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I will on occasion, be introducing you to some podcasts that I am enjoying because they are in some way related to SF/F. Podcasts, for the uninitiated, are audio programs that are down loadable from the web and intended to be listened to on your MP3 player.
First up is a podcast that focuses on publishing from an aspiring writer’s point of view – Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing. How pertinent is that to the audience of this blog?
Shaun Farrell and Sam Wynns collaborate on the podcast which includes news and interviews with writers and editors in the business. If you’re looking for a smart, and entertaining podcast with plenty of focus on industry news, you can’t go wrong with Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing. They are currently teaming up with TOR and Pyr SF in a contest called, Keys to Publishing, which includes timely writing and publishing tips and free books from both publishers.
There’s more good content that I don’t have the space for here, so go and download the latest issue and subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or from their recently updated and shiny new web site.
There will be a book signing for the Barren Worlds Anthology at the Rediscovered Bookshop in Boise, at 2:00 pm on the 26th of July. Two authors with stories featured in the anthology will be on hand to sign books and talk about their stories; Mary Ellen Martin from Moscow, Idaho and Ken McConnell from Boise, Idaho.
Come on out and help support local book sellers and local SF authors by purchasing this beautiful new book from Hadley Rille Press.
(Reposted from Myview)
Cory Doctorow has been one of my heroes for some time now. I’ve listened to him read on his blog, watched him give talks on line and even tried to read some of his fiction. But his fiction writing has never been as important to me as what he has to say about free speech and free thought. Until now.
With Little Brother, Doctorow has finally bridged his political views with his writing talent in a way that has immense appeal to average readers. You don’t have to be a science fiction geek to enjoy Little Brother. You don’t have to be a computer nerd either. But if you are, you may have to wipe that giddy smile off your free software loving face. This novel preaches the gospel of open encryption and free speech that this country is rapidly loosing to political fear mongering and civil rights trashing. It may be the most important book anyone can read this year for that alone.
But even if you just like a rousing tale of an unlikely hero, Little Brother delivers. Cory’s writing is personal, timely and full of hope. Sometimes he lapses into technical info dumps but unlike most writers, Cory can pull it off. I enjoyed the book immensely and recommend it to all. This is one book that lives up to all the hype. Get it, read it and learn.
With the impending refresh of my self-published SF novel, Starstrikers, I have decided to put up a web site dedicated to the book and it’s fans. I used a template site called Ning Networks to host it. This way I could focus on growing a community around the book instead of maintaining another web site.
The Starstrikers.ning.com web site is more than just a social networking site for the book. I’ve expanded it to include every short story and novel set in the same universe as Starstrikers. There are pictures, a blog and forums all dedicated to the stories set in this universe.
One interesting aspect of the Ning network is that everyone who joins, gets their own web home on the site. So you can post your own blog entries and pictures and whatever you want. You can even retheme your area to your own tastes and still be on the Starstrikers network.
The site has about ten members at the moment, all of whom were invited by myself or people I know. With time, there could be dozens of members or, luck willing, hundreds even thousands. If early indications are to be believed, that is not unattainable. The site already gets twice as much traffic as my personal blog.
Since the publishing world largely snubs self-published works, the only way they can succeed is by word of mouth on the interwebs. That’s what this site is all about. Building community and getting the word out.
If you are interested in checking out what I’m doing, please head on over and join the fun!
My first short story sale – “The Renoke“, is now up at SpaceWesterns.com. You can read it there for free. I think Nathan, the editor, did a good job capturing the alien and the look of the starship of the story’s title.
I’ve been waiting to share this with the world for quite some time, so tell everyone about it and go read it. Besides, it’s creepy good fun. 
My first SF book is finally selling as a POD offering on Amazon’s Kindle. I wrote it a long time ago and always imagined it as being the center book of a three book series. I started in the middle because that’s the part of the story that was the most developed in my mind for ten to fifteen years prior to writing it.
Now that I am getting some feedback from readers on the story, I’m finding that it may be advantageous to come back to the series and develop the other two books. One reader at my office spent some time trying to get out of me where I was going next with the series. He was genuinely interested in what I had planned. His questions got me thinking of things I had not thought about in years.
I really have no intention of writing the other two books in the series at this time, but I have been forced to think about them. To ponder story lines and work out the Big Picture of the series. If not for anyone but myself, so I better understand where I want to go, should the need arise. In the mean time, I have other projects to work on.
Still, it’s interesting to ponder during a sleepless night or when I’m daydreaming. Do any of you have ideas for sequels or a series based on something you have not yet sold?
I’m using this post as a test to see what has changed in the new WordPress. I’m logged in as my own self and this should have W0PHT as my sig. That’s my Ham Radio call sign for the curious.
Looks like we have a nice text editor here to type in. This blog works along the lines of a publication, in that you can write a post and not have it publish until you decide to publish it. You can add Categories to your post, to make it easier to search for later. If I categorize this as say Publishing, which I just did, then you can search for publishing and this post will come up months from now.
Guess I will hit publish and see what happens.
