Dmae Roberts, an award-winning radio artist and writer, recently profiled acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin for Stage and Studio, a radio show that focus on performing, literary, and media arts with a connection to Oregon.
Member News for Kelly Swails, KJ Kabza, and Keffy R. M. Kehrli.
When I’m teaching, I do bring some books to class in order to point students toward them. I don’t think books are a substitute for the act of writing, but they can help focus and direct your practice and give you a list of things to work on that might not otherwise occur to you. Here’s a list of my top ten for speculative fiction writers focusing on their craft. I was sad to find some not available on the Kindle, but where possible, I’ve pointed to the e-version.
It’s one thing to say that something bad is going to happen. It’s quite another to know that kidnappers are going to cut your finger off with a pair of wire cutters. It’s one thing to have someone say something good will happen (Chinese fortune cookie) and quite another to say your uncle just died and left you a million dollars, but you have to fight your three cousins for it.
Renovation, the 69th World Science Fiction Convention, is delighted to announce that the 2011 Hugo Award nomination period is now open.
Doomsday scenarios are a dime a dozen. When a villain claims to be on the verge of ‘destroying the Earth’ he/she usually means killing everyone/everything on it. But sometimes simply killing all humans isn’t good enough. Unfortunately even the vast amounts of energy necessary to wipe out all civilization is woefully inantiquate to physically destroy the planet. To do that would take some serious power.
Industry News and Member News for Will McIntosh, Joanne Merriam, Maureen K. Power, and Anne M. Pillsworth.
What is it that makes us entertain fantasies about mating outside our own species? Surely this can’t be in our DNA; the mule, sterile offspring of a horse and donkey’s mating, is an example of the evolutionary dead end that results.Yet since our earliest days we’ve apparently been fascinated by the non-human cultures we co-exist with, and the fantasy of strange creatures, able to shift from wild animal to human. Long before we could write, we told stories around the campfire about them, as lovers, not monsters.
Earlier this year, I was studying my royalty statement from DAW, comparing my print and electronic sales. I’ve been hearing for years that print is dying and e-books are the future, so I was rather surprised to find that electronic sales made up only 3-5% of my overall book sales.
With this post we begin looking at the key conditions that build reader suspense. Stories are made up of four main ingredients: character, setting, problem, and plot. All of these are important, but problem is the engine that makes suspense go.
A historical fantasy: the remarkable tale of Miss Bristol, a young woman born in 1885 who lost herself, found herself, and learned how to eat pizza like a New Yorker in 2025.
Auston Habershaw is a science fiction and fantasy author, writing about the could-be and never-was, and also teaches composition and literature at MCPHS University in Boston, MA.
