(date: 2024-05-03 22:49:20)
date: 2024-05-03, from: Interesting, a blog on writing
I’m in.
https://inneresting.substack.com/p/199-hack-and-backslash
date: 2024-05-03, from: Locus Magazine
Join MC Henry Lien and special guest Connie Willis at the 2024 Locus Awards, June 19-22, 2024. Get your tickets now. Online or in-person, we can’t wait to see you!
WEDNESDAY – FRIDAY: We’ll kick off the event with a series of online readings in the evenings starting Wednesday, June 19, with several readers each evening and a Q&A, and an online meetup.
SATURDAY: Saturday will have several …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/05/locus-awards-coming-up-in-june/
date: 2024-05-03, from: Locus Magazine
Reckoning Spring ’24 F&SF 1-2/24 Strange Horizons 1/29/24, 2/5/24, 2/12/24 Worlds of Possibility 2/24
The new year brings a new issue of Reckoning, featuring poetry, fiction, and nonfiction focused on issues of environmental justice. Kelsey Day is among the poets complicating and keenly describing the intersections of ecological and social violation in “50% off Venus Fly Traps”, which finds a person plant shopping and running into the ways …Read More
date: 2024-05-03, from: Final Draft blog
Known as a go-to writer for the genre, showrunner Eric Wallace’s journey into television started as a 6-year-old really into horror movies, Godzilla and Frankenstein. That passion has taken him from fun childhood filmmaking to show running. Wallace recalled, “I started to obsessively study horror movies and when I was twelve I co-wrote my first screenplay on notebook paper.”
https://blog.finaldraft.com/finding-your-lane-with-the-flash-showrunner-eric-wallace
date: 2024-05-03, from: Final Draft blog
Known as a go-to writer for the genre, showrunner Eric Wallace’s journey into television started as a 6-year-old really into horror movies, Godzilla and Frankenstein. That passion has taken him from fun childhood filmmaking to show running. Wallace recalled, “I started to obsessively study horror movies and when I was twelve I co-wrote my first screenplay on notebook paper.”
https://blog.finaldraft.com/bricks-of-breaking-in-the-flash-writer-eric-wallace
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-05-03, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
The secret of life, the key to all wisdom.
[contains quote post or other embedded content]
https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3krlqsvsebk2j
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-05-02, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
A reminder that Fountain Pen discussion keeps going at the Fountain Pen Feed: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:nkahctfdi6bxk72umytfwghw/feed/aaad2q353alqm
[contains quote post or other embedded content]
https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3krjzutzfi22t
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-05-02, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
An amazing writer. Her Little Holidays in Hell collection from the Women’s Press was filled with uncategorizable goodies.
[contains quote post or other embedded content]
https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3krjt2payp22k
date: 2024-05-02, from: Locus Magazine
The 78th Annual Edgar Awards were presented May 1, 2024, at the New York Marriott Marquis Times Square. The Awards are given by the Mystery Writers of America (MWA), “honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television.” Winners of genre interest follow.
Flags on the Bayou by James Lee Burke (Grove Atlantic – Atlantic Monthly Press) won in the Best Novel category, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/05/2024-edgar-awards-winners/
date: 2024-05-02, from: Locus Magazine
Kurdistan + 100 , Mustafa Gündoğdu & Orsola Casagrande, eds. (Comma Press 978-1-91269-736-6, £10.99, 237pp, tp). November 2023. Cover by David Eckersall.
When you finish reading the last page of the last story in this strong anthology of strong stories, you are not yet done with the book. There is an afterword by editors Mustafa Gündoğdu and Orsola Casagrande, which probably was not part of the original concept. It is …Read More
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-05-02, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
Stardust was written with a Waterman, my first fountain pen as an adult, bought through the Levenger catalogue (which was how you bought things in rural Wisconsin in 1994).
[contains quote post or other embedded content]
https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3krj5whevds2w
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-05-02, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
I’m glad. It helps my weird brain doing it like that too.
