I have very distinct memories of the spring when I was in Grade 7.

My Grade 7 teacher would hold trivia tournaments at the end of every week and would hand out prizes. Being trivially minded, I won more than my fair share of such prizes (I still have the thesaurus I won as a prize).


One week, bored of the books on tanks and fighter jets that usually seemed to be on offer, I selected a giant bag of Twizzlers which I then spirited home, so that for once I didn’t have to share with my three brothers. I hid them in the top drawer of my blue desk, and for years afterward that drawer smelled of Twizzlers whenever I opened it. 


What I don’t remember as well was where I acquired two other very important items from that spring: a copy of Paul Simon’s album The Rhythm of the Saints on cassette, and a hardcover copy of Anne McCaffery’s Dragonsdawn. I can still recall the ragged, untrimmed edge of the pages, the first time I’d encountered these in a book. I remember thinking that perhaps whoever had given it to me had got it cheap, as some kind of printer’s error copy. 


Each night I would read Dragonsdawn until I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and then I’d fall asleep listening to ‘The Obvious Child’ on my knock-of Walkman (listening with the volume almost at pain-inducing levels, so that the drums filled the universe). 


But the strongest memory from that spring were my school lunch hours. See, I lived right around the corner from school so I went home each day for lunch. And for that spring when I was reading Dragonsdawn I would inhale my lunch and then, rather than watch cartoons, I would run up to my room, grab a couple of Twizzlers from my secret stash, and flop down on my bed to read Dragonsdawn in the sunshine (I’m sure it must have rained but I only recall sunshine). I would read for as long as I possibly could, often so long that I was late for afternoon classes. More than once I can recall arriving in the school yard, having run full tilt from home, to arrive just as the last student in line was entering the school.


These are wonderful memories, and I still recall how engrossed I was by the book, the smell of Twizzlers, the feeling of the warm sunshine on my bed…


Anne McCaffrey died yesterday, I’ve just discovered. She was a judge of the Writers of the Future contest and I regret that I was never able to meet her during my trips to the contest week. I would very much like to have told her what that book meant to eleven-year-old Stephen, longing to be a science fiction writer himself. 


Thank you for that book, Anne, and for the happy memories I associate with it. I only hope that someday some book of mine can mean as much to someone as yours did to me when I was young.

SFcontario was this year’s host of CanVention, the annual national Canadian sci-fi convention. That means its where Canada’s national award for works of the fantastic–the Prix Aurora Awards–are handed out, and it was a lot of fun to finally get to attend one of these award ceremonies.

Congratulations to all the winners! Special mention should be made of Derwin Mak and Eric Choi, who won for their editing of The Dragon and the Stars, from DAW Books. Derwin and Eric were founding (now emeritus) members of The Stop-Watch Gang and we’re all thrilled for them!  

And a special congratulations should be given to Suzanne Church, a fellow member of the Stop-Watch Gang, who came within 5 votes of winning herself an Aurora Award. Great work, Suzanne!

Winners are listed below, highlighted in bold italics.

– S.

Best English Novel
Black Bottle Man by Craig Russell, Great Plains Publications
Destiny’s Blood by Marie Bilodeau, Dragon Moon Press
Stealing Home by Hayden Trenholm, Bundoran Press
Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay, Viking Canada
Watch, by Robert J. Sawyer, Penguin Canada

Best English Short Story
The Burden of Fire by Hayden Trenholm, Neo-Opsis #19
Destiny Lives in the Tattoo’s Needle by Suzanne Church, Tesseracts Fourteen, EDGE
The Envoy by Al Onia, Warrior Wisewoman 3, Norilana Books
Touch the Sky, They Say by Matt Moore, AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review, November Your Beating Heart by M. G. Gillett, Rigor Amortis, Absolute Xpress

Best English Poem / Song
The ABCs of the End of the World by Carolyn Clink, A Verdant Green, The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box 
Let the Night In by Sandra Kasturi, Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead, EDGE
Of the Corn: Kore’s Innocence by Colleen Anderson, Witches & Pagans #21
The Transformed Man by Robert J. Sawyer, Tesseracts Fourteen, EDGE
Waiting for the Harrowing by Helen Marshall, ChiZine 45

Best English Graphic Novel
Goblins, Tarol Hunt, goblinscomic.com
Looking For Group, Vol. 3 by Ryan Sohmer and Lar DeSouza
Stargazer, Volume 1 by Von Allan, Von Allan Studio
Tomboy Tara, Emily Ragozzino, tomboytara.com

