DOUGLAS SMITH | Writing the Fantastic

My SF first-contact story, "Symphony," will be appearing in the upcoming space opera anthology, Have Ship, Will Travel, coming out in January from Stories Rule Press in Canada. It's a reprint, but I got a special kick out of this one.

If you're one of my newsletter subscribers, you would've received "Symphony" as your monthly ebook story back in March of this year. If you're not on my list, you can subscribe here (and get a free ebook for signing up).

And if you want to check out the excellent bunch of stories in this very large antho (over 400 pages), you can pre-order it here from your favourite retailer (note: an Amazon link will be added soon).

So what was that special kick I got? Check out the cover on the right. I'm one of the two "featured authors" at the top along with the multi-award-winning author and editor, Kristine Katherine Rusch. I've attended ever so many craft workshops given by Kris. This is my first (and likely last time) being billed ahead of her. Kris's story opens the antho and mine closes it. Very cool.

I'll be giving a series of three workshops in early 2022 via Zoom covering my writer's guide, Playing the Short Game: How to Market & Sell Short Fiction. The workshops are free and sponsored by the Richmond Hill Public Library of York Region and will be offered the first Thursday evening of March, April, and May (Mar 3, Apr 7, and May 5) from 7:30-9:00pm.

Topics covered in workshop #1 (March 3, 2022) include:

• The benefits of writing short fiction
• Avoiding traps for the beginner
• Understanding rights and licensing for short fiction
• Finding short fiction markets
• Selecting the right market for your story
• Submitting short fiction to a market
• What not to do when submitting
• What to do after submitting

If you're interested, go here to register ahead of time. Note that you'll be registering for all the Jan-Mar workshops offered by the library. They're all free, and you don't need to attend any other workshop (but you're welcome to).

Registration links for workshops #2 and #3 are not yet available, but I'll post here when they are. I look forward to seeing you there.

I posted earlier about recently selling a brand new short story that I'd written at the start of the pandemic. Well, I sold another "new" story in November, but it's one that I wrote much earlier than 2020. As in much, much earlier.

This sale is a first for me in a couple of ways. One, it's not a genre story. "The Balance" is mainstream. It's also not a "new" story.

I wrote this one almost two decades ago, in 2002. It's a very personal story, inspired by events surrounding the birth of our second son and the time he spent in hospital having far too many operations in his first few weeks of life.

Although I kept submitting it to markets all those years, I'd come to believe it was too personal to ever sell. So I was extremely happy when the excellent Canadian multi-genre magazine, Pulp Literature, accepted it. This will be my second appearance in PL. The cover from my earlier appearance is pictured

I'll post here when the issue with "The Balance" is published and available.

I sold a new short story in November, one I'd written at the start of the pandemic and, aside from a flash piece in late 2019, the first new short story I'd written in a long, long time, since I moved to novels.

"Gypsy Biker's Coming Home," based on the Springsteen song of the same name, will appear in an upcoming issue of the excellent, multi-award winning, and long-running Canadian speculative fiction magazine, On Spec.

The story is set in my Merged Corporate Entity universe, the same setting for many of my other SF stories, including "Scream Angel," "Enlightenment," "Memories of the Dead Man," and "Jigsaw." Those stories garnered three award nominations and one Aurora Award win, so fingers crossed for this one.

This is a long story, almost 10,000 words, and stories at that length are hard to sell. Most markets top-out at 6,000 words. So I was thrilled when long-time Executive Editor Diane Walton said she'd take a look at it even though it was well over their maximum word count..

This will be my fourth appearance in On Spec. Earlier appearances also resulted in two award nominations, plus another Aurora Award win for "The Walker of the Shifting Borderland" (issue's cover pictured here), so again, fingers crossed. This will also be my third Springsteen-inspired story I've had published, the others being "Going Down to Lucky Town" and "Radio Nowhere."

I'll post here when the issue comes out.

I'll be giving a workshop on the craft of short fiction via Zoom to the National Capital Region chapter of the Canadian Authors Association tomorrow, Sunday October 17, from 1:00-2:30pm.

You do not have to be a chapter or CAA member to attend, but you do need to register and there is a suggested non-member fee of $10. All the information on the workshop and registration can be found here.

