Science Fiction Loses Iain M. Banks

Posted on June 10, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

Science fiction (and literature in general) lost one its brightest writers yesterday when Iain M. Banks passed away from gallbladder cancer.  He revealed his terminal diagnosis several months ago, but still managed to finish his final novel, The Quarry, which, not-too-surprisingly, is about a man dying from cancer.

Among speculative fiction fans, Banks is known for his Culture novels.  He’s been nominated multiple times for the Hugo and Locus Awards—but surprisingly has never won—and The Times named him one of Britain’s greatest novelist since 1945.  His creativity, wit, and writing will all be missed.

Posted in Science Fiction | 2 Comments

Time to Get Back into the Reading Routine

Posted on June 7, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

A writer should be well read.  Everyone says it, and I believe it.  I think it’s important for every writer, no matter what he or she writes, but especially for genre writers to be well-read in their chosen genre (and beyond).  It’s important to know what’s been done and to learn the genre conventions, which can only be done by reading.  A lot.  I also find reading helps to stimulate my creativity, so not only do I learn what’s been done and how, but I get ideas for things to write.

Besides, I really like to read.  When I was a teen, I was a voracious reader, and I burned a good chunk of my weekly allowance on books from the local used book store.  As an adult, I used to read every day during my commute on the bus (when I wasn’t editing stories, that is).  Over the last six months, however, I’ve not read much at all.  In fact, other than reading technical documents for the day job, I’ve read almost nothing.  The last novel I read was the Hunger Games (which has some of the slickest craft I’ve seen in a while), and that was before the film came out on DVD.  I did read all of the Nebula-nominated short stories and novelettes in March, but other than the odd short story here and there, I’ve not read much fiction at all.

I blame it on my recent move—I’ve got to blame it on something, right?  In January, my commute got too short for productive reading, and since finalizing my move three weeks ago, my daily commute has become a 5-second walk down the hall to my home office, leaving me no convenient (and captive) reading time.

I’m gradually beginning to settle into my “new” life and redevelop my routines.  I’m slipping back into a consistent writing routine, something I’ve been lacking since January.  Now I need to carve out time to read again.  Without a commute to create free time, I’ll need to  fend off other potential distractions to get  my reading in.  That’s never been easy for me to do, but I want to start reading again.  I miss it, and that should be enough incentive for me to find about an hour a day.  Now I need to stop writing and talking about it, and just do it.

Posted in Inspiration, Writing | Leave a comment

“Still Life…” to Get the Film Treatment

Posted on May 29, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

This week I achieved another first in my writing career.  A few weeks ago, a student filmmaker from India named Sairaj Reddy contacted me and expressed interest in adapting my story “Still Life Through Water Droplets” to film.  After a brief negotiation, we came to an agreement that will allow Mr. Reddy to film the story.  That’s pretty cool, and I admit it’s also flattering that anyone would like one of more stories enough to invest his time and money to bring it to the screen (any screen, large or small).

While Mr. Reddy has asked that I look over the script, I don’t particularly want to get involved in many (if any) aspects of the production—I’m a writer, not a filmmaker, and I really don’t know the first thing about films.  I understand that things in my story will be changed, and I’m fine with that; if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have given the rights.  Like most films, and especially student films, I expect few will ever see final product, or that it will make any money.  Then, that wasn’t my motivation for giving the rights to Mr. Reddy.  I don’t write to make money (although that’s a nice bonus, and if I could earn a living doing it, that would be awesome), and if producing this film can help Mr. Reddy achieve his goals in the film industry that would be great.  One thing I can definitively say is that I will be one of people who sees Mr. Reddy’s work (it’s in our agreement that I get a copy of the final film), and I will likely subject everyone I know to a personal showing, too, so that’s an audience of at least…oh…three or four people.

I’m especially looking forward to seeing what Mr. Reddy does with the story.  My story takes place in Boston, so it’ll be interesting to see if he chooses to move the story to India and gives it an Indian flavor if he choses to leave it in the U.S.A.  Will he play with the themes a little? Will it get a little Bollywood treatment?  I don’t know, but I’m game for just about anything.  If all goes smoothly, I’ll find out relatively soon, too—a final film should be available sometime in the next year or two.

