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I’m thrilled to report that SAND RUNNER, my near-future science fiction novel, is a contender in the inaugural 2021 Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC). What an honor! And very, very exciting.
Huge thanks to Hugh Howey and Duncan Swan for organizing, and to all the book bloggers and reviewers for reading & judging the entries!
And best of luck to all my fellow indie science fiction writers! I look forward to reading your books in the future.
Update:
Sadly, SAND RUNNER did not make it to the next round of the competition. But the reviewers’ verdict was that “Fans of YA are likely to get a kick out of it.” I can live with that! 🙂
Thank you to all the SPSFC reviewers for their time and effort reviewing the submissions, and congrats & best wishes to all my fellow indie writers, no matter what the outcome. And maybe the future iterations of the SPSFC could have a separate YA category? That would be great.
I am a huge fan of the Clarion and Clarion West speculative writing workshops. So this year, I decided to support Clarion West by participating in its online Write-a-thon. Write-a-thon participants set their own goals, write alongside the workshop participants for 6 weeks, and help raise funds for future workshops.
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SUNDAY, JUNE 20 – official start of WRITE-A-THON 2021
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The Submission Grinder is a terrific, easy to use, searchable database of short story & poetry markets as well as a submission tracker for your own submissions. Lots of useful information, like stats about market response rates and times, pay rate, recent acceptances and rejections, etc. And it’s absolutely free to use (although consider supporting them if you can, to keep the good thing going).
Writing Excuses is a fantastic, long-running podcast run by professional writers and focused on the art and craft of writing fiction, with occasional forays into publishing, marketing, and the business of fiction as well. Each episode is about 15-20 minutes long and packed with information, and you can search the extensive archives for any topic you wish. Topics include story structure, characters, plot, outlining, discovery writing, genres, worldbuilding, pacing, research, revising, and many more.
Run by three full-time indie authors, Six Figure Authors is a great weekly podcast that “helps you take your writing career to the next level” by offering thoughtful, honest, up-to-date advice on writing, publishing, and marketing your books. New episodes drop on Thursdays, and you can peruse the archive to learn about additional topics. Two of my favorite recent episodes include: Book Marketing for Introverts; and Mistakes That Newer Authors Make.
Mary Robinette Kowal, who is an award-winning speculative fiction writer as well as a professional puppeteer and audiobook narator, has an excellent series of blog posts called Reading Aloud with advice on doing readings and audio recordings of your fiction. Well worth the time!
Artbreeder is a creative tool for generating and manipulating images, including portraits, landscapes, album covers. It uses machine learning (specifically Generative Adversarial Networks) to allow almost endless manipulations to the images that users upload to the platform and combinations of these images. You have to open a free account to start playing with the images, and there’s a paid subscription option with additional functionality. Why would a writer use Artbreeder? Inspiration for settings and characters (e.g., you can create a character and progressively change their age).
The Creative Penn Podcast is a long-running, super informative and fun to listen podcast for writers created and run by an indie thriller writer and creative entrepreneur, Joanna Penn. Most episodes include an in-depth interview with a writer, editor, publishing or marketing professional, or subject expert, and there’s also a segment on publishing news and a segment on technology of interest to creatives. New episodes drop on Mondays, and there is a huge, searchable archive. For instance, here is a collection of episodes on dictation.
To be blunt, if you’re a fiction writer, you are in the intellectual property (specifically copyright) business. The more you know about the copyright law in your country, the more you can protect yourself and your work. How to start learning?
In the U.S. and many other countries, you automatically hold copyright in all your creative work providing the work meets the criteria for copyright. But there are still benefits to registering your work with the U.S. Copyright Office, especially since they allow Group Registration of Unpublished Works (up to 10 literary works) for a reasonable fee (right now $85). Here is a step-by-step video tutorial. By the way, you can register your work even if you write under a pen name or pseudonym.
This might be more of interest to indie published authors… If you use your own ISBNs, maybe because you want your company name to appear as the publisher rather than AMZ, you would purchase those from Bowker. But – good news! – you do not have to buy the barcodes that are also required on print books. There is a wonderful online tool that will generate a barcode for your ISBN absolutely free – the Free Online Barcode Generator! Use responsibly.
Contracts and Dealbreakers is a series of articles on all aspects of publishing contracts and related intellectual property (IP) licensing topics, written by a long-time speculative fiction writer, editor, and publisher Kristin Kathryn Rusch. A required reading for all writers, whether you aim to publish indie, with a small press, or with a traditional publishing house!
Publishing a book involves signing publishing contracts. As the title suggests, Book Publishing Contracts: Checklist of Deal Terms offers a handy “checklist and guide to the issues typically covered, and the terms publishers typically offer, so you can identify issues to consider and possibly address and thereby make the time spent with your lawyer or other advisor more efficient.”
Ready to create some promo materials for your book? Here is one free and easy tool: The 3D Book Cover Creator from DIY Book Design. Enjoy!
I love reading and writing short fiction, so I’m thrilled to announce that two stories of mine were accepted for publication.
“Of Bugs, Debts, and Distant Planets” (science fiction, 995 words) was published in Fifth Di… (June 2021 issue).
And “Mira” (science fiction, biopunk, 1350 words) was published in Hyphen Punk (June 16, 2021 publication date).
