I had a great time at Capclave, a couple weekends ago.  (Except for the con-crud that delayed my postlude…)

Highlights included moderating a small press panel with Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace, and Mike Walsh of Old Earth Books. Meeting BCS authors Adam Corbin Fusco and David Milstein; hanging out with Jen and Melissa. Chatting again with BCS author and novelist Genevieve Valentine. Seeing co-GOH Cat Valente again (I met her last year at World Fantasy, when the BCS party woke her up at 2 AM :) ).

Speaking with James Morrow, who lectured my year at Odyssey. His novel about Darwin’s lady assistant flying a steampunk airship over the Amazon, which he read from at ReaderCon 2010, is in rewrites and hasn’t yet found a publisher. Which is sad because the excerpt was great. He really liked the cool BCS flyers I had.

Chatting in the bar for hours with co-GOH Carrie Vaughn, a fellow Odyssey grad and bestseller who I had never met in person.  She is mostly known for her urban fantasy, but she’s read tons of epic fantasy and published several dozen short stories, and knows a ton about the field.

The Terry Pratchett surprise visit. I’m not familiar with his work, but I know he’s a very clever and engaging guy. The excerpts that his assistant read from his new book were quite droll (although the assistant read for way too long and interjected his own opinions too often).

They only made enough time to take one question, and it wasn’t about his books but about a BBC documentary he had helped make on assisted suicide for terminally ill. He talked for twenty minutes about that, made even more profound because of his own health situation, and it was utterly fascinating. (I will be blogging about that specifically later.)  Someone in the crowd put it on youtube, and Capclave posted an mp3 of the audio.

The GOH interview. I didn’t know how they would do it with two GOHs. It turned out that Carrie and Cat know each other, so they interviewed each other and took pre-written audience questions.  It was the best GOH interview I’ve ever seen. They were engaging, witty, and profound. Topics included the sociological underpinnings of the mythoses of vampires and werewolves; writing for shared-world anthologies; writing goals and achieving them; where they live and the sense of place in their writing.

I was only at the con for a day and a half, but I had a great time seeing these cool people and having great conversations. That seems to be what I mostly get out of cons–talking to clever people about interesting things.  I’ll definitely be back next year.

This weekend I will be at Capclave, the local D.C.-area SF/F con.

The co-Guest of Honor this year is bestselling writer Carrie Vaughn, a fellow Odyssey grad.  I’ve heard her writing lectures in podcasts (they’re very insightful), but I’ve never met her in person.

The con again this year has lots of cool literary SF/F programming.  I will be on several panels, again this year:

Friday 8:00 pm:
Short Fiction: Where is the new good short fiction found now?

Saturday 11:00 am:
Small Press Publishing: Running a publishing company, publishing a magazine or semi-prozine.

Saturday 1:00 pm:
When Characters Threaten to Take Over

Alas, no reading this year, for some reason–I did ask for one.

I will probably swing by the hotel bar Friday after my panel, at 9PM.  I’m not sure how long I’ll be around Saturday, and I probably won’t be there Sunday.  If you see me, feel free to grab a snazzy BCS flyer and say hello.

Weird Tales magazine has been sold, according to Editor Ann VanderMeer, to a new Publisher/Editor, Marvin Kaye, who intends to edit the magazine himself.  Ms. VanderMeer’s editorship will end with the next issue, #359, which Mr. Kaye plans to publish next February.

I for one will be sorry to see Ms. VanderMeer go. Her editorial vision took WT in a less pulp, more literary and character-centered direction. She published several pieces by veteran writers that I enjoyed, including a new Elric novella by Michael Moorcock.  And she also published many new and neo-pro writers, as she proudly mentions in her farewell editorial, including Rachel Swirsky, Jonathan Wood, Amanda Downum, and N.K. Jemisin.

The former and the latter have gone on to earn Finalists for major awards.  Jonathan Wood has authored two of my favorite stories so far in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Amanda Downum has published a dark, secondary-world fantasy trilogy.

Ms. VanderMeer also bought my first genre sale, “Excision” in WT #347. (That same issue included the Jonathan Wood and Amanda Downum pieces.  Downum’s story is one of the top ten stories I’ve read in the last decade–a creepy yet heart-rending tale of emotional loss and attempted redemption.)  And Ann was delightful to me in person at Capclave last year.

Best of luck to Mr. Kaye with his new plans for the magazine, and I’m certain that Ms. VanderMeer’s editorial vision will continue in her future projects.  But I’m sad to see the new slant that she brought to WT five years ago end.

Word comes from semiprozine.org that there is yet another idiotic proposal to redefine the Semiprozine Hugo category (and the Fanzine one), this time to exclude audio podcasts or any other non-text format.

