A Bit of Priming on Publishing, Part 1

Over at the SFFWorld.com forums, an author looking at different ways of proceeding in fiction book publishing asked for information regarding a number of basic questions about book publishing. You can check out that discussion thread here, and the conversation is not necessarily done as I’m sure more questions may come up, but I am also going to reprint my responses to various questions here. While many may find the info basic, it ended up being a decent foundational outline of things authors have to understand and consider in business decisions in fiction publishing. And so it may be of some interest to writers navigating the waters or those simply curious about how the odd industry of fiction publishing operates. Part 1 below:

Nebula Awards Announcements

The Nebula Awards, including the Ray Bradbury Award for Dramatic Presentation and the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult SFF, announced their short list nominees today:

Best Novel (Long Form): 

Raising Caine, Charles E. Gannon (Baen)
The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu (Saga)
Uprooted, Naomi Novik (Del Rey)
Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard, Lawrence M. Schoen (Tor)
Updraft, Fran Wilde (Tor)

Best Novella:

Wings of Sorrow and Bone, Beth Cato (Harper Voyager Impulse)
“The Bone Swans of Amandale,” C.S.E. Cooney (Bone Swans)
“The New Mother,” Eugene Fischer (Asimov’s 4-5/15)
“The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn,” Usman T. Malik (Tor.com 4/22/15)
Binti, Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)
“Waters of Versailles,” Kelly Robson (Tor.com 6/10/15)

Best Novelette:

“Rattlesnakes and Men,” Michael Bishop (Asimov’s 2/15)
“And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead,” Brooke Bolander (Lightspeed 2/15)
“Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds,” Rose Lemberg (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 6/11/15)
“The Ladies’ Aquatic Gardening Society,” Henry Lien (Asimov’s 6/15)
“The Deepwater Bride,” Tamsyn Muir (F&SF 7-8/15)
“Our Lady of the Open Road,” Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s 6/15)

Best Short Story:

“Madeleine,” Amal El-Mohtar (Lightspeed 6/15)
“Cat Pictures Please,” Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld 1/15)
“Damage,” David D. Levine (Tor.com 1/21/15)
“When Your Child Strays From God,” Sam J. Miller (Clarkesworld 7/15)
“Today I Am Paul,” Martin L. Shoemaker (Clarkesworld 8/15)
“Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers,” Alyssa Wong (Nightmare 10/15)

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation:

Ex Machina, Written by Alex Garland
Inside Out, Screenplay by Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley; Original Story by Pete Docter, Ronnie del Carmen
Jessica Jones: AKA Smile, Teleplay by Scott Reynolds & Melissa Rosenberg; Story by Jamie King & Scott Reynolds
Mad Max: Fury Road, Written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nick Lathouris
The Martian, Screenplay by Drew Goddard
Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Written by Lawrence Kasdan & J.J. Abrams and Michael Arndt

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy:

Seriously Wicked, Tina Connolly (Tor Teen)
Court of Fives, Kate Elliott (Little, Brown)
Cuckoo Song, Frances Hardinge (Macmillan UK 5/14; Amulet)
Archivist Wasp, Nicole Kornher-Stace (Big Mouth House)
Zeroboxer, Fonda Lee (Flux)
Shadowshaper, Daniel José Older (Levine)
Bone Gap, Laura Ruby (Balzer + Bray)
Nimona, Noelle Stevenson (HarperTeen)
Updraft, Fran Wilde (Tor)

And the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award is being given this year to C.J. Cherryh, which is highly pleasing and well deserved.

Humans will carve anything. Dragons!

While it won’t last forever, this video of watermelon carving by Italian artist Valeriano Fatica is fascinating:

 

Some Music Videos to Accompany Snow. And More Snow. And Yet More Snow. (Enjoy the summer, Southern Hemisphere!)

Just to get things started (and clean out some files,) here are some music videos that contain great tunes and interesting video experiences.

First up is folk singer Shawn James, who decided to cover the A.A. Bondy song “American Hearts” in a wolf sanctuary near Fort Collins, Colorado. Some of the wolves came to check out the musicians, as hoped, but to their surprise, the wolves in the area also joined in for part of the song. You can check out the wolf sanctuary, which also takes donations, at:

http://www.wolfsanctuary.net/index.html

And Shawn James’ music at:

http://www.shawnjamesmusic.com

 

Next is the video from alt rock Franco-American band Hold Your Horses! for their single “70 Million.” In it, the band members and some pals re-create famous works of art. You can check out their music at iTunes and here:

https://holdyourhorses.bandcamp.com/

This additional video takes you through it with the paintings they copied:

 

And lastly, alt rock band OK Go, the king of creative silly music videos, had to come up with a doozy to top previous efforts. So they decided to go weightless for their new single, “Upside Down & Inside Out” from the new album Hungry Ghosts. You can check out their music at: http://okgo.net/

Bonus, a previous music video for their song “Needing/Getting,” which added a car to their Rube Goldberg machine style videos and is quite funny:

 

 

 

It’s Alive!

Viago from What We Do in the Shadows

And with an incredibly slow start, my blog begins 2016. No, I haven’t forgotten about Women in Film — that’s coming up. And there’s stuff on publishing, books, etc. Thanks patient followers and new followers who are very optimistic!

(By the way, What We Do in the Shadows, a totally awesome — as long as spurting fluids and mild gore do not wig you out — mockumentary about vampires in New Zealand, is well worth your time. It’s the Real World meets Friends meets Nosferatu.)