Kage Baker

()

Locus Online posts a brief obituary for Kage Baker, who died of cancer yesterday.

More Steampunk Links

()

The editors of Fantasy Magazine bring us more steampunk links, including eye candy, an overview of steampunk, a web comic, and a forthcoming novel from Pyr.

How to be Prolific

()

Charlie Jane Anders reveals 12 Secrets To Being A Super-Prolific Short Story Writer at io9. Unnumbered but still lurking there in the introduction is the classic story-a-week advice. Also of note are secret #6, share one of your worlds with yourself, and #12, write to different markets.

Strange Horizons Info Blog

()

Via @sfwa on twitter: Strange Horizons now has a blog where contributors can read status, stats and advice from the fiction department.

Unagented

()

I found the Wall Street Journal article on The Death of the Slush Pile that’s making the rounds, via a mailing list. As an aside in a very long thread about agents, Dean Wesley Smith pans it. The whole thread is worth reading, but here’s the short version: agents should not be used for marketing, only accounting.

My Shortest Story

()

My shortest story yet was published today at Thaumatrope, an sf/f/h twitter fiction magazine. I dimly recall submitting it, apparently in response to a call for steampunk and/or holiday stories, but I figured Bad Elf had killed little Timmy and buried his body in the slush pile.

To submit your own 140 characters of immortal speculative prose, all you need is a twitter account.

Chicks on Chainmail

()

I mean, women writing fantasy. Via a mailing list: Doug Cohen announced a female-themed issue of Realms of Fantasy for August 2011. The deadline for chick-written content is November 15, 2010.

… submissions dealing with gender, sexism, and other areas important to feminist speculative literature are particularly welcome.