Editing: Unlikely Friends: James Merrill and Judith Moffett: A Memoir

I know, I know... Where have I been these past nearly two months? (Sometimes a guy just needs to veg for a while....) Anyhow, here I am! But let me also add a teaser: I've been busy reading a new manuscript from Charles Stross for the next volume in his Laundry Files series!

In this post, the book that I want to introduce you to is by Judith Moffett. Now if you've read this blog regularly over these past years you will recognize her name, as I have written about her on numerous occasions. In fact, if you scroll down just a bit, in the sidebar on the right you will see the cover for her Hugo and Nebula award-nominated story "Tiny Tango," along with a link to the four-part series on how we turned this story into an ebook. And one of my earliest blog posts on Ms. Moffett's work was back in February 2010 entitled "Aliens Have Entered Mainstream's Orbit." Feel free to search this blog (see Search field on the right) for "Judith Moffett" for a list of all the entries.

In 1988, Moffett won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in the field of science fiction and fantasy. But what you may not know is that, long before writing sf, Moffett was (and still is!) a poet -- and a helluva poet at that. Here are just a few of her awards and honors: (1971) First prize, Graduate Division, in the Academy of American Poets Contest at the University of Pennsylvania; (1976) First Ingram Merrill Foundation Grant in poetry; (1984) National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship Grant; and, even after launching a successful science fiction writing career: (1998) Presenter at the Nobel Symposium on Translation of Poetry and Poetic Prose. But enough of the kudos...you can read the complete list of "Awards, honors, and recognitions" in her Wikipedia entry.

Merrill & Moffett, 1993, International
Poetry Festival, Malmö, Sweden

I bring up poetry because that is the focus of her most recent publication, Unlikely Friends, a memoir of her near thirty-year friendship and correspondence with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Merrill. I had the honor of line editing and copy editing the manuscript: more than 200,000 words of diligently maintained journal entries from throughout that friendship, carefully transcribed correspondence, photographs -- and above all, the personal insight gleaned by the author upon looking back upon those decades.

For those readers in the book/publishing biz, you most likely know that a Kirkus review is difficult to come by: the publication is fairly stingy with its reviews. That being said, imagine how difficult it is to not only get reviewed by Kirkus, but to snag a starred review as well. And that's exactly what Unlikely Friends did: it garnered a starred review -- and, to top it all off, the memoir is self-published! Here's an excerpt from that review:

"Her Merrill scholarship is exhaustive, as she spent years writing a book about his work while finding success with her own poetry. She and Merrill were rarely in the same place, but she lovingly describes a 1973 trip to Greece and moments at his New York City apartment. Both eventually struggled with serious health problems, but they remained close due to their obvious reliance on each other's intellect and their lifelong dedication to their crafts. Moffett's painstaking memoir is epic in length but remains consistently engrossing. Particularly noteworthy is her desire to get to the root of her own fascination with Merrill, and she reaches some surprising conclusions about herself. She tells her own life story of struggle and success with undying fervor, and Merrill's letters show him to be urbane, witty, a bit fussy, and generous when it mattered. The two were different in many ways, but Moffett's account of what they shared is authentic and impressive.

An absorbing, indispensable portrait of poets."

–Kirkus starred review, January 23, 2019

If you have access to Facebook, Moffett has been publishing lengthy excerpts and photographs from the book on her FB page.

And as I was writing this, I remembered that in 2016 I had noted in a blog post the receipt of her most recent poetry book (at that time), Tarzan in Kentucky: about life on her farm, grief (the loss of her husband), and other poems of a more personal nature.

Both Unlikely Friends (print and ebook) and Tarzan in Kentucky (print only) are available from your bookstore of choice; the links here will take you to Amazon.com.

"By culling a trove of letters and journals, Moffett has written an account of her friendship with Merrill that somewhat suggests the vivid quality of a novel. In every chapter the events of particular years are given the importance they had when they happened—they are not simply bridges to some later, more important time, but events in their own immediacy. The dense braid of writing by the various Judys of those years, and the Judy now reflecting and summing up, gives her narrative the four-dimensional effect of deep time. It's a love story—love of literature, of friends, of idealized figures who were also real people. It will send you back to Merrill's poems, and Moffett's too."

–Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Mars Trilogy and

New York 2140

Editing in Process: What Dreams Shadows Cast by Barbara J. Webb

This blog post has been in "draft" for quite a number of weeks... I didn't want to post my editorial work on this self-published novel until I had access to the final cover art. And then I learned that the author was going to be part of a "story bundle" of fantasy novels, and I wanted to share that with readers as well....

A bit more than two years ago, in my January 12, 2014, blog post, I wrote of my work on Barbara J. Webb's self-published novel City of Burning Shadows, book one in her Apocrypha: The Dying World Series.

Earlier this year, City of Burning Shadows was selected, among hundreds of entries, as one of the ten best self-published fantasy novels. Those ten novels are now part of a story bundle, which I urge you to take advantage of if ebooks are your preferred format. The ebooks are all DRM free and can be read on pretty much any computer, laptop, tablet, or phone. Note: the story bundle ends on May 5 -- so act now before you forget and time has run out. You can read more on the "self-published fantasy blog-off" that yielded these ten fantasy novels in my December 29, 2015, blog post. And here's a direct link to the story bundle details and ordering: SPFBO Story Bundle.

But let's get back to the current book at hand: What Dreams Shadows Cast, the second book in Apocrypha: The Dying World Series.

In book two, author Barbara J. Webb continues the tale of Ash Drake, former priest of Kaifail, and currently an employee of Price & Breckenridge, Legal and Investigative Services. Events in book one take place after the Abandon, when all the gods departed the land, never to be heard from again. Our protagonist, along with his fellow team members, have saved their city, Miroc, from devastation. And now, in book two, the city is quiet...too quiet....

