Hi - apologies in advance if this community doesn't cover my question...

My latest story is called "Swimming in the FastWarM Current", a romantic sci-fi story, can you believe that? I didn't even know it was going that way until the final couple of pages - isn't it strange how stories develop some times?

After many disappointments over the past few years, I would appreciate any suggestions on good paper or web-based magazines to submit the story to. Does anyone have any recent positive experiences they can share?

Have a great holiday break everyone.

Best wishes - Lee

If somebody in the continental US PayPals about $12 (roughly the cost of shipping them) to skittisheclipse@gmail.com (cards accepted) by tonight, I will send you a 12x12x10.5" box stuffed with Analog, Asimov, and SF&F magazines from the past couple years. (I'm moving again, to a small apartment I'm sharing, and need to cut down on book space.) It's a boatload of reading for very cheap.

Comment if you've done it, so that other people will not accidentally send me monies!

THE ORPHAN WORKS BILLS OF 2008
The proposed Orphan Works legislation will drastically change American
copyright law if passed as currently written. These changes will
negatively impact visual artists of all disciplines as well as writers,
musicians and filmmakers. (http://www.owoh.org/index.php)

I strongly urge you send this to all your creative friends and ask them
to sign the petition, or at the very least look at the Q and A page in
order to know what's going to happen to their work if this bill passes!

EDIT: Here is the link to the actual legislation. http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/  I get e-mails from the RWA on a regular basis, of which the content of this post is from. They're all in a frenzy over there. What do you all think about this?

Author : MorvaShepley
Title : Bloodbeast
Wordcount : 250 words
Genre :SF
Rating :G
Type : novel chapter
Notes : I'm still deciding on a title for this would-be novel

 

Prologue

Out on the plains, where the grass grows sparsely and the beasts graze rarely, the horizon stretches away into the stars, brushing infinity. No one goes there anymore. Only the wind stirs there now, fluting voicelessly through the long grasses, uselessly. Nobody hears.

Out on the plains there stands a cart, a long cart of wood greying, splintering, the ropes hanging loosely fraying, swaying, sand tying the wheels down with knots of grass.

In the cart lies a long, blue stone.

( Read more... )
 

 

We all write fantasy, and so I assume we all read it, too, and they must criss-cross, right?

( Here's an example. )

I'm going to cross-post this to a few places, so I apologize for multiple views.

I just joined this community, and LJ, a little while ago, and it looks like this community is pretty well laid-out for the kind of critique I'm looking for.  I guess I have kind of the same question as the last person: is this community still taking works for critique?  I just posted my first piece on my journal, and would love some feedback (that's kind of why I came to LJ).  Anyway, could someone let me know if I need to post it on the critiques page, or if I should just leave it in my journal so people can come check it out?  Thanks.

The last work posted for critique is from 2007. Is this group still active?

Hi. I'm also new. I'm a college student who likes to write mostly fantasy. I usually enjoy critiquing other people's work as an excuse to procrastinate on my own, although I do like to get feedback on my writing.

I had a question for the writers here. Not a what-do-I-do question (although that advice would be helpful) but more of a just-out-of-curiosity poll question.

Do you prefer to write short stories or novels?

I personally prefer novels, just because I like to take the time to get really invested in a story and the characters, and with a short story, I feel like it isn't as worth my time to do so.

According to some advice I once received through a writing contest, short stories are (usually) more concept-based while novels tend to be more character-based. I think the same person told me that short stories were much more difficult to write than novels.

What are your thoughts?

(Is this the sort of thing people usually discuss here, or am I just being an out-of-place newbie?)

Hi,

I'm just introducing myself. I'm a wannabe writer and I hope I'll be posting some fiction for critting here. Personally, I find it way easier to crit than to finish a story and post it.  Also, starting stories is easy. Getting them written all the way through to the end is another matter. Maybe I should stick to very short stories.

I'm Australian. Sometimes I think that writing is the hidden national pass time of Australians. It's because of the flies. If we talk, flies might get in our mouths, so we don't like talking and certainly don't trust smooth talkers, like politicians. So, it we have something to say, or a story to tell, we have to write it.

What else? I'm the mother of two boys. That's an important influence on my writing in that it's the reason I have restricted time for writing. For instance, right now I'm supposed to be watching DeathNote with them. There's a lot of imagination in Anime, the ones suitable for children to watch, anyway. Childrens Lit is also displays wonderful imagination, like bums going psycho, or people walking around with their souls in animal form.

