(date: 2024-11-17 16:11:25)
date: 2024-11-17, from: Locus Magazine
The Bog Wife, Kay Chronister (Counterpoint 978-1-64009-662-2, $28.00, 336pp, hc) October 2024. Cover by Nicole Caputo.
Isolated on their West Virginia estate, the five Haddesley siblings have a troubled and troubling relationship with their magical heritage. Charlie, the next in line to be patriarch, has been severely injured by a falling tree, and doubts his ability to fulfill his part of the bargain with the bog that supports and …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/the-bog-wife-by-kay-chronister-review-by-jake-casella-brookins/
date: 2024-11-16, from: Locus Magazine
Crypt of the Moon Spider, Nathan Ballingrud (Nightfire 978-1-25029-173-8, $17.99, 85pp, tp) August 2024. Cover by Sam Araya.
Nathan Ballingrud is one of the finest purveyors of speculative fiction working today, and Crypt of the Moon Spider, the first book in what will be The Lunar Gothic Trilogy, further cements him as one of the strongest voices in the field. Wonderfully atmospheric and very strange, Crypt of the …Read More
date: 2024-11-15, from: John August blog
The original post for this episode can be found here. Craig Mazin: Hi. Today’s episode features an enormous amount of profane language, and not for any reason. I just felt like cursing. If you have kids in the car or anybody that doesn’t enjoy that sort of thing, earmuffs on. John August: Hello, and welcome. […] The post Scriptnotes, Episode 658: Advice Show, Transcript first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/scriptnotes-episode-658-advice-show-transcript
date: 2024-11-15, from: Interesting, a blog on writing
Go ahead. Give it a shot.
https://inneresting.substack.com/p/225-try-to-imagine-a-better-world
date: 2024-11-15, from: Author’s Union blog
At the heart of the Flynn v. McGraw Hill case is a breach of contract claim. The plaintiffs argue that McGraw Hill’s royalty deductions for maintaining its online system violated the terms of the agreement. Central to the argument is the publisher’s promise to ‘publish at its own expense.’ This case serves as a prime example of how important it is to scrutinize the details of a publishing agreement, where the devil often lies.
date: 2024-11-15, 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 works that were made in response to the uncertainties of this current moment, and the myriad of ways writers can reflect and critique the world they live in. Our collection includes: […] The post Featured Friday: Modern Anxieties first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/featured-friday-modern-anxieties
date: 2024-11-15, from: Locus Magazine
The American Library Association (ALA) has announced the shortlists for the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence for “the best fiction and nonfiction books for adult readers published in the U.S. in the previous year” with three fiction and three non-fiction titles.
The fiction shortlist includes James by occasional SF writer Percival Everett (Knopf). The non-fiction list includes Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/2025-andrew-carnegie-medals-shortlists/
date: 2024-11-15, from: Final Draft blog
“What I wanted to do with this movie was take this interesting
relationship that I have been exploring over the course of my writing,
over 20 years, and this dynamic, and set it against the backdrop of
something so objectively worse than anything the characters are going
through. I wanted to put this funny, fraught relationship that seems
like the stakes are quite high – are these two people going to continue
on together? Against the backdrop of stakes that are so much higher, we
can put their relationship into perspective,” says Jesse Eisenberg,
writer/director and star of the new buddy movie A Real Pain
that takes place on a holocaust tour of Poland.
In this
episode of the Write On podcast, Eisenberg talks about spending years
trying to get this particular story just right, how it was personal to
him, what it was like to shoot at a concentration camp and the great
advice his producer Emma Stone gave him. He also shares his criteria for
writing a road trip/buddy movie.
“It has to have an original
quality to justify it as a movie. I read so many scripts as an actor and
I’ve written so many things, that [a script] has to have two things: it
has to be specific enough to feel real and personal. There are just so
many movies in this road trip/buddy movie genre, if it doesn’t feel
specific I think an audience can sniff it out immediately. The other
thing is to make it feel new, to have a new reason to tell this story so
it doesn’t feel like something I’ve seen 10,000 other times,” says
Eisenberg.
