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Climbing Aboard the Dragon: Three Paths To a Story

Climbing Aboard the Dragon: Three Paths To a Story

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“There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right.”
— Rudyard Kipling

Get out the map...Okay, writers. Let’s say you have a short story idea or two, but you don’t know the best way to write it. Some sage writers with some sales under their belts tell you that you Must Outline. Other wisened authors tell you to just, “Go where the story takes you,” that you shouldn’t outline at all.

So what’s a new writer to do? Who’s right?

Well, they all are, of course. They’re right about what works for them.

You have to figure out what works best for you.

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Locus magazine announces the 2010 Locus Awards Winners

Locus magazine announces the 2010 Locus Awards Winners

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boneshaker2The 2010 Locus Awards winners were announced today, at the annual Science Fiction Awards Weekend in Seattle. The winners include:

     Best SF Novel: Boneshaker, Cherie Priest (Tor)
     Best Fantasy Novel: The City & The City, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
     Best First Novel: The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)
     Best Young Adult Book: Leviathan, Scott Westerfeld (Simon Pulse; Simon & Schuster UK)
     Best Novella: ‘‘The Women of Nell Gwynne’s,’’ Kage Baker (Subterranean)
     Best Novelette: ‘‘By Moonlight,’’ Peter S. Beagle (We Never Talk About My Brother)
     Best Short Story: ‘‘An Invocation of Incuriosity,’’ Neil Gaiman (Songs of the Dying Earth)
     Best Anthology:  The New Space Opera 2, Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, eds. (Eos; HarperCollins Australia)
     Best Magazine: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

The Locus Award has been presented annually since 1971. It’s given to winners of Locus magazine’s annual readers’ poll. You can find the complete list of winners at Locus Online.

Congratulations to all the winners!

Graham McNeill’s Empire wins the David Gemmell Legend Award

Graham McNeill’s Empire wins the David Gemmell Legend Award

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graham-and-pigstickerGraham McNeill’s novel Empire: The Legend of Sigmar (Black Library) is this year’s winner of the David Gemmell Legend Award for Best Fantasy Novel of 2009.

The list of nominees, including Brandon Sanderson, Joe Abercrombie, and Robert Jordan, was announced April 7.

The David Gemmell Legend Award  is a fan-voted award administered by the DGLA. The Legend Award for Best Fantasy Novel was first granted in 2009, to Andrzej Sapkowski’s Blood of Elves.

As winner, McNeill received a replica of the mighty Snaga, the axe wielded by Druss in David Gemmell’s novel Legend.

I think George Mann, publisher of Black Library, captured my thoughts nicely when he said:

‘We are delighted for Graham – not only is this a wonderful acknowledgement of a fine writer, but it is an important victory for franchise fiction, which is often overlooked by the wider genre community.’

The Ravensheart Award, for best Fantasy Book Jacket/artist, went to Best Served Cold – art and design by Didier Graffet, Dave Senior and Laura Brett.

The Morningstar Award for Best Fantasy Newcomer/debut went to Pierre Pevel’s The Cardinal’s Blades.

Black Library editor Nick Kyme has a lengthy blog entry on the awards ceremony here.

Climbing Aboard the Dragon: Homework Every Day

Climbing Aboard the Dragon: Homework Every Day

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doorways

Being a writer is like having homework every day for the rest of your life.
— Lawrence Kasdan

When John from Black Gate suggested I do a guest blog about writing for short fiction markets, I had to check to make sure he hadn’t intended his email for someone else. Surely he meant to send that email to my co-writer for the story “Devil on the Wind,” from Black Gate 14. That would be Jay Lake, who has over 200 story publications and counting.

But nope, the email was correct.

And a quick look at my list of stories over on my website seems to confirm the fact that I may indeed have figured how to sell a short story — fifty story publications thus far. And I have thirty more stories out to various publishers (fingers crosssed!).

Here’s the thing, though. You never figure out the trick to this writing gig. Soon as you think you’ve got it understood, you’re sunk.

