Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Sleep now in the fire

Today editor John Joseph Adams held a lecture about publishing short fiction. He is the current editor of Lightspeed and Fantasy, and has edited a number of anthologies of sf, fantasy, etc.

He talked about how to grab an editor's attention, what he wants as an editor, what he doesn't want, what a cover letter is supposed to include, how not to behave (don't reject the rejections!), how to handle questions around rights, exclusivity and reversion clauses, etc.

Lots and lots of non-creative stuff, but very important once I start sending stuff out to be published.

I got to sleep last night. It cooled down during the night. Now it's humid as hell again, so I won't get my hopes up for tonight. We'll see.

I turned in my final story for critique last night. Unmade, an apocalyptic fantasy story that I'm sort of happy with. If the others are remains to be seen. I am reading it out loud to a group of people later tonight.

So now I have no more stories to turn in. I will try and finish one more this week, and then Odyssey is over. So strange that six weeks have passed already, even though it feels like I've been here for months.

I shall now go read a story and write a crit for it. I shall leave you with some quotes.

Meta, about Party Planner: Not only did she write the shortest story today, now she brings us popsicles too. I may have to revise my crit.

John Joseph Adams, about writing a bio in a cover letter: Don't write "Oooh, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter!" No one cares.

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