Best English Related Work
Chimerascope, Douglas Smith (collection), ChiZine Publications
The Dragon and the Stars, edited by Derwin Mak and Eric Choi, DAW 
Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead, edited by Nancy Kilpatrick, EDGE
On Spec, edited by Diane Walton, Copper Pig Writers Society
Tesseracts Fourteen, edited by John Robert Colombo and Brett Alexander Savory, EDGE

Best Artist (Professional and Amateur)
Lynne Taylor Fahnestalk, Brekky cover art, On Spec Fall
Erik Mohr, cover art for ChiZine Publications 
Christina Molendyk, Girls of Geekdom Calendar for Argent Dawn Photography
Dan O’Driscoll, cover art for Stealing Home
Aaron Paquette, A New Season cover art, On Spec Spring

SFContario begins tonight (Ramada Plaza Hotel, 300 Jarvis Street, Toronto) and runs for the weekend. Here’s my schedule:

Targeting the Appropriate Market – Sat. 11 AM Parkview

Often selling a story is all about finding the right market. How do you label what you’re selling? How do you find out about markets and identify the right one? Our panelists discuss sources of calls for submission, networking methods, using rejections to refine your targeting strategies, and other techniques of getting your story in front of the person who will buy it. (Madeline Ashby, Karen Dales, Stephen Kotowych, Jana Paniccia (M), Mike Rimar)

Reading – Sat. 12:30 Gardenview

Writer’s Groups Behind the Scene – Sat. 8 PM, Solarium

Ever wonder how a writer’s group really works? Come and see Toronto-area writer’s group The Stopwatch Gang in action! The members of SWG will hold one of their no-holds barred critique sessions at SFContario this year and want you to come watch and see how it’s done! A short reading of a first draft story will be followed by a roundtable critique by the SWG members. An audience critique will also be encouraged, and questions and tips for setting up your own writer’s group will follow. (Brad Carson, Suzanne Church, Costi Gurgu, Ian Keeling, Stephen Kotowych, Tony Pi, Mike Rimar)

This year SFContario promises to be a great one. Guests include Karl Schroeder, John Scalzi, Gardner Dozois, David G. Hartwell, and Kathryn Cramer.

In addition, SFContario is also this year’s Canadian National Science Fiction convention (“the CanVention”), and the Aurora Awards will be presented there. Good luck to all the nominees, but especially to my fellow Stop-Watch Gang member Suzanne Church, who’s nominated in the Best Short Fiction category.

See you there!

– S.

I love that moment when you hear something which makes total, perfect sense but which wouldn’t ever have occurred to you in a million years.

I also hate those moments because they make me wish I was smarter, more observant, or just plain cleverer.

One such moment occurred today when I was reading an interview with Tim Powers on the JohnnyDeppReads website.

Tim was being interviewed about his book On Stranger Tides being adapted into the latest Pirates of the Caribbean juggernaut. There was a question about the various covers the book has had in its several print versions:

Tim : The first edition, from Ace Books, back in 1987, and then the paperback from Ace in 1988 and a limited edition from Subterranean Press, two or three years ago all used this one painting by Jim Gurney which is a gorgeous painting, I’ve got a print of it on my wall, of a skeleton in pirate garb with a parrot on his shoulder, holding a sword, and he’s on the deck of ship and you can see that one of his forearm bones is broken and tied up with a rag and there’s coins and a skull around his feet and a broken sword hilt and behind him you can see the rigging and forecastle of the ship, kind of receding in mist. It’s just a beautiful painting! And I think whatever success the original printing had was probably because of the picture. I mean you walk past that book in a book store and think “Damn, I have to read THAT! I never heard of this writer…but look at that picture!” Now a days, I think publishers don’t want that kind of painting, [emphasis added – ed.] the kind that needs to be eight or ten inches tall, and five inches wide to be comprehensible because I think publishers are calculating that the majority of customers DON’T see books in bookstores. [emphasis added – ed.]

The majority of customers see books as thumbnails on an Amazon page on their monitor and a giant cool picture like that will simply be a blur if it’s a one inch high thumbnail. And so I think the style is changing, the style in the cover art to be most effective seen one inch tall. [emphasis added – ed.] Sort of postage stamp standards, I think this is kind of a shame because there have been some book covers that every now and then you can put your finger in to hold your place in the book and you turn back to look at the cover again and think Yeah WOW …COOL. It’s sort of like record albums when they used to be the 33 1/3 real records. The album was a good foot square. On “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” or “Big Brother and the Holding Company’s Cheap Thrills” or Jimi Hendrix’ “Axis”, all of which were just gorgeous pictures. But now “albums” are little four inch square CDs and those big old pictures are not really the style anymore.

