Category Archives: Announcements

Story sales, articles, reviews, any kind of publication announcement.

SF COntario Schedule, short and long

By | | , , ,
Comments Off on SF COntario Schedule, short and long

photo by Laurie Grassi of Raincoast Books

For those of you who will also be attending SFContario this November 17-19th, here’s the short and longer versions of my schedule!

What, When, Where
Creating Languages:  Saturday 10 AM; Solarium
Eating and Ethics; Saturday 11 AM; Solarium
Plot Complications (Moderator): Saturday 1 PM; Parkview
Reading: Sunday 11-11:30 AM; Parkview,
Quatloos and Credits and Latinum, Oh My! Sunday 1 PM; Solarium
Who else? and Panel Details!
Creating Languages: Many SF/F worlds have their own languages, Elvish and Klingon being two examples. From etymology to grammar to culture, there are many characteristics to consider. How do you craft languages that make sense? How does a language reflect the identities of its speakers? How do we make our languages and vocabularies believable? Alyx Dellamonica, Sephora Hosein(M), Lawrence Schoen
Eating and Ethics; What is the ethical scope of our food choices? Is buying local really better than buying imported food? Are Vegans better for the environment? How do things like socioeconomic status, mental health, and disability intersect with the ethics of food consumption? Charlotte Ashley (M), Alyx Dellamonica, Lawrence Schoen, Gunnar Wentz
Plot Complications: Characters in a story are attempting to solve a problem. In the best stories, their attempts go horribly awry. Who can forget the moment when the Crew of the Enterprise, attempting to defeat the Borg, is faced with the announcement from their beloved Captain–“I am Locutus of Borg.”  And the course of the story is changed. Or, when Boromir falls to the lure of the Ring and tries to take it, splitting up the Fellowship and changing everyone’s paths. Panelists and audience are invited to present their own favorite heart-stopping moment from books and film.  Timothy Carter; David Clink, Alyx Dellamonica (M), Cathy Hird
Quatloos and Credits and Latinum, Oh My! Economics is frequently overlooked in SF. Do adventurers simply live on nuts and berries and what they can kill? What do they pay with when they visit an inn or buy a drink? How is trade carried out, particularly between species? Is there still a struggle for resources or has science advanced to the point where anything can be fabricated? Quatloos and Credits and Latinum, Oh My!; Alyx Dellamonica, Cenk Gokce(M), Kelly Robson

The Stories Behind The Sum of Us

By | | , ,
Comments Off on The Stories Behind The Sum of Us

I was so pleased this weekend when Lucas K. Law and Susan Forest took home an Aurora Award for Strangers Among Us: Tales of the Underdogs and Outcasts, which includes my story “Tribes” as well as fiction by Gemma Files, Hayden Trenholm, James Alan Gardner and so many other great writers. This was one of the Laksa Media series anthologies, done as a benefit for people with mental health challenges, and I was proud to be included.

Lucas and Susan haven’t rested on their laurels, or even paused for breath: this year they have followed up with The Sum of Us: Tales of the Bonded and Bound, and there will be a launch in Toronto on October 11th, 2017. Here’s a  link to the Facebook Event, and here’s the poster:

Many of the authors in the antho will be there, talking about the story behind each of the stories in The Sum of Us: Tales of the Bonded and Bound. As the poster says: Sandra Kasturi, Rahti Mehrotra, Derwin Mak, Melissa Yuan-Innes, Toni Pi, Karen Lowachee and Charlotte Ashley will all be there. And so will I, talking about the Proxy War story series generally, my piece “Bottleneck” in particular, and what a story about a hard-bitten army sergeant is doing in a book of pieces about caregiving and caregivers.

Pursuing Mastery. (Very fine mastery at that!)

By | | ,
2 Comments

The better you get at something, the harder it is to improve.

