Here's the opening paragraph of The Dreaming Jewels (aka The Synthetic Man) by Theodore Sturgeon:

They caught the kid doing something disgusting under the bleachers at the high-school stadium, and he was sent home from the grammar school across the street.  He was eight years old then.  He'd been doing it for years.

That's a hell of a hook. How could ( Read more... )

Heads up, Canadian writerly types. Cory Doctorow and Holly Phillips are co-editing Tesseracts Eleven, the next volume of the award-winning anthology series for Canadian science fiction and fantasy. Cory has posted the submission guidelines at Boing Boing. Both English and French submissions are welcome. Your deadline is December 31, 2006.

Kit Whitfield is a new author who has also worked on the other side of the fence as an editor at a publishing house. After slogging through many a slush pile, she has put together a list of her favorite cover letter howlers. Even better, she has translated them into dating-speak:

"Imagine that the editor or agent is a woman standing on her own in a ( Read more... )

All you on-line novelists (and serialists) get your tails over to the Lulu Blooker Prize page. Lulu is sponsoring the first literary prize devoted to books originally published or developed on a web page or blog. You must submit three printed and bound copies of your book. Self-published entries are accepted, and you can of course use Lulu to have ( Read more... )

Looking at my friends list, I'm sure most of you are already aware of Baker's 12. But just in case anyone else wandered in here by accident or invitation, I encourage you to check it out.

So... what is it?

Baker's 12 is an incredible, massive, ongoing work of serial fiction by Taras Stasiuk. Time travel, adventure, major weirdness, and... it's ( Read more... )

Eric Flint will be editing Baen's Astounding Stories, a new quarterly webzine devoted to popular adventure fiction in sf and fantasy. While most of the magazine will consist of stories set in established universes by popular authors, each issue will also feature one story by a new author.

"We make no bones about the fact that we are oriented ( Read more... )

And so, here I am ( Read more... )