[contains quote post or other embedded content]
https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3krj5jqqulc2k
date: 2024-05-02, from: Locus Magazine
The Man Who Saw Seconds, Alexander Boldizar (Clash 978-1-96098-807-2, $19.95, 325pp, tp) Cover by Joel Amat Güell. May 2024.
A precog, an anarchist, and an assistant director of the NSA walk into a bar….
Preble Jefferson can see five seconds into the future. Fish is an anarchist, lawyer, and Jefferson’s friend. Thad Bigman is an assistant director at the NSA. The action in The Man Who Saw Seconds centres on …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/05/alexandra-pierce-reviews-the-man-who-saw-seconds-by-alexander-boldizar/
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-05-01, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
It’s not up to me. It’s up to viewing figures, completion rates, and algorithms. If you like it get people to watch it.
[contains quote post or other embedded content]
https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3krhnh5um322p
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-05-01, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
I would love to do this if I didn’t dislike Mont Blancs so much. One day Pilot or Lamy or someone nice will come and call…
[contains quote post or other embedded content]
https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3krhneifvdc2a
date: 2024-05-01, from: Locus Magazine
The Proper Thing and Other Stories, Seanan McGuire (Subterranean ISBN 978-1-64524-192-8, 508pp. $50.00, hc) April 2024. Cover by Carla McNeil.
Probably best-known for her Wayward Children series, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winner Seanan McGuire is also a prolific writer of short fiction. McGuire’s second collection (she has two others writing as Mira Grant) is both massive and enchanting. The two dozen stories tend toward darkness but, more often than not, …Read More
date: 2024-05-01, from: Locus Magazine
Author Paul Auster, 77, died April 30, 2024 of lung cancer at home in Brooklyn NY. Auster wrote more than 30 books, inluding literary novels and non-fiction, and occasionally incorporated surreal and genre elements in his fiction.
Paul Benjamin Auster was born February 3, 1947 in Newark NJ. He attended Columbia University, graduating with bachelor’s and master’s degrees before moving to Paris in 1970, where he worked as a translator. …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/05/paul-auster-1947-2024/
date: 2024-05-01, from: Interesting, a blog on writing
Can you say no when you see a problem with the notes?
https://inneresting.substack.com/p/making-unnecessary-and-possibly-horrible
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-05-01, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
They can’t hurt.
[contains quote post or other embedded content]
https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3krh4kgd4222b
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-05-01, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
It’s up to people watching it and the Netflix Algorithms – how much they watch it, how many of them finish all 8 episodes within the time frame.
[contains quote post or other embedded content]
https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3krh2u7pc2224
date: 2024-05-01, from: Locus Magazine
khōréō 3.3
khōréō 3.3 includes two short stories and a novelette in two parts. The one I found to be most effective of the three is “The Blue Glow” by Lisa Hosokawa, which follows a failed suicide pilot as he returns home in search of his family, and finds only destruction. His journey is plagued by ghosts, but he holds onto hope that his mother and baby …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/05/a-c-wise-reviews-short-fiction-khoreo/
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-05-01, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
Terrifying and educational.
[contains quote post or other embedded content]
https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3krgkkajv4k2u
date: 2024-05-01, from: Locus Magazine
The May 2024 issue of Locus has interviews with Malka Older and Victor Manibo. News includes the 2024 Hugo Awards Ballot, Bethany Jacobs’s Philip K. Dick Award win, the Small Press Distribution shutdown, the Chesley Awards winners, and more. Photo reports cover the 2024 International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Norwescon 46, and the Williamson Lectureship. Daria Piskozub reports on SF in Ukraine: On Fantasy Tropes and Romanticizing …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/05/issue-760-table-of-contents-may-2024/
date: 2024-05-01, from: Literature & a Latte blog
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="200" scrolling="no" src="https://player.fireside.fm/v2/FGsx06Yz+f6PZxkJY?theme=dark" width="740"></iframe></p>Show notes:
<a href="https://www.veronicahenry.net/" target="_blank">Veronica G. Henry</a>
<a href="https://www.veronicahenry.net/copy-of-bacchanal" target="_blank">The Canopy Keepers</a>
<a href="https://www.japan.travel/en/guide/forest-bathing/" target="_blank">Shinrin-yoku - forest bathing</a>
<a href="https://www.literatureandlatte.com/blog/do-you-write-longhand-store-handwritten-notes-and-texts-in-scrivener-projects" target="_blank">How to Store Handwritten Notes and Texts in Scrivener Projects</a>
<a href="https://amazonpublishing.amazon.com/47north.html" target="_blank">47North</a>
<a href="https://tracyclarkbooks.com/Books/hide-harriet-foster-1/" target="_blank">Tracy Clark: Hide</a>Learn more about Scrivener, and check out the ebook Take Control of Scrivener.
