by Juliet Kemp As writers, we all have our own strengths – and our own shortcomings. At the start of your writing career, you’re working on everything all the time; as you improve, you can identify your strengths and lean into them. But to level up and develop your career, it’s vital (if tough!) to […]

by May Haddad Fantastic noir is a subgenre that blends film noir or its literary inspiration and counterpart, hardboiled fiction and roman noir (respectively), with the more outlandish elements of speculative fiction. It crops up here and there in films like Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers and Pokémon Detective Pikachu or novels like Jonathan Lethem’s […]

by J. Scott Coatsworth In the middle of 2022, I broke my arm. And not just a simple fracture—my orthopedic surgeon said it looked like it had exploded. Thus began a difficult (and still in progress) recovery. I won’t go into the gory details—suffice it to say that for about six weeks, I was unable […]

By J.D. Harlock Introduction The “belly dancer” is one of the most prevalent tropes western media has of Middle Easterners, and it’s often used as a cheap source of fan service in Middle Eastern and Arabesque settings. However, not only is this an insensitive portrayal of a revered traditional dance, but the inaccurate dress has […]

by Emma Johanna Puranen It seems like everyone’s listening to things these days. Between the larger podcast boom and the rise of the audiobook, it can be easy to overlook the small but thriving world of science fiction audio drama.  Audio drama, which evolved from the radio play, is a storytelling medium in which the […]

A.J. Cunder As an editor, I’m tempted to say there’s a certain magic when it comes to submissions that catch my eye in the slush pile: an ethereal feeling when the story just clicks, an almost intangible quality to the author’s wordsmithing. But of course, to reduce an editor’s decision to magic (even in the […]

by Anthony W. Eichenlaub Your time has value. That’s it. That’s the lesson. If you’re looking to save a few minutes, you can skip the rest of this article and just keep that one thought in mind. Your minutes have worth, and how you spend them is as important as how you spend your money. […]