Amelia [Price] was at her desk, staring at her computer screen, a frown on her beautiful face. In her perfectly tailored suit, with her perfectly styled hair, and perfectly manicured nails, no one could guess the truth. No one would ever see the creature that now lived inside her skin.

I waited in the doorway. She knew I was there. This new Amelia was aware of everything around her every moment. Nothing escaped her notice. But that didn't mean she was going to allow me to interrupt whatever thought-process she was working through.

"What do you need, Ash?" she finally asked. The irritation in her voice was one hundred percent Amelia. Her own mother wouldn't know that she'd changed. Some days—most of them—I wished that I didn't.

"We've finished with the train tunnels," I said from the doorway. "Nothing's sneaking up on us from below the city. I think it's time to redirect our attention. Iris has been telling me about an influx of refugees. A lot of people coming in, and also a lot of people going out."

That got Amelia's attention. We were starved for news from the outside. And she wouldn't have missed the most obvious question about the people who were leaving—where would they go? She looked up, tapping her fingers on the desk in the steady rhythm that had always meant Amelia thinking.

Some days I could almost forget that it was Syed moving those fingers, looking at me through Amelia's eyes. That it was Syed's mind and Syed's decisions now guiding Price & Breckenridge. For six months I'd been braced for some dramatic moment, some drastic change that had never happened. As far as I could tell, Syed had done nothing that Amelia wouldn't have done, had made no decision Amelia wouldn't have made. He lived in her body with the same perfect mimicry I'd seen the rest of his people capable of.

It was creepy. It was wrong. But it was a lesser evil, compared to everything else that had gone wrong in the world. And the truth was, we needed him. And he needed us. Which led to this awkward state of truce and a thin layer of pretense and no one was all the way happy with any of it.

Full wrap-around cover art for What Dreams Shadows Cast

Plots within plots, conspiracies, gangs, battles, tech-magic, giant spiders, and beings thousands of years old [read: Syed] -- the Apocrypha series has it all. But don't forget to check out the story bundle, which expires on May 5. And while you're at it, you may as well snag volume two: What Dreams Shadows Cast ebook, from either Amazon or iTunes.

Print Edition: The Labyrinth of the Flame by Courtney Schafer

Let's see...I need to recap a few past blog posts on Courtney Schafer's Shattered Sigil Trilogy.

In my April 29, 2015, blog post I was reading mobi editions of the first two volumes of Ms. Schafer's trilogy: The Whitefire Crossing and The Tainted City. All of this in preparation for working on volume three, The Labyrinth of Flame, as Ms. Schafer had hired me to do a full line and copy edit on the 219,000-word manuscript. (Just an FYI, that's 756 manuscript pages! Whew....)

As I stated in the blog post, Courtney launched a Kickstarter campaign in support of The Labyrinth of Flame, the first two volumes having been published by Night Shade Books. The Kickstarter was fully funded (funded by 284%, to be exact) -- and by my November 10, 2015, blog post, all Kickstarter contributors had received their maps and ebook editions of The Labyrinth of Flame. Since the Kickstarter print editions were still in process, the author shared with her readers the interior illustrations that would be included in the print edition.

By my January 5, 2016, blog post, all Kickstarter contributors had received their signed trade paperback copies of The Labyrinth of Flame -- and I had received my signed comp copy as well. So the Kickstarter campaign was officially complete.

Though the ebook edition of Labyrinth has been available these past few months to the reading public, what has (pleasantly) surprised Courtney has been the demand for print copies of the book beyond those she had printed specifically for the Kickstarter. Back to the drawing board, so to speak.

She again contracted with Thomson-Shore, the same printer who had provided the Kickstarter print editions. In her recent blog post announcing the general availability of print copies, Courtney explains why she again went with Thomson-Shore (quality, quality, and...quality) rather than self-publishing the books via Create Space or Ingram Spark.

So, if a print edition of The Labyrinth of Flame, book three in the Shattered Sigil Trilogy, is what you so desire, then make your way to Amazon.com or the Seattle Book Company to purchase a copy.

If you are not familiar with Courtney Schafer's Shattered Sigil Trilogy, then get ye to courtneyschafer.com, where the author has posted multiple sample chapters of each of the three books. Check it out, sample the samples, then go buy all three volumes of the Shattered Sigil Trilogy.

And enjoy the read.

Book Received: Courtney Schafer's The Labyrinth of Flame

I wrote about my work on The Labyrinth of Flame -- Book III in the Shattered Sigil Trilogy by Courtney Schafer -- in my November 10, 2015, blog post.

The Labyrinth of Flame is the product of a fully funded Kickstarter (284% funded, actually) -- and when I wrote that blog post in November, Kickstarter contributors had already received their maps and ebook edition of the novel. In fact, the ebook edition is available for purchase at this time.

And now, as I write this, all Kickstarter contributors have received their signed trade paperback print edition of the novel as well. (And I've received my signed copy of the book, too!)

Ms. Schafer is currently working on a distribution agreement with Thomson-Shore, and once that is finalized, readers will hopefully be able to order the print edition. As soon as the book becomes available, I'll post an update on More Red Ink -- but in the meantime, whatever process you use to make notes to yourself: Evernote, OneNote, Keep, Pocket, or even the old-fashioned handwritten Post-It note, make a note to read The Labyrinth of Flame. Correction: make a note to read the entire Shattered Sigil Trilogy!