Listen to the podcast to learn more.
https://blog.finaldraft.com/write-on-a-real-pain-with-writer-director-and-star-jesse-eisenberg
date: 2024-11-15, from: Locus Magazine
James by Percival Everett (Knopf) is the winner of the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year 2024, and fantasy novel Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell (Random House Children’s Books) is the winner for Children’s Book of the Year.
Shortlisted titles are nominated by Barnes and Noble booksellers. The winner was announced on November 15, 2024.
For more, see the Barnes and Noble website.
While you are here, please take …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/bn-book-of-the-year-winners/
date: 2024-11-15, from: Locus Magazine
The City in Glass, Nghi Vo (Tordotcom 978-1-25037-682-4, 224pp, $24.99, hc) October 2024.
Nghi Vo has a Hugo Award and a Crawford Award to her credit for The Empress of Salt and Fortune, the opening novella in the Singing Hills Cycle, as well as an Ignyte for Into the Riverlands. The City in Glass, her latest work – a short novel – is unrelated to her …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/the-city-in-glass-by-nghi-vo-review-by-liz-bourke/
date: 2024-11-15, from: Locus Magazine
ROY GRAHAM, K ARSENAULT RIVERA, and SASCHA STRONACH are now represented by Arley Sorg of kt literary.
LAURA BLACKWELL is now represented by Jake Lovell of Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.
JOHN HORNOR JACOBS received the Heasley Prize for Fiction, presented October 22, 2024 at his alma mater, Lyon College in AR.
TIM LEBBON sold folk horror novel Secret Lives of the Dead to Cath Trechman …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/people-publishing-roundup-november-2024/
date: 2024-11-15, from: Locus Magazine
Time magazine has released a list of 100 Must-Read Books of 2024. Works of genre interest include:
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/time-magazines-must-read-books-of-2024/
date: 2024-11-15, from: Locus Magazine
The winners of the second Fishing Fortress Science Fiction Awards, honoring the best in Chinese SF writing, were announced on November 9, 2024.
Sci-Fi Master Achievement
Sci-Fi Promoter Achievement
Sci-Fi Educator Achievement
Sci-Fi Publisher Achievement
Sci-Fi Translator Achievement
Sci-Fi Academy Award
Marco Polo Award
Best Novel
Best
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/2024-fishing-fortress-awards-winners/
date: 2024-11-14, from: John August blog
The original post for this episode can be found here. John August: Hey, this is John. Today’s episode has even more swearing than usual, so if you’re in a car with your kids, this is a standard warning about that. Hello and welcome. My name is John August. Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin. […] The post Scriptnotes, Episode 657: Deadpool with Ryan Reynolds, Transcript first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/scriptnotes-episode-657-deadpool-with-ryan-reynolds-transcript
date: 2024-11-14, from: Locus Magazine
Top new Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror releases for the week of 11/12/2024! We’re super excited to tell you about them, so come on by our YouTube channel to discover some new books for your TBR pile! While you’re there, why not give the video and like and subscribe to support our work and keep up-to-date with future uploads.
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/new-book-releases-for-11-12-2024-come-by-youtube-for-a-watch/
date: 2024-11-14, from: Final Draft blog
Warning: spoilers ahead!
Why does it seem like so many horror
stories have religion as part of the narrative? In everything from
Bram Stoker’s Dracula to 2024’s The Deliverance,
demons and devils are always seeming to pop into the horror genre, with
priests and true believers usually the ones to save the day.
https://blog.finaldraft.com/heretic-and-religion-in-horror
date: 2024-11-14, from: Locus Magazine
BizarroCon has announced the winners for the 2024 Wonderland Book Awards for Excellence in Bizarro Fiction.
Best Novel
Best Collection
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/2024-wonderland-awards-winners/
date: 2024-11-14, from: Locus Magazine
Beneath Ceaseless Skies 8/8/24, 8/22/24 Lightspeed 8/24 Worlds of Possibility 8/24
J.A. Prentice returns to Beneath Ceaseless Skies with August’s “An Isle in a Sea of Ghosts”, which finds Kreisa on a journey to try and save her brother from a spell that changes him into a different animal every day. After two years, she has gone through almost everything she can think of, and her brother has …Read More
date: 2024-11-14, from: Locus Magazine
The 2024 Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund (TAFF), which “will send a European fan to the 2025 Worldcon in Seattle,” is open for nominations until December 20, 2024.