If you like the podcast, please follow it in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Leave a rating or review, and tell your friends. And check out past episodes of Write Now with Scrivener.
Veronica Henry has written four novels, across different but related genres. She has written fantasy, mysteries, and thrillers. Most authors stick to one genre, but Veronica likes to write “what I like to call speculative fiction, which encompasses a wide range of fiction, about the fantastical, things that are a little outside of your everyday life.”
Early on, she faced a choice whether she should “establish a career writing one thing for a very long period of time, and then branch out, or book the trend and write what I want.” She chose the genre switch, and hasn’t regretted it; neither have, it seems, her fans.
Veronica’s first published novel is Bacchanal, a fantasy novel, but, before that, she says “The first novel that I wrote was a sci-fi novel that no one will ever see. Thank goodness.” But after that, influenced by Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, she asked herself “that quintessential author question. What if? What if this was told from my perspective, and the perspective of someone in my family in South Carolina. But that “what if” question about what that story would look like, told from a perspective set in the South, a perspective from someone that was black, African-American. I thought this could be interesting. Of course, the story that I told ended up being nothing like Something Wicked This Way Comes. But it served as that spearhead of the idea to say, ‘Okay, I could take this in a different direction.’”
I mentioned that I had grown up in the 1970s, reading authors like Ray Bradbury, and Robert Heinlein, and there were very few African-American voices in science fiction. Veronica said that it was the same for her. “It took a long while for me to even discover Samuel R. Delaney and Octavia Butler, who were our pioneers in the space. But I did the same thing as you: I read Herbert, I read Heinlein, and I read Bradbury, I read all of those folks. And I read those books over and over again. But again, not discovering that there were people like me who did this much until later had an impact.”
Science fiction can be set anywhere, such as Veronica’s novels set in the depression in the South, or in New Orleans; it gives much more latitude than other genres. “It absolutely does. It's one of those genres that makes it very clear that no matter where you are from, no matter what you look like, no matter your gender, our stories are really very similar. We all want the same things. We all struggle with the same things.”
Veronica’s latest novel, The Canopy Keepers, is an ecological science fantasy. “I read about the fires that happen in Sequoia National Park and the devastation to the giant sequoia trees. And I thought that if we keep doing this, we destroy these trees, we destroy the trees in the Amazon, we are setting ourselves up for some trouble. So I got the idea to write a story about nature and about the environment, but from the perspective of nature being a little angry at us about what we're doing. We always see nature as this passive victim of human evolution. I wanted to spin that and say, ‘What if nature is taking notice and saying, You know what, I've had enough.’”
Veronica mentioned two books that influenced The Canopy Keepers: Richard Powers’ The Overstory, and Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation. She said that, when reading books like that, “the trick is to read them during the research process, before you start to write a word. That way, you have enough of a distance between another author's thoughts and another author's way of telling a story and your own, so that you're not subconsciously filtering in some of that into your own work.”
Veronica has used Scrivener to write all four of her published novels. But she writes longhand first, then types up her chapters the next day, “making some little changes on the fly, making it sound a little better. In that way, I finished with a first draft and maybe a little bit of a second draft at the same time.”
“What I love about [Scrivener] is, that I never found anything that matched everything that I need in a writing tool. Being able to organize my research and have it at hand is critical. Being able to label and color-code my chapters, because I often write from multiple points of view. And there's so much research that goes into my work that has to be organized. I have what I call the vault in my Binder. I have information about certain things about ecology, about the roles of firefighters, what their job is like, what type of equipment they use. All that research, all those notes that I take by hand, generally end up in Scrivener, so I can easily access them, particularly when I'm going through the editing process.”