As you may, or may not, know, the first two volumes of the trilogy -- The Whitefire Crossing and The Tainted City -- were originally published by Night Shade Books. Upon the publisher's demise, and sale, Courtney Schafer decided to self-publish volume three via Kickstarter. Fortunately, the author knows her readers, her audience, and how finicky we book collectors can be. (To paraphrase Ross E. Lockhart from his Facebook post:) Production-wise, Ms. Schafer did the literary equivalent of getting the old band back together: cover artist David Palumbo, cover designer Martha Wade, and Ross E. Lockhart on interior design. So even though the book was self-published, book three perfectly matches the previous two volumes in the series. Readers and fans of Courtney Schafer will not be disappointed in the quality -- both in design and content editing -- of this final volume in the series.

Bibliotropic has a lengthy review of The Labyrinth of Flame, and here's the conclusion to that review (but please do read the review in its entirety):

...the ending of The Labyrinth of Flame is quite possibly the most satisfying ending to a series I've ever read. It ties up everything wonderfully, leaves room for the future, and left me with flailing around like an idiot over what happens to the people I ship. Seriously, I don’t think there's any possible better way for this book and this series to have ended. It closed on a high note, filled with hope and optimism even for difficult tasks ahead, and I'm going to be honest with you all — I actually just went and reread the last chapter again while writing this, because I love the ending that much. It left me with the first book hangover I've ever experienced, and despite having just reread the first two books in the series in preparation for reading this one, all I wanted to do when it was over was pick up The Whitefire Crossing and start over, so that I didn't have to leave the world and characters behind.

Fantasy just doesn't get much better than this!

~Ria, Bibliotropic

Barbara J. Webb's Apocrypha: The Dying World Series

Two years ago (and it's hard to believe that much time has passed already!) I was working on a manuscript for City of Burning Shadows, book one in a new series from author Barbara J. Webb.

Ms. Webb is among a growing number of savvy, professional, self-published writers who understand that to have a successful career in self-publishing one must invest in professional editing: developmental editing, line and copy editing, and final proof editing.

I'm now reading the mobi edition of City of Burning Shadows to refresh in my mind the story line and characters in preparation for my next project, which will be book two in this series: What Dreams Shadows Cast. I will begin work on this manuscript in January.

You can read my previous blog posts on City of Burning Shadows, but what would be even more revealing would be Ms. Webb's recent guest blog post on Bibliotropic in which she wrote:

I wanted to write about hulking lizard warriors. And bird-people. And people so made of magic that they don't have a true shape. I couldn't do that in the real world. So I built a city—a dying city in the desert—and into that city I placed a hero.

Ash is bruised and broken. He's lost his family, his faith, his purpose. He's watching his world collapse around him and feels powerless to stop it. But when he's faced with an old friend in need and a new friend who holds the key to saving Ash's dying city, he can't turn away. That one act of humanity drags him into a world of lies and plots and monsters he never imagined.

A secret world.

If you've read this far then you are most likely a reader of fantasy fiction, and urban fantasy in particular -- so I wanted to make sure that you were aware of "The Great Self-published Fantasy Blog-off!" hosted by author Mark Lawrence (@mark__lawrence [2 underscores!]).

Let's see if I can sum up: Mark published a blog post on self-promotion that was so well-received that he decided to take the self-promotion one step further: a self-published blogger challenge.

Mark asked for volunteers from the well-respected book-reviewing blogger community. He then asked writers to submit their self-published fantasy novels. He selected 10 bloggers and 250 fantasy novels. Each blogger was randomly assigned 25 novels. From those 25 novels, each blogger selected the best novel. So he now had 10 bloggers and 10 novels.

Then each blogger had to read and rate each of the 10 novels. When all was said and done, the novel that came in first place would then be reviewed by all 10 bloggers (aka free publicity, free promotion). The readings and ratings are still ongoing, and can be tracked here. The deadline for reading and rating the 10 novels is March 1, 2016.

So, why am I telling you this? First, if you enjoy reading excellent quality self-published fantasy, Mark's list would be a great place to start. And second, one of the 10 finalist novels is Barbara J. Webb's City of Burning Shadows.

In fact, if I understand correctly, a story bundle of the 10 finalist novels will also be made available in March. So you'll want to stay connected to Mark's blogger challenge in order to take advantage of that offer.

Editing in Process: The Labyrinth of Flame by Courtney Schafer

Cover art by David Palumbo

The largest project I had worked on in the past year or two was the short story collection Led Astray: The Best of Kelley Armstrong, clocking in at around 148,000 words.[1]

That is, until I worked on The Labyrinth of Flame, book III in Courtney Schafer's The Shattered Sigil Trilogy -- a massive 756 manuscript pages, totaling 219,000 words of wondrous fiction.[2]

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may recall that back in April (April 29, 2015, blog post) I was in the middle of reading the first two volumes of The Shattered Sigil Trilogy -- The Whitefire Crossing and The Tainted City -- in order to get up to speed on the world and characters of Ms. Schafer's trilogy.

Since I read ebook editions of these two volumes I can't speak to their actual length. However, using Calibre Ebook Management software (which I highly recommend), I converted the two MOBI files to RTF files, opened them in MS Word, and have the approximate word counts: 135,000 words for The Whitefire Crossing, and 173,000 words for The Tainted City. That's more than 300,000 words of reading just to prepare myself for this current project.

These first two titles in the trilogy were published by Night Shade Books (prior to its acquisition by Skyhorse Publishing and Start Media[3]), after which Ms. Schafer made the decision to self-publish the final title in the trilogy via a Kickstarter campaign. The Kickstarter was more than fully funded (284% to be exact), unlocking three stretch goals.

Unlike far too many other authors, Courtney Schafer is self-publishing The Labyrinth of Flame properly -- which will be evident to her readers when they receive the finished book: She hired artist David Palumbo for the cover art, the same artist who did the covers for volumes I and II, so that the trilogy's covers would match even though the three books were not from the same publisher. She also hired a developmental editor to review the novel's plot, characterization, setting, etc. I was then hired for a detailed line edit and copy edit. After the author made the content changes I recommended, she then hired another copy editor for a final proof of the novel.

