What I'm Working On: The SFWA Cookbook

Last day of the giveaway! Remember that you can comment five times (one per giveaway post) in order to be entered five times in the jewelry giveaway. Here’s another shot of that jewelry, just because it’s so pretty. 🙂

The book launch has been going well. If you’re one of the people who’ve finished the book already, Amazon reviews are most welcome if you feel so inclined. (Yeah, I know that’s shameless, but I’d really like this book to do well because I love it so much.) Lots of people have signed up for the Goodreads give-away and 165 people have added it on there.

Some of the interviews, reviews, and guest blog posts:

• An interview with Marshall Payne
• A plug from my cousin Tammy Salyer, author of CONTRACT OF DEFIANCE 🙂
• A giveaway on Diabolical Plots
• Interview for Amber Sistla’s Writer Wednesday
• Review on Tor.com by Stephen Raets
• Katherine Sparrow calls me daring, twisted, dark, hilarious, and wise. Your mileage may vary.
• An interview and giveaway on Far Beyond Reality
• Interview with Bryan Thomas Schmidt
• I talk about sex and the book for the Outer Alliance blog

So here’s the last five of our images, left to right.

Image #1 accompanies the story “Angry Rose’s Lament.” It’s another of the images that remind me of a submarine, if you had one carved by Aztecs.
Image #2 was chosen to go with the story, “Long Enough and Just So Long.” I like this image to the point where I’m considering another tattoo, featuring this. I don’t know why it appeals to me so much.
Image #3 was chosen for its swordlike aspect to illustrate the superhero story, “Ms. Liberty Gets A Haircut.”
Image #4 is set with the story “Seeking Nothing.” This one’s half submarine, half brass musical instrument.
Image #5 illustrates the story “Surrogates,” because it often looks to me like a laughing jester’s face, of the sort that perfectly illustrates that story.

Some of you have two weeks left to sub to She Walks in Shadows. All woman Lovecraft antho, pays 6 cents a word (pro rate). Guidelines.

Good piece about science-fiction writer Nnedi Okarafor on BookRiot. “I came to her work at a time when the debate about a woman’s place in the world of science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction was getting a lot of buzz. I realized that I’d read a few of the women who’d made their mark in that realm ““ Ursula K. LeGuin, Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood, Jo Walton- but I felt as though I hadn’t gone far enough. Okorafor’s stories have encouraged me to travel further down that path.”

Interested in a writer’s retreat? Here’s a pretty good list of them.

Ray Bradbury talks about creativity and how our motives shape our writing. On the same site, Umberto Eco talks about the pleasures of maps of imaginary places.

What happens in your head while you’re reading? Your brain on stories.

David Cronenburg is interviewed about his process of novel writing, as well as finding beauty in unlikely corners. “There are many realities we need to ignore in order to function. Whenever we’re reminded of that, however obliquely, it is very disturbing””there’s a real dissonance that’s happening there. But of course it’s part of the function of art to keep that dissonance happening.”

An article with a lot of resonance for the self-pub versus traditional publishing argument about day jobs, found via M.C.A. Hogarth.

In The Atlantic, Jeff VanderMeer talks about the uncanny power of weird fiction.

Great piece about writers and their real influences, the things that shape their writing.. “I have a theory: the thing that makes you a unique writer hasn’t got so much to do with your influences as it does with how you became a writer in the first place. I think your preferences””your obsessions””come just as much from the first sorts of things you consumed and were passionate about. Whether that’s pop music, comics, “lowbrow” fiction, soap operas, or anything else, the thing that matters most is what started you writing stories.”