PODCASTLE - Spoken short speculative fiction broadcaster seeks stories

http://podcastle.org/guidelines/
PodCastle seeks quality fiction. If you’re a writer with a speculative short story that you’d like to hear narrated by a performer, this is the place to submit. Short Fiction falls between about 2,000 and 6,000 words. Pays $100. Flash Fiction is short five-to-ten minute “bonus” pieces used between the weekly main episodes. These stories can be up to 1,000 words. Pays $20. PodCastle is the world’s first fantasy audio magazine. Each week they bring short stories across the spectrum of fantasy from leading authors and new discoveries. Like their sister podcasts, Escape Pod and Pseudopod, PodCastle is entirely free to listen and share.

NOTE: This is so cool. If you are into audio, give this a go. $100 is actually more than more literary journals pay for short fiction.

DOUBLE NOTE: Are you getting as tired as I am about the fussing and feuding within the publishing industry about electronic publishing? Gracious, you'd think there's a deadline when paper books will be illegal the way these people are carrying on.

Promote as if you were self-published

Regardless of what you write, whether you pen novels or columns, whether you are syndicated or piece-meal, whether you are self-pubbed or seek traditional routes,  you need to promote yourself as if you were self-published. And according to this blog at The Book Designer , you need to do it fast. For instance, if you are writing a book, you need to build your platform three years before you ever publish the book. (**Fantastic blog resource, BTW)

As a previous administrative director of a federal government agency, I lived to delegate. As writers we can't afford to delegate. Everyone expects you to be the ultimate resource for hawking your writing. Hey, you wrote the words, you want your message delivered . . . so learn how to deliver it.

You are in charge of finding your readership - nobody else.

Where can you find those people? Answer these questions:

- who do you work with online and in person
- who do you socialize with online and in person
- who do you communicate with online and in person
- who do you do business with online and in person
- who do you recreate with online and in person
- who do you relate to for clubs/hobbies online and in person
- who do you train/go to school with online and in person
- who do you share professional interests with online and in person
- who have you worked for/socialized with/recreated with/shared interests with in the past - online and in person?

Find a way to connect with them. Make it professional and subtle. Don't jump into a forum or chatroom and blare out you have something to sell. Relate, reacquaint, connect. Become a personality. Somewhere along this path you'll realize you make more sales via savvy social media than you will speaking in person. You'll save a lot of money as well.

A day shouldn't go by that you don't cultivate your potential readership and proclaim yourself as a writer. If it's what you want to do for a living, then live your life as if this profession is what molds you as a person. Self-promotion is not an afterthought . . . it's your future.

Kids and Ebooks

My nephew thinks his Kindle is the greatest. He's 11. As a voracious reader, he can carry around hundreds of novels instead of cramming his bookbag full of 25 pounds of books. And we all know kids stay on the go these days, and how much easier it is to carry an electronic reader.

In my recent post about embracing the ebook era, a children's writer disagreed with me, saying that she still believed in books and in children holding books. I don't disagree. However, I also believe that kids jump on reading, in any format. Some just may jump on it sooner and more often in electronic form.

The National Writing Project is an education endeavor to involve writing in education in a serious way. I receive their newsletter, always intrigued how serious teachers strive to make students want to write.

The mission of the NWP: The National Writing Project focuses the knowledge, expertise, and leadership of our nation's educators on sustained efforts to improve writing and learning for all learners.


The vision of the NWP: Writing in its many forms is the signature means of communication in the 21st century. The NWP envisions a future where every person is an accomplished writer, engaged learner, and active participant in a digital, interconnected world.


The website has many examples of how teachers urge students to become writers. Notice that they have recognized the need to incorporate technology in the education process. Enjoy this piece at the NWP site about involving the digital age in writing education: http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3154

All of us recall a favorite little book in our childhood hands. Most of us can name a book or two. The Velveteen Rabbit, Goodnight Moon, The Cat in the Hat, Little House on the Prairie, Where the Wild Things Are, and Are You My Mother? I still think books are fantastic gifts for children, but if they are already doing homework online, their tiny fingers dancing on buttons and keyboards, don't you think they would draw like a magnet to an electronic reader? Just because we get nostalgic over printed books doesn't mean that we are denying kids anything giving them an electronic reader.