Nothing is more frustrating, at least for me, when I attempt to read -- and inevitably give up on reading -- a self-pubbed novel that has blatant typos and awkward (and often ridiculous) sentence structures. Readers won't find these issues in The Labyrinth of Flame: Courtney Schafer has written and published this novel as the professional that she is, and this volume is the worthy conclusion to The Shattered Sigil Trilogy -- and the harrowing adventures of Kiran, Dev, and Cara.

Those who contributed to the Kickstarter have already received their maps and ebook editions of The Labyrinth of Flame and, according to the author, the print editions are currently in process. In fact, Ms. Schafer shared the book's interior illustrations with readers in her October 29 blog post.

If you didn't get in on the Kickstarter but are interested in the ebook, The Labyrinth of Flame Kindle edition is now available for preorder. Print copies will be available for order on December 1, but Amazon doesn't allow preorders for self-published print editions.

You can read more of The Shattered Sigil Trilogy on the Courtney Schafer website, including sample chapters from all three volumes.


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Footnotes:

[1] You can read about my work on Kelly Armstrong's Led Astray, from Tachyon Publications, beginning in my August 26, 2015, blog post.

[2] I actually completed work on this project about two and a half months ago, but new, incoming projects have kept me busy.... I'm using the "Editing in Process" tag in order that this blog post will track with my other editing projects.

[3] "For Immediate Release: Skyhorse Publishing and Start Media Acquire Night Shade Books"

Editing in Process: In the Stars I'll Find You by Bradley P. Beaulieu

In late 2012, author Bradley P. Beaulieu (pronounced "Bowl-yer") launched a Kickstarter campaign in order to self-publish a short story collection. The collection, entitled Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories, was successfully funded by the end of January 2013 -- and I had the pleasure of working with Brad on the editing of this collection. You can read my blog post of April 22, 2013, on this project, if you wish.

Two years later, on December 1, 2014, Brad and five other authors launched a new Kickstarter campaign -- "Six by Six: A New Kind of Spec-Fic Anthology" -- in which six authors each provided a collection of six stories. This Kickstarter was a rather unique idea involving, as I said, six authors (including Will McIntosh and Martha Wells), and was fully funded along two stretch goals by the end of December.

After Brad met his "Six by Six" Kickstarter goals and rewards, he then combined those six stories with four additional stories -- and put together a second collection of short stories: In the Stars I'll Find You & Other Tales of Futures Fantastic, which he also plans to self-publish.

Brad was fortunately satisfied with my work on Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten (You can read the author's acknowledgement in the first collection here.) because I was given the opportunity to work on this second collection as well.

As with the first collection, I performed a developmental review of the four new, previously unpublished stories:

"And a Girl Named Rose" (5,100 words)
"Born of a Trickster God" (16,900 words)
"Compartmentalized" (6,400 words)
"In the Stars I’ll Find You" (9,400 words)

Then, after Brad had reworked these stories as necessary, he pulled together the full collection of ten stories -- approximately 83,000 words of fiction -- and I did my line and copy editing thing. Even though I had already reviewed the four new stories, including them in the overall copy edit allowed me to catch any new errors that might have been introduced during the rework, plus I could then ensure consistency in word usage and such throughout the entire collection.

So, in addition to the four new stories above, the collection includes these six published stories (also in alphabetical order):

"Bloom" - first published in Realms of Fantasy, June 2008

"Chasing Humanity" - first published in Man vs. Machine, November 2006

"Flashed Forward" - first published in Help Fund My Robot Army, edited by John Joseph Adams, 2014

"No Viviremos Como Presos" - first published in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, October 2007

"Quinta Essentia" - first published in Clockwork Universe - Steampunk vs. Aliens, edited by Patricia Bray and Joshua Palmatier, 2014

"Upon the Point of a Knife" - first published in The Crimson Pact, Volume V, edited by Paul Genesse, 2013

The original sources for these six stories are quite varied -- anthologies and magazines -- and since most readers don't have access to such a variety of publications, a collection of Brad's short fiction is the best way to read these stories. In the Stars I'll Find You will be published in both print and electronic editions later this year.

With these two collections, I've now read twenty-seven stories...and what continues to impress me with each new story is the breadth of content -- and the storytelling: from a medical procedure on a man's brain so he can control individual actions and memories ("Compartmentalized") to the relationship between a ship's AI and a young girl ("A Girl Named Rose") to unlocking the secrets of the fifth element ("Quinta Essentia").

I would recommend that you connect with Bradley P. Beaulieu: the author's website has links to Facebook, Twitter, G+, etc. so that you can stay informed of his activities, as I know he'll let his readers know when the new collection will be officially released.

Courtney Schafer's The Shattered Sigil Trilogy

Earlier this year, author Courtney Schafer launched a Kickstarter campaign for her fantasy novel The Labyrinth of Flame, book III in The Shattered Sigil Trilogy. Books I and II in this series were originally published by Night Shade Books. Ms. Schafer then made the decision to self-publish volume III, and thus the Kickstarter campaign was born. At the time, she had a complete draft of the novel and had also commissioned the book cover (art and layout) -- with artwork by David Palumbo, the same artist who had done the covers for the first two volumes. So there was little risk for those who contributed to this Kickstarter project.

The Kickstarter was, in fact, fully funded -- and then some: the campaign achieved 284% funding and unlocked three stretch goals.

I've been reading the mobi editions¹ of books I and II in The Shattered Sigil Trilogy. I completed The Whitefire Crossing a week or so ago, and I'm now about one-third of the way through The Tainted City.

