HARDCOVERS Months on list Last month
The Spellshop, Sarah Beth Durst (Bramble) 1 –
Iron Flame, Rebecca Yarros (Red Tower) 9
(date: 2024-10-26 06:11:16)
date: 2024-10-25, from: Author’s Union blog
Earlier today, the Library of Congress, following recommendations from the U.S. Copyright Office, released its final rule adopting exemptions to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act’s prohibition on circumvention of technological protection measures (e.g., DRM). As many of you know, we’ve been working closely with members of the text and data-mining community as well as our […]
date: 2024-10-25, from: John August blog
Weekend Read, our app for reading scripts on your phone, features a new curated collection of screenplays each week. This week, we look at how monster movies use their creatures to express and exploit our deepest fears. Our collection includes: A Quiet Place by Scott Beck & Bryan Woods Aliens by James Cameron An American […] The post Featured Friday: Monster Movies first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/featured-friday-monster-movies
date: 2024-10-25, from: Locus Magazine
Sarah Rees Brennan, Long Live Evil (Orbit US 8/24). A dying woman makes a magical bargain to become the villainess in her favorite fantasy series in this first volume in the Time of Iron series, an entertaining look at women’s roles and options in fantasy and ‘‘a wholehearted embrace of, and a commentary on the high-fantasy high-angst high-romance end of the fantasy genre… It’s very entertaining.’’ [Liz Bourke]
https://locusmag.com/2024/10/new-notable-3/
date: 2024-10-25, from: Locus Magazine
The Great When, Alan Moore (Bloomsbury 978-1-63557-884-3, $29.99, 336pp, hc) October 2024.
By now there are so many mystical-magical ‘‘hidden London’’ novels that it’s getting hard to keep up – though admittedly there’s something delicious about the notion that in any great city, you’re only being shown what they want you to see, with the real city available only at certain access points for certain chosen adventurers. In his …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/10/the-great-when-by-alan-moore-review-by-gary-k-wolfe/
date: 2024-10-25, from: Final Draft blog
Characters are essential to storytelling. They drive conflict, provide a point of view for the story, and become the audience’s reason to stay rooted in the experience. But what kind of character are you writing to motivate your story?
https://blog.finaldraft.com/what-are-static-and-dynamic-characters-in-screenwriting
date: 2024-10-25, from: Locus Magazine
Winners for the 2024 Geffen Awards for best science fiction and fantasy published in Hebrew were announced by the Israeli Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy at Icon, held October 20-22, 2024 in Tel Aviv Israel.
Best Translated Fantasy Book
Best Translated Science Fiction Book
https://locusmag.com/2024/10/2024-geffen-awards-winners/
date: 2024-10-24, from: Locus Magazine
Halloween is coming up, but until then we’ve got another video of new book releases for the week of 10/22/2024! It’s full of new releases in the fantasy, SF, and horror books! Come check the Locus YouTube channel, and, if you’re feeling generous, subscribe to the channel to support what we do! And if you’d like to purchase any of them, we have the full list up at Bookshop.org here. …Read More
date: 2024-10-24, from: Final Draft blog
“Comedy and scares are so similar. I’ve found that in a lot of my
scripts, it’s almost like you’re taking the peaks and valleys of humor,
and the peaks and valleys of scares, and flipping them on each other.
So, you have the scare that you come down from for a moment of brevity
and humor, or just character work, and then you do another scare. You’ve
relaxed them and then scare them again. The effect is that you’re making
the audience have a good time,” says Seth Sherwood, author of The
Scary Movie Writer’s Guide.
In this episode, we speak with
Seth Sherwood, writer of horror movies like Leatherface and
Hell Fest. He was also nominated for an Emmy for writing the TV
show Light as a Feather. I chat with him about the long process
of making Hell Fest with producer Gale Ann Hurd, the difference
between internal and external horror and his definition of grounded
horror that’s so popular these days. He also gives his advice on what he
thinks is the single best thing an emerging horror writer can do to help
their career.
