Browsing Tag

sfwa

Publishing, Site Updates

Victory of the Hawk cover copy, site housekeeping, and SFWA

In the midst of all this HEY BONE WALKER IS OUT excitement, do not forget, Victory of the Hawk is ALSO on its way. And there’s official cover copy for it now and everything, so I have updated the official Victory of the Hawk page with it! AND, I have also found it up on iBooks for preordering goodness, so I’ve added that link to the page too.

I have also taken the time to update various high-level pages on the site to be current with the status of Victory and of Bone Walker. The About Me, FAQ, and Books pages have all been updated too with current data, including how to get print copies of Faerie Blood and Bone Walker by ordering via Bandcamp!

Likewise, I have made sure that the current main places to get all of my books are called out on the overall Books page. This includes the direct links to go to the Crime and the Forces of Evil merch pages on Bandcamp, where you can order the aforementioned print editions.

It ALSO includes a direct link to the Audible page for the audiobook edition of Valor of the Healer, which IS a thing that exists, let me remind you all. 😀

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Last but not least, I saw the news break last night courtesy of James Nicoll’s LJ that SFWA has opened membership to self-pubbed and small press authors.

To wit, awesome.

I still don’t qualify for membership by the criteria they’re discussing, which are based around “how much income do you pull in from your writing?” They are setting that bar at a level that’d be the equivalent of what authors can get from an advance from a traditional publisher. And honestly, that seems reasonable to me.

Now, though, this changes my likelihood of ever joining SFWA from “well, THAT ain’t gonna happen” over to “possibly feasible, if I keep growing my available titles and sales”. And this does please me. So as I said on the comment I left on the post, I would like to thank the folks in SFWA for making this policy change.

Meanwhile, I am still very pleased that NIWA is a thing that exists, and have renewed my membership with them. The opportunity to be in an organized group of independent authors IS very valuable–if nothing else, the chance to team up to sell books at local conventions is very, very welcome. And I do recommend that fellow indie authors who aren’t yet at SFWA-qualifying levels of sales consider checking them out.

Publishing

SFWA calls for input re: membership for self-pubbed authors

This just in: spotted on Twitter that SFWA is putting out a call to its membership for commentary re: opening membership to self-published authors. If any SFWA members are reading me and haven’t already seen this, check out the link for deets.

I for one am glad to see that SFWA’s opening this up for discussion, since RWA has already beaten them to it. And as I’m already a dues-paying member of NIWA, I definitely feel that there’s a need here that should be addressed.

I’m still a bit of a weird duck, what with my sales being tiny in the grand scheme of things from both my self-pubbed work and my stuff with Carina. Accordingly, I suspect that were SFWA to open membership to self-pubbed authors, the criteria would probably set sales figures too high for my current reach–but it would be nice to have that option eventually available.

Certainly I’d be willing to pay in at a lower level of membership, such as affiliate, as I’ve mentioned before.

Anyway, good to be able to post about something SFWA-related that isn’t schadenfreude! Well done, SFWA. Keep it up.

Main

SF/F genre drama, May 2014 edition

So there have been a couple more rounds of SF/F genre drama going around, which I’ve mostly missed due to the recent round of medical annoyance that I have, at this point, mostly fought off. I am therefore coming in late to this round, but will note in passing nonetheless that:

One, the drama surrounding this year’s slate of Hugo nominations, and how certain infamous personages got into the list of nominations. I’ve basically seen two overall camps of response to this: 1) OHNOEZ THEY MUST HAVE RIGGED THE NOMINATIONS (mostly from the left-leaning SF/F genre crowd), and 2) HOW DARE PEOPLE SAY THEY WILL VOTE ‘NO AWARD’ RATHER THAN GIVE THE WORKS A FAIR SHAKE (mostly from the right-leaning SF/F genre crowd).

Two, a particular individual has recently flounced his way out of SFWA, with attendant cane-shakery about the “lunatic left” and “thoughtpolice”. And, apparently, a lot of attempt at revisionism about prior rounds of drama, thoroughly debunked over on Radish Reviews and also by Foz Meadows.