All this in preparation for my next project: I will be working with Courtney Schafer on book III, The Labyrinth of Flame, performing a full copy edit of the final manuscript prior to publication.

On her website, Courtney Schafer has provided a sneak peak at the novel, with chapters one through three available online. And, if you missed out on the Kickstarter but would still like to add this third volume to your library, the author will accept "late pledge" pre-orders until August 1; contact her directly at courtney(at)courtneyschafer(dot)com.

For those completely new to this series, the author provides sample chapters as well for both book I, The Whitefire Crossing (chapters one through six), and book II, The Tainted City (chapters one and two), on her website.

Now, as I said, I haven't finished reading the second volume, but the story has demanded my attention -- a new take on the apprentice mage (Kiran) and thief (Dev) -- with just enough twists and surprises to keep me intrigued. And, if you are a mountain and/or rock climber who enjoys reading fantasy, then this series is an absolute must read.

"Courtney Schafer has the gift of bringing this reader up to the brink, heart in my throat as I think--no! she's not really going to do that, is she?--and then ruthlessly dropping me over the cliff. That's why I love her books."
~Kate Elliott, author of the Spiritwalker trilogy

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Footnotes

[1] I read ebooks primarily on a Nexus 7-2013 using the Kindle for Android app. I do have access to an older Kindle, but prefer the amenities provided by an actual Android device.

SFWA Welcomes Self-Published and Small Press Authors!

In a referendum with a third of voting members participating and over 6 to 1 in favor, the membership of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has approved bylaw changes that enable SFWA to accept self-publication and small-press credits for Active and Associate memberships in the organization. We are using existing levels of income but are now allowing a combination of advances and income earned in a 12 month period to rise to the qualifying amounts.

SFWA President, Steven Gould, states, “Writers write. Professional writers get paid a decent amount for what they write. For the past five years it’s been apparent that there are ways to earn that decent amount that were not being covered by our previous qualification standards. Though these changes took a substantial amount of time, I’m grateful to everyone who worked toward this end.”

According to SFWA Vice President Cat Rambo, “I’m very excited to see SFWA moving forward and adapting itself to the changing face of modern publishing. SFWA will be much richer for the influx of knowledge and experience that the new members who have focused on independent and small-press publishing will bring with them.”

Specific details will be posted at sfwa.org by the first of March, but the basic standards are $3,000 for novel, or a total of 10,000 words of short fiction paid at 6 cents a word for Active membership. A single story of at least 1,000 words paid at 6 cents a word will be required for Associate membership. Affiliate, Estate, and Institutional membership requirements remain unchanged.

Self-published and small-press works were already eligible for the Nebula and Norton Awards, SFWA’s member-voted genre award, and will remain so.

SFWA will open to applications from small press and independent publishing qualifying members on March 1, 2015. Further information will be available at that time here: Membership Requirements

For membership questions not answered at the link above, please contact Kate Baker, at operations@sfwa.org. For information on SFWA or the Nebula Awards, or to request interviews or other information, please contact Jaym Gates, at communications@sfwa.org.

About SFWA

Founded in 1965 by the late Damon Knight, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America brings together the most successful and daring writers of speculative fiction throughout the world.

Since its inception, SFWA® has grown in numbers and influence until it is now widely recognized as one of the most effective non-profit writers’ organizations in existence, boasting a membership of approximately 1800 science fiction and fantasy writers as well as artists, editors and allied professionals. Each year the organization presents the prestigious Nebula Awards® for the year’s best literary and dramatic works of speculative fiction.

For Release: February 03, 2015

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Note/Caveat: I am not a SFWA member: I can join as an editor, but since such option has no voting power, then I see no purpose in paying for a membership. By posting this news release here on More Red Ink, I neither encourage nor discourage readers who are eligible from joining SFWA. It's an individual decision. I am posting this because a number of my "clients" ― and readers ― are self-published authors and/or authors who sell much of their work to small (often micro) indie publishers.

Book Received...Barbara J. Webb

As I have previously mentioned, I work directly with writers on their unpublished manuscripts. Some of these writers plan to self-publish their work; others want an edited manuscript to submit to an agent/publisher.

Toward the end of last year, I worked with author Barbara J. Webb on her soon-to-be-self-published novel City of Burning Shadows: the first volume in her new series, Apocrypha: The Dying World.

My "Editing in Process" blog entry was posted on January 12, and included a very brief excerpt (just a few paragraphs) from the novel. City of Burning Shadows was published shortly thereafter in March, in both Kindle and trade paperback editions.

About a week ago I received my comp copy of the trade paperback from Barbara. As to that gap in time from March, when the book was published, until now, well, Barbara shared a few life-happenings with me and, with her permission, I'll share them with you as well. But just a quick recap:

Barbara was invited to participate in the Rio Hondo Writers Workshop, hosted by Walter Jon Williams and held in northern New Mexico in the Taos Ski Valley. I don't have a complete roster, but I've seen a few photos posted on Facebook and recognized Nina Kiriki Hoffman, James Patrick Kelly, David D. Levine, and Rick Wilber in attendance. Now, you would expect a writer to attend a writing workshop, but Barbara is also a professional violinist, and a member of the Columbia Civic Orchestra. And the demand for orchestras -- and violinists -- is at its highest during the April/May Easter season and the Christmas holiday season. So, while Barbara played her violin, and then wrote fiction at a ski lodge (and ate fancy food, and hung out in the hot tub with other writers), I waited patiently for my copy of City of Burning Shadows.

But you won't have to wait: City of Burning Shadows is available now for your reading pleasure.

City of Burning Shadows Revealed

Cover art by Jordan Grimmer

Joshua "Ash" Drake is a man in hiding.

