by Vida Cruz Note: This article first appeared in The Bulletin #216 in October 2021. Quick: you hear of an injustice over the news. What do you do? Some of us march. Some of us donate to charities and NGOs and fundraising artists. And some of us write stories criticizing the injustice and the social […]
SFWA’s Comics Committee has announced the results of two surveys they’ve conducted to document current industry norms for advances and per-page rates for the work of comics writers and graphic novelists. The reports can be downloaded here: Survey of Industry Professionals Survey of Comics Writers and Graphic Novelists Sixteen acquiring editors (50%), publishers (25%), and […]
by Matthew Broberg-Moffitt Part 1 of this series focused on the importance of #OwnVoices stories and the representation of neurodiversity and the neurodiverse (ND) in modern media. Part 2 covers the business of traditional publishing and the unique challenges that the ND face when attempting to get a seat at the proverbial table. For those […]
by Gabriel Ertsgaard From Hector and Achilles to Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, the heroic duel is a fiction staple. However, my special interest (and the topic of my unfinished book) is how to tell stories of nonviolent heroism. How do we tell gripping stories without the charge of heroic violence? Is it even […]
by Alice Speilburg Nearly every summer, I bring on an intern for the agency, and each week we cover a different publishing topic, focusing on traditional publishing paths in the US. When we get to author payment structures—advances and royalties—I start with a theoretical explanation. An advance is intended to cover an author’s expenses while […]
May 17, 2021 — Monday, May 17, at Noon PST, will bring a close to The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc., (SFWA) 2021 Silent Auction. Final bids may be placed at bitly.com/sfwaauction. The auction opened on May 10. In the past week, over 1,100 bids have been placed, with at least $9,500 raised for […]
by Matthew Broberg-Moffitt If you are a writer and an avid Twitter user, you may be familiar with the term #OwnVoices and pitch events such as #PitMad and #DVPit. There is some measure of controversy in the writing community regarding the use of the #OwnVoices qualifier. The term was originally coined by writer Corinne […]
SFWA is launching an online auction to support its expanding membership base of over 2,000 members, advocacy efforts for all writers, and initiatives to better serve marginalized communities within the larger speculative fiction writing world. This silent auction will open May 10, 2021, at 12:00pm Pacific Time and close May 17, 2021, at 12:00pm Pacific […]
by Andrew Hoe Human martial arts styles are biased: they’re specifically designed to fight other humans. Of course, watching Neo trade Kung Fu blows with Agent Smith is awesome, but perhaps our focus on human fighting systems in sci-fi affects our imagining of alien/robot bodies. Put simply, it makes composing fight scenes easier. By […]
by Aigner Loren Wilson Like many writers, when I first started out writing speculative fiction, I felt lost when it came to who to talk to or where to “hang out” with the other cool kids. I knew there were speculative fiction communities out there, ones that were even open and welcoming to little ol’ […]
The Scotty (a device named for the Star Trek character) is not merely a transporter. Taken to its logical conclusion, it is a form of technology which gives its user the powers of an absolute god! And as the old saying goes, power corrupts.
Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam is the author of the novel Grim Root and the collection Where You Linger. Her short fiction has appeared in over 90 publications and has been nominated twice for the Nebula Award. By day, she writes for a mobile game.
