Guest post by Zena Shapter Getting a manuscript ready for submission to agents or publishers is much like cleaning your home or car. Since I’m no mechanic, and we all have homes, I’m going to go with the home analogy for now. But why, do you ask, is preparing your [...]
Issue 3 is out now, with new fiction from Cat Sparks, Rob Hood and Steve Cameron. Download it here in epub or mobi formats.
by Ian McHugh With the (then) impending release of her new novel Shatterwing, part one of Dragon Wine, I interviewed Donna Hanson about her long-time passion project. Because I’m a slacker, Shatterwing is now out in the world and the sequel, Skywatcher, is on its way on October 9. The [...]
Guest post by Ian McHugh One major challenge of stepping up from short stories to novels is managing a larger ensemble of characters. In my impetuousness, I exacerbated this problem for myself by starting from real historical events. Reality is way less tidy than fiction. In real life, people bob up [...]
Guest post by Zena Shapter I didn’t mean to become one, but over the last few years I’ve become a social media consultant. Writers started asking me how to use social media and, after a while, I thought – why not? Since I know about social media … why not [...]
by Ian McHugh With the forthcoming release of his first fiction anthology, Suspended in Dusk, I interviewed editor Simon Dewar about chutzpah, the importance of having no concept of level of difficulty, the horror of caesarian sections and the inspirational value of Mariah Carey and prog metal. Oh, and some [...]
Guest post by Ian McHugh Something writers are often exhorted to do is “write what you know”. This doesn’t necessarily mean that your stories should reflect the literal truth of your lived experience, although they can. My first published story, “The Alchemical Automaton Blues” was basically a recounting of a real [...]
Guest post by Zena Shapter Why is it that we only realise how bad we were at writing novels… once we’re finally good at writing them? When I finished writing my first novel, I honestly thought it would be a simple matter of promoting it to the right agent or [...]
Events Gillian Polack is guest of honour at Liburnicon in Croatia Sales and Publications Gillian has sold more than three books to Satalyte Publishing, including Langue[dot]doc 1305, which will have a pre-release at Loncon. Donna Hanson, writing as Dani Kristoff, has a new book out from HarperImpulse, The Sorceror's Spell. Donna [...]
by Simon Dewar (writing at simondewar.wordpress.com) As I send the Suspended in Dusk anthology off to James Roy Daley at Books of the Dead Press for publication, I think now is probably the right time to look back on the experience and see what lessons I learned. So I guess this post [...]