This philosophy–which I’m pretty sure I first encountered in a science fiction novel by Kevin J. Anderson, expressed there as the Law of Diminishing Educational Returns–has borne out with many of the skills I’ve pursued in a less than professional fashion. Yoga, photography, choral singing, and aikido all come to mind. You get to a certain point, and you’re somewhere between not bad and decent, and it’s clear that the amount of time and effort required to get up to impressive is going to ramp up in a big way.

Leveling with aikido is an especially on-point example, because each belt exam comes after a certain number of hours in the dojo, on the mat. That number rises… not exponentially, but significantly as one travels from white belt to yellow and upward.

I also believe that if you aren’t trying to improve, you’re coasting. And what is coasting, really, but a gentle drift downhill?*

I certainly don’t think I’ve stopped striving, as a writer, but I also don’t want to wait until I reach some hypothetical future where I’ve eased up, unknowingly. I’ve gotten very good indeed at a lot of things, and I’m proud of my accomplishments. And I’ve written a couple things lately that feel like new breakthroughs. I love breakthroughs. Getting better is an incredible feeling!

All of which means that now is a great time, for me, to greedily reach for more. And, specifically, to look for some coaching. It’s easy and necessary to cultivate self-sufficiency in this game–to follow your instincts and see where they lead you. But it isn’t a good idea to do that all the time.

To that end–and for a bunch of other reasons besides, most of which I’m betting you can guess–I applied last December to the UBC’s Optional-Residency MFA program for creative writers. (Wow. December. So long ago!) I was accepted in February, or around there, and quietly settled into a state of waiting to start school. This has been rather like existing as a chrysalis: neither caterpillar nor butterfly. Suspended animation.

Well… okay. I’ve been as suspended as one can be when one has books due, classes to teach, a new university bureaucracy to navigate**, and fabulous trips to Finland to first go on and then reminisce about. But I haven’t said anything while I was waiting, waiting, for this exciting new thing to begin.

Now the chrysalis is cracking: I did homework today for my Writing for TV class, and things officially get rolling on September 3rd. I’ll report in, as I’m able… in the meantime, I hope you’ll wish me luck!

_________

*I believe this observation comes from Joan Welsh, but the Internet’s opinion is mixed.

**I’m telling people I’m now in a polyamorous relationship with three universities. Oh, the humanity!

Award-eligible 2016 works

By | | , , ,
Comments Off on Award-eligible 2016 works

In addition to my newest novel, The Nature of a Pirate, officially out as of last Tuesday, I’ve had three works of short fiction see release in 2016.

First, there were two novelettes, both set on Stormwrack–the same world as the aforementioned Pirate and its predecessors in the Hidden Sea Tales trilogy. First came “The Glass Galago” on Tor.com in January; you can read it for free here. More recently, “The Boy who would not be Enchanted,” was in Beneath Ceaseless Skies this fall.

Finally, there was a short story, “Tribes,” which appeared in Strangers Among Us: Tales of the Underdogs and Outcasts, edited by Susan K. Forest and Lucas K. Law.

All of the above are first-time publications, suitable for nominating for Hugos, Nebulas, Auroras, World Fantasy Awards, Booker Prizes, Governor General’s Awards, Pulitzers and possibly Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters. As works of prose fiction, they probably don’t qualify for Emmys, Grammys, Tonys or Oscars. (Though if you think you can make a good case for it, please! Have a go!)

Heiresses of Russ 2015 ToC Announcement

By | | , , ,
Comments Off on Heiresses of Russ 2015 ToC Announcement

I am so pleased to announce the finalized line-up for Heiresses of Russ 2016, from Lethe Press, edited by Steve Berman and myself. This is my editorial debut and it’s the sixth, I believe in the HoR series. As the Lethe Press site says, Heiresses of Russ reprints the prior year’s best lesbian-themed short works of the fantastical, the otherworldly, the strange and wondrous under one cover.

Here’s the line-up:

 

As a side-dish to go with the introduction I wrote for this anthology, in which I speculate about what Joanna Russ might have thought of this series that bears her name, I am hoping to lure some of my wonderful authors over here to talk about what constitutes a lesbian-themed work of genre fiction in this day and age.