Steven R. Southard's Blog, page 4

Do We Really Need National Tell a Story Day?

Today is National Tell a Story Day. You can honor this day by telling a story. Now that I think of it, you might find it harder not to tell a story.

Image courtesy of PixabayDefinition

At its essence, a story consists of a character and at least one event, but usually a series of connected events. The character might be you, someone you know, someone you’ve heard of, some animal, or some other non-human creature.

Born Storytellers

Since the development of verbal language, our spec...

How to Construct a Fictional Vehicle

A good story can take your readers for a journey. Characters need to go places and readers yearn to ride along. A distinctive vehicle makes the trip more interesting and you can peruse Wikipedia’s list of the best-known vehicles in fiction. As a writer, how can you give some personality to your fictional vehicles?

Credit to fity.club for Odysseus’ Ship, ar.inspiredpencil.com for Pequod, moriareviews.com for Time Machine, hotcars.com for KITT, and Wikipedia for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Nautilu...

Dive! Dive! It’s National Submarine Day

How will you celebrate National Submarine Day? It’s today, by the way. I’ll offer some suggested activity ideas later in this blogpost.

USS Holland USS Holland (SS-1)

125 years ago today, the U.S. Navy acquired the submarine USS Holland, designated SS-1. Though small, slow, shallow-diving, and lightly armed by today’s norms, that craft steered a course for all U.S. Navy subs to follow in her wake.

The Holiday

Senator Thomas J. Dodd, back in 1969, introduced a bill proposing April 1...

National Library Week – Are You Drawn to the Library?

Today marks the start of National Library Week. Remember the last time you saw, and smelled, so many books? Time for another visit there.

Theme

Sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA), National Library Week has grown since 1957 to include other countries, making it international. For this year’s theme, they chose “Drawn to the Library.”

Something about libraries draws us in. Even in the Internet Age, libraries retain the aura of vast, free knowledge that nothing online ca...

Starting Today, You Can Hear Visions

BearManor Media just published the audiobook version of Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne. You can get it at Amazon, Audiobooks.com, Audible, Hoopla Digital, AudioBookStore.com, Downpour, and Indigo.

Perhaps you lack the time to sit and read print books or ebooks, but enjoy listening to literature instead. You heard about Extraordinary Visions when it got published, but passed on it, since the anthology wasn’t available in your preferred format. Your long-awaited oppo...

Would You Trust a Robot to Care for Grandma?

Many of those who reach old age don’t enjoy the condition much. Those who tend to them, their caregivers, often wish they could do something else with their time.

A few years ago, I and (mostly) my wife, served as caregivers for my mother-in-law. As a scifi writer, I wondered if technology might help ease the burden for other caregivers someday.

I wrote a short story, “Its Tender Metal Hand,” about a caregiver robot of the near future. That story appears in the new anthology by Cloaked ...

Time to Spring into Scifi

Welcome to Spring! Starting today, you can Spring into Scifi by purchasing the new anthology by Cloaked Press, available here. The book contains one of my short stories.

My Story

My tale, “Its Tender Metal Hand,” concerns an aged man, Maleko Koamalu, whose remaining family can’t care for him.

They pay for a caregiver robot.

Maleko hates the robot, but the robot persists in taking care of his needs. Robots can do many things, but can they help an old man reconcile with his child b...

How to Harmonize with Your Editor

When you submit a story, poem, or article to an anthology or magazine, you could be starting a great relationship with an editor. Don’t ruin it by doing something dumb.

A few years ago, I never thought I’d edit an anthology. Now I’ve edited three. I learned a few things while wielding the blue pencil, and I’ll share those lessons with you.

Obey the Submission Guidelines

Guidelines vary from editor to editor, so you’ll have to change the same submission to comport with different forma...

How Can You Know What Book to Read Next?

You’ve finished reading a book, and it’s time to start another. Which one do you pick? What process do you use to decide?

Image from Pixabay.com

In a way, you’re about to meet someone new, to form a new relationship. As a reader, you’ll be engaging with the thoughts of a writer. At the beginning, you don’t know where that relationship will go. With most books, the connection will make a fleeting impression, then recede into fading memory. For a golden few, though, the relationship will endu...

Soon You’ll Hear Extraordinary Visions

Have you heard about the upcoming audiobook version of Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne? In about a month, you’ll be able to listen to the first anthology ever sponsored by the North American Jules Verne Society.

The Book

Like the (still available) print and ebook versions, the audiobook will feature stories by modern authors taking up where Verne left off. Some stories provide an aftermath to a Verne novel. Some tell concurrent adventures involving Verne’s beloved...