Of course! This makes TOTAL sense! And yet this is the first time I’ve heard it mentioned anywhere, despite my having been following several on-going discussions over the last several months about the rise of the self-published ebook and the desperate need for a good looking cover to accompany even an ebook (as in, don’t let the author slap something together with crappy type in Photoshop, but rather still pay the cost upfront to have a good looking cover designed so that readers–who, let’s face it, ALWAYS judge a book by its cover–will feel that this is a work of quality, rather than something somebody just cranked off and threw up on Amazon or Smashwords.)

Now, I feel like this is an absolute and total victory for science fiction and fantasy author. Why? Because, let’s face it, a great many sci-fi and fantasy books have had, and continue to have, some pretty garish covers. You can wander through any sci-fi/fantasy section in any bookstore and see dozens of high fantasy books with cookie-cutter covers (often by the same very famous artist) trying to look like (and I suppose fool readers into buying as a result) some other bestselling, on-going Epic High Fantasy Series. These days you don’t often find the barbarian-saving-the-chainmail-bikini-clad-damsel-from-the-necromancer-type covers that were for so long the mainstay of the genre, but you can pick up dozens of deep space hard sf books written and printed in the last 5-10 years that have hand-painted space ship covers that might easily have been from the 60s or 70s.

Now, I know that there’s a segment of the market that likes (and perhaps even insists upon) these kinds of covers. When they’re done well they can work–I, for one–am a HUGE fan of Stephan Martiniere’s work (and not just because he provided the amazing cover for Writers of the Future XXIII…), though I confess that’s an exception. But let’s face it: the demographics have changed. More women buy books than do men (so chainmail bikinis out right there) and fantasy outsells science fiction by a healthy margin (bye bye acrylic space ships). And we live in an age of slick minimalism in graphic design: just look at any of the most popular websites for proof. Book covers need to keep pace.

The Harry Potter series notwithstanding, what have the cover designs of the most popular fantasy titles looked like over the last 5-10 years? The strong, central conceptual images of the Twilight series (which appeal heavily to who–oh, yes, the female book buying public!) If you look at a number of Kelly Armstrong’s reissued books, the new covers are shameless Twilight ripoffs. And the Game of Thrones series has slick new–what?–strong, central conceptual images for the reprints of back list and the newest volume in the series. Gone are the sweeping mountain vistas and hand-drawn depictions of Smaug on the latest editions of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings that came out around the movie: everyone I saw on the subway had the tone-on-tone black covers (well, those who didn’t have the editions with Elijah Wood on the cover, I mean.)

All of these covers will look good in that little thumbnail on Amazon, and will appeal to the large group of people who might like to read a fantasy or sci-fi book but who can’t get over the stigma of reading a book with a cover that looks like some installment of the Dungeons & Dragons rules guides. Think of books that have had crossover success–The Time Traveller’s Wife; Oryx & Crake, etc.–and you’ll see that “mainstream” books that deal with sci-fi ideals get a grown-up, sophisticated cover, and are instantly taken more seriously.

Yes, of course, a great book can overcome a bad cover, but if we’re talking about ebooks and anybody-can-do-it e-publishing through Amazon you need some way, ANY WAY, of rising above the chaff and get your book noticed. I think that giving your ebook a strong, central conceptual image that will scan well visually at Amazon thumbnail-size is a step in the right direction.

You can read the full interview with Tim Powers–chalked full of good stuff–here.

– S.

Hello all –

Just got word that my guest post on the OSC’s Intergalactic Medicine Show blog, Side-Show Freaks, is now live.

Each month, IGMS asks the authors in the current issue to write a short essay about the creation of their story, the inspiration behind it, the process of writing it, etc. I wrote up a little something about how I came up with the idea for “Under the Shield.”

It’s funny when writers write about writing. I’ve always assumed that they go out of their way to make it seem that the process of coming up with ideas is really intensive and mysterious, that the execution is a combination of deliberate thematic planning and the workings of an inscrutable muse who either deigns to visit, or not, leaving them paralyzed and unable to work.

Now, I certainly think that some writers go out of their way (*cough*”literary”authors*cough*) to make it seem this way, but in writing about the process behind “Under the Shield” I found that just describing the process in a linear fashion might give it this kind of pretentious appearance.