TAFF “was created in 1953 for the purpose of providing funds to bring well-known and popular [science fiction] fans familiar to those on both sides of the ocean across the Atlantic. Since that time TAFF has regularly brought North American fans to European conventions …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/2024-taff-nominations-open/
date: 2024-11-13, from: Locus Magazine
Clarion West has announced that their next six-week workshop will be held virtually instead of in-person, and will run June 22-August 2, 2025. The new format is “designed to give students more time to write, additional lecture time with instructors, and more experimentation with workshopping models.” The instructors will be Maurice Broaddus, Malka Older, Diana Pho, and Martha Wells. Applications open on December 1, 2024 and close February 15, 2025. …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/clarion-west-virtual-workshops/
date: 2024-11-13, from: Interesting, a blog on writing
Maybe all of them?
https://inneresting.substack.com/p/which-project-should-i-write
date: 2024-11-13, from: Final Draft blog
Maybe you’re a fan of movies, TV series or various streaming content and
have thought: ‘I’d like to write stuff like this. I’d like to be a
screenwriter.’ Well, it’s only natural to want to take part in something
you enjoy, and the prospect of getting paid to do so would no doubt be a
dream job.
But is it a dream job or just a dream?
Being a
screenwriter or scriptwriter is a real profession, and although there is
a lot of competition for screenwriting jobs, thousands of people still
manage to do it. In fact, thanks to an ever-growing global marketplace,
there are increasing opportunities for people who know how to write for
the screen.
Just like any vocation, screenwriting is a learned
skill and there are definite steps you can take to become a professional
screenwriter. I myself am a professional screenwriter, and I’ve been
working in the film and television industry for two decades
now.
Using my own experience — as well as things I’ve heard over
the years from screenwriting friends and colleagues — I’ve created some
basic steps an aspiring screenwriter can do to become a
professional.
Below are 5 Basic
Steps that can put you on the right path:
https://blog.finaldraft.com/how-to-be-a-screenwriter-in-5-basic-steps
date: 2024-11-13, from: Locus Magazine
Deep Dream: Science Fiction Exploring the Future of Art, Indrapramit Das, ed. (The MIT Press 978-0-26254-908-0, 229pp, $24.95, tp). October 2024. Cover art by Diana Scherer.
Of the ten stories collected in Deep Dream that aim to, as editor Indrapramit Das has it, “both embody and visualize the future of art,” only one offers an explicit definition of what art might be. Many millennia in the future, the twinned …Read More
date: 2024-11-13, from: Literature & a Latte blog
https://www.literatureandlatte.com/blog/how-to-write-first-lines-in-novels-that-grab-readers
date: 2024-11-13, from: John August blog
The original post for this episode can be found here. John August: Hey, this is John. Heads up that today’s episode has just a little bit of swearing in it. Hello and welcome. My name is John August. You’re listening to episode 656 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to […] The post Scriptnotes, Episode 656: Halogencore, Transcript first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/scriptnotes-episode-656-halogencore-transcript
date: 2024-11-12, from: Locus Magazine
Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape; Grove Atlantic US) is the winner of the 2024 Man Booker Prize. It depicts the lives of astronauts, and is “the first Booker Prize-winning book set in space.”
This year’s shortlist also included James by Percival Everett (Mantle;Doubleday US).
The £50,000 prize is “open to works by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.” This year’s judges
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/harvey-wins-2024-booker-prize/
date: 2024-11-12, from: Locus Magazine
ActuSF has announced the winners for the 2024 Prix de l’Uchronie. The prize is awarded to works of alternate history, written or translated into French and published between September 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023.