Terry Pratchett and Neal Stephenson are a couple of my favorite writers. To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, is what I consider the best book ever written. I prefer Wuthering Heights to Jane Eyre because it's more passionate. Reading classic novels is a great way to learn how to write, too. Funny, they weren't classic when they were new, they were just popular.

Sometimes I suspect I just like SF for the costumes.


UrbanDragon

Hi all. Forgive me if I'm breaking netiquette but I'm brand spanking new at this. I'm a signed author with Tor books with my first novel due out in March of 2009. I just started a blog called:

Dani Kollin: The Road to Release
A signed author's perspective from closing the deal to releasing the book

Figured this might be a good place to post and let people in on my perspective as an "almost there" sf writer (bottom line: it ain't as rosy as you'd believe...but it ain't half bad either). Anyhow, thanks for letting me ramble.

Dani

Hi, sorry for the intrusion. I submitted a piece of creative fiction to Weird Tales 5(ish) weeks ago now, and haven't heard anything back. Their submission guidelines state 2-4 weeks.

This is my first time submitting work. Is it proper to wait 'x' number of weeks before submitting it elsewhere? Is it proper to wait a few weeks longer and request an update?

All advice and experience welcome, and thank you.

One of the things that really got me into speculative fiction is the fact that you can create a mythos (or adapt one or use concepts of to your own evil ends).

It's really a fascination with mythology, and god(s). So I wanted to start a discussion on how you create your pantheon, or your own little mythology. Is it clear, and concise, with chosen functions? Non-existent, or existing only due to belief? Real and directly affecting character's actions/lives? Actual characters that directly affect the story's flow?

Just wondering...:)

This isn't technically a request for critique, but it is a question, and it is regarding science fiction and fantasy, so I figure it is okay to ask. If it's not, please feel free to delete me.

I'm writing a fantasy novel, the first in an original world I created a few years ago. For one of my classes, I've got to design a website for a final project, and I've been given the okay to create what would be a fansite for my original world. Its primary purpose will be to inform the users regarding the world and the novels (and me), but I'm curious to know if you, as readers of fantasy, have any other things you would like to see on a site dedicated to a fantasy world.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

Hey, I've signed up for Nanowrimo this year. :) Are any of you planning to join? Just wondering. I think it's a great way to get a kickstart on a good sci-fi/fantasy novel. :)

I'm a new member to this group and a less new member to Critters. I'm not sure if this is the right place for this question, but I was looking for a writer's LJ community to ask this and I saw Critters and decided to go for it.

I just sold a short story to a POD anthology a few months ago. The anthology is scheduled to come out in October, although I don't think that's a very firm deadline. I sold first world anthology rights for the story. Now I want to submit the story to an audio magazine that accepts reprints. Is it kosher to submit now, or should I be waiting until the anthology actually comes out? So far as I can tell, this wouldn't be a legal problem--I only sold the first anthology rights, not any audio rights (unless the "first" part means first in every medium--I'm actually not clear on that). Besides, even in the unlikely event that the story gets accepted, it probably wouldn't get out before the anthology does. But I can't be sure about that, and I would feel bad about submitting something that I don't have the actual authority to sell at this moment. I'm more worried, though, that this would be just plain bad form, and I'm kind of embarrassed to ask the editor of the anthology because I feel like I ought to know the answer to this question.

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Thanks!

What would you like us to know about you?
I'm not quite sure! Probably that I've never critiqued anything beyond SPG before, but I shall try my best with this. Also that although I love to write, I have dreadful confidence problems that cause me to scrap (read: delete, burn, shred) just about anything I've come up with. I'd like to get past that stage. I want to write a novel that I have planned in intricate detail.

Where did you hear about sfandf_critters?
Through a link from another writing community

What do you like to read?
Mostly fantasy, historical fiction and soft SF. My favorite authors at present include George RR Martin, Frank Herbert, Stephen King (for the Dark Tower, not so much the horror stuff,) Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Anne McCaffrey. I tend to mostly read novels by female authors, I'm not entirely sure why. Probably my rampant feminism at work...

What do you like to write?
I want to write my first novel, One For Sorrow, which would be Bronze Age political fantasy. Most of my writing prior to now has been Tolkien RP and collaborative fanfiction, with many abortive attempts at original work. Oh, and I adore worldbuilding. I could do that forever - I love the brainstorming posts you have here.

What are your goals, if any?
To gain confidence in my writing, learn more about the technical side of things through critiquing and reading the critiques of others, and maybe end up posting something of my own here one day.

http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/ now bears a message of demise.