“Right now, the industry is in a retraction,
there’s an implosion and streaming is dying. When people ask me now how
to break in, I say I don’t know, but I think you’ll never go wrong in
actually trying to make stuff like short films. I know it’s a whole
other path and it’s a difficult thing to do but people will always watch
stuff before they read stuff if they’re not writers. And those people
are the gatekeepers. I always wanted to make my own films, but my
writing career took off and I’m actually in a spot where I’m going
backwards, where I have done so many writing assignments in the last few
years but things aren’t getting made – so, I’m going to go make a
microbudget horror film on my own with my friends. The thing that I
wanted to do when I was 20 years old. Because at least it’s a thing that
can be seen. And that has more weight than a script right now,” he
says.
To hear more about horror writing from Sherwood’s
perspective, listen to the podcast.
https://blog.finaldraft.com/write-on-seth-sherwood-horror-masterclass
date: 2024-10-24, from: Locus Magazine
Dakini Atoll, Nikhil Singh (Luna Press Publishing 978-1-91555-634-9, £22.99, 252pp, hc) June 2024. Cover by Elena Romenkova.
Nikhil Singh has carved out a niche within African SF by bringing the full range of his artistic talents into play in his worldbuilding. The dystopian underworlds explored in his earlier works create the unique effect of falling into a sensorial swamp, an enticing feature that is only enhanced in Singh’s third …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/10/dakini-atoll-by-nikhil-singh-review-by-nedine-moonsamy/
date: 2024-10-23, from: Locus Magazine
Light Bringer Project and Omega Sci-Fi have announced that the Roswell and New Suns Climate Fiction awards are on indefinite hiatus.
Omega Sci-Fi is celebrating their 10th anniversary this year, and will continue their two youth competitions, The Tomorrow Prize and The Green Feather Award. Submissions for both awards are open through February 14, 2025.
This year’s competition will come to a close during the Celebrity Readings and Honors event …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/10/omega-sci-fi-awards-news/
date: 2024-10-23, from: Final Draft blog
Benjamin Barfoot, a screenwriter, director, editor, and composer, is a self-taught filmmaker and self-proclaimed jack-of-all-trades. After getting his start in shorts and animation, he’s moved on to bigger and more ambitious projects—which brings us to his second feature, the Shudder Original Daddy’s Head which just premiered at Fantastic Fest.
date: 2024-10-23, from: Locus Magazine
Finalists for the 2023 Kitschies, awarded for “the year’s most progressive, intelligent and entertaining fiction that contains elements of the speculative or fantastic,” have been announced.
The directors of the award have announced that this, their 15th year, will “be the final year of the prize, citing the increased time-commitment required both of the prize’s administrators and its judges. They note, however, that this year’s diverse lists make the perfect …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/10/2023-and-final-kitschies-shortlists/
date: 2024-10-23, from: Locus Magazine
The Repeat Room, Jesse Ball (Catapult 978-1-64622-140-0, 256pp, $27.00, hc) Cover by Sara Wood. September 2024.
We have such a cornucopia of dystopias right now, fictional and otherwise, that they’ve really got to do something different to catch my attention. The Repeat Room, the latest novel from the prolific Jesse Ball, captured it thoroughly: haunting, spare, and inventive, it’s a bleak tale that’s nonetheless rich with sparkling turns …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/10/the-repeat-room-by-jesse-ball-review-by-jake-casella-brookins/
date: 2024-10-23, from: Literature & a Latte blog
https://www.literatureandlatte.com/blog/4-books-on-creativity-to-jump-start-your-writing-project
date: 2024-10-23, from: Locus Magazine
» LA Times, 12 Oct: Lorraine Berry: What happens when humans confront a form of nature with no rational order?, reviewing Absolution
» Boing Boing, 8 Oct: Thom Dunn: Jeff VanderMeer’s “Absolution” is a dark mirror to the Southern Reach Trilogy
» NY Times, 20 Oct: Interview with Jeff VanderMeer by Alexandra Alter
» The Verge, 21 Oct: ’I woke up and had the whole idea …Read More
date: 2024-10-22, from: IF Database News
The team has been hard at work on improvements to IFDB.
