PSA: I (that's Charlie) will be traveling for the next few weeks. And while I'm on that subject, I'll be hoisting a beer this Thursday the 30th in New York. If you're reading this, you're welcome to turn up.
The bar is d.b.a. Brooklyn (113 North 7th Street Brooklyn, NY 11249): Twitter @dbabrooklyn. It's close to Bedford Av. station on the L line and the East River Ferry. Arsebook event here. I'll be there from about 5:30pm-6pm, and I am informed that there should be some cask ales on tap ...
Charlie's away team continue to fill in on the blog. Starting tomorrow, we have Kameron Hurley:
Kameron Hurley is an award-winning author, advertising copywriter, and online scribe. Hurley grew up in Washington State, and has lived in Fairbanks, Alaska; Durban, South Africa; and Chicago. She has degrees in historical studies from the University of Alaska and the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, specializing in the history of South African resistance movements.And in case you didn't get the memo, Charlie is of the opinion that you really should try "God's War" if you want to inject some high-density, high-energy health food into your science fiction diet: it's refreshingly different and gripping, and it's published for the first time in the UK this month.Hurley is the author of God's War, Infidel, and Rapture, a science-fantasy noir series which earned her the Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer and the Kitschy Award for Best Debut Novel. She has been a finalist for the Nebula Award and the Locus Award. Her work has also been included on the Tiptree Award Honor List. Hurley's short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Lightspeed, EscapePod, and Strange Horizons, and anthologies such as The Lowest Heaven and Year's Best SF. Her fiction has been translated into Romanian, Swedish, and Russian. She is also a graduate of Clarion West.
In addition to her writing, Hurley has been a Stollee guest lecturer at Buena Vista University and taught copywriting at the School of Advertising Art. Hurley currently lives in Ohio, where she's cultivating an urban homestead. She shares articles and insights regularly at kameronhurley.com.
I'm pleased to introduce the first of three guest bloggers who'll be posting here while I'm away for the next month: Hugh Hancock of Strange Company, sometimes called "the father of Machinima".
As one of the pioneers of real-time 3D animated filmmaking—known as Machinima—he has worked on pioneering new ways to make movies with unexpected technology for more than 15 years.
He founded (but does not currently run) Machinima.com, now the fourth-biggest YouTube channel in the world. He directed the online-distributed feature film BloodSpell. And he has been quoted on the future of filmmaking in the New York Times, the Guardian, on the BBC and on NPR amongst others.
He also fronted possibly the geekiest cookery show in the history of the medium.
Currently he is working on a new project starring Hollywood voice actors and using Avatar-style performance capture, which he expects to release in late January 2014.
When he isn't making films, Hugh is a Muay Thai enthusiast, amateur game designer and borderline cooking and coffee obsessive ...
Jim Hines has some interesting things to say about chasing the market: at writers workshops he (and I) are often asked, by folks in search of success, "What's popular right now? What's the next Big New Thing? What are agents and editors looking for?"
I'd like to remind any aspiring writers reading this right now that the only reason for paying any attention to the current runaway success is that you should avoid writing anything like it. Here's why:
Should pass 80,000 words tomorrow; the end is in sight (somewhere in the range 5-10 days' work away). Until I get there, though, blogging is going to be scanty.
I'm going to be away from January 29th through February 20th, travelling. Consequently, I'm in the process of lining up some guest bloggers. Guest blogger #1, who'll be starting in a week's time, isn't (surprise!) an SF/F author; he's Hugh Hancock of Strange Company, an SF/F filmmaker who's doing pioneering work in the fields of Machinima and low-end motion capture. (He also founded Machinima.com, back in the dawn of the 21st century.) Among other things, he'll probably be talking about his latest production ...
I was planning on hitting another hornets' nest with a baseball bat this week just to keep you amused (candidate topics: why Libertarians are like Leninists; how to solve the housing crisis (and why it won't happen); the end of the American Century), but my ability to cope with delusional narcissists and real estate agents is running critically low right now. I am 70,000 words into the first draft of a 100,000 word novel, which is great, except that I really want to get it finished by January 28th—and I'm about to take three compulsory days off writing (because family stuff).
So instead, I want you all to pitch in and try to come up with the best caption for this really cute cat photo I found on reddit. Such teeth, very hairless, wow!
Maybe some enterprising cipherpunks can base a cryptocurrency on it ...
Every year, John Scalzi posts a blog entry inviting authors who have published work in the preceding year that's eligible for nominations for the field's awards to announce and/or link to the work in question. As he says:
So if you're a science fiction and fantasy author, editor, or artist: Tell us what works of yours (or if you in yourself) are eligible for award consideration this year. The site gets up to 50,000 visitors a day, many of whom nominate for Hugos/Nebulas/Other genre awards, so it's a decent way to get the word out.This site doesn't get 50,000 visitors a day; more like 19,000 (peaking at 62,000 on a really good day, which this isn't). But if you want to tell everyone what you've published in 2013, feel free to do so here as well! I'm pretty sure our readerships form only partially overlapping sets ...
This has taken me slightly by surprise—I was expecting an official announcement later in the month—but as they're available for pre-order on Amazon.com right now I think I can safely say this:
Tor are releasing the remastered, halfway-rewritten, omnibus editions of the Merchant Princes series in the US as DRM-free ebooks next Wednesday, the 7th of January:
The Bloodline Feud
Paper editions will follow in September 2014 to January 2015: dates subject to confirmation. I'll provide other, non-Amazonian ebook store links as and when I get them. More information below the fold ...
