Douglas Smith's blog

My SFContario schedule

Yeah, okay. I'm a tad late posting this. The Toronto SF&F convention, SFContario, started tonight at the Ramada Plaza Hotel, 300 Jarvis St, Toronto. I'm doing a bunch of panels, one reading, giving a workshop on marketing and selling short fiction, and also will be one of the presenters at the Aurora Awards ceremony.  

Here's my full schedule:

Friday, Nov 20

8:00-9:00pm: Signing (yeah, too late for that one)

Saturday, Nov 21

1:00-2:00pm: Panel - The use of science in fantasy works (Gardenview Room)

3:00-3:30pm: Reading (Room 207)

4:00-5:00pm: Panel - Real world settings in urban fantasy (Room 209)

7:00-9:00pm: Workshop - How to market & sell short fiction (Gardenview Room)

Sunday, Nov 22

11:00am-Noon: Panel - Targeting short fiction markets (Courtyard Room)

1:00-3:00pm: The 2015 Aurora Awards ceremony. I'll be presenting the award for Best Short Fiction (Ballroom C)

I hope to see you there.

"The Walker of the Shifting Borderland" published in Estonia

Cover for The Walker of the Shifting BorderlandMy short story "The Walker of the Shifting Borderland," which won Canada's Aurora Award in 2013, has been translated and reprinted in the Estonian magazine, Reaktor. That is the thirty-second country and twenty-sixth language in which my work has been published. If you can read Estonian, you can check out the story here.

For the rest of you, you can get the ebook edition of the story, complete with the awesome cover art by award winning artist, Erik Mohr, here.

Enjoy!

It's not Halloween without MONSTERS!!!

Monsters ebook Storybundle coverI'm pleased to announce that I'm part of an exciting new ebook bundle of great stories all of which feature some sort of monster. Just in time for you to get your scare fix for Halloween!

Best-selling author, Kevin J. Anderson, has curated the MONSTERS ebook bundle for Storybundle, and he's put together a great lineup. You can read more on Kevin's blog here or go right to the Monster ebook bundle on the Storybundle site to check out this excellent set of titles.

Here's how the bundle works:

  • Pay whatever you feel the books are worth.
  • You decide how much of the money goes to the authors, to a charity (the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, in this case), or to administration costs to keep storybundle.com running.
  • Pay a minimum of $5.00 and get the basic set of six books 
  • For $15.00 or more, you get all twelve books (a dozen monsters!)
  • Your ebooks are delivered immediately, in whichever ebook format you prefer, DRM free.

Storybundles are great deals. Buy this for yourself or get some early holiday presents for friends and family, all at an incredibly low price. Great books, great price. What's not to like? This bundle is available for three weeks only, from October 15 until November 6 at midnight, so don't delay.

Thanks for the support! 

 

New interview: The Usual Questions

A new interview with me is up at Festivale, an online arts and entertainment magazine created in Melbourne, Australia. The magazine has a long-running interview series called "The Usual Questions" that they've been asking of writers and other artists since they began the concept at the 1999 WorldCon in Melbourne, Australia.

The questions are always the same:

  • Has your interaction with fans, for example, at conventions, affected your work?
  • Is there any particular incident (a letter, a meeting, a comment that stands out?
  • Do you have a favourite author or book (or writer or film or series) that has influenced you or that you return to?
  • Who is the person you would most like to be trapped in a lift (elevator) with? or a spaceship?
  • Who is the person you would most DISlike to be trapped in a lift with? Or a spaceship?
  • What would you pack for space? (Is there a food, beverage, book, teddy bear, etc that you couldn't do without?)
  • What is the most important thing you would like to get/achieve from your work?
  • What is the special satisfaction of your work?

Check out my answers here on the Festivale site

"Scream Angel" alongside Lovecraft in German

Visionarium #6 coverrI'd posted earlier that my Aurora Award winning story, "Scream Angel," was to be translated and reprinted in the Austrian magazine, Visionarium.

