All Entries Tagged With: "Novel"

Book Review: Julian Comstock by Robert Charles Wilson

Julian Comstock isn’t a book, it’s a force, plain and simple. The fictional biopic of Julian Comstock written by his long-time friend, Adam Hazzard, is far from science fiction in my opinion. While the book utilizes tropes from the post-apocalyptic sub-genre it doesn’t dwell on them, nor does it exploit them to either further the [...]

ChiZine Publications Expands Its Distribution Options

Independent speculative genre publisher ChiZine Publications announces it is expanding its distribution options to increase the availability of its books through various channels.

Signing a deal with The Literary Press Group of Canada (LPG), all of ChiZine Publications’ titles are now available via the LPG sales force. In addition, this deal results in all of ChiZine [...]

What Can We Expect From Baen Books in the Future?

While attending Worldcon in Montreal I had the fortunate pleasure of attending Baen Books publisher’s presentation. Similarly, prior to the event I had a writer’s workshop with one of their authors, Mark L. Van Name, who I can’t help but thank for his insightful criticism from the nearly finished novel. Nevertheless, the following is a [...]

The Turkey City Lexicon (Part 6 – Character and Viewpoint)

Alas we come to the final section of the Turkey City Lexicon, character, viewpoint and other miscellaneous things. Sufficed to say if these are your only problems with the story after managing to accomplish every else in the other five parts of the turkey city lexicon then fixing these mistakes should be a cakewalk. On [...]

What can we expect from Tor Books this season?

While at Worldcon in Montreal I had the opportunity to go to the publisher’s presentation for Tor Books with all of their editors (including Patrick Nielsen Hayden, David G. Hartwell, and Tom Doherty) present and I can honestly say that if Tor delivers on the goods this year in terms of their books we can [...]

The Turkey City Lexicon (Part 4 – Plots)

Plots are the cousins of story ideas. Well, not really, but in terms of crafting a good short story (or novel) they are important. Just as any story need a plot that is original and not cliched, plots need to be well formulated, concise, and, most importantly, they need to make sense. So here is [...]

The Turkey City Lexicon (Part 3, Common Workshop Story Types)

Despite the common belief, editors do a lot more than simply correct spelling and grammar (which is more suited for a copy editor). In truth the editor works in the best interests of a writer to ensure that their work is the best piece of fiction it can be before it is manufactured and placed [...]

The Turkey City Lexicon (Part 2 – Words & Sentences, Cont’d)

Here is the second part of my six-part series entitled the Turkey City Lexicon. Click Here for the first part.

While many aspiring writers have no problem writing short stories, most seem to have a problem with reading short stories, a feature evident upon reading their works. Many aspiring writers assume that writing short stories is [...]

The Turkey City Lexicon (Part 1 – Words and Sentences)

In anticipation for Anticipation (WorldCon ‘09) in Montreal, I decided to take it upon myself to sign up for a writing workshop to get some insightful criticism on my latest novel, “The Seducer’s Handbook” before I go about editing the second draft. The five-person writing workshop set to take place at this year’s Worldcon involves [...]

How to Deliver the Perfect Elevator Pitch

A week ago, I bookmarked a post on io9.com on Delicious entitled “Make You Epic Space Novel Live Up To Your Elevator Pitch” and didn’t look at it until yesterday. Expecting to read an article on how to deliver the perfect elevator pitch I was presented with something verydifferent, leaving me to scratch my head [...]