
Exordia, Seth Dickinson (Tordotcom 978-1250233011, hardcover, 544pp, $29.99) January 2024
Seth Dickinson’s Baru Cormorant trilogy, known collectively as The Masquerade, was a splashy debut, earning him many accolades and fans. So when his next book, “a gonzo space opera and alien techno-thriller” titled Exordia, was announced in 2018, excitement grew. Six years later, after some public wistful wondering as to when the book would actually appear, Exordia finally …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/paul-di-filippo-reviews-exordia-by-seth-dickinson/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-18, from: IF Database News
The 2023 IFDB Awards ran from February 1st to February 17th. Winners can be found here.
Congratulations to all winners, and thanks to everyone who participated!
https://ifdb.org/news?item=139 Save to Pocket
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-18, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
The heartbreak of the Hugo mess is posts like these.
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