The Guide to Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction

I just got my contributor's copy of Philip Athans' The Guide to Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction: 6 Steps to Writing and Publishing Your Bestseller!. The book has an introduction and original story by R.A. Salvatore, and features quotes from a number of SF&F luminaries, including Kevin J. Anderson, Terry Brooks, Paul Park, Mike Resnick, Yours Truly and others. I hope to get a chance to read it myself!

I Will Not Read Your F'ing Script

This piece in The Village Voice by A History of Violence screenwriter Josh Olson is priceless.

I am so grateful that he spelled out a few things. He starts off with a many paragraph refusal--"I will not read your fucking script"--and then goes on to say, "At this point, you should walk away, firm in your conviction that I'm a dick. But if you're interested in growing as a human being and recognizing that it is, in fact, you who is the dick in this situation, please read on."

The full article is very well worth reading, but this point especially I'm glad he made:

"This needs to be clear--when you ask a professional for their take on your material, you're not just asking them to take an hour or two out of their life, you're asking them to give you--gratis--the acquired knowledge, insight, and skill of years of work. It is no different than asking your friend the house painter to paint your living room during his off hours."

I think I'm going to bookmark this article.

Podcast: Lou on Writing Excuses

At the recent World Science Fiction Convention, I was honored to be a guest on Writing Excuses, the podcast of writing advice hosted by Brandon Sanderson, Howard Taylor, and Dan Wells. The episode is available on iTunes and elsewhere, and here is the direct link. Their description (not mine!):

So what exactly does an editor, do, anyway? We’ve already talked about the process of submitting to an editor; today we talk about the millions of vital things that happen after an editor says “I want to buy your book.” Not only that, but we get to hear it all straight from the mouth of Lou Anders, the Hugo-nominated editor from Pyr Books, who this year alone helped create a Hugo-nominated book and two Campbell-nominated authors. In other words: when this man talks about editing, you listen.

Here It Comes... "Net" Result of the Writers Strike

Readers of this blog will know I am very eager for the age of quality online filmic content on the Internet to gear up into full swing. Therefore, this is really exciting. And I love this final quote:

"The companies are pushing us into the embrace of people that are going to cut them out of the loop," marveled one show runner who is tracking the start-up trend but not participating. "We are one Connecticut hedge-fund checkbook, one Silicon Valley server farm and two creators away from having channels on YouTube, where the studios don't own anything."

Meet Barry Baldwin: Man of Mystery

Meet Barry Baldwin. I've been meaning to blog Barry for a while now (and for "a while" read "since about last October"). Barry is Professor Emeritus of Classics at the University of Calgary, an author of 12 books and some 600 articles in the area of Greek, Roman, Byzantine, 18th-Century, and Albania history, and lastly and most recently - and here editors of short fiction take note - the author of a slew of mystery tales that are both charming and charmingly perverse. Barry's been a finalist in both the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Awards (1999) and Bouchercon Anthony Awards (2000), and he's contributed to both Alfred Hitchcock's and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, as well as to Chris Roberson's retro-pulp anthology, Adventure, Vol. 1.

A few years ago, when circumstances allowed me to publish mysteries and thrillers, it was my great pleasure to publish a short story of Barry's called "VE Knights," but since then he's been scribbling with a vengeance (as indeed he was before then too), and a great many of his works are available online. Here's "The Last Act" from Hardluck Stories, "The Best-Laid Plans" and "Boys and Girls Come Out to Play" on Sliptongue, "Telling Them Apart" on Shattercolors, "Double Top" on Mouth Full of Bullets, and "Party Poopers" on Flash Fantastic. I aggregate them here as much for your reading pleasure as because they should be aggregated somewhere so more people can discover his work. Barry - if ever anyone needed a website! The rest of you, happy reading.