<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>
date: 2024-05-01, from: John August blog
The original post for this episode can be found here. John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August. Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin. John: And this is Episode 637 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, Cowboy Carter is the new […] The post Scriptnotes, Episode 637: Love and Money, Transcript first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/scriptnotes-episode-637-love-and-money-transcript
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-04-30, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
For people who enjoyed DEAD BOY DETECTIVES, the cast and some of the creators tell you things and answer questions:
https://youtu.be/SZ46HfOaOzU?si=29vSZoS0BJtGHJ2K
https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3kres7qthh22p
date: 2024-04-30, from: Locus Magazine
Kat Clay has won the 2024 Going Under Fan Fund (GUFF), intended to send one fan from Australasia to Glasgow 2024, the 82nd Worldcon. Ian Nichols was the other nominee. There were 81 votes counted.
The fund is currently administered in Europe by Alison Scott and in Australasia by Simon Litten.
For more information, see the GUFF website.
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});https://locusmag.com/2024/04/clay-wins-2024-guff/
date: 2024-04-30, from: John August blog
John and Craig investigate what characters know and how we know they know what they know. It’s something that can be as confusing as that last sentence was, but they offer clear guidance on building informed characters, audience expectations, and how to get everybody on the same page. We also look at how ad breaks […] The post What Characters Know first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/what-characters-know
date: 2024-04-30, from: Locus Magazine
Jumpnauts, Hao Jingfang (trans. Ken Liu) (Saga 978-1-53442-211-7, 368pp, $18.99). March 2024.
Deep in the bowels of Hao Jingfang’s Jumpnauts, an alien guide reveals to the human protagonists that what defines civilisational progression, from their elevated perspective, is ‘‘the capacity for information exchange.’’ The development of writing, which allows information to be transmitted widely in space and time, was the necessary precondition to reach the ‘‘zeroth rank’’ of …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/04/niall-harrison-reviews-jumpnauts-by-hao-jingfang/
date: 2024-04-30, from: Final Draft blog
It all starts with the script. But once the script is finished and ready to be turned into a movie, writers can often feel completely cut off from the process. I’ve heard tales of screenwriters walking down a closed-off street and realizing a film they wrote was being shot, and they had no idea.
https://blog.finaldraft.com/on-set-etiquette-for-screenwriters
date: 2024-04-29, from: Locus Magazine
Submissions for the Speculative Literature Foundation’s (SLF) Older Writers Grant are open through May 31, 2024.
The $1,000 grant is awarded to a writer who is 50 years of age or older and “just starting to work at a professional level.” The award is “to be used as each writer determines will best assist their work.” The recipient will be selected by SLF members and announced on July 15, 2024. …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/04/2024-slf-writers-grant-applications-open/
date: 2024-04-29, from: Locus Magazine
Bourbon Penn
https://locusmag.com/2024/04/magazines-received-april-4/
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-04-29, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
For everyone who ever gets sad at the prices cool books go for in auctions and wishes for raffles for a good cause instead…
[contains quote post or other embedded content]
https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3krcg7zdg7c24
date: 2024-04-29, from: John August blog
The original post for this episode can be found here. John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August, and this is Episode 636 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. (Whispers:) Today on the show, what’s with all the whispering in movies? Is it a deliberate narrative […] The post Scriptnotes, Episode 636: Whispering Loudly, Transcript first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/scriptnotes-episode-636-whispering-loudly-transcript
date: 2024-04-29, from: Locus Magazine
The Omega Sci-Fi Awards has announced the finalists for its Tomorrow Prize short story competition:
Honorable mentions were given to the following stories:
The Tomorrow Prize is
https://locusmag.com/2024/04/2024-tomorrow-prize-finalists-and-green-feather-winner/
date: 2024-04-29, from: Locus Magazine
Yanekon, the 62nd Japan Science Fiction Convention, has announced the finalists for the 2024 Seiun Awards (the Japanese equivalent of the Hugo Awards), honoring the best original and translated works published last year in Japan.