Posted in Writing | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Amazon to Publish “Fan Fiction” through Kindle Worlds

Posted on May 24, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

Earlier this week, Amazon announced that it had reached licensing deal that will allow fans of some popular television shows and novels to write, publish, and earn money off fan fiction.  For those not familiar with fan fiction, its stories written by non-copyright holders using characters or settings created by someone else without their permission.  No professional publication (or semi-pro for that matter) will publish fan fiction because of the copyright infringement and potential lawsuit.  According to the press release, certain works created by Alloy Entertainment, a division of Warner Bros. Television, including Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and Vampire Diaries are covered under the agreement.  (Some have argued this isn’t really fan fiction, but media tie-in, because the copyright holder has sanctioned the use of the characters and world, but I’ll leave that distinction for others to sort out.)

Amazon will pay royalties on the net revenue to both the original copyrights holder and the fan fiction author, although it isn’t clear if the royalty rate cited will be paid to each or will be split among the parties.  For those royalties, however, authors will give all of their rights to the story to Amazon and Alloy Entertainment, with no further chance at future compensation, and those rights will be given for the life of the copyright.  Basically, this is a work for hire, leaving the author with nothing at the end but a paycheck (not that there’s anything wrong with that).  It appears that Amazon stands to earn a significant amount of money from this deal especially considering the popularity of some fan fiction.  If you’d like to read more about the rights, see SFWA President and best-selling author John Scalzi’s take here.

While often tolerated by copyright holders, fan fiction is technically illegal to sell or publish because it infringes on the original creator’s intellectual property rights.  While every copyright holder treats fan-fiction differently, often there isn’t a problem as long as the fan-fiction isn’t sold or otherwise generating money.  Let’s face it, who has time to track down and post take-down notices to every piece of fan fiction (although Game Design Workshop seems to have enough lawyers to do it, even when it’s inappropriate and absurd).

Currently the list of shows and other works included in the deal looks limited, but Amazon says it is trying to expand the licensing agreement.  If this agreement does expand significantly, it could be a game-changer in the publishing field, especially for self-published authors, who must already compete against thousands upon thousands of other titles for a reader’s attention.  Throwing fan fiction into the mix could potentially alter the dynamic, although it’s unclear to me how much it would do this—I don’t have any idea what number of readers could be drawn away from original fiction to fan fiction.  I would like to think the answer is not many, but I wonder how many young readers, especially, will forego an original genre book to read the latest piece of corporate fan fiction set in their favorite television show’s world.  Obviously Amazon and Alloy Entertainment think there’s money to be made, so it will be interesting to see how this unfolds.

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

At Last, Home

Posted on May 22, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

I finally completed the move I started back in January.  I caught a red-eye flight to the continental U.S. last Thursday (for those keeping track, the state of Oregon, to be specific) and spent the weekend playing with my daughter, relaxing, and catching up on my sleep.

I’m now in my new home and reunited with my family on a full-time basis—yeah!  The new house is fantastic, even if my office has a ways to go (my desk and other odds-n-ends will be delivered Friday).  The weather has turned nice (mostly), and I spent Sunday in the garden planting tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, raspberries, blueberries, peppers, and watermelons, to go along with stuff already there, including kale, lettuce, snow peas, bush beans, and more herbs than I knew existed—mmmmm….  All this is very different from my previous home, where gardening was difficult and limited for a variety of reasons.

I didn’t get much writing done over the weekend, but I’m settling back in and working on a new short story.  I’m also finishing up a story revision that I hope to have finished before the end of the month.  I’m trying to get back into writing routine, and I expect that will take a few days while my life adjusts to all the new things.

Posted in General News | Leave a comment

Nebula Awards Announced

Posted on May 20, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

This weekend, the Science Fiction Writers of America announced the winners of the 2012 Nebula Awards.  For those not familiar with the Nebula Awards, they’re one of the genre’s two major “best of” awards (along the with the Hugo Awards).  As an active member of SFWA, I was able to vote for this year’s awards, but due to limited reading time, I focused my attention to the short fiction categories.

I was especially pleased to see Aliette de Bodard win the short story Nebula for “Immersion,” which was one of my favorite stories of the year.  “Immersion” is an outstanding story about cultural domination, colonization, and decolonization of both a society and an individual.  Additionally, “Immersion” is a story that displays exception craft; it has perhaps the most effective use of 2nd-person point of view I’ve ever seen.