Because you can’t rest on your laurels. Trust me on this — even though I’ve sold stories to great places like Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Interzone, and to this fine magazine as well, I still get rejections aplenty. And while my focus has moved from short stories to novels, with the occasional comic script, I always have fun writing stories.

But I still have more to learn. Much more. And I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned along the way.

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Thinking of Heroes

Thinking of Heroes

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butch_o_hare-280I’ve been pondering the need for heroes in fiction again this week, and I thought it a good time to revisit a post I’d made on the Black Gate Livejournal page a few years ago. I imagine a lot of you haven’t read it; if you have, I apologize for the repeat.

During the school year my little girl brings home reading practice sheets every week. Each day we’re to time her reading the fluency sheet for a minute, three times, the idea being that it will improve her reading. She does get better at reading each time through, naturally, but she also gets pretty bored – I suppose I would, too, if I had to read the same thing over and over three times a day. But she’s also bored because the stories as a whole haven’t been very interesting. Except for one.

She brought home the story of Butch O’Hare. I’d never given much thought to whom O’Hare airport was named after. I suppose I assumed it was named after a politician. None of these fluency stories can be read completely in a minute—she was only about a third of the way through when the minute timer dinged. My son, her older brother, was so interested that he looked up from his own homework and said “actually, that’s pretty interesting.” I agreed, and asked her to keep reading, and she was intrigued enough herself that she kept going without complaint.

Stories about heroes fascinate my family, and, I believe, humanity as a whole. I think that we’ve become so cynical that we sneer a little when we hear stories of heroics and imagine that it can’t really be true, or we wonder if the hero secretly beats his wife. We are programmed to think that we REALLY need to read stories of ordinary people or cowardly people or despicable people and that stories of heroes are for children. We’re savvy enough now not to believe everything we hear or read, because, God knows, we’ve been fooled plenty of times.

But we still need heroes. And Butch O’Hare was one.

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Apex Magazine re-opens to Submissions

Apex Magazine re-opens to Submissions

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apexmagApex publisher Jason Sizemore has announced that the magazine has re-opened to submissions.

This is great news for fans, since the magazine announced last May that it was temporarily suspending publication. It began as print edition Apex Digest in 2005, swtiching names to Apex Magazine when it became online-only in 2008. It resumed online publication in June 2009 and has published monthly since. 

Note that Apex has new Submission Guidelines. The pay rate is five cents a word, and the new fiction editor is Catherynne M. Valente. The magazine has added Dark Fantasy to their list of interests (originally focused on science fiction and horror), and their Guidelines are worth the read:

What we want is sheer, unvarnished awesomeness. We want the stories it scared you to write. We want stories full of marrow and passion, stories that are twisted, strange, and beautiful. We want science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mash-ups of all three—the dark, weird stuff down at the bottom of your little literary heart. This magazine is not a publication credit, it is a place to put your secret places and dreams on display. Just so long as they have a dark speculative fiction element—we aren’t here for the quotidian.

The latest issue of Apex includes original fiction from Paul Jessup and Jerry Gordon, a reprint from Catheryyne M. Valente, Audio Fiction from Jerry Gordon, and a Dark Faith roundtable interview with Gary A. Braunbeck, Jay Lake, Nick Mamatas, and Catherynne M. Valente.

The complete magazine is also available in a downloadable, pay-what-you-want edition through Smashwords, and in a Kindle edition (for 99 cents).

Apex Book Company also recently published Dark Faith, reviewed right here at the Black Gate blog by David Soyka.

Ryan Harvey Wins Big

Ryan Harvey Wins Big

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ryan-harveyIt gives me great pleasure to announce what some of you may have already heard — the talented Ryan Harvey, author and Black Gate blogger extraordinaire, has placed third in the International Writers of the Future contest for the First Quarter of 2010.

Judged by a panel of experts made up of well-known speculative fiction writers like Orson Scott Card, Anne McCaffrey, Eric Flint (to name just a few!)  the Writers of the Future contest was established 27 years ago by L. Ron Hubbard “to discover and provide talented new and aspiring writers of science fiction and fantasy a chance to have their work seen and acknowledged.”