https://ifdb.org/news?item=146
date: 2024-10-22, from: IF Database News
There’s a new star rating control, designed for accessibility. We’d love to get your feedback on it on the intfiction.org forum.
https://ifdb.org/news?item=145
date: 2024-10-22, from: IF Database News
You should see a number of performance improvements on the site. Especially note that clicking your browser’s Back button now shows the previous page instantly. And on Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, we’re now downloading certain links before you click on them, especially “See full review” links on the home page and the first few results on searches, so when you click on those links, the page loads instantly.
https://ifdb.org/news?item=144
date: 2024-10-22, from: IF Database News
The All Game Tags page now shows tags in a list, sorted by frequency. You can also sort them alphabetically and view them in a tag cloud.
https://ifdb.org/news?item=143
date: 2024-10-22, from: IF Database News
There are always more fixes to make, but we’ve fixed a number of spots where IFDB Dark Mode was showing bright white dialogs or low-contrast text.
https://ifdb.org/news?item=142
date: 2024-10-22, from: IF Database News
When adding a tag, we now provide suggestions based on what you’ve typed. We’ll suggest any tag that’s been used on at least ten games.
https://ifdb.org/news?item=141
date: 2024-10-22, from: Locus Magazine
GigaNotoSaurus 7/24 Diabolical Plots 7/24 Kaleidotrope Summer ’24 Small Wonders 7/24
The latest from GigaNotoSaurus is Gustavo Bondoni’s “Sambra do Espaço”, which finds Letícia working on an orbiting solar satellite array that gives power to a lot of Earth, including a disproportionate number of impoverished people. And though during Carnaval she’d much rather be watching her family dance and remembering her time in Brazil, an attack by …Read More
date: 2024-10-22, from: Locus Magazine
Anderson, Kevin J.: Science Fiction Stories, Volume 2 (WordFire Press 9781680577259, $18.99, 350pp, formats: trade paperback, hardcover, 10/22/2024)
Second volume in Anderson’s short story series, including science fiction stories about asteroid miners, time travelers, body swappers, giant robots, space cadets, futuristic prisons, and more.
Carroll, Jordan S.: Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (University of Minnesota Press 9781517917081, $10, 120pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 10/22/2024)
Critical non-fiction about …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/10/new-books-22-october-2024/
date: 2024-10-22, from: John August blog
John and Craig answer twenty listener questions on craft, career, and the future of the industry. Questions include: How do you correct well wishes you haven’t earned? What kind of relationship should you have with the person who created your source material? How do you keep your reps invested? What’s going on with that Stereophonic […] The post 20 Questions (2024 Edition) first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/20-questions-2024-edition
date: 2024-10-21, 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 you’re listening to Episode 655 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, it is a compendium episode, where we go back through the […] The post Scriptnotes, Episode 655: Conflict and Stakes Compendium, Transcript first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/scriptnotes-episode-655-conflict-and-stakes-compendium-transcript
date: 2024-10-21, from: Locus Magazine
It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over by Anne de Marcken (New Directions) is the winner of the third Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, which includes a $25,000 cash prize, given “to a writer for a single work of imaginative fiction” and presented by the Ursula K. Le Guin Literary Trust.
The judges called the book
a work of quietly detonative imagination. Written in the guise of a …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/10/de-marcken-wins-le-guin-prize/
date: 2024-10-21, from: Locus Magazine
A fantasy novel by Chloe C. Peñaranda, The Stars Are Dying (Bramble), first of a trilogy, debuts on three lists, ranking #2 on the fiction hardcover lists of New York Times and Publishers Weekly.