I don’t quite understand the print purists’ furor over new media, such as audio.  But I’m shocked at the ancillary effect that their revision, which was rejected by the Semiprozine revision committee, would have.  They want to cross out the stipulation of “non-professional”, which would effectively put all magazines into the Semiprozine category.

Yes, Asmiov’s, Analog, and F&SF would all become semipro zines.

I am boggled that anyone could think that for example F&SF, which currently has an exclusive business arrangement with one of the largest corporations in the world (Amazon), is on equivalent footing with magazines like Strange Horizons, which is a charity that has to beg for donations every year.

But this incessant Hugo politics seems to get more mind-boggling with each iteration.  The idiotic minority proposal I blogged about a few days ago would exclude every zine that had been nominated in the past four years; this one would include nearly all magazines in the field.

I hope cooler heads will prevail.  For the good of the entire field.

The committee to revise the Semiprozine category in the Hugo Awards has made their proposal, along with several minority recommendations by single members of the committee.  (Followers of this issue may remember that the Semiprozine Hugo was slated to be abolished two years ago, but a grassroots campaign led by editor and publisher Neil Clarke prevented that.)

At the core of this issue is how to define the difference between a “pro” zine and a “semipro” zine, since the former are not eligible in this category.

The committee’s recommended criteria offer a good distinction.  If a magazine provides a quarter of the income of any staff member, or is owned by a company that provides a quarter of the income of any person, it would be a pro zine. That makes perfect sense.  Lightspeed and Weird Tales,  for example, are both owned by publishing companies with full-time employees, and those magazines clearly have a different footing than Clarkesworld or Space and Time or my magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

But the minority proposal by Ben Yalow, a thirty-year fan, that any magazine that pays a pro rate for its fiction must be a pro zine, is ludicrous.  Other editors and publishers have pointed out the absurdity that such a criterion would make every zine that has been nominated in the Semiprozine category in the last four years no longer fit in that category.

The main flaw with his idea is its fundamental misunderstanding of why some non-pro zines, like my magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies, pay a pro rate for fiction.

We do it out of respect.  Respect for authors, in an era when it’s all but impossible to make a living writing short fiction.  Respect for fans; the readers who still crave great short stories.  Respect for established writers doing great work in that form and upcoming writers using it to develop their voice. Respect for a form of fiction that has a proud tradition in our genre; that we know is in financial decline but we love it so much we do it regardless.

We pro-paying, non-pro zines feel this respect so deeply that we prioritize paying a pro rate above all other financial considerations. Look at any number of non-pro zines who have volunteer staffs–paying their authors a pro rate and their staff members nothing, for working sometimes over twenty hours a week. Look at the ones who have spartan websites or plain cover art–again, prioritizing the fiction above all else. Look at the ones, like BCS, who are 501c3 non-profit organizations, approved by the IRS as charities, because paying a pro rate for their fiction is such a priority that those zines know they will never, ever make a dime in profit.

Mr. Yalow seems to think it’s an arbitrary decision for these non-pro zines to use their money to pay pro rate rather than to pay their staffs.  He could not be more wrong.  Imagine giving an avid reader $100 to spend in the dealer’s room at a con.  Sure, it’s theoretically possible they could spend it on steampunk goggles or chainmail t-shirts.  But, as any avid reader can attest, their love for fiction means that the only actual outcome would be them walking out of the dealer’s room with $100 of books.  If not more.

This committee proposal and discussion comes at a crucial time.  WorldCon is this weekend, and Hugo business is conducted at the con.

If you will be at WorldCon and this issue is important to you (it should be, if you have ever sold a story to a semipro zine), go to the Preliminary Business Meeting at 10AM on Thursday morning.  Go there, and make your voice heard.  (EDIT: Kevin Standlee, in this comment, provided detailed information on the business schedule.  Thank you!)

With pro-paying, non-pro zines forming the majority of the pro-rate fiction markets these days, and publishing more fiction and a wider variety of it than the pro zines, it would be a sad day if the most prestigious awards in our genre were changed to no longer recognize this vibrant and crucial area of our field.

Former mid-list New Weird/epic fantasy novelist Steph Swainston last month famously announced that she is quitting writing, canceling her current two-book contract, in order to train to become a college chemistry teacher.

Beyond the irony of her wanting the job I’ve already got (and me coveting hers!), her comments touch on several interesting points about the writerly life.  Yes, it is extremely solitudinous.  It can feel distancing from reality.

