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Columnists

Angel’s Bits: Writer Assist

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As writers and readers, we often talk about diversity, and we are a diverse community here at QSF. One of the things we don’t often talk about is how diverse we are in our physical abilities and how that affects us as authors. Vision challenges, neurological illnesses, arthritis, stroke, neurally atypical issues, paralysis – all of these and so many more challenges authors face within our community. What’s a writer to do when they can’t see or type or even hold a pen? It’s certainly never been the end of a career. Even Milton, who was blind when he wrote … Read more

Angel’s Bits – Tense Situations

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Verb tenses can get complicated depending on the language. So in the interest of not going down that road, we’re not even going to invite things like past perfect, subjunctive, pluperfect and such to the party. Generally speaking, fiction writers choose either past or present tense for their narratives. We could try writing in future tense – and I think I recall a couple of experimental short stories someone wrote that way – but this stretches reader expectations to the breaking point and puts more emphasis on the verb tense than a writer usually wants. In other words, it’s distracting … Read more

Angel’s Bits: What the *#@$ is an Epigraph?

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We all actually know what these are. We just forget what they’re called, because really, how often does this come up in conversation? So while an epigraph can be the inscription on a monument, for writing purposes, an epigraph is a quote from another author that one finds at the beginning of a chapter, story section or work. You find them at the beginning of Frank Herbert chapters, at the beginning of T.S. Eliot poems, at the start of Stephen King novels. Depending on the author, they can serve different purposes. They can set tone. They can anticipate or illuminate … Read more

Angel’s Bits – A Parliament of Edits

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Edits. Those things where someone who is not the author gets to mark up the manuscript with red pen, er, track changes. (Sometimes those are also red.) Depending on the length of story and the purpose of publication (and the publisher) the process can vary wildly. But there is a hierarchy and a purpose to each step and type of edit. Sometimes an author gets to see them all (poor author) and sometimes parts of the process are folded together. A quick rundown of what you may encounter in your visit to the edit chamber: Developmental or content edits: Your … Read more

Angel’s Bits: How Did They Pick That One?

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Or a little bit about writing contests… If you count the annual contests when I worked for the university literary magazine, I’ve been judging writing contests for over thirty years. Not continually, thank goodness. I have no idea what the process looks like for big, fancy awards but for flash fiction? Yeah, done a few of those. The ideal situation is several judges, who all bring something different to the table, doing blind judging. That last bit is crucial. No matter how impartial a judge intends to be, knowing some of the authors will color decisions. Flash fiction is a … Read more

Angel’s Bits: So your con’s in another country…

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When I was younger – and really, it’s not that long ago – we could blithely skip across the border between Canada and the US with nothing more than a passport. Where ya headed, ma’am? Oh, sure, nice there this time of year. Have a nice stay, welcome to Canada! Fast forward a bit, and lots of things about travel between countries has changed. We do need a passport now to travel to Canada, and obtaining one/renewing one isn’t a completely awful process if you leave yourself enough time. US citizens have somewhere over 120 countries where passports are sufficient … Read more

Angel’s Bits: Shine It Up, Baby

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Hi! Life has been a bit of heck lately, apologies for the lack of bits. Er. You know what I mean. Here’s a thing that we run into from authors of all skill levels – the notion that critique partners and editors will fix, clean up and spit polish your manuscript. No. Just no. I really mean it. No. Critique partners/ beta readers and editors are vital to your process. Absolutely. Hands down. No question. You need other eyes. You need expert advice. If you work with a publisher, you need to have someone checking the style guide (CMOS or … Read more

Angel’s Bits – the Queer Sci Fi Website Tour

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Hi all! I was joking with Scott the other night that we should do a tour of the site, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The QSF site has so many cool features for both readers and writers. Let’s go take a look, shall we? Home Page – houses the blog where we post all the articles, announcements, reviews and so on. In the upper left, you’ll find a pull down menu, and here’s where all the rest of the fun stuff is. :) About – Which you know. You’re here. Though there is … Read more

Angel’s Bits: A Short Rafflecopter Tour

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At least I hope it’s short. We had a request for a Rafflecopter tutorial – so here we go! Rafflecopter is a useful tool for giveaways in that it: Allows your blog visitors to complete different tasks for entries Keeps track of entries for you Randomly chooses winners on the expiration date you set You can set up a single prize or several, a single task to complete (blog comment, page like) or a number of tasks to give your visitors a choice and potentially more entries. You do have to set up an account, and as long as you’re … Read more

Angel’s Bits: To KU or not KU?

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Amazon is the big yellow and purple polka-dot gorilla in the room. There’s no getting around that. Mind you, I admire Amazon in a lot of ways. This is a fiercely competitive company who sinks profits right back into business so they can keep expanding like a supernova exploding in slow motion. It’s one of the largest employers in my state and it’s changed the way we think about commerce in many ways. But we’re only talking about one arm of this giant, Elder-godlike monster today. From time to time, we get questions from authors about Kindle Unlimited and whether … Read more