Best Translated Novel
https://locusmag.com/2024/04/2024-seiun-awards-nominees/
date: 2024-04-29, from: Locus Magazine
The 40th Writers of the Future Awards and 35th Illustrators of the Future Awards gala event took place on April 25, 2024 at the Taglyan Complex in Los Angeles CA.
The Writers of the Future Golden Pen Award went to Jack Nash for the story “Son, Spirit, Snake”, and the Illustrators of the Future Golden Brush Award went to Tyler Vail for the illustration of “Squiddy”. Each Golden Award winner …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/04/2024-writers-illustrators-of-the-future/
date: 2024-04-29, from: Locus Magazine
Slipping only a bit in the rankings, Leigh Bardugo’s The Familiar remains among the top 10 fiction hardcovers on all four print lists compiled here.
Title Debut / #wks on any list NYT 05.05 LAT 04.28 USAT 04.21 PW 04.29 Amz (04.29) UK: Amz UK (04.29) Canada: Amz.ca (04.29)
Items on list -x- number of lists surveyed
10×3 10×2 150 15×3 100 100 100
Hardcovers
Andrew, Your Blood, My Bones …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/04/weekly-bestsellers-29-april-2024/
date: 2024-04-29, from: Locus Magazine
The Dead Cat Tail Assassins, P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom 978-1-25076-704-2, $20.99, 224pp, hc) April 2024.
Like Chekhov’s famous gun, it seems to be an unstated principle among writers as diverse as Robert Ludlum and Octavia E. Butler that a character suffering from total amnesia in the first act is in for some world-shaking revelations by the third. The same is true of P. Djèlí Clark’s The Dead Cat Tail …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/04/gary-k-wolfe-reviews-the-dead-cat-tail-assassins-by-p-djeli-clark/
date: 2024-04-29, from: Locus Magazine
The 2024 Australasian Shadows Awards (previously known as the Australia Shadows Awards) shortlist has been announced. The award is given by the Australasian Horror Writers Association (AHWA) for “the finest in horror and dark fiction published by an Australasian within the calendar year.”
Novel
https://locusmag.com/2024/04/2024-australasian-shadows-awards-shortlist/
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-04-28, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
Big proud happy face. Toby created the version of Dead Boy Detectives that inspired Steve Yockey to make the TV show. (Toby, now’s when you point out to DC Comics how much you’d like to write a DBD novel.)
[contains quote post or other embedded content]
https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3kr7uhw2uml2d
date: 2024-04-28, from: Locus Magazine
A View from the Stars, Cixin Liu (Tor 978-1250292117, hardcover, 224pp, $27.99) April 2024
Most authors segregate their fiction from their non-fiction, compiling the two classes of work into separate collections. I always recall one exception I read as a teen, a minor Frederik Pohl volume titled Digits & Dastards, which featured two essays along with the stories. And I suppose that Harlan Ellison’s inclusion of long anecdotal …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/04/paul-di-filippo-reviews-a-view-from-the-stars-by-cixin-liu/
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-04-28, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
Agreed.
[contains quote post or other embedded content]
https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3kr7edviho22q
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-04-28, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
I just backed This is Only Earth, My Dear - Poems & Photos on @Kickstarter
This is Only Earth, My Dear - Poems & Photos, via @Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kylecassidy/this-is-only-earth-my-dear-poems-and-photos?ref=android_project_share
@kylecassidy.bsky.social
https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3kr7c6xgyhu2e
date: 2024-04-28, from: Locus Magazine
The Truth of the Aleke, Moses Ose Utomi (Tordotcom 978-1-2508-4905-2, $24.99, 112pp, hc) March 2023. Cover by Alyssa Winans.
Among the more fascinating things that Moses Ose Utomi seems to be doing with his Forever Desert series is looking at how worldviews change with experience. The protagonist of The Lies of the Ajungo, a young teenage boy, cut through the titular deception with a heroic self-sacrifice. Generations later, …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/04/jake-casella-brookins-reviews-truth-of-the-aleke-by-moses-ose-utomi/