But that’s all within the writer’s control.  Have a family; have a life.  Have other pursuits and hobbies.  Go to conventions with your writer pals and drink into the wee hours of the morning (one of my favs!).  In addition to keeping you grounded, interactions with real people of course provide the insight into human nature that makes good fiction.

She’s absolutely right about many fans not realizing the pressure they put on authors.  It seems that in our modern TMZ paparazzi society, some fans have the misguided and selfish idea that superstars owe them something.  I’m reminded of “George Martin is not your bitch.” The self-centered obliviousness that a good many of Martin’s fans have displayed over the long delay for A Dance with Dragons is disgusting.

But I think Swainston is overreacting in things like saying that vocal fans can change an author’s next book.  Only if the writer lets them.  That too is all within the writer’s control.

I have no illusions that the life of a working novelist is tough.  Maybe “be careful what you wish for”?  It sounds like in this case it’s not the objective hardship but that such a life is not working out for Swainston.

Two interesting “road maps” for novel writing were online recently, from two different fantasy authors.

J.K. Rowling’s spreadsheet outline for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix shows not only the arcs and plotlines of the characters, but also the arcs of the legends or mysteries–the plot threads that are purely news or information–and how they are growing or spreading during each chapter, even if none of that is happening on-screen (the on-screen characters aren’t hearing or spreading that information).

Fascinating.  In such an epic society-wide situation at that point in the saga, with Voldemort in the open, how much info is known about his plans and whereabouts is an important plot thread, even if it’s not in the scenes that the on-screen characters are having.  It makes perfect sense in a story of that scope that Rowling would want to track it in her outline almost like tracking a character.

Several recent blogs have discussed swords & sorcery master Michael Moorcock’s speed-writing method used to write some of the early Elric novels in only three days (!).  He mentions being very prepared, including having a list of cool fantastical images or things to use as he goes along.  (I assume his preparations also included knowing the characters well).  He used a prearranged plot format or structure–the fantasy quest–and knew general narrative problems he would need to solve. He broke goals or aims into immediate ones (must find the first magic item, in this chapter) and overriding ones (must save the world).

Likewise fascinating.  Moorcock of course was great at S&S, so the events and dialog he could come up with on the fly are far better than what most writers could.  But his strategies for planing, including having the plot structure in advance, seem astute moves no matter how long you have to write the whole novel.

I had a blast at ReaderCon last weekend.  Among the many, many highlights:

-the Naked City anthology reading Thursday night in Cambridge, with readings by John Crowley, Jeffrey Ford, my buddy Matt Kressel, and post-reading beers with Jed Berry and Mike DeLuca

-panels Friday, including on anthologies

-drinking Friday with many, including Claire H., Maggie R., Jenn B., Renee B., and Mike DeLuca

-my reading Saturday morning–I read “The Very Strange Weird of Endart Sscowth” in the current Space and Time and a bit of my Homeless Moon chapbook 4 story.  A nice crowd, who were treated to back-issue copies of Space and Time #108 and #114 and Weird Tales 347, all containing stories by me.

-the BCS reading Saturday afternoon, with Matt Kressel, Margaret Ronald, Marko Kloos, and Mike DeLuca

-dinner and more drinking with many, including Marko, Chang T., Abby, Dave B., Claire H., Maggie, Jenn, Renee, and Mike DeLuca (anyone detecting a theme? :) )

-chats with and meeting of cool people, like Leah Bobet, Ellen Datlow, and Ellen Kusher

-drinking Sunday and Monday with Mike DeLuca (that theme again…)

It was awesome, all of it–fascinating discussion and delightful fellowship.  Woo!

Want to win a free copy of Space and Time Issue 114?  The one that has my story “The Very Strange Weird of Endart Sscowth” in it?

I’m going to give away a free copy tomorrow afternoon, on my Facebook page.   I’ll ask a question about something from the story (you won’t need to have read it to figure out the answer).

For the first person who leaves a comment with the right answer, I’ll send you a free copy of the issue.  Hell, I’ll even sign it if you like, but that might lower its value rather than increasing it. :)

So drop by my Facebook page tomorrow (Wednesday) around 2pm Eastern time.  Good luck!

Want to win a free copy of Space and Time Issue 114?  The one that has my story “The Very Strange Weird of Endart Sscowth” in it?

I’m going to give away a free copy tomorrow afternoon, on my Facebook page.   I’ll ask a question about something from the story (you won’t need to have read it to figure out the answer).

For the first person who leaves a comment with the right answer, I’ll send you a free copy of the issue.  Hell, I’ll even sign it if you like, but that might lower its value rather than increasing it. :)

So drop by my Facebook page tomorrow (Wednesday) around 2pm Eastern time.  Good luck!