How I Use Instagram

The first session of this class went well! Nisi Shawl was a terrific guest speaker.

In talking about reviews, we talked about good reviews and what they do. Here’s the notes from that.

• Provide a sense of the reviewer, their styles and biases.
• Explain what makes the reviewer say something is very good or very bad.
• Provide a sense of the book’s context and comparable books.
• Make you want to read the book but without creating unreasonable expectations.
• Alert the reader to problematic things without providing preconceptions.
• Be diplomatic but honest.
• Provide an educated impression of the book that tells the reader whether or not they should invest time/money in the book.
• Delve into what about the book created a particular impression.

Other topics we touched on: how you get started doing book reviews, what limits to have regarding spoilers, how to write a negative review well, promoting yourself and your reviews, networking, how to evaluate reviews, and the best way(s) to get better at reviewing. I thought it went really well and had plenty of interesting conversation and questions.

The next Art of the Book Review online class will happen Sunday, March 30, 9:30-11:30 AM PST. Nisi will be appearing as a speaker for the class in this session as well.

A few days ago, I implemented #Critclub, tying the Chez Rambo Discord server more tightly into the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers and providing a way for F&SF to swap critiques online. People seem excited about this, and the Patreon campaign has seen an uptick. A few people have taken me up on the offer of scholarships – thank you!

A nice little bump of people have appeared on the channel as a result and we’ve been doing things like sorting out how the critiquing system will work. We have added the first custom emoji, a rainbow kittywumpus 🙂 courtesy awesome community moderator, Frances KR.

Writing sprints and discussion of process as well as substantial amounts of con discussion have all taken place, as well as some swapping of market news and much use of the rejoice and venting rooms. In short, happy small steps towards the sort of thriving writing community I’m hoping to build, happening at a manageable rate and letting people invest in it by helping shape it.

On September 19, 5 – 6 PM Pacific time, participants will be able to submit live questions for the class I’ll be doing for Gregory Wilson’s channel on Twitch, “Applying Algorithms” in which I’ll talk about how to use the rules of storytelling to make your fiction more effective. This is the fourth of these classes I’ve done, and they’re always a lot of fun, plus a chance for me to beta test classes I’m thinking about teaching.

In other news I’ve been working away on checking the edits from my editor for Tor novel, You Sexy Thing, which will come out in November of 2020, and putting together an initial list of potential blurbers to send him. At the same time, I’m getting The Five, the MG space opera I’ve written, ready to go out to beta readers, and prepping to add some scenes with writing sprints next week. After that I’ll turn back to getting Exiles of Tabat (due out May 2020 from Wordfire Press) ready for beta readers and writing the sequel to You Sexy Thing, tentatively titled Devil’s Gun.

If you’re at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association next weekend, please come to my workshops! I will have postcards with a free class on them, plus books for sale. 🙂 Similarly if you’ll be at the Surrey International Writers Conference in October, please check out my classes there! Can’t make it to either of those? I do have some live classes coming up; you’ll always find the latest news and most comprehensive list of those listed here.