“This is well-written,” the rejection letter read, “but time travel isn’t science fiction. I suggest you send it to a fantasy magazine like Beneath Ceaseless Skies.” A newbie writer, I had never gotten such a direct referral to another magazine before. Surely it meant this editor knew more than I Read more…
When I was a wee child, picking a topic to write about was easy: I wrote COOL SHIT. Like… bicycles that transform into helicopters or space ships or motorcycles or maybe power armor and I should have a cool robot friend who is sarcastic and transforms into like a briefcase. Read more…
So, I wrote this story with a black, inner-city protagonist. I based her on a friend of mine and like that friend she is compassionate and witty and willing to do anything for the people under her care. In an early scene in the story, she describes a boy “as Read more…
I’ve written before about how genre is a set of expectations. Those expectations can be set for the reader when they see the author’s name, or when they enter a certain section of the bookstore, or see the cover art. Titles, back cover copy, the first sentence – all of Read more…
Mild spoilers for two movies and Steven Universe below. This week I saw two movies that dealt with childhood bullying. One was Naoko Yamada’s A Silent Voice and the other was J. A. Bayona’s A Monster Calls. Both show middle-grade children getting bullied, but their points of view are almost Read more…
Hey guys. Guess what, it’s Awards Season for us Science Fiction Writers and so a lot of people will be writing these here “Award Eligibility” posts where they list and link their stories that are eligible for professional awards – that is, stories that appeared in SFWA-Approved markets for the Read more…
So I decided to enter the IF Comp (The Interactive Fiction Competition) again this year, having tried it last year and come in next-to-last place – I got outvoted by unfinished games! This time I started late, more or less on whim, with only days to submit an idea before Read more…