I wasn’t as impressed with any of this year’s novelette nominees, and, to be honest, this year’s winner, Andy Duncan’s “Strange Encounters,” did little for me.  While Mr. Duncan captures a nice narrative voice, I’m not a big fan of “folksy” stories, especially when they meander around like this one did.  I found this a difficult story to finish (but I did finish it).  Obviously others didn’t feel the same way about this one.

Other winners included multi-award winner Kim Stanley Robinson for his novel 2312.  Robinson is one of my favorite novelists, and I haven’t read this one yet, but it is on my to-read list and will be one of the first novels I read if when I eventually get back to reading longer works–I read more short fiction than long these days.  In the novella category, Nancy Kress won for her story After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall.  Again, I haven’t read this one either, but I have enjoyed much of Ms. Kress’ work over the years.

If you haven’t read these stories, I would recommend any and all of them, winners and nominees alike.  While they might not all be to your personal liking, these stories illustrate the broad range of speculative fiction, and certainly something to excite your reading sensibilities can be found.  Also many of the short works are available for free reading on-line (find the short story and novelette links here), so you have no excuse.

Posted in Writing | Tagged | 1 Comment

Did They Really Cite Me as an Authority?

Posted on May 9, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

So I stopped in yesterday to publish a post (Killing a Story Through Revisions), and I decided to gander at my visitation stats.  My eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw a huge spike in my site-traffic for Tuesday and Wednesday.  At first I thought it an error, but then I noticed a similar spike in referrals from the Daily Dot and Salon.com.

After a quick investigation, I found that my post on Diversity in Science Fiction had been linked to in a Daily Dot article about Orson Scott Card, and that article had been picked up by Salon (the article isn’t a flattering piece, but then Mr. Card is known as much for his politically incorrect views as he is for his writing).  I don’t mind them linking to my post; they didn’t grossly misrepresent its content or make too much of it.  They did, however, treat it like a “reputable” source.

As a scientist for my day job, I have a narrow view on how to treat citations.  I’m not an authority on diversity in science fiction; I’m a middle-aged white guy with an opinion and not much to back it up.  When I get cited like an authority on diversity in science fiction, that makes me a little uncomfortable, to be honest.  If they wanted to show that science fiction is a genre dominated by middle-aged white guys, the article’s author should have cited something more compelling and factual than a blog post, perhaps the ethnic/age makeup of the Science Fiction Writers of America or the winners of the Nebula or Hugo awards.

I don’t think anything in my post is incorrect—I’m actually quite pleased with that post—and I’m glad people are reading it because I think diversity, and the lack thereof in the speculative fiction genre, is an important topic.  While I think in-roads are being made, I believe the genre still has a ways to go and must continue to diversify and grow in order to remain relevant.

Posted in Science Fiction, Writing | 2 Comments

Killing a Story Through Revision

Posted on May 8, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

I mentioned last week that I was working on a story that I thought needed “one more pass” before it would be finished.  It was a story I have been working sporadically on for over a year.   I’m happy to say I finished the story and it’s been sitting in a slushpile for four days (not that this means anything of course).  On my earlier post, fellow writer Eric J. Baker left a comment in which he observed that too much editing can sometimes stifle a work.  I agree with Eric, but that got me wondering: When are you done tinkering with a story?

I don’t have a good answer.  I know when I’m done line-editing a story (when I have nothing left to remove—yes, remove, not add), but I don’t really know how I decide enough is enough on revising a story.  I guess I make that decision on the “feeling” that it’s compete, an intuitive sense that I’ve developed with practice and experience.  (I know, not a useful answer, but it’s the best I have.)

When I started writing, I used to work stories to death, constantly tweaking and adding and changing and obsessing.  I’m sure that I wound up editing the life out many of them, not that I think they had much life to begin with because I simply wasn’t a very good writer (I’ve since risen to passable…I think).  I’m now more confident in my writing craft, and I find it easier to look at one of my stories and decide specifically what it needs to make it work as well as it can.  Looking back several years, I used to approach revisions with a shotgun full of buckshot; now I approach them with the focused precision of a laser.  This makes it easier to know when I’m finished, because I’m not trying to change everything in the story, only the “important” stuff.  I’ve also developed a stronger sense of “voice,” the primary thing that I think gets ruined with too much revision.  I can tell with greater confidence when my story has reached the point that more revision would compromise the voice.  Most importantly, I now have the sense to stop revising when I reach this point.