I'll be focusing on how to make decisions about story structure in your short fiction. Topics covered will include crafting characters, choosing the right point-of-view, pros and cons for POV options, stories with multiple POV characters, use of flashbacks and non-linear plots, handling scene changes, POV and character voice, plotting as character decisions, openings, endings, recommended resources…and more if time allows.

I recently had my Aurora Award-winning story, "The Walker of the Shifting Borderland," reprinted in Amazing Stories. The great cover is pictured here. Mountains, forests, red-and-white spaceship with the maple leaf, robot moose...what's not to love?

The venerable genre magazine dates back to 1926 and has been published with some interruptions for over 90 years. It was resurrected a few years ago yet again, first as an online website and then, just before the pandemic, once more as a print magazine.

My first major professional sale was to Amazing back in the late 90's. That was a particular thrill because one of my favourite SF & fantasy writers, the late Roger Zelazny, got his break selling to AS in the sixties, an era that saw Amazing publish the first stories of other writers who, like Zelazny, would go on to become giants in the field: Ursula K. Le Guin, Piers Anthony, and Thomas M. Disch.

This one is an all-Canadian issue, and it's a special treat for me to appear alongside such a great lineup of Canuck authors, so many of whom are friends as well as colleagues.

On Sunday September 12, from 1:30-4:00 EDT, I'll be giving a virtual (Zoom) workshop on the craft of writing short fiction as part of the annual Open House meeting of the Writers' Community of York Region (WCYR). Details of what I'll be covering and how to register can be found here.

The workshop and the open house are both open to non-members of WCYR. There is no charge to attend, but you do have to register at the above link.

York Region (where I live) is a large community north-east of Toronto. The WCYR is "is a collective of local authors, poets, and industry professionals who endeavour to build a supportive and encouraging framework for writers and their craft."

If you're a writer, I hope you'll check out the workshop. If you're a writer in York Region, I hope you'll consider joining WCYR.

This Thursday, April 29 at 7:00-8:30pm, I will be giving a webinar on marketing and selling short fiction, jointly sponsored by the Canadian Authors Association and SF Canada.

Drawing from my writer's guide, PLAYING THE SHORT GAME: HOW TO MARKET & SELL SHORT FICTION, I'll cover rights and licensing, finding short fiction markets, a strategy for selecting markets, submission advice, key contract clauses, and leveraging second rights for such things like reprints, foreign language rights, audio markets, and publishing a collection.

This webinar is free due to COVID-19’s impact on the writing community, but space is limited to the first 100 attendees. You can register for free here. Hope you'll be able to join me.

BookBub is currently offering a great deal on The Wolf at the End of the World, my urban fantasy novel set in my Heroka universe.

Up until March 16, you can pick up the ebook edition of the novel for only $0.99 (or the equivalent in your country).

The deal is available here and is offered in Canada, US, UK, Australia, and India, via Amazon, Apple, B&N, Kobo, and Google Play.

But it only runs until Tuesday March 16, so don't miss it!

I'll be giving a free webinar on marketing and selling short fiction on Thursday, March 25 from 1:00-2:00 pm, as part of the Indie Author Project's "Expert Session" series. You can register for free here.

The Indie Author Project's mandate is to encourage strong relationships between indie authors, local libraries, and readers by partnering with curators and libraries across the U.S. and Canada to find the best indie-published books.

My presentation will be drawn from my writer's guide, Playing the Short Game: How to Market & Sell Short Fiction, and will focus on rights and licensing, finding short fiction markets, a strategy for selecting markets, submission advice, key contract clauses, and all the ways to leverage second rights (reprints) to keep selliing your fiction.

Here's the webinar summary:

Take your first step to becoming a professional short fiction writer, join best-selling author, Douglas Smith, for this Expert Session on how to leverage short fiction in your writing career. In an engaging and conversational style, multi-award-winning author Douglas Smith will share how to market and sell short stories—and much, much more. Even experienced writers will find value here as Smith takes you from your first sale to using your stories to build a writing career.

Again, the webinar is free, so if you're a short story writer or always wanted to be, I hope you'll tune in! You can register here.