Three, as a corollary to these two particular rounds of drama, I’ve seen a resurgence in people insisting that if you don’t adore the works of Robert Heinlein, you cannot possibly be a true science fiction fan.

I’ve been too wearied by the aforementioned medical annoyance to give more than a token facepalm to either of these rounds of drama. But I think it’s worth saying yet again that:

One, if it bothers you when people call you a bigot, there’s an easy solution to this problem. Which is, don’t be a bigot. I.e., don’t spew bigoted bullshit, and don’t do screamingly bigoted things. This is not rocket science, but it is apparently difficult for some folks who love them some rocket science in their fiction.

Two, you are not being censored or oppressed if you spew bigoted bullshit and other people then call you a bigot. If you insist you are being censored or oppressed, and you cannot in fact provide proof that your civil rights are being impinged upon, you’re not only being a bigot, you’re also being an asshole.

Three, if you’re going around claiming that “only people who like the same exact stuff I like are true science fiction fans” or “only people who write a narrow and specific set of stories that happen to line up exactly with my personal political and/or religious beliefs are true science fiction writers”–really, in general, if you’re yelling about how “these other people over here are DOING THEIR FANDOM WRONG”–you know what you’re being? If you said “an asshole”, then DING DING DING WINNAH.

There’s been way too much divisiveness like this in SF/Fdom lately, and I’m really, really sick of it. The whole Fake Geek Girl thing, for example. Or “my subgenre is better than your subgenre”. Or the ongoing LALALALALA WE CAN’T HEAR YOU every time women, or people of color, or queer people of any stripe, or people of non-Christian religions or lack thereof, etc., etc., etc.,–every time anyone in those groups tries to say “Hey! We’d like to join in, too!” And they keep getting shut down.

And then as a bonus, now we get told that if you don’t adore one specific Dead White Male Author you’re not a real SF/F fan? Seriously?

Nope. Sorry. You don’t get to tell me which authors I get to adore and which ones I don’t. You don’t get to appoint yourselves the gatekeepers of my SF/F fandom, and you don’t get to judge the validity of my affection for the genre.

Though I’m tellin’ ya, Internets, with how this kind of drama keeps going around and around and around and around ad infinitum, it makes me want to go read a good mystery novel instead.

Publishing

SFWA Petitiongate Epilogue

The word is going around tonight that Sean Fodera has apologized for his commentary to Mary Robinette Kowal. In two separate posts to sff.net, he’s addressed both his commentary about Mary and his stance on women in science fiction in general.

Sff.net is down as of this writing (word has it over at userinfojames_nicoll‘s LJ that it got slashdotted), but screencaps were taken by Natalie at radishreviews.com, and are available here.

Having just read both of the screencaps, I can say that at least to this observer, they sound sincere and are well-written. More importantly, Mary Robinette Kowal has said on Twitter that she accepts his apology without reservation, and that’s good enough for me.

It’s surprising and pleasing to see this, after the flames that have been shooting around the Internet this week. I’ll mark this as a plus on the side of “Anna will continue to keep an eye on SFWA”. And let’s hope that this time, this really is done!

ETA: Dara points out quite correctly that this is really only a resolution (if that) for Mr. Fodera’s part in this entire fracas. It does nothing to address the petition itself, nor its signers. I will be keeping an eye out for further developments on that, if any, as well.

Publishing

SFWA Petitiongate link roundup, 2/19/2014

And now, a link roundup on further posts on SFWA: Petitiongate. Because quite a few writers are speaking up about this, and while the furor appears to be dying down a bit, conversation is still happening. This is a good thing. Because this is a conversation that needs to keep happening.

I spotted all of these last night via Twitter. I follow Diana Pharaoh Francis there, and saw her post. From her, I found the other two.