Prix Littéraire
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/2024-prix-actusf-de-luchronie-winners/
date: 2024-11-12, from: Locus Magazine
Bacon, Eugen & Editor), Abimbola Adelakun (Series, ed.: Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction (Bloomsbury Academic 9798765114674, $29.95, 256pp, formats: trade paperback, hardcover, ebook, 11/14/2024)
Non-fiction anthology, a selection of original essays. Introduction by Suyi Davies Okungbowa. Authors including Dilman Dila, Nerine Dorman, Nuzo Onoh, Shingai Njeri Kagunda, Suyi Okungbowa, Tobi Ogundiran, Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga, Cheryl S. Ntumy, Stephen Embleton, and Xan van Rooyen – offer boldly hybrid chapters (both …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/new-books-12-november-2024/
date: 2024-11-12, from: Final Draft blog
“One of the things that I really wanted to focus on, and I felt it
immediately after meeting Lina the housewife in Indiana [played by Betty
Gilpin in the show], whose husband no longer wanted to kiss her on the
mouth, I felt like this woman was as important as the Queen of England,
as important as Napoleon. I felt her dreams and fears are just as
universal as someone who has defeated an army and the only reason we’re
not hearing about her is because we have these sorts of rules in place
for what possesses historical significance. And I don’t really think
that that’s necessarily true,” says Lisa Taddeo, author of the book
Three Women, on which her new TV show is based.
In
today’s episode, we speak to Lisa Taddeo, creator of the show Three
Women that stars Shailene Woodley, Betty Gilpin, DeWanda Wise and
Gabrielle Creevy as “ordinary” women searching for their sexual identity
and fulfillment in disparate and surprising ways. The show is an
intimate, often stark portrayal of forbidden female desire and the
consequences of that desire – both good and bad.
We also talk
about writing the “female gaze” into the scripts, filming with
prosthetic penises, the power the book Twilight has on teenage
girls, and the uncanny way our mothers influence our own sexuality.
“My mother made up her face every morning, even when she wasn’t
going to leave the house. Who is she? My father sees her before she puts
on her face as they say, so it’s not for him. Nobody is coming to the
door today, so it’s not for them. It’s certainly not for me, because I
see her without makeup when she washes it off at night. So, who is it
for, you know? And that was a question I had but didn’t really know how
to frame,” Taddeo says.
To hear more about the groundbreaking
show Three Women that’s airing on Starz, listen to the
podcast.
Trigger warning: contains mentions of sexual
explicit material, sexual assault and trauma.
https://blog.finaldraft.com/write-on-three-women-creator-lina-taddeo
date: 2024-11-12, from: Locus Magazine
Winners for the 2024 Premio Italia Awards have been announced, honoring accomplishments in the field of Italian fantasy and science fiction.
International Novel
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/2024-premio-italia-winners/
date: 2024-11-12, from: Locus Magazine
M. M. OLIVAS is an alumna of the 2022 Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop and the 2023 Under the Volcano Writers Residency. Her short fiction has appeared in several publications, including Uncanny Magazine, Weird Horror Magazine, Apex, and Bourbon Penn. As a trans, first-generation Chicana, she explores the intersection of queer and diasporic experiences in her fiction. She currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, earning her …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/spotlight-on-m-m-olivas/
date: 2024-11-12, from: Final Draft blog
For many writers, the passion for creating starts at an early age. For Allison Schroeder (Hidden Figures, Christopher Robin), this was absolutely true thanks to her English teacher mom. She happily recalled:
date: 2024-11-12, from: Locus Magazine
Bringer of Dust, J.M. Miro (Flatiron Books 978-1-25083-383-9, $29.99. 608pp, hc) September 2024. Cover by Keith Hayes.
Bringer of Dust, the second doorstopper of a novel in J.M. Miro’s The Talents Trilogy, picks up not long after the events of the first book, Ordinary Monsters. Several adults, beloved and despised, and children, innocent and manipulated, lost their lives in the course of the first book, sometimes due …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/bringer-of-dust-by-j-m-miro-review-by-alex-brown/
date: 2024-11-12, from: John August blog
John and Craig explore character agency in everything from scenes to entire series. They look at what agency looks like on the page, which characters should have agency, and what to do when you feel your characters sleepwalking through the plot. We also strategize ways to move forward after the recent US election, and answer […] The post What Can You Even Do? first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/what-can-you-even-do
date: 2024-11-11, from: Locus Magazine
Paul Ryan O’Connor is the winner of the Speculative Literature Foundation’s (SLF) 2024 Older Writers Grant, which gives $1,000 to writers “fifty years of age or older at the time of grant application, and is intended to assist such writers who are just starting to work at a professional level.”