I can think of few writers as deserving of notice as Ryan, who’s been tirelessly drafting brilliant essays and reviews not only at  Black Gate, but for his own blog and the defunct swordandsorcery.org web site and other places besides.

What many of you may not know is that Ryan is also a talented fiction writer. The winning story is from his Ahn-Tarqa short fiction cycle which — if you haven’t already experienced it — will be featured in two upcoming stories in Black Gate.

I hope you’ll join with us in wishing Ryan congratulations!

Signing the Contract

Signing the Contract

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whispers_from_the_stoneLast week I wrote about obtaining my first book deal. Over the next few months I thought I’d talk from time to time about what happens next.

As the point of my first essay was mostly about the importance of contacts (and in working steadily and not giving up), I mentioned some things in passing that I thought I’d cover in more detail. For instance, how did I get the offer? By air mail? Phone call? Candygram?

My friend Scott Oden had submitted my manuscript to his editor at Thomas Dunne Books, Pete Wolverton. A little over three weeks later, I received an e-mail from Pete asking me to give him a call at my convenience.

When I’d sent previous novels to other publishers, at best I had only ever received pleasant e-mail rejections, or, in olden times, a letter. Sometimes my novels had just disappeared, with nary a response at all. I had never received a request to call, and with Sherlockian-like deductive reasoning figured that was a promising sign.

I deliberately slowed down, made myself a cup of tea, and took my time drinking it. About twenty minutes later I dialed the number Pete had provided.

I found myself on the phone with a bright, friendly professional who’d enjoyed my book and wanted to talk about it, and to talk to me to get a sense of who I was… and to discuss a book offer.

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Rogue Blades Announces Challenge! Writing Contest

Rogue Blades Announces Challenge! Writing Contest

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2010-discoveryRogue Blades Entertainment (RBE) has published some terrific fantasy anthologies over the past few years, including Return of the Sword and Rage of the Behemoth, featuring original work from writers such as E.E. Knight, James Enge, Bill Ward, Michael Ehart, Thomas M. MacKay, S.C. Bryce, Steve Goble, Brian Ruckley, C.L. Werner, Harold Lamb, and many others.

This week Rogue Blades publisher Jason M. Waltz announced the first annual RBE Challenge! Writing Contest. The competition is open to anyone, and the top stories will be printed in the competition anthology, Discovery (cover at right).

Submissions must consist of heroic adventure in any genre, and must arrive between June 1st and September 1st, 2010.  The top twelve stories will recevie a copy of the anthology; the top three will also receive cash awards, and a detailed critique from the contest judges.

The entry fee is only $10, almost criminally cheap. If you’re any aspiring writer looking for an opportunity to show your stuff, now’s your chance to appear in a new anthology from one of the top publishers of modern heroic fantasy.

More information is on the Official Announcement page, including this invitation from Jason Waltz:

Using V Shane’s artwork and the title Discovery as inspiration, pen me mighty and mysterious tales of action and adventure. Speculative fiction is NOT required… Sword & Sorcery, Sword & Planet, Soul & Sandal, Western, Mystery, Dark Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Sci-Fi, even Horror and Romance! You name it, so long as it’s heroic fiction, you can submit it.

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How to Get a Book Deal

How to Get a Book Deal

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vengence-small2In late July of 2009 I got an offer for a historical fantasy novel from St. Martin’s imprint Thomas Dunne featuring my series characters, Dabir and Asim.

The deal itself reads anti-climatically, which is why I delayed posting about it. But I think that there’s something to be learned from the story of publication, so I’ve decided to share it.

I finished revising a book, I gave it to a friend, he showed it to his editor, I got an offer, I talked to agents of two writer friends, agonized about which agent to select, then chose one.

Boiled down, the process sounds simple; after all, I’m just one of those lucky guys who wrote a novel and showed it to a friend, then got a book deal after just a few weeks from the first pro who looked at it. Easy as pie, right?

This account of events manages to miss a couple of things.

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