Why It’s a Good Thing the SFWA Meltdown Is as Ugly at The Alternative Typewriter

Why the SFWA Shoutback Matters by Juliet E. McKenna

Gender, Writing, SFWA, by Diana Pharaoh Francis

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–I may not actually be a member of SFWA and not likely to be eligible at least in the immediate future (Carina doesn’t qualify me for membership). But I care about what’s going on with them for a variety of reasons.

One, I read a lot of these people. They’re writing my native genre when it comes to what I want on my bookshelves.

Two, they’re my fellow spec fic writers, part of the extended community of people who write what I want to write. And what happens with SFWA, while indeed focused on the American branch of speculative fiction, does echo across the worldwide community of SF/F writers. See the post by Juliet McKenna, above. Writers across the world are watching.

ETA: Catherine Schaff-Stump speaks out on SFWA: Privilege and Institutionalized Everythingism

Publishing

Join Kowal and Scalzi’s Insect Army!

Because this, right up with Dara’s I’m going to sue the Internet for LIBEL!, is pretty much THE BEST ANSWER to the entire explosion going around the SF genre for the last several days.

I have called dibs on the “light brown apple moth”, Epiphyas postvittana, described by Wikipedia as “a highly polyphagous pest”. Because hey, I like all kinds of food! And if I get to be a pest, all the better!

Meanwhile whoa, SF Signal linked to me by way of linking to the excerpt from the Daily Dot that included my earlier link. So if you’re coming over from SF Signal, hi there. All of my posts on the current matter can be found under the tag “petitiongate”.

I’ll update this post today with further items of note as I see them!

ETA: And speaking of those items of note…

Popehat, regarding the threat to sue the Internet for libel, basically says “AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA no”.

Mark Tiedemann has very good commentary over here. That post was actually written last year, during last year’s SFWA explosion, but it’s still timely and pertinent since this one’s related to last year’s too. Tiedemann writes about how he didn’t get it at first–where “it” is what all of the people upset during last year’s explosion were upset about–and then he did.

Ann Aguirre is right up front about why she doesn’t miss SFWA in the slightest, for pretty much all of the reasons that have been voiced already.

Other People's Books, Publishing

How much popcorn can we pop with this fire?

The fire from yesterday’s Daily Dot explosion continues to rage across the Internet this morning, folks.

Scalzi, not content to have issued yesterday’s A Note to Sean Fodera, has followed that up with a scathing critique of the attacks on Mary Robinette Kowal.

Money quote:

How many more award nominations and wins does she have to have before she is somebody, I wonder? How many more books does she have to publish? How many more television shows does she have to work on? How many more years of unpaid, volunteer service to the trade organizations in her field does she have to offer? How many more years of abject, unambiguous and wholly undeserved contempt does she have to endure before she is allowed to be someone “you should have heard of”?

Kowal herself, more soft-spoken but no less pointed, has offered herself up as a representative example of the sexism women face in the genre.

Silvia Morena-Garcia shows some of the pics of Kowal that have gotten lambasted–which, I point out, are exactly the sorts of dresses that you’d see in the A&E production of Pride & Prejudice, a fashion sensibility which is hardly daring, at least if you live in a mindset later than 1805–and describes how she’s had to evaluate her own clothing choices for fear of the same kind of attack, the fear that she’d get labeled a “cheap tart” if she wears the wrong thing.

James Nicoll is breaking out the popcorn over here. I think he’s going to need more popcorn.

There’s not much I can add to a lot of this, except to say that I have read Mary Robinette Kowal’s Shades of Milk and Honey, as well as her shorter works “First Flight” and “Lady Astronaut of Mars”. I quite enjoyed all three, and I will very much enjoy going through the rest of the novels in her series, including Book Four, Valour and Vanity, due to be released in the US in April. Her speaking out in support of the good that SFWA can do and has done is in fact a contributing factor to why I keep paying attention to what goes on with the organization–because if she can speak in favor of it even given the shit that’s been hurled at her head, I respect that a lot.

And I for one feel that her words accomplish the very best of what any writer hopes for: to make her, indeed, someone you should have heard of.

P.S. Yoiks, I got linked to by Ansible! If you’re coming over from there, greetings to you!