I weep! This was the best place to link anyone who asked, Samuel R. Delany? James Tiptree, Jr.? JoAnna Russ? Who were they? I loved sharing some of the stories there.

The archives are still up, however, so if you want to download it for future reading before they actually manage to kill it off utterly, the command line program wget is an easy way to do so. ( Furtherance of this tip )

What would you like us to know about you?
Not much really *shies away* except that I'm here with the hopes of improving my writing.
Where did you hear about sfandf_critters ?
I was looking for a Science Fiction community and found this place while searching.
What do you like to read?
Science Fiction mostly such as Ray Bradbury, Anne McCaffery, and Piers Anthony (I can't remember any others at the moment), but I enjoy a little fiction, poetry, fantasy, and sometimes mystery.
What do you like to write?
Sci-Fi and poetry.
What are your goals, if any?
Well besides college, I want to finish a story that I started years ago and never finished. I've been freshly inspired by Deborah Chester's series Alien Chronicles which happens to be similar to the kind of science fiction I'm into writing.

Satellites: Used to document atrocities, but USA's NASA is going to have to cut back on using them for climate monitoring

Synthetic life: The issues surrounding a patent on creating synthetic life, though a cell pared down to only its essential genes.

Neurons: Forgetting helps you remember important things, a neuronal mechanism could help explain deja vu, and they've found out how to store data in live neurons (they've stored data in bacteria, too. Clues to the origins of the nervous system have been found in sea sponges. An oldie but goodie: video on rat neurons trained to fly a plane.

Innovations: MIT demonstrates wireless power transfer, working on understanding superconductivity, determining accurate time faster.

Dinosaurs: Take a tour of the Creationist museum or read about theories on the hearing abilities of dinosaurs.

Culture: Archaeologists reconstruct life in the Bronze Age at a site in southern Spain and cultured chimpanzees pass on novel traditions.

Environment: Iron fertilization of the oceans to promote algae growth is being explored for CO2 reduction and the Chernobyl area has become a wildlife haven

Space: A stable source of light ups the odds for life in a planet named Gliese 581c. Meanwhile, on Mars they think they've found puddles. You can see many high res photos of Mars online now, as well!

Title: A Circle of Stars: Chapter One
Author: alias_sqbr
Wordcount:3300 = 22 x 150 (as decided after discussion with mods)
Genre(s): Fantasy
Type: Comic
Rating: G, will be PG eventually
Link: Link to the comic (Trust me, you don't want all 22 images here :))
Notes: This is a webcomic, so I wrote each page in order with only the odd revision made later on. On the plus side this means the quality improves as it goes along, but also means there a certain amount of inconsistency and an odd pace so that each page stands somewhat on it's own.

I am intending to go back and fix a bunch of stuff about this chapter, and will incorporate any suggestions you guys make. Please stop at chapter one! I will post chapter two when I have enough credits. (Chapter three is only just starting) Also I know the first page's php is broken, will have to get my husband-the-house-sysadmin to fix it.

As far as I can tell this is the first time a comic has been posted to this community, I discussed it with coyote_cult but I guess we just have to see how it goes and tweak the system if neccesary. I understand you all may not feel qualified to comment on the art, but any constructive criticism on the writing, pacing, or anything else would be greatly appreciated.

[[CRITIQUES USED FOR CREDIT]]

This is my first post for critique so in theory I don't need any.

But I need 7 credits and gave a bit over 600 words of feedback on Asenions Short Story which is 12 points. Yes? It hasn't been processed yet or something, I guess, since it didn't show up on the Credit List Maker.

Please let me know if I got the protocol wrong on any of this. Though I don't think critiquing my request for critique counts towards your total :D

Here's some recent science topics from the past couple of weeks that I thought might be interesting for you all!

• Equipping E. Coli With A 'Chemo-navigation' System
• Babies Able To Tell Through Visual Cues When Speakers Switch Languages
• World Population Becomes More Urban Than Rural
• Essential Tones Of Music Rooted In Human Speech
• Cosmologists Predict A Static Universe In 3 Trillion Years
• Brighter Prospects for Cheap Lasers in Rainbow Colors
• Antarctic Waters Are Cold, Dark, Deep—And Teeming with Life
• How Alexander the Great Laid Waste to an Island Fortress
• What is the significance of E = mc²? And what does it mean?
• 'Radiation-eating' Fungi Finding Could Trigger Recalculation Of Earth's Energy Balance And Help Feed Astronauts