Samhain Publishing Ltd. Weblog

Friends Don't Let Friends Publish America

“I’m going to be a published author too,” my friend Gary (not his real name) announced. “A book of my poems is coming out soon. They’re giving me a hundred copies, and I need to talk to you about promotion.”

Some of my confusion must’ve shown on my face. This wasn’t what I expected to have slapped on my plate in the middle of a Sunday afternoon cook-out. “That’s great, Gary. You’re getting a hundred ARCs? Wow! That’s amazing. How soon are you getting published?”

“October. What’s an ARC?”

Fantasy & the City

I’m not here.
With any luck, by the time you read this I’ll be in Richmond, VA, warping young minds—er, participating in pre-RavenCon programming at a local Richmond high school. Or maybe you’ll read this a little later, after my roommates and I head out to the local cold spots—the kinds of places where the ghost of Edgar Allen Poe never sleeps.
I love finding the weird in a new locale. No two places have the same feel.
It’s more than a matter of kind.

What to do when you’re NOT writing

I’m going to go hide now. Another well-meaning writing friend just tried to pummel me in to word-count servitude. You know, those schemes designed to guilt you into writing a book in a month by ignoring all outside distractions like eating, sleeping, bathing and national elections.

I have to hide. It’s either that or commit writing heresy by disagreeing with (Nora) Roberts’ Law. Some days, some weeks, some months, you really

Thirteen Things Final Line Edits (FLEs) Taught Me About Writing

Samhain writers, get out your rotten tomatoes and let them fly. I am the person at Samhain you most love to hate. I am the fussy, picky, pedantic, acid-tongued Final Line Editor Angie James inflicted on you in a moment of unadulterated sadism. (She’s proud of it too. Look at her buffing her nails as I type that.) I will question your spelling, your punctuation and word choices. I will point out the plot thread you dropped in chapter six and never picked up again. I will tell you when your hero crawled into bed wearing the heroine’s Jimmy Choos and the dog’s socks. I know what the weather was like in London in February 1815, and I’ll be delighted to show you the contemporary sources to prove it. I am all your editorial nightmares rolled into one.

Stealth Guest -- Or How to Succeed at Cons with a Cunning Plan

The email from RavenCon’s assistant director of programming was polite but not encouraging:

“Right now our guest list is full, but I will put you on our short list if a guest cancels…”

A lot of writers will take that as a hint. In other words: “Stay home, little girl, you’re not big enough/you’re the wrong genre to play in our sandbox.” But I’m evil and wise in the ways of science fiction/fantasy conventions. And I had a cunning plan.

The Vanyr You Don't See

With Nine You Get Vanyr came out in print on Fat Tuesday. The same day I found out the electronic version scored as the number two finisher in the SF/fantasy category of the 2006 Preditors & Editors Poll. The same day I inaugurated my book-related contest of the new year. After a triple header like that, I bet you’re expecting me to use this blog to post excerpts of the book.

When have I ever blogged what you expected?

Looking on the Bright Side of Fan Fiction

The heart-warming article I planned involving Shakespeare, Twelfth Night and a tanker of pina coladas sailed out the window the minute Rachel Caine squee-ed: “Did you hear … Methos is BACK in the new Highlander movie? WOOOOOOOOOO!”
Rachel, who writes fan fiction under the handle “Julie Fortune”, and I think we met ten years ago in a fanfic group for Highlander, the Series, even if we can’t remember each other’s name in the group. So you sort of expect these things to crop up in the middle of our online conversations. But she wasn’t the only one. Fannish threads have been exploding all over—on lists, on loops, on the phone, in person. Another writer friend even proposed…