O’Connor was awarded the grant for his unpublished novel Gumshoe Frankenstein.
Applications for the Older Writers Grant are considered …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/oconnor-wins-older-writers-grant/
date: 2024-11-11, from: Locus Magazine
The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS) has selected Hayao Miyazaki as this year’s recipient of the Forry Award for lifetime achievement in the SF field. Miyazaki is the founder of Studio Ghibli and has won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for Spirited Award (2001) and The Boy and the Heron (2023), and has received nominations for Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) and The Wind Rises (2013).
The award, …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/miyazaki-wins-forry-award/
date: 2024-11-11, from: Locus Magazine
The Asociación Española de Fantasía, Ciencia Ficción y Terror (AEFCFT) has announced the winners for the 2024 Ignotus Awards, honoring speculative fiction from Spain and beyond.
Novela extranjera (Foreign Novel)
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/2024-ignotus-award-winners/
date: 2024-11-11, from: Locus Magazine
A trend this past year has been for publishers to issue new hardcover “deluxe” editions of books. This week’s examples are Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes and Bookshops & Bonedust (both Tor). The new editions rank on three lists, as high as #12.
Debuts of original books this week are by Kerri Maniscalco, ranking #2 on two lists, and M.L. Wang, ranking #9 on two lists.
Title Debut / #wks …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/weekly-bestsellers-11-november-2024/
date: 2024-11-11, from: Locus Magazine
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/alaskan-book-ban-ruled-unconstitutional/
date: 2024-11-11, from: Locus Magazine
An annotated version of Terry Pratchett’s 29th Discworld novel, Night Watch, will be released in Spring of 2025. The title will be released under Penguin Random House as a Penguin Modern Classic, recognizing Pratchett’s immense influence in the literary world as a genre author.
The edition will have a foreword by Rob Wilkins, managing director of Pratchett’s literary estate, and annotations by Dr David Lloyd and Dr Darryl Jones …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/terry-pratchetts-night-watch-re-release/
date: 2024-11-11, from: Locus Magazine
The shortlist for the inaugural PEN Heaney prize in poetry has been announced. The list included two works with speculative elements:
A collaboration between English PEN, PEN Ireland/PEN na hÉireann, and the Estate of Seamus Heaney, the award honors a single book of poetry published in the United Kingdom or Ireland …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/inaugural-pen-heaney-prize-shortlist-2024/
date: 2024-11-11, from: Locus Magazine
RHONDA S.A. GARCIA was born in Trinidad and Tobago, where she has lived her entire life. Though she earned her A levels and qualified to enter university, her mother’s illness and other difficulties made it impossible for her to attend. She worked various jobs, most recently as an administrator in the engineering industry, until becoming a full-time writer following a breast cancer diagnosis in 2021.
Garcia began publishing SF with …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/r-s-a-garcia-main-character-energy/
date: 2024-11-11, from: Locus Magazine
The Wilding, Ian McDonald (Gollancz 978-1-39961-147-3, £25.00, 314pp, hc) September 2024.
Ian McDonald may be one of the most accomplished SF writers of his generation, but he isn’t particularly known for horror – though that may change with the very creepy ecological fable The Wilding. I’m using “creepy” in a quite literal sense here: There’s a lot of creeping going on. A project to restore and “rewild” a …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/the-wilding-by-ian-mcdonald-review-by-gary-k-wolfe/
date: 2024-11-10, from: Locus Magazine
The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love, India Holton (Berkley 978-0-593-54728-1, $19.00, tp, 384pp) July 2024.
Romantasy is a subgenre getting considerable attention and India Holton enters the field with a new series, that is a lot of fun. The first book, The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love, introduces two academics, Beth Pickering and Devon Lockley, who specialize in the study and, if necessary, capture of thaumaturgic birds. These …Read More