Heck, we already put DVD players in the car. Wouldn't a Kindle, iPad or SONY e-reader make more sense?

You Can't Please All the People

When you are asked who your readership is, be specific, be knowledgeable, and don't say everyone. You can't please all the people with whatever you write. For instance, I've received three negative emails in the last week about my work with FundsforWriters, consisting of:

1. "You're all crooks."
Not sure what crooked company I'm keeping. Maybe I need to watch my back and avoid these sleezy sorts I'm cavorting with. Seriously, this person is probably getting rejected, doesn't want to learn the business, and writes off everyone in the biz. Unless I give this person what she wants, which I have no clue what that may be, she will be disgruntled. Unless I master mind-reading, I'll never win this person's loyalty.

2. "Your original advertisement was deceptive. I need monies to get my first book published."
The most common question I receive is how to get a grant to pay for self-publishing a first book. I can't name one. FundsforWriters posts grant calls, but most of them require you prove your expertise as a writer. In some cases that means a work sample, but in many other cases, it's publishing credits, education degrees or a freelance portfolio. Grants are also affiliated with retreats, conferences, fellowships at institutions, travel opportunities and many more writing experiences. But no one anywhere, to my knowledge, is handing out grants to unproven writers who want to test their hand at writing via self-publishing. If I find one, I'll post it.

3. "You don't provide the right grants that help me."
Again, I've got to get that mind-reading thing down better.

I try to be all things to all writers, but reality tells me it ain't going to happen. Same goes for your writing. Be prepared for negative feedback. Hey, I didn't like Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible, considered a classic. I'm not a fan of Stephen King's endings. No, I haven't read Dan Brown. Are these authors losing sleep because they missed the mark with me? Nope. They are selling books to the customers who love them, and that's how it's done.

Your job is not only to avoid being all things to all people, but to recognize who the people are you are supposed to be writing for. If you could design a Stepford Wife robot that epitomized the perfect reader for your writing, what would it look like, where would it work, how old would it be, what would it like to do, what social interests would it have, where does it hang out?

Before you write this exercise off as wasted effort, realize that knowing all this information tells you how to advertise, blog, and self-market your writing. Find out where these people are and go to their havens - become one of them. Rubbing elbows with your style reader is how word-of-mouth lights a spark and takes off.

Not Wanting to Understand

This editorial appeared in the July 25, 2010 issue of FundsforWriters. Funny, but I never know when an editorial will register or when it won't. I write what bugs, intrigues or excites me, in hopes I'm not the only one. This one touched a few folks, and based on the following note from a reader, I'm also posting this editorial to the blog. Hope it registers with you, too.

Hello Hope,
You've done it again with this week's newsletter editorial - summed up a topic, and offered a very intelligent solution to a problem that is giving many writers, and publishers, sleepless nights. I attended a panel discussion the other day that brought together a print book publisher, an agent, an author and a lit mag editor, and they left everyone in the room - except me - with a heavy feeling of doom and gloom. I've been naturally optimistic when it comes to talking about e-books and change in the biz of writing and publishing, so was very pleased to read your editorial confirming what I've been trying to get across to all of these conference attendees. Will you be posting this editorial to your blog? I would like to point everyone in your direction so they may read it for themselves.=====

Not Wanting to Understand
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
~Upton Sinclair

When someone's career depends upon publishing, and that publishing has been in the form of printed books, then electronic publishing becomes scary. Rather than endure a shift in the paradigm, he fights change. After all, when one's income has come from one particular direction for a while, and that direction has been comfortable and financially rewarding, trying something new is unsettling.

Technology via computers has taken progress and shot it full of crack. In other words, change is not only fast, but it is accelerating before we firmly grasp the previous change. We understand 3G phones only to see 4G ones advertised. Some of us, however, still use a flip phone that does little more than make calls and take a picture or two. Why try the new technology when the old technology works just fine?

We can stall change for a while. Ebooks tried multiple times to make their mark in the world only to fail miserably. Then it took iPhones and Kindles to springboard ebooks to their rightful place. Now everyone wants to create ebooks, heck, even aps for their phones for those ebooks.

