Market Watch: Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion Anthology

Stop tempting me you anthology creators. I'm supposed to be thinking about writing a novel.

 Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion Anthology

"We are seeking original stories with strong steampunk elements and a connection to the Bristol area.
Contributors will be paid £25 plus royalties, and one physical copy of the book.

Wordcount: Up to 7,500
Submission: Send your story to submissions@bristolcon.org
Submissions deadline: Sunday 16th June. Early queries and submissions welcome."

The Editor as Stranger

Sometimes people tell me that I should go to cons. Specifically,  that meeting editors will help my writing career.

Now, I'm not ragging on cons. If you like them go to them, enjoy. I like small cons and meetings, the big ones not so much.

But I don't think that it's important to meet editors to sell short stories.

I've sold *runs off and checks* 159 short stories. (Yay!) And I've met in person, none of the editors. I do network a bit, through my blog and twitter. So I can tell you that before selling, I'd interacted with electronically with three of the editors.

So, it doesn't seem that networking is paying a big part in the sales. Of course, if I'd been going to cons it might be that I'd have sold even more. Maybe. Impossible to tell, really.

What do you think? Has networking, electronically or in person helped your career? Is it more important if you're trying to sell a novel? Am I in denial about the whole thing?

My Story to Appear in Year's Best SF 18

My Nature story,'Glass Future' that I know some of you have read is going to appear in David G. Hartwell's Year's Best SF 18, a collection of 2012 science fiction stories. Considering that I've been reading this since Year's Best #3, (long, long before I ever thought about writing) you can see how pleased I might be.

I found out yesterday  completely out of the blue.

I can't wait to see the full table of contents, as you can see from the cover I'm going to be rubbing ink with some of the best names in science fiction.

Wow. Just wow.

Contact Information on Your Blog

Today I was contacted by an editor about a possible reprint sale. Good news. The editor found me Facebook and sent me a message via Facebook.

This made me realise that there was no contact information on my blog. How foolish of me. So I've stuck up my e-mail and twitter name now. But I'm worried about getting too much spam.

What's the best way of putting contact information, folks?

Edited to say: Using the AT seems to be working just fine.

Writing the Future at the Royal Society, London

I'm looking forward to my day out this Wednesday (1st May) when I'll be attending the mini conference, Writing the Future. 

"The afternoon is designed as a series of creative short presentations and panels themed around the transformative power of science, technology, communication and the human imagination.

Fast, forward-facing and fantastically futuristic, Write The Future condenses the best bits of a typical two-day conference into a single afternoon of compelling content, inspired by the life and work of science fiction author, inventor and futurist Sir Arthur C. Clarke."

The topics include:

• Wrangling Shamans, Snake Oil and Science Fiction. 
• Kinking Reality and Imagining the Future. 
• Don't Feed the Lizard Brain. Surviving the Social Media Comedown
• Free Your Words and Your Mind Will Follow. Language as Technology and Ludwig’s Talking Lion
• The Bionic City of the Future
• Botworld. A Printer That Prints Its Own Face, and How The Web Won't Stay Trapped Behind Glass
• Future Now

If any one would like to join me you ARC have announced a discount code,  "whatthefuture"  via twitter: that gives you a discount bringing the cost down to £35 for the afternoon.

Market Watch: Unidentified Funny Objects 2: Kickstarter and Opens Soon

Alex Shvartsman will soon be opening subs to UFO2 (if you're a member of SFWA or Codex subs are already open. what are you waiting for).

Oh my. Every wanted to be table of contents buddies with these guys?

Robert Silverberg
Mike Resnick
Ken Liu
Esther Friesner
Tim Pratt
Jody Lynn Nye

Oh my. I made it into the first anthology last year. Can I swing a double whammy?

Alex is running a kickstarter to make the anthology as big as possible. If you fancy supporting there may be a  copy of the first UFO anthology in it for you.

But because he's such a fair guy, you can read the stories that make him laugh for free here.

New Story up at Dark Expanse

My story, Light Bringer, can be read at the Dark Expanse website. The Dark Expanse galaxy is home to a multiplayer online strategy game.


Dark Expanse^© is a free-to-play, real-time, massive multi-player online strategy game of galactic conquest. Local commanders develop their resources, improve their planets, colonize new worlds, research new technologies and build space fleets while defending their territory and conquering enemy worlds. Choose your friends and allies carefully because mutual offensive, defensive and navigational capabilities can be achieved through combining forces with other commanders.

The creators have commissioned a number of writers to develop the lore of the Dark Expanse galaxy.

This was a first for me, as it was set in a shared world. So parts of the story were already in place. My story for instance was based on a gaseous species called the Methenes who had already some defined racial traits. And as other writers to were also writing stories set in the Dark Expanse galaxy we needed to co-ordinate details (which we did via a private forum).

It was a very interesting experience. The fact that I was working in an established world actually made the story easier to write. Has anyone else written in shared world environment?

I hope you like the story, or maybe you'd prefer to play the game. Either way, enjoy.