Spontaneous Derivation

Patrick Nielsen Hayden corrected me on Beth Meacham’s edited books for the year. The correction is now live here. Thanks, Patrick!

If anyone has more corrections, please let me know. In fact, if someone can help me Ginjer Buchanan’s edited books I would be very grateful—that’s the last piece of missing information I have for the Hugo 2008 Countdown.

Update: Ginjer was on vacation, but Cameron Dufty was kind enough to give me three for now. Fortunately I did get two of the books right—Halting State and Galactic North. Thanks, Cameron!

Science fiction and fantasy: where would they be without visuals? Humans are visual creatures, and while we can visualize the images behind the words of stories and novels, it’s the artists who bring those images to life.

Continue reading “2008 Hugo Awards Countdown: Best Professional Artist”

Photography: .parker.

Life is short, and blogging takes time.

Say you’re oncall (like I am currently). Do you really want to spend your two hours of free internet time a day doing annoying blog odd jobs and maintenance that ought to just be easy—or do you want to spend it doing research and writing? I know what any sane blogger would say.

Here are five WordPress plugins that are giving me more time now, during a couple weeks when I shall be very short on time indeed.

Continue reading “5 WordPress Plugins That Make Life Easier”

This is the companion article to the one for Best Editors - Long Form.

It’s been fun putting together the names and faces together of the men and women who manage with the insanity of writers on the one hand, the chaos of publishing on the other, and don’t go postal with a chainsaw on the slush pile.

Continue reading “2008 Hugo Awards Countdown: Best Professional Editors - Short Form”

We don’t appreciate editors enough sometimes.

For they’re the ones who choose the writers and works and shepherd the manuscript through the publishing process. In the case of the short form (meaning magazines like Asimov’s) they go through slush piles that would make your knees knock together. And in the case of the long form (novels and anthologies), they deal with the insanity that is publishing.

Because editors oversee so many projects, and sometimes don’t even have a website of their own (they’re waaay too busy), this took a bit longer than I expected to put together.

Continue reading “2008 Hugo Awards Countdown: Best Professional Editors - Long Form”

Definition: related book

A book that isn’t a science fiction or fantasy story presented in text (or mostly text). This includes books that present material about the genre, usually in the form of essays or art, as well as picture books and graphic novels.

I must add that the final nominee in this category is rather unique.

Continue reading “2008 Hugo Awards Countdown: Best Related Book”

Definitions:

Long form dramatic presentation: movie-length or, in some cases, season-length.

Short form dramatic presentation: TV episode short arc length or less.

Continue reading “2008 Hugo Awards Countdown: Dramatic Presentation (Long Form/Short Form)”

Photography: Luz A. Villa

I’ve been busy with the guest-posting, yes:

Four Important Lessons I Learned From Writing Serials over at Fumbling Fiction.

Photography: maxedaperature

You’ll find my guest post on the EntreCard blog. Hope you enjoy—and leave plenty of comments over there!

Definition: novella

A story between 17,500 and 40,000 words long.

Continue reading “2008 Hugo Awards Countdown: The Sites and Blogs Behind the Fiction - Novellas”