Define Me: The Role of Changelings in Folklore
It’s human nature to take the inexplicable things in life and try to make sense out of it. What are those eerie lights that dance around in the swamp at night?
Archive for the ‘SFWA Blog’ Category
Publishers Settle With Google–But What About Authors?
Seven years ago, the Authors Guild and several major publishers (including McGraw Hill, Penguin, and John Wiley) filed suit against Google for its unauthorized scanning of in-copyright books.
Guest Post: Enter the Dragon*Con
If you haven’t been to Dragon*Con before, here’s a little background. The convention takes place, technically, from Friday-Monday, over Labor Day weekend, in Atlanta. Most people come in on Thursday.
Guest Post: A Comet is Coming!
But there’s a promising new comet candidate that could rival the moon in brightness and be visible in the day time sky late in 2013.
Class Action Lawsuit Against PublishAmerica Dismissed
On June 11 of this year, a class action lawsuit was filed against PublishAmerica by a Baltimore, MD law firm, in association with high-profile litigators Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro.
Among other things, the complaint alleged that PA makes money off its authors while billing itself as a traditional publisher, requires authors to pay for “usual and customary marketing that any reputable publisher would do as a matter of course,” offers “services that are not reasonably designed to promote book sales,” and “duped” the three plaintiffs in the lawsuit with, among other things, “bogus services” and books “riddled with errors.”
One About One: Part 2
Don DeLillo wrote: “One truth is the swing of the sentence, the beat and poise, but down deeper it’s the integrity of the writer as he matches with the language.”
Can the same thing be said about a writer’s connection to the work of another?
One About One
In Silent Interviews, Samuel R. Delany said: “I begin, a sentence lover. I’m forever delighted, then delighted all over, at the things sentences can trip and trick you into saying, into seeing. I’m astonished—just plain tickled!—at the sharp turns and tiny tremors they can whip your thoughts across.
Quick Updates for 2012-09-25
Member News for Beth Cato, Larry Niven, Edward M. Lerner, and Athena Andreadis.
Guest Post: The Habit of Starting
The biggest reason people fail at creating and sticking to new habits is that they don’t keep doing it.
That seems obvious: if you don’t keep doing a habit, it won’t really become a habit. So what’s the solution to this obvious problem? Find a way to keep doing it.
Cat Rambo: Near and Far
I’ve found that editing other writers’ work often forces me to articulate my philosophy of writing, which helps me then turn around and apply it to my own. When you’re telling people to avoid adverbs, for instance, it’s worthwhile to go look at your own and see how many you have of your own.
