So it’s been almost exactly two and a half years since I posted my first “Navigating Woke SF” blog post, where I demonstrated an anti-conservative bias in the responses I was getting to my traditional short story submissions, and predicted a cultural backlash against the woke moral panic of our times. Those predictions are now… Continue reading Navigating Woke SF, Part 5: Where do things stand now?
Tag: traditional publishing
Retro sci-fi cover fails
Back a few years ago when indie publishing was a new thing, I remember there was a blog that would take the worst self-published covers and make fun of them. It was a popular site for a while, though a lot of the indies whose covers were shamed didn’t think it was all that fun.… Continue reading Retro sci-fi cover fails
Bowing Out
Back at the end of August, I blogged about how I was going to do a writing challenge in September to produce more short stories to fill out my publishing queue. At the time, I had a couple of stories that looked like they were going to be picked up by one of the major… Continue reading Bowing Out
Fisking Hysteria
So a couple of days ago, I finished revising “The Freedom of Second Chances” and started looking for places to submit it. That was how I found this anthology call, for a pro-abortion anthology titled Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic: An Anthology of Hysteria Fiction. The guidelines were so unbelievable that I just have to fisk… Continue reading Fisking Hysteria
Short Story: The Body Tax
This was a fun one to write, even if it did go a little dark at first. The idea for it came from this article about a couple in San Francisco who received an outrageously huge warning fine ($1,500) for parking their car in their own driveway. In the comments to the article, I wrote:… Continue reading Short Story: The Body Tax
Print vs. Ebook vs. Audiobook: Pros and Cons
Print Pros: A printed book is a hard, physical copy that cannot be altered, edited, deleted, revoked, remotely accessed, or otherwise tampered with by a third party who does not have physical access to the book. The reading experience is totally private. Governments, corporations, and other third parties cannot easily know about what you read… Continue reading Print vs. Ebook vs. Audiobook: Pros and Cons
Navigating Woke SF, Part 1: Short Story Markets and Author Blacklists
Last year, I had a short story published in the anthology Again, Hazardous Imaginings: More Politically Incorrect Science Fiction. Not only was it one of my highest paying short story sales to date, but it also made it onto the Tangent Online 2020 Recommended Reading List with a *** rating, their highest tier. Only 13… Continue reading Navigating Woke SF, Part 1: Short Story Markets and Author Blacklists
A New Short Story Plan
So I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how best to leverage my short stories, not just from the traditional publishing angle, but from the indie publishing side as well. The problem is that self-published short stories really don’t sell much, so after you’ve sold them to a traditional market, what are you supposed to… Continue reading A New Short Story Plan
A Much Deserved Fisking
In the November issue of Locus magazine, Cory Doctorow wrote an op-ed piece defending Jeannette Ng and the decision to strip Campbell’s name from the Campbell Award. At least, that’s how it started out, but it quickly devolved into a hatchet piece against everyone in science fiction whose politics lie somewhere to the right of… Continue reading A Much Deserved Fisking
Algorithms, social media addictions, and the endless churn of content
In the last 5-6 years, I’ve noticed a shift in most of the media content that I consume. Content has proliferated at an unprecedented rate, and the churn—or the rate at which new content pushes out old content—has become one of the driving factors for those of us trying to make our careers in this… Continue reading Algorithms, social media addictions, and the endless churn of content