Hiding from the past, from the horror of his life as a priest after the gods disappeared.

Hiding from his emotions, denying the nightmares that haunt his sleep and the anger that fuels his days.

Most of all, hiding from the truth―

that no matter how much he keeps his head down, no matter how he clings to the echoes of everyday life, his city—his world—is dying.

When a new technology offers salvation to his desperate city, Ash must reach out to people he left behind and step back into the world that almost killed him. But coming out of hiding now could be the worst mistake Ash has ever made.

Because there are monsters in the darkness, feeding the chaos, watching the city burn. And once those monsters know his name, Ash will never be able to hide again.

City of Burning Shadows is the first volume in Apocrypha: The Dying World, a new series from author Barbara J. Webb.

Back in mid-January, I posted about my work on Barbara's novel, which she planned to self-publish. At the time of my blog post, however, the cover art had not yet been finalized.

As you can see, not only is the cover art complete, but City of Burning Shadows is now available as a Kindle ebook as well as in a trade paperback print edition.

In that previous blog post I recommended that you make a note -- in whatever note-taking manner you utilize -- to add City of Burning Shadows to your forthcoming books list. Well, now is your opportunity to snag a copy of the book itself, show your support for an independent, self-publishing author, and enjoy a quality read as well.

Editing in Process...Barbara J. Webb

My latest project is by author Barbara J. Webb and is not the novel pictured to the left. The novel I worked on is entitled City of Burning Shadows, which the author plans to self-publish. In the meantime, I'm pointing you to her previous novel, Midnight in St. Petersburg, volume one in The Invisible War series. But I'll be sure to post here when City of Burning Shadows is published. The wait will certainly be worth it.

Unfortunately I don't pimp myself as much as I should. In addition to the work I do with publishers, I also work directly with writers: new and novice writers, self-published writers, and contract writers who understand the value of an editor and copy editor. I'd like to point you to one such project, Bradley P. Beaulieu's self-published short fiction collection Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories. If you have an interest in chatting with me about a project, you'll find my email address listed under my blog profile. I don't attend as many conventions as I used to, but should you see me at a con, please feel free to come up to me and introduce yourself, and let me know you would like to talk about a project. And this should up my pimp quota somewhat....

But back to this project: Barbara Webb sent me the first chapter of City of Burning Shadows prior to our signing an agreement to work together on this project. I was impressed with the quality of her writing in this opening chapter and didn't come upon any obvious editorial issues through my initial read. But more important, this one chapter presaged a great novel that I wanted to read further. Here's the end of that first chapter:

...I couldn't afford to lose this job.

Getting myself killed provoking fights was one thing. Starving to death in the street was a whole other. Not that I'd probably live long enough to starve. I'd be another headline: former priest of Kaifail beaten to death, or burned alive, or strung up with his intestines hanging out for the crows. People in this city were nothing if not creative in their punishments for those of us they blamed for the state of things.

All this was still fresh in my mind when the intercom on my desk pinged. "Mr. Drake?" The security guard. "There's a man down here asking for you."

Was there any way this could be good? "Who is he? What does he want?"

"Says he needs to see you. Says you know each other." The guard's voice dropped, whispering into his microphone: "He says he was a priest."

Just like that, I was back on my feet. "I'll be right down." Because I hadn't learned my lesson yet about getting involved. Because I didn't have enough to worry about these days. Most of all, because I thought it would be good to see a friend.

In other words, I hurried back downstairs because I was an idiot.

The blunt, choppy sentence structure hints of the noir detective story. The priests have the ability to perform magic, but the kind of magic present in this story brings to mind Charles Stross's Laundry Files stories: magic via technology. There are conspiracies, and plots within plots.

Whatever tool you use to make notes to yourself -- a journal, Google Keep, MS OneNote, Evernote, or just plain old sticky notes -- make this note: Barbara J. Webb and City of Burning Shadows. As I previously said, I'll post on this blog when the book is available.

Added March 14, 2014:

Book Cover Revealed

Dear Indie Author Community:

An open letter from author J. M. Gregoire to all indie authors.
A must read.

Dear Indie Author Community,

Something bad is happening in the Indie Author Community. Several bad things, in fact, and if something isn't said to you, you're going to ruin your writing career before it ever gets started. What is about to follow in this letter is not an "I know everything" bomb. This letter is to serve as what should be common sense for all of us. All of this I have learned through experience as a jaded reader, a disappointed fangirl, a pissed off book blogger, a screwed over event planner, a disgusted indie author PR rep, and a fellow indie author who wants to see the community as a whole succeed. This is an Open Letter meant to try to bring the Indie Author Community back to respectable place where we can all be taken seriously.

There are a good many indies out there I no longer have respect for. Now, to understand the gravity of that statement, you must understand this: I absolutely love indie authors. I love the basic idea — you can tell your story without the media or some suit telling you what to write and when to write it. The "we don't need them" mentality is one of the factors that kept me from even considering publishing years ago. When the self-publishing boom hit, I thought it was a fantastic idea! Take out the middle man and bring stories down to what it really should be — a relationship between the storyteller and their audience.

All of that being said, I have become all those things I have listed up above. A jaded reader because the market is being flooded with books that are not ready to be published. A disappointed fangirl because of all the authors that feel just because they're published, they are somehow above everyone else...and treat them as such. A pissed off book blogger because once upon a time, writing reviews was FUN and now if I don't like a book, I can't just SAY SO (even POLITELY, mind you) without running the chance of having the author flat-out attack me and drag my name and the name of my book blog through every mud puddle they can find. A disgusted indie author PR rep because I keep watching indies spit in the face of the people who are the very reason they exist. A screwed over event planner because there are so many authors out there booking themselves for events and then not following through on their commitments. An indie author who is just sick of seeing her community drown itself....