If a story isn’t working by this point, there is probably not much I can do to rescue it.  It’s time to put it away for while, possibly forever.  I can’t see much sense in trying to revise a story that simply isn’t working.  My writing time would be better spent on a new story, one that is more likely to come together better than the one that failed.  If the trunked story has some ideas that I really like, I may periodically revisit it to see if I have gained any insights as to how to quick fix it.  I might tinker for a day or two, but if nothing continues to work, I’ll put it away again.  I may eventually scrap the story, and write another one using the elements I liked from the trunked version (I did this with at least a couple of stories that I later managed to sell).

I have several stories in this state.  Some I have never gone back to (and probably never will); others I still believe in, and if I can get some distance from them, I think I can eventually figure out the problems and maybe even fix them.  But this will only happen if I can avoid editing the life out of them.

Posted in Writing | Tagged | 4 Comments

A Little of This and That

Posted on May 4, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

It’s been about a week since I’ve checked in here.  Usually I make it a point to get here every two or three days and see what’s up, but I’m still having computer problems (and thus connectivity issues).  I’ve been told my new machine won’t be here until sometime next week.  Sigh.

I’ve got a little news on the writing front, however.  I finished a story that was inspired by Earth Day.  Reading the story, you likely wouldn’t be able tell because the idea morphed several times during the creative and writing process.  It’s out the door already, and slowly making the rounds.

Speaking of slowly making the round, I have several other stories on the submission circuit, but it seems like they are all sitting, sitting, sitting.  At this rate I’m never going to reach my submission goal of 60 short story submissions in 2013.  Nearly everything I have out there seems to be sitting for four, six, eight months these days.  I keep telling myself this is a good sign (and generally I think it is), but that doesn’t make the wait any easier.  Fellow Hopefull Monster Colum Paget and I have both noticed a slow down in the slush pile at nearly every market over the last six to eight months, but I don’t know if that’s real or just impatience.  I know waiting is part of the game, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

Also on the writing front, the Hopefull Monsters have expanded.  Australian writer Robert Datson has joined the ranks.  He came recommended by fellow Aussie (and Hopefull Monster)  Tracie McBride, and that was good enough for us.  Robert’s a member of the Australian Horror Writers Association (you can find his profile here) and is looking for that first sale.  Maybe the Monsters can help him get there, and in return he can bring a little new blood to the group (his, hopefully, and not someone else’s).

One the personal front, I’ll be completing my move to continental U.S. in less than two weeks.  “But didn’t you move in January?” you ask.  Well, sort of.  I moved house, and my family relocated, but I had to come back to the Pacific to tie up loose ends at the day job.  Those loose ends are nearly knotted up in somewhat pretty bows, and on May 16th I’ll board a plane and rejoin my family just in time to enjoy a beautiful Pacific Northwest summer.  I’m really looking forward to getting back to my family and my new home.

I guess that catches things up for now.  I’ll get back to regularly scheduled writing stuff with the next entry.  Better yet, maybe I get to make a sale announcement.  After all, I do have several stories that have been sitting on editors’ desks for a while now.

Posted in General News, Hopefull Monsters, Writing | Leave a comment

One More Pass

Posted on April 27, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

I’ve nearly finished a story that has been difficult to write (it seems like I’ve been writing a lot of difficult stories recently).  The subject matter is dark and the emotions in the story strike dangerously close to home for me.  I have put down the story many times since I started it, yet I’m always drawn back to it because it’s a story I feel compelled to finish.

I’ve been working on it for over a year—tinkering, shaping, carefully molding it into something I hope is special.  I recently sent it to my writing group for critique and got some helpful feedback.  It’s nearly there…I think.  I keep telling myself, “One more pass and it’ll be done,” but always, one more thing seems to need revisiting.  I’m sure it’s close now, just one more pass…

Posted in Writing | Tagged | 3 Comments