Swords Against Boredom

The adage runs thus: Write what you know.

It’s pretty good advice, but it presents special problems for writers of fantasy, science fiction and ghost stories. Such authors set out to write about things that no one knows.

I’ve never been set upon by a wolfpack, nor fended off skeletal ghosts, nor struggled with the controls of a starship bucking against a sudden encounter with turbulent atmosphere. Those are all things, however, that the characters in my stories might deal with.

What to do?

Well, you know more than you think. You may never have done any of those things, but you probably have done analogous things — and you can draw upon those experiences. Read more »

Hey, here’s your hoping Christmas was great.

Mine involved plenty of family time, lots of pirates and giant rubber monsters smashing scale-model cities — can’t beat that!

– Steve

Paul Jessup, editor of GrendelSong magazine and a writer himself, is conducting a poll on the state of markets for speculative fiction. I thought some of you might be interested. I filled out the poll myself; it takes only a couple of minutes.

So, if you have a view or two on this topic, hop on over there.

– Steve

Another in my series of brief reviews of movies everyone else saw months ago …

“Memoirs of a Geisha” is a pretty good film. I do not know how accurate its portrayal of the pre-World War II geisha culture really is, and I’ve never read Arthur Golden’s novel. But I found this movie engaging. The storyline involves a good deal of intrigue as various factions develop within the geisha house. The cinematography at times is stunning. The acting is pretty good. The score is outstanding.

There. And you thought I couldn’t appreciate a movie without swords, bombs or gigantic thermonuclear mutant lizards.

A disclaimer: If somebody filmed Zhang Ziyi doing nothing but algebra for two hours, I’d probably watch it willingly.

– Steve

OK, I sent a couple of more subs out a few moments ago — my usual reaction to receiving a rejection.

That gives me 10 short stories in circulation at the moment. One is a new piece, making the rounds for the first time. The other is a story I really like, but one that so far has failed to click with editors. One or two liked it, but thought it didn’t quite fit with their product (an inherent danger when submitting to start-up magazines; you can’t get a feel for their content if they haven’t published any yet). Read more »

Some writers attach a bit of a stigma to being published on a Web site, as opposed to being published in print. I’m not one of them.

Sure, I prefer print. It’s quite fun to hand someone a book and tell them what page your story is on. It’s nice to have on the shelf. It’s nice to think you might wander into someone’s home one day and see it on their shelf.

But I don’t think a story is any less a story because it published on the Web. The reading experience certainly is different — it’s harder to lean back in your recliner with a Web page — but the story itself still retains whatever qualities it would have had in a print venue. Prose, poetry, characterization, plot, ideas all can be transmitted as effectively in one medium as in the other. Read more »