Jeff VanderMeer's Blog, page 88
July 27, 2010
On the Thickness of Skin by Angela Slatter
I've dealt with a lot of rejected/dejected writers this week, for one reason and another. They've been dejected because of the rejections. It's completely understandable. Rejection hurts.
It somehow says 'You're not good enough', no matter how confident you are of yourself as a person or as a writer. Sometimes a writer's week brings more than one rejection, which just feels like the Universe has given you a paper cut and rubbed lemon juice into it.
Everyone reacts differently to rejections...
July 26, 2010
Letter from Jakarta, and Cloud Permutations Release
Letter from Jakarta & Cloud Permutations
Lavie Tidhar
I'm late to the guest-blogging season this time around, but I have an excuse – I'm currently writing two novels and a novella back-to-back, which gives you an idea of how absent my social life is at the moment. Of course, it doesn't help that I'm spending a couple of months in Jakarta – if you haven't been, don't. Someone should probably write a paper on The City as One Giant Traffic Jam, or maybe that's China's sequel to The City and the...
Shared Worlds Continues
I am smarter now than when I started the day. Always a good feeling. Today the credit is due to Holly Black and Carrie Ryan, who brought their brilliance to Shared Worlds today in the form of classes for the students and a great reading (including roleplaying out a classic con!) at the new and local Spartanburg bookstore, Hub City Bookshop.
Holly Black kicked off the day with a phenomenal presentation of the cultivation and calibration of magic systems in fiction, including identifying how...
Monday's Content
In Monday's Original Content at the World SF Blog, I interview Paolo Chikiamco, editor and founder of Eight Ray Sun publishing. This in connection with the Alternative Alamat project.
At poc.net, this article on the first YA novel by a Filipino. Tall Story by UK-based Filipina writer, Candy Gourlay was purchased by David Fickling books in 2009 and has been released in the UK, the US and just this month in The Philippines. A note of interest: Candy mentions how this book is influenced by the B...
July 25, 2010
Strange Coins and Flooded Cities
Hi there. My name is Will Hindmarch, and I teach at the Shared Worlds creative-writing camp founded by Jeff VanderMeer and Jeremy Jones. For the second and final week of the camp, I'm here at Wofford College being the sub-Jeff in Jeff's considerable psychic and professorial wake. I am a pale substitute—I know Jeff VanderMeer and I am no Jeff VanderMeer—but I'm scrappy and eager to please. So I'm pacing myself and preparing to withstand the merciless heat and weather the incredible energy...
A Quick Introduction to a Malaysian and Malaysian SF/F
Hello wonderful readers! I am Jha! Sorry to be so late to the party here. I have excuses, but you don't want to hear them. So instead, I will do the thing I should be doing, which is writing about pop culture stuff and generally being entertaining while still adding my ish to this here lovely blog.
Right now, I am blogging from my family home in warm, humid Malaysia. Most of the year, I'm in Canada, the Great White North, where I've been studying since 2003, and going back for a post-grad...
July 23, 2010
The PC Challenges of Being an Editor
Maurice Broaddus is the author of the novel series, The Knights of Breton Court (Angry Robot). His dark fiction has been published in numerous magazines, anthologies, and web sites, most recently including Dark Dreams II & III, Apex Magazine, Black Static, and Weird Tales Magazine. He is the co-editor of the Dark Faith anthology (Apex Books). Read his blog where he often opines on issues of race, religion, writing, and pop culture and learn more about him at www.MauriceBroaddus.com.
Not t...
State of Today's Mushroom
Today's guest-mushroom has paused her reading in order to create this entry.
Today's mushroom carries around a copy of The Third Bear. Due to constant interruptions, today's mushroom has not even finished reading the first story.
Today's mushroom wonders. Is the bear a hero or a villain? In this story, the bear wreaks havoc.What is the third bear thinking?
Once the story leaves the writer, the story belongs to the reader. What the reader thinks of the story, how the story affects the reader...
July 22, 2010
The Danger of A Single Story
Today's inspiration comes from watching this video talk given by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie–The Danger of a Single Story.
July 21, 2010
Some Philippine Speculative Fiction Links
In the wake of discovering that I had forgotten to renew the domain name of the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler, here are a couple of online (so you can read them now) publications that publish fiction written by Filipino authors:
The Farthest Shore: Fantasy from the Philippines edited by Dean Francis Alfar and Joseph Nacino
Demons of the New Year edited by Joseph F. Nacino and Karl de Mesa
Usok edited by Paolo Gabriel V. Chikiamco
Also, here are some stories published this year in other o...
