MFA Programs and the efficacy or use thereof tend to come up in discussion periodically. For those of you interested, here is a run down of the types of programs and what to expect. I personally have an MFA in Poetry from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and am currently looking into applying for a second MFA, this time in Fiction. I might be addicted to school. Or it might be that MFA programs really are just that awesome.
Award-winning author and editor Jennifer Brozek has edited over ten anthologies (with more on the way in 2013). The creative director of Apocalypse Ink Productions, she also has won both the Origins and the ENnie awards for her work writing for RPG companies, contributing to a long list of sourcebooks that include Dragonlance, Shadowrun, and White Wolf SAS.
The Baltimore Science Fiction Society, a 501(c)(3) located at 3310 East Baltimore Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21224, is proud to announce more writing workshops for 2013 run by professional writers.
You may have heard that Vantage Press, one of the USA’s oldest vanity publishers, closed its doors at the end of 2012.
John Scalzi reported on this scam earlier this week, and his post was widely disseminated on Twitter–but since not everyone reads the same blogs, and the scam is a recurring one that isn’t limited to science fiction and fantasy writers, I thought it was worth covering here.
You might have heard the advice, “Don’t chase the market.” That’s good advice, as a general idea, but many people misunderstand it and think that it means that you should not write for a specific audience. Here’s the thing… Your audience is not the market.
You’d think that dodgy publishers, publicists, and others would know better than to spam Writer Beware. But no. Disproving the frequent spammer claim that their email lists are carefully targeted, I get quite a substantial number of advertisements, press releases, and solicitations.
When people speak of works that “have withstood the test of time” it’s worthwhile asking “Withstood for what?” and “Withstood for whom?” For instance, The Malleus Maleficarum is indeed an immortal work, but it’s not remembered for the reasons its authors and admirers might have wished. The same nuancing holds for classic SF. Overlapping this is the forelock tugging to so-called “hard” SF that, inter alia, seems to still hew to the fifties concept that only physics and astronomy are quantitative sciences.
As we begin the new year (Writer Beware’s fifteenth–good heavens!), here’s a look back at some of Writer Beware’s most notable posts and warnings from 2012.
On Saturday, January 12th, 2013 at 8PM, the Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS), located at 3310 East Baltimore Street, Baltimore, MD 21224, will have a free, public party to celebrate 50 years of promoting science, science fiction and fantasy throughout Maryland.
From the cosmic to the ghostly, A Prisoner of Dreamland and Other Oneiric Terrors presents fourteen tales that take the reader on a tour de force journey through the twilight kingdom of dreams.
Garrett Boatman is the author of Stage Fright, Floaters, Night’s Plutonian Shore, The Clocks of Midnight, The Mirror of Eternity, and A Prisoner of Dreamland. His stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies.