If you've gotten this far, you need to read the entire open letter on J. M.'s blog.

May Links & Things

As I've previously mentioned, I backup my working data daily and the entire "My Computer" weekly, all to an external hard drive; that external hard drive, in turn, is also backed up daily and weekly to another external drive. But all of that means very little when the power supply decides to give up the ghost. Early Saturday morning, just prior to leaving the house for Baycon, I realized that I needed one more piece of information in preparation for my interview/chat and slide show presentation with Artist Guest of Honor John Picacio later that afternoon. I went to turn on the PC and, well, there was no "on" -- not even any noise, other than the click of the on/off button. So I snagged the info I needed from a book that just happened to be handy, and left for the con, knowing I would have to deal with a dead PC come Tuesday morning. Long story short, a new OEM power supply was ordered Tuesday, installed Wednesday (yesterday), and by last night all was as it should be (or should have been).

This is my monthly wrap-up of May's Links & Things. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern. Note, however, that not all of my tweeted links make it into these month-end posts. If you are new to this blog, and wish to catch up on my previous month-end posts, just look for the "Links and Things" tag in the right column.

• Advertisement of the month:
  
  
  
  
  What concerns me in the ad are the words: "Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed." If anybody responds to the ad successfully, I would surely appreciate your sharing with us in the Comments section! (ad courtesy of Libi Kavanah's Facebook page)

If you haven't yet subscribed to mediabistro.com's eBookNewser and GalleyCat blogs, which are delivered daily to your email inbox, then what are you waiting for?

• Links by the number:
  
  From GalleyCat: "10 Nontraditional Ways To Promote Your Book." GalleyCat has collected 10 tips on self-promotion from a thread on the Amazon discussion boards. The tips, in turn, are linked to the author's specific explanation.
  
  From GalleyCat: "5 Free Formatting Guides on How To Publish Your eBook." This brief article mentions these five guides along with their respective links: Smashwords Style Guide, Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines, Barnes & Noble ePub Formatting Guide, Apple iBookstore Style Guidelines, and Calibre User Manual.
  
  Now that you have the guides, here are the tools, from eBookNewser: "Six eBook Formatting Tools." These six tools are mentioned, with their respective links: Calibre, Aspose, Mobi Pocket, Jutoh, Feedbooks.com, and BookGlutton.
  
  Okay, you have the formatting guides, the formatting tools, now you need to know how to publish -- from eBookNewser: "Five Tools For Self-Publishing Your eBook." Explained in this article, with links, are these self-publishing options: Kindle Direct Publishing, Barnes & Noble PubIt, iTunes Connect, Smashwords, and Lulu.com.

There are undoubtedly more eBook formatting guides and tools and eBook publishing sites, but these are worth serious consideration, and at least provide a baseline for further research.

Writing (& Publishing) 101: A Conversation Between J.A. Konrath & Barry Eisler

March was a busy month for writing and publishing links and resources, which is why I split up my March Links & Things blog post (April 5), devoting one post on April 4 to "Writing 101: Don't Respond to Negative Reviews" and this post to a second set of links.

In my March Links & Things, I noted that best-selling author Barry Eisler had turned down a two-book, one-half-million-dollar deal with St. Martin's Press in order to self-publish his future books himself. And I linked to an interview in The Daily Beast in which Jason Pinter (@jasonpinter) asks Barry Eisler (@barryeisler) why he decided to self-publish.

But there is more to this Eisler/self-publishing, a lot more....

Barry Eisler is not your typical author: He graduated from Cornell Law School, joined the CIA in a covert operations position, and then left the CIA after a few years to work as a technology lawyer and startup executive in Silicon Valley and Japan. He began writing full-time in 2002, and is the author of two best-selling series, both thrillers: one features anti-hero John Rain, a half-Japanese, half-American former soldier turned freelance assassin, and the second features black ops soldier Ben Treven.

I checked out Barry Eisler's website and I was totally knocked out. Obviously, I expected the website to be in English; what I didn't expect was to find his website available in 8 other languages. Now that is impressive! And an incredible means to reach a global audience.

But I can't talk about Eisler's move to self-publishing without mentioning his friend and fellow author, J. A. Konrath (@jakonrath). After nearly 500 rejections and 9 unpublished novels, Joe Konrath finally scored with his tenth novel, Whiskey Sour, the first in his continuing series featuring Lt. Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels of the Chicago Police Department. Joe has stated that he discovered the Amazon Kindle in 2009, and since has self-published his novels in eBook format. And, in fact, on December 20, 2010, he published a blog post entitled "A Newbie's Guide to Publishing" in which he begins his post with "You Should Self-Publish." In this post, Joe Konrath tells why he felt, for many years, that traditional publishing was the only way to go. But once he discovered the Kindle, and is now selling 1,000 eBooks a day, he is reversing this one long-held belief about writing and publishing.

Anyhow, my purpose with this blog post is to bring to your attention a recent conversation between Konrath and Eisler on the subject of eBooks and self-publishing. The conversation itself was originally done as a live Google Docs discussion, and then later was edited and posted on Barry Eisler's blog. What's even more significant is that the authors made the conversation available in downloadable, mobile platforms: "doc, pdf, epub, and mobi formats, so it can be uploaded to Kindles, Nooks, Sony Readers, Kobos, and pretty much any other device." In the third paragraph of the conversation you'll find a link to a zip file that contains all of these formats. Be aware that this is not a light conversation, nor a short one either; it clocks in at about 13,000 words and is 35 pages on my Sony eReader.

