Bryan Thomas Schmidt's Blog, page 24

Goodbye & Thanks 2012! A Good Year In Review

Well, as many of you know, Fall 2009 through Fall 2011 were some tough times for me. Although it all ended on a high note with the release of The Worker Prince and mention by Barnes and Noble Book Club’s Paul Goat Allen in his Year’s Best Science Fiction Releases of 2011.  But 2012 has been  [ Read More ]

2012 Blog In Review – 45k visits

Here’s WordPress’ latest Blog Year Review for my site. Some significant growth. Thanks all! Crunchy numbers 4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 45,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 10 Film Festivals In 2012, there were 154 new posts, growing the total archive of this  [ Read More ]

The 100 Books I Read This Year

Goodreads has a Challenge where you can set reading goals each year.  Last year I discovered it half way through so I only set a goal of 40 books, which I more than reached. This year, I decided to set a goal of 100. I finished today, with my first Honorverse and David Weber book,  [ Read More ]

Sprunk-Schmidt Star Wars Rewatch: Our Wishes For Future Star Wars

BTS: Jon, this has been a fun discussion. It’s reminded me of so many reasons why I like Star Wars, and has me mire excited than ever at the prospect of more.  When Disney made their announcement a few weeks back, I was surprised and reticent, but done well, this could be an amazing opportunity  [ Read More ]

Guest Post: The Importance Of World-building by Mary Sutton

Today, I have the pleasure of hosting Mary Sutton, whose YA fantasy debut chapter book I edited for Delabarre Publishing. As a software technical writer, Mary has been making her living with words for over almost 20 years. Power Play is her first published fiction work. She is a member of Pennwriters and is the incoming  [ Read More ]

Write Tip: Advice From the Slushpile – Writing Lower Word Counts is a Writer’s Best Friend

I get asked a lot these days for tips on how to sell stories, etc. One tip, I’ve never heard a lot is learn to write to word counts. But I’d go one further, learn to write low word counts. Why? If an editor gives you guidelines with a range of 3-8k, that doesn’t mean  [ Read More ]

A Triumph Over Tragedy Story Preview: Duncan Derring

Recently, I had a first,  when my humorous Science Fiction story, Duncan Derring & The Call Of The Lady Luck, was picked up by Triumph Over Tragedy, R.T. Kaelin’s brilliant project to raise funds for the Red Cross’ Hurricane Sandy. Featuring stories from the likes of Robert Silverberg, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Michael Stackpole, Timothy Zahn, Elizabeth Bear  [ Read More ]

A New 5-star Review for Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales 6 edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... A new 5-star review for Space Battes: Full Throttle Space Tales 6 from Goodreads: Eric Townsend rated it  Space Battles is a collection of 17 different short stories centered on, you guessed it, space battles. They each have their own unique way of displaying a battle and include anything from one-on-one gun fights, to dogfights between  [ Read More ]

Sprunk-Schmidt Original Trilogy Rewatch: Empire Strikes Back

A couple weeks back my buddy and fellow author Jon Sprunk and I decided the time had come to revisit our childhoods and rewatch the original Star Wars movies that changed our lives. Knowing other fans might enjoy sharing the experience and learning how it’s influenced our writing, etc., we decided to discuss it on our  [ Read More ]

How Not To Respond To Story Rejections aka Whalen Strikes Again

Writers, let’s let this be a write tip for this week, even though I’m not going to bother officially labelling and logo-ing it as such. There’s a writer I just rejected for an anthology I’m doing because he’s burned bridges all over town. How? By this kind of behavior here (my response, kinder than deserved  [ Read More ]