Last April, Mur Lafferty was the subject of a fan-driven firestorm around at Escape Pod. The prevalence of lesbians in her magazine was raising a few eyebrows among both people who don’t like lesbians and people who wanted to see more gay men. As is the case with Internet controversies, …
So, you want to make your work–book, movie, sculpture, whatever–perfect, don’t you? You want it to shine. And you’re going to polish it, rewrite it, re-imagine it, and retcon it every chance you get? Or maybe you just can’t resist adding those few last-minute flourishes? Well, you’re in good company. …
The following is the text of an email I sent this evening to the Parsec Awards Committee. If you agree, please chime in in the comments. Dear Committee– A couple years ago, the categories surround podcast novels were modified so that single reader podcast novels were given their own category, …
You hear a lot of talk of “discovery writers” and “outliners” in the writing world. The “pantsers” and the “plotters,” respectively. It’s true that there are a lot of people that fall into both categories–including many of my friends–and human nature loves dichotomies, but I’ve never fit comfortably either, and …
Writing fiction in the age of the Internet can be fraught for the author who values authenticity–particularly if you write historical or technical fiction. Since the glorious thing about writing fiction is that you essentially make shit up to entertain other people, there are a range of opinions about the …
Disclaimer: What follows is a rant about something that can screw up the creative process. This post is more esoteric than is normal for this blog. It contains a lot of jargon, and talks a lot about academic politics and social history, and it won’t interest everybody. Don’t worry, though. …
A funny thing happens during times of great industrial upheaval: Everyone wants a piece of the new deal, but nobody wants to take what they perceive to be a risk. Most established players retrench, hold on to what’s familiar, and try to shout down anyone with a contravening opinion. It’s …
When I started writing The Antithesis Progression, I had a nice, tidy three-book series in mind. Then I wrote it, and discovered that what I thought was book 1 was actually 2 books cleverly hiding inside my head under a single title. Well, no problem there. Turns out there was …
It’s mid January, and time for your vegetables. This year’s first link salad is here–I hope you enjoy this sampling of my weidrness and wanderings from around the web!
A new year. Time for resolutions, right? Right. Except that a few years back I resolved to no longer make resolutions. Ironically, it’s one of the few I ever wound up keeping. Instead, I use this wonderfully arbitrary and booze-infused time of year to make plans. Because, really, is there …