But if you are an author and/or publisher, if you are considering eBooks and self-publishing, then you need to read this conversation, which "examines the history and mechanics of the publishing industry as it exists today, analyzes the way the digital revolution reflects recent events in Egypt and the Maghreb," and more.

Here's some samples from just the first few pages of the conversation:

Barry: ...my general point was that digital was going to become more and more attractive relative to paper. First, because the price of digital readers would continue to drop while the functionality would continue to increase; second, because more and more titles would become available for digital download at the same time more brick and mortar stores were closing. In other words, everything about paper represented a static defense, while everything about digital represented a dynamic offense. Not hard to predict how a battle like that is going to end....

Barry: ...Lots of people, and I'm one of them, love the way a book feels. I used to like the way books smelled, too, before publishers started using cheap paper. And you can see books on your shelf, etc... those are real advantages, but they're only niche advantages. Think candles vs electric lights. There are still people making a living today selling candles, and that's because there's nothing like candlelight -- but what matters is that the advent of the electric light changed the candle business into a niche. Originally, candlemakers were in the lighting business; today, they're in the candlelight business. The latter is tiny by comparison to the former....

Joe: I also love print books. I have 5000 of them. But print is just a delivery system. It gets a story from the writer to the reader. For centuries, publishers controlled this system, because they did the printing, and they were plugged into distribution. But with retailers like Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords, the story can get to the reader in a faster, cheaper way. And publishers aren't needed. Do you think publishers are aware of that?

Barry: I think they're extremely aware of it, but they don't understand what it really means.

Joe: I believe they've gotten their business model mixed-up. They should be connecting readers with the written word. Instead, they're insisting on selling paper.

Joe: ...The agency model is an attempt to slow the transition from paper to digital. Windowing titles is another one. So are insanely high ebook prices....

Barry: Well, again, I think they're taking it into account, but they're drawing the wrong conclusions. The wrong conclusion is: I'm in the paper business, paper keeps me essential, therefore I must do all I can to retard the transition from paper to digital. The right conclusion would be: digital offers huge cost, time-to-market, and other advantages over paper. How can I leverage those advantages to make my business even stronger?

Joe: We figured out that the 25% royalty on ebooks they offer is actually 14.9% to the writer after everyone gets their cut. 14.9% on a price the publisher sets.

Barry: Gracious of you to say "we." You're the first one to point out that a 25% royalty on the net revenue produced by an ebook equals 17.5% of the retail price after Amazon takes its 30% cut, and 14.9% after the agent takes 15% of the 17.5%.

Like I said, you really need to read this conversation. And there's no excuse, because you can download it in a variety of formats, for print, mobile devices, or even read it online.

Addendum: I neglected to mention that at the end of the conversation, there are more than 425 comments, so you've definitely got your reading cut out for you. Note, though, that the comments are only available on the blog post; they are not included in the downloadable files.

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Writing 101: Don't Respond to Negative Reviews

I had just begun my month-end Links & Things wrap-up when I realized that the following item would take quite a few more words and space than a single paragraph, so I'm going to post this one point, and then follow with the monthly Links & Things blog post.

The major editing/publishing controversy this past month surrounded author Jacqueline Howett. The controversy began innocently enough when BigAl's Books and Pals website reviewed Howett's self-published novel The Greek Seaman. The entire review, including the title and author of the book, and the fact that it received two stars, only came to a total of 355 words... But those 355 words generated almost as many comments -- 309 before the blog owner cut off comments. The reviewer stated that readers would "find the story compelling and interesting"; it was the caveat that upset the author so much: "the spelling and grammar errors, which come so quickly that, especially in the first several chapters, it’s difficult to get into the book without being jarred back to reality as you attempt unraveling what the author meant."

The author posted multiple comments to the review, accusing the reviewer of not downloading the correct/current version of her eBook. She accused him of not responding to her personal emails. She accused him of not understanding her writing because she is, and writes, British English. She even went so far as to post other, positive reviews of her book in the comments section, I assume to prove her point and to counteract his review. The reviewer, in turn, posted a couple of the author's more egregiously written sentences as examples -- you judge for yourself:

"She carried her stocky build carefully back down the stairs."

"Don and Katy watched hypnotically Gino place more coffees out at another table with supreme balance."

And then the ultimate sin: when other readers began commenting as well, in support of the review, which was, as I said, positive except for the negative grammar aspects, the author, Jacqueline Howett, told everyone to "Fuck off!" Not the best way to make friends and influence readers to purchase your book. After that, the blog went viral, and the comment section became little more than an author pile-on. After seeing a photo of the author on her blog, and reading about her worldly travels, one would think that her life experience would have yielded more maturity than what she displayed in the comments section.

The lack of quality in her writing unfortunately supports the generalized notion that most self-published books are crap -- and a lot of them are, so we have to rely on reviews like those from BigAl's and other review sites to sift the wheat from the chaff. There are also a lot of lessons to be learned here: It is not the reviewer's responsibility to find/track down the current/correct copy of the book to be reviewed. The book that the reviewer is sent, or the one the reviewer buys off the shelf, or online, is the book that gets reviewed. If you, as the author, do not want a lesser quality book to be reviewed, then don't put it out there! And, as an author, you must learn to accept the good reviews with the bad; you don't necessarily have to like it, but you absolutely must learn to accept it, or shine it on as one bad reviewer's personal opinion, or whatever it takes to get past that negative review. Enjoy the positive reviews when you can, and try to learn and improve your writing and/or the quality of your book from the negative ones.

The link above to BigAl's will allow you to read the review and comment section at your leisure. I doubt that most will read more than the first 50 or so comments; after that, it really does become tiresome. But you'll get the point: Writing 101 -- Don't respond to negative reviews. Simply grin and bear it (and try to learn from the review if you can).


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