And one day most people will have to accept electronic publishing. They'll have to download a program to computer, buy an e-reader or learn to read on their phone. And those authors (and publishers) who have stalled for years to embrace electronic reading, will face the music and deal with the change. Those who initially embraced that change, made a mint leading the tidal wave that is electronic technology.

Dare to step off the rutted path. I'm not telling you to be a sheep and do what everyone else does. I'm saying don't wait until everyone else is doing it, has removed the risk, has made it common, to endeavor to improve your career. I can't tell you how many people have said to me:

1. Do I have to have a website? I'm not electronically gifted.
2. I find social networking a complete waste of time.
3. I prefer a hard book in my hands, so I won't do ebooks.
4. I just want to write and let someone else handle the technical aspects of marketing and publishing.

In reality, they are waiting until they reach the crossroad - the place where they have to decide to accept technology in order to keep writing . . . or quit writing.

We are a population that resists the status quo. But it's those who understand change never stops who make the most of their writing careers.

If you don't read, quit trying to write

I have my annual rants, one of which is reading. Not about literacy, not about teaching kids to write, not about donating books to schools and at-risk populations. It's about writers taking the time to read. Aimee Weinstein wrote this post which brought this rant back to the forefront of my mind.
http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2010/07/guest-blog-post-active-reading-for.html

She sweetly explains how reading is fruitful for writers. I tend to take the message further, in a more dramatic tone. I feel that if a writer isn't a voracious reader, he doesn't deserve to write. My mantra is:

You don't have the right to write, if you don't have the need to read.

Reading other works teaches you how to write your own. No, you aren't copying others' material, but you are learning what works and what doesn't. You develop an ability to recognize style, voice, character development and plot twisting. No, you won't all this get this from how-to books.

Look at doctors and teachers. Look at painters and craftsmen. They school up on the trade. They practice the trade. They study the talented in their profession and know the masters. They try to analyze what makes someone great. They attempt to note the tricks of the trade, the habits that do not work and those that do.
What makes writers any different?

Many writers do not read. The arrogance of thinking one can write best-sellers and not dissect current best-sellers, just slays me. And these self-proclaimed writers will be unproductive, doing busy work, not progressing, not understanding why their work is not attractive to other readers. All they see is their world of their words. Not studying the words of those who've managed to distribute their stories around the world denies them the knowledge needed to be succcessful. They deceive themselves thinking they'll continue to check out how-to write books at the library or buy them online and come out sounding like Pulitzer Prize winners. Nope - won't happen.

To enable your talent, you need to study, practice and read. To shortchange any of the three is to handicap the work product. Why do you think sports figures are so appealling to young athletes? It's all about studying the moves to get your own right.

WriteOnCon - Free, Online, Lots of Names

WriteOnCon is coming in a few weeks - free and online and chocked full of names. The kidlit conference will take place August 10-12, 2010. http://writeoncon.com/ Just look at these agents and editors!


Michelle Andelman, agent with Regal Literary
Regina Brooks, author and agent with Serendipity LLC
Catherine Drayton, agent with Inkwell Management
Daniel Ehrenhaft, author and editor for HarperCollins
Mandy Hubbard, author and agent with D4EO Literary
Stasia Ward Kehoe, author and Author Appearance Coordinator for Simon & Schuster
Mary Kole, agent with Andrea Brown Literary
Jennifer Laughran, agent with Andrea Brown Literary
Steven Malk, agent with Writer's House
Mark McVeigh, agent with the McVeigh Agency
Martha Mihalick, associate editor Greenwillow Books
Molly O'Neill, assistant editor at Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint at HarperCollins Children's Books
Kathleen Ortiz, agent with Lowenstein Associates
Laura Rennert, senior agent with Andrea Brown Literary
Anica Rissi, executive editor at Simon Pulse
Holly Root, agent with Waxman Agency
Elana Roth, agent with the Johnson Literary Agency
Joanna Stampfel Volpe, agent with Nancy Coffee Literary
Suzie Townsend, agent with Fineprint Literary Management

NOTE: Seriously, this is great if you write children's literature. Where else will you connect with this many agents? Especially of this caliber. Makes me wish I wrote kidlit.
 
