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Angel’s Bits: Panel Chameleon

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(from left to right: Belinda McBride, Angel Martinez, K.C. Burn from the SF panel at GLR 2013) Picture me singing this to “Karma Chameleon.” A lot of our writers and readers attend conferences and retreats large and small throughout the year. With these, we’re often confronted with the dreaded panel decisions. Should I be brave and volunteer for one? Which ones? Are there ones for which I want to be in the audience? Am I going to have seventeen nervous breakdowns before and during the con because of these damn panels? Believe me, I get it. I get nervous just … Read more

Ebook vs Print? Pfffff – move on

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We spent several years (since the late 90’s) in the author/ publishing community talking about ebook vs print – would one or the other survive, which was better, and so on. The answers? Who cares? Ebook is well entrenched in the marketplace. Print books might go away someday, but not anytime soon. Everyone has their own reasons to prefer one or the other or both. The answer’s simple. Offer both. So it’s time to move on into less charted waters. Today I wanted to throw audio out there. Audio books aren’t new. They’ve been available for quite a while, boon … Read more

Ana’s Spoons: Mrs. Claus

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Mrs. Claus

Welcome and thank you for joining Ana’s Spoons, a feature co-hosted with Queer Sci Fi on the second Wednesday of the month. Today’s topic, as part of the holiday fun, focuses on our favorite holiday figure. Come Join the Chat Wait. Mrs. Claus who? Our Christmas lore is filled with references to her husband. Jolly Old Saint Nicholas ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas The examples are endless. In the season of Christmas, Santa Claus rules. In some cultures, it might be Kris Kringle, Father Christmas, or St. Nicholas. But what of the women? Or little girls, for that matter? A … Read more

Angel’s Bits – How Not To Anger the Acquisition Deities

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Getting that story finished is important. Beating it into the best story you possibly can even more so. But guess what? You can have the perfect story and still be chucked off the acquisitions table without ceremony if you’ve ignored your formatting. Way back when we all still used typewriters, formatting was more difficult from a technical standpoint, but more standardized. There was only so much you could do with even a fancy-schmancy typewriter. We all learned one way, and that’s how we did it. Even some of the younger peeps who learned to type on computers were still being … Read more

Angel’s Bits – Who Are You?

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QSF membership has a large percentage of authors. My acquaintances online, friend lists, contacts, are in large part authors. I know a lot of authors. Except that I don’t. All of these names in lists and feeds and such don’t always have any associations for me. I look at posts in my Twitter and FB feed and think, who are you? This is bad. So bad. Not necessarily for me (though I do worry about my memory some days) but for the authors I can’t place. Authors get a lot of advice thrown at them about branding and, yes, this … Read more

Ana’s Spoons: Female Characters in Harry Potter

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Today is our monthly FF takeover of the QSF site. :) Here’s Ana‘s kick-off for the discussion today: I don’t like Harry Potter. No, that’s not exactly correct. I’ve read all of the books multiple times, visited the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios, and indulged in some top-secret fan fiction involving Professor McGonagall and her cane. (I write kinky spanky stories, and the one after-the-fact mention of an expected caning fueled many a happy secret fantasy.) I love Minerva McGonagall. Plus, the woman can change into a cat and go where she wills. What’s not to love? … Read more

The Midweek Mingle: A Question of Barriers

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Just like last week, this isn’t going to be so much of me trying to give advice. This is something I hope we can talk about, and something I hope I can get people thinking about. I’ll return to your regularly scheduled programming after I get back from Sasquan (Wish me luck that I won’t die!). Now, I’m not exactly an old hat in the industry. I’ve been at it since 2010, and I’m embarrassingly young to be an SF/F writer (No exaggeration: it embarrasses me. I have to imagine most 23 year olds don’t just hope to suddenly be … Read more

The Midweek Mingle: Overcoming 3 Hurdles for Inclusive Writing

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When I first really started writing and publishing, I was pretty well convinced of a few things that I could and could not do with my books. Silly things, too. I won’t go into all of them here (we don’t have time for that, and it’s far too early in the morning for that much vodka), but I’ll touch on a few. Namely, a few relating to QUILTBAG+ representation in books. See, I don’t know if the environment is the same, but when I was starting, you didn’t do that. At most, you could have a romance heroine’s best friend … Read more

The Midweek Mingle: Hollywood Tokenism

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When it comes to diversity in fiction/cinema/whatever, we’ve come a long way. Like, a really, really long way, in a relatively short time. If the Supreme Court rules that same sex marriage is legal, pretty soon, we’ll have an entire generation who doesn’t remember a time when it was illegal. We already have a generation or two who won’t have to worry about getting their sexuality classed as a mental disorder. And already, QUILTBAG+ characters are hardly something to bat an eye at (Usually. I’ll touch on that further, promise.). Yay yay yay, more more more! However (there always seems … Read more