That issue (#6) is out, and my SF tale can now be read in German, alongside stories by Justin Isis, which received praise from none other than Thomas Ligotti, and a graphic novel adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Music of Erich Zann." Very cool to be sharing a Table of Contents with the likes of those writers.

The issue 6 cover is shown here. 

 

Playing the Short Game review

Playing the Short Game coverFilip Wiltgren, writer and game designer, has just posted a great review of my writer's guide PLAYING THE SHORT GAME: HOW TO MARKET & SELL SHORT FICTION. You can read it yourself here, but I'll include one of his comments about the book:

"I can’t tell you what you should write. That’s entirely up to you. But if you are the least bit interested in having a career as a fiction writer then I can tell you what to read: Douglas Smith’s “Playing the Short Game: How to Market & Sell Short Fiction”. From now on this is my go-to book for all things related to starting and maintaining my fiction writing career." --Filip WIltgren

Thanks for the shout-out, Filip.

And if you're a short story writer, I'm not even going to try to be humble. I have put all of my knowledge and experience of how to leverage your short stories to build a writing career into this book. If you write short fiction or would like to, you need to read it. More info on the book is available here.

The Angel screams again, in Germany

Illustration for Scream Angel in VisionariumMy SF novelette "Scream Angel" will be translated into German and published in the Austrian magazine, Visionarium. "Scream Angel" won the Aurora Award in 2004, and is one of the stories that fans often tell me is their favourite tale of mine. The story first appeared in the anthology Low Port (editors Steve Miller and Sharon Lee).

Visionarium editor / publisher Bernhard Reicher kindly provided me with a preview of the beautiful and haunting illustration that will accompany the story, pictured here at the right.

This is the fifth time I've been published in German, and Austria brings my country total to thirty-one. But who's counting? Oh, yeah. Right. I am.

Eww! There's some geology in my fiction

Illustration for Jigsaw in Issues in Earth ScienceMy short SF story, "Jigsaw," has just been reprinted in the online magazine, Issues in Earth Science. IES is "dedicated to raising awareness of the science of our world and our place in it.  It provides essays, challenges, a forum for discussion, and fictional stories related to the Earth and Space Sciences."

"Jigsaw" incorporates plate tectonics in a deep space adventure where Cassie Morant, our young geologist protagonist, races the clock to solve a planet-sized puzzle before time runs out for her crewmates. You can read the story at IES here. The very cool illustration that accompanies the story, pictured here at the left, is by Erin Colson of IES.

"Jigsaw" first appeared in the anthology Odyssey (edited by Julie Czerneda) in 2004 and was a finalist for the Aurora Award. I hope the story makes studying geology a little more fun for some students out there. Not that I'm saying that geology is boring — Cassie would never forgive me.

"Symphony" published in The Gernsback Variations in Italy

Cover for The Gernsback Variations anthologyI posted a while back that my science fiction short story "Symphony" would be appearing in the upcoming anthology Le Variazioni Gernsback (The Gernsback Variations) in Italy. The anthology is now out, and you can check out the cover at the left and the full contents here (if you read Italian).

"Symphony" first appeared in the Canadian literary magazine, Prairie Fire, in 1999, where it won second prize in the magazine's SF contest to commemorate Canadian SF writer, A. E. van Vogt. The story was a finalist for the Aurora Award in 2000. I'm thrilled to have it translated into Italian and to have it appear with a host of fine Italian writers, as well as Michael Bishop and Robert Silverberg. Even better, "Symphony" is the closing story, one of the special slots for stories when editors put together an anthology.

If you haven't read "Symphony," you can pick up an ebook edition in all formats here. It's also included in my collection Chimerascope.

Video interview on Fantasy Fiction Focus

Cover for Flashback by Simon RoseSimon Rose is a Calgary-based author of science fiction and fantasy for children and young adults. Simon's most recent book is Flashback, shown here.

Simon kindly interviewed me recently via Google Hangouts and has posted the video to YouTube here. I hope you'll take some time to check it out (the whole interview is about 25 minutes long). 

And you can check out Simon's books at his website at http://simon-rose.com/.

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