DOUBLE NOTE: Finally launched the Annual FFW Contest and thought I could prop my feet up and work on the novel. Entries are coming in already! The theme must be a good one to attract people so soon. See more at www.fundsforwriters.com/annualcontest.htm

CONSEQUENCE MAGAZINE POETRY PRIZE

http://www.consequencemagazine.org/
NO ENTRY FEE
The prize will be awarded for the best poem addressing the culture and consequences of war. The winner will receive $200, have the selected poem published in both print and online editions of CONSEQUENCE, and be invited to read at the launch of CONSEQUENCE Magazine's next issue and receive a three year subscription to the magazine. All poems submitted will be considered for publication in both print and online editions. Entry deadline is September 30, 2010.

NOTE: I always love a good no entry fee contest. This one has a theme of WAR. You have over two months to pen this poem, so take your time to make it marvelous.

DOUBLE NOTE: FundsforWriters has opened its own annual contest. Don't forget to check it out at www.fundsforwriters.com/annualcontest.htm . How does a $300 first prize sound?

SHAKING LIKE A MOUNTAIN FICTION OPEN - LITERARY MUSIC

http://shakinglikeamountain.com/

$10 ENTRY FEE
First prize: $350
Second prize: $100
Third prize: $50

The three prizewinners will be published in Shaking Like a Mountain and have their work submitted by shaking editors to the Best of the Web and Best of Net anthologies. Deadline: September 15, 2010. Accepts all genres of literary fiction as long as stories are related to the theme of music. Entries must be
unpublished; 4,000 words or less.
 
NOTE: Very unique journal - literary writing that touches upon contemporary music. Think back in your life how music has shaped it. I can remember what I heard at my prom, when I married, when I rocked at a Clemson football game . . . when I . . . never mind.
 
DOUBLE NOTE: Countdown to when my child graduates college August 7. A big day, a big weekend. Once the crowd has thinned, I'm free to write . . . unlimited time to pound out the third novel.

Top Novelists Ditching Their Publishers to Develop Their Ebooks

Publishing & Self-Publishing: Where Is the Tipping Point? is the latest post on a blog called The Book Designer. It talks about novelists jumping ship and leaving their publishers in order to publish their own ebooks. A well-known Japanese novelist Ryu Murakami is going strictly Apple. There's even rumor that Janet Evanovich is doing solo with her ebooks. We already know about JA Konrath leaving St. Martin (or did they leave him?) to orchestrate his ebooks. The list adds up.

Is electronic publishing turning publishing on its ear? Is self-publishing turning into the norm?

Yes, books cost more than ebooks. We feel more green reading ebooks. E-readers are convenient as heck, and are becoming crazy cool. People are finally wrapping their minds (and hands) around technology. Ebooks might be coming into their own. Ebooks are easily self-pubbed. Should we follow the lead of the masters who seem to be boldly going where few have gone before? Without a big publishing house?

Before you drink the kool-aid and write off traditional publishing completely, realize there's a huge elephant in the room. Note that the author of this other blog post never really touches upon the fact all of these authors have a platform to die for . . . thanks to traditional publishing. They'd have a market if they wrote a novel on toilet paper and sold it on rolls in the grocery store. They've made a name for themselves.

Don't let the hoopla make you miss the reality. You must be able to sell your book, regardless of the medium. Throwing your story into an ebook does not sell your work. You still have to sell yourself, your book and your brand. The sea of self-published ebooks will exceed the paperbacks flooding the world now. Marketing will become an even bigger issue when it comes to electronic publishing.

NOTE: Hey, I've considered ebook publishing of my own fiction, but then I splashed water in my face and realized I'd drown in the flood of new, self-pubbed ebooks. Chill, I told myself. Keep your eyes on the horizon.

DOUBLE NOTE: I'm nursing my chicken bitten by the neighbor's dog. I've also ordered her a saddle - a cloth cover for her back, where she received a nasty wound. Since we moved her to the garage in the kennel, she's become a talker. Tonight we fed her cooked grits with milk and she gobbled it up. As for the writing . . .one publisher is very interested . . . another just requested the full manuscript.