Title Debut / #wks on any list NYT 10.20 LAT 10.20 USAT 10.13 PW 10.21 Amz (10.21) UK: Amz UK (10.21) Canada: Amz.ca (10.21)
Items on list -x- number of lists surveyed
10×3 10×2 150 15×3 …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/10/weekly-bestsellers-21-october-2024/
date: 2024-10-21, from: Final Draft blog
An aspiring screenwriter might wonder: how long does it take to write a screenplay?
https://blog.finaldraft.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-write-a-screenplay
date: 2024-10-21, from: Locus Magazine
The winner for the Endeavour Award was announced at OryCon 44, held October 18-20, 2024, in Portland OR.
The prize recognizes “a distinguished science fiction or fantasy book written by a Pacific Northwest author
https://locusmag.com/2024/10/owen-wins-endeavour/
date: 2024-10-21, from: Locus Magazine
Tell us about your magazine, The Deadlands. When was it founded, and who’s on the publishing team?
The Deadlands is spec-fic/literary zine all about death. It launched in May 2021. In late 2020 I (Sean Markey) brought the idea to E. Catherine Tobler (Elise), whom I knew from when she was the editor in chief of Shimmer, which had closed down a few years before. The publisher of Shimmer, Beth …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/10/spotlight-on-the-deadlands-and-psychopomp/
date: 2024-10-21, from: Locus Magazine
Asimov’s 7-8/24
The July/August issue of Asimov’s opens with the novella “Sisters of the Flare” by Stephen Case, set in the same world as the author’s earlier story “Daughters of the Lattice”, though in a different time period. The story focuses on Tars, who encounters a woman named Petrichora who has forsaken her vows as is now on the run. Tars and Petrichora’s story is interwoven with …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/10/asimovs-short-fiction-reviews-by-a-c-wise/
date: 2024-10-20, from: Locus Magazine
The Locus Bestsellers for May include top titles: The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst (Bramble), Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (Tor), A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas (Bloomsbury US), and A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas (Bloomsbury US).
HARDCOVERS Months on list Last month
The Spellshop, Sarah Beth Durst (Bramble) 1 –
Iron Flame, Rebecca Yarros (Red Tower) 9
https://locusmag.com/2024/10/locus-bestsellers-october-4/
date: 2024-10-20, from: Locus Magazine
The Mercy of Gods, James S.A. Corey (Orbit 978-0-31652-557-2, $30.00, 423 pp, hc) August 2024.
The longer I review science fiction, the more I notice how it much it depends on recycling tropes – not just repeating but extending and varying and inverting them – and, I suspect, refitting them to reflect current anxieties or hopes, conscious or not. This time the recognition lights have been set flashing by …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/10/the-mercy-of-god-by-james-s-a-corey-review-by-russell-letson/
date: 2024-10-20, from: Locus Magazine
The World Fantasy Awards winners for works published in 2023 were presented during the 2024 World Fantasy Convention, held October 17-20, 2024 in Niagara Falls NY.
The Life Achievement Awards, presented annually to individuals who have demonstrated outstanding service to the fantasy field, went to Ginjer Buchanan and Jo Fletcher.
The World Fantasy Awards winners are:
Best Novel
https://locusmag.com/2024/10/2024-world-fantasy-awards-winners/
date: 2024-10-19, from: IF Competition Blog
The results of the 2024 Interactive Fiction Competition are now live on the IFComp Website!
If you missed the livestream, it will be available over the coming days on Twitch and will be permanently archived over on YouTube shortly.
Of course, we are already planning for the ’25 Comp. Please provide your feedback on what went well, what could have gone better, what we should do more of, and what we should consider changing or leaving behind, by filling the Post-Competition Survey:
2024 IFComp Post-Competition Survey
We are so grateful to everyone who helped make this year’s comp happen. Thank you!
https://blog.ifcomp.org/post/764804690125996032
date: 2024-10-19, from: IF Competition Blog
Greetings, Authors & Judges!
The end of the 2023 Interactive Fiction Competition is nearly upon us! We will announce the top 20 results via live stream at 4:00 PM Eastern on Today! Saturday, October 19th.
The stream will be held on Twitch. To confirm what time the awards stream will be for you in your time zone, visit this website.
Hope to see you there!