I was at least honest about the themes appearing to me as I planned and wrote the story (this was always what Tim Powers said should happen, not the other way around). But what I didn’t mention in the blog post (but perhaps should have now that I think of it) is that the “process” as such didn’t really exist. I just sort of knew all this stuff about Tesla and one day the whole story (or, at least, the earliest version of it–which involved Tsarist agents killing a girl to keep Tesla quiet, and which didn’t make sense upon further reflection) kind of flashed in my mind.

Now, I don’t know that I call that “the muse” at work, because that was just the idea and a VERY rough plot and those are a dime a dozen, those are easy. The writing itself, and the reworking of the plot (hashed out in part at my dining room table with help from Tony Pi and Costi Gurgu during our Stop-Watch Gang 24-Hour Write-a-thon), was bloody hard work.

There was no waiting for inspiration to get to work. Just me at the keyboard, trying to figure out why this girl ended up dead in the subway, and what on earth it had to do with Tesla’s death-ray. And at least genre authors are honest and will tell you that it’s 99% hard work.

Doesn’t sound quite so sexy now, does it?

You can find the post at the IGMS blog here.

– S.

Sweet!

Andy Cox just emailed me the artwork that will accompany “A Time for Raven” in an upcoming (September?) issue of Interzone. I think it looks great, and it certainly captures the main elements of the story.

I’ve been very, very luck with all the artwork that’s been produced to accompany my various publications. Someday I want a whole wall covered in framed art inspired by my stories…

– S.

Tangent Online–one of the web’s premiere review venues for short SF–has reviewed IGMS #24, and with it “Under the Shield”. Some of the highlights from the review:

You never know what to expect, and that intrigues…

This story develops well as a mystery and I found myself intrigued by the plot, the clues and the protagonist. I liked it well enough to keep reading and not to skim – and that’s something…

What keeps the reader sidetracked and distracted in a clever way is the mix of futuristic science and the pre-world war history. Steampunk – I like it…

I enjoyed the steady tension in this tale. The author captured the fear and dread imposed on a society under a government’s heavy thumb that controls every aspect of daily life…

One thing I hadn’t expected was that the reviewer classifies the story as belonging to the steampunk sub-genre, something I hadn’t considered. When I think of steampunk, I think my mind is drawn primarily to the costumers I’ve encountered at various conventions–all gear-driven computers and goggles (which seem to me to be the de rigueur steampunk fashion accessory). But thinking about it, I suppose steampunk isn’t all brass nozzles and mechanical dragons. And though there are no corsets or steam-powered tophats to be found anywhere in my tale, I guess I can see how one might categorize “Under the Shield” as a part of this SF zeitgeist.

Huh. I wrote a steampunk story. Whodah thunk it?

The full review (by Sherry Decker) can be found on the Tangent site, but a word of caution: the full review contains SPOILERZ!

– S.

Very pleased to discover this morning the first review of “Under the Shield.” A big thanks to my friend and fellow WOTFian Stephen Gaskell for the tip!

The review (written by Lois Tilton) appears on the Locus Magazine website. Here’s the highlights:

A fascinating and thought-provoking scenario, bringing to mind such diverse events in our own timeline as the initiation of WWI, the Alien and Sedition Acts and the Department of Homeland Security, and the birth of the atomic age. It’s a story of conflicted loyalties and the eternal threat of totalitarianism in the name of security, as well as a murder mystery. This is all good stuff. The scenario, however, is complicated and takes the author a while to set it up; the result is dense and over-compacted. I could definitely see it expanded into a cracking good novel, with all its elements given room to fully work themselves out.

Pretty happy with that! I’ve heard from a few other readers already and I’m very pleased that people are getting what I was going for with this one. Now, about that novel… 😉

The full review (which includes a plot summary) can be found here.

– S.

Hello all –

Very pleased to report that “Under the Shield” is now available on the Intergalactic Medicine Show website. Thanks for the small army of people who emailed to let me know. I’d been checking constantly, but somehow you beat me to it… 🙂

And seriously–check out the artwork, too, right? Totally rad!

You can find my story here, or by following the image link in the right-hand bar of the blog–the one with Tesla’s face on it.

Enjoy!

– S.

I’m thrilled to announce that my story, “A Time for Raven”, has been accepted for publication by Interzone.

That’s two sales inside three weeks–a personal best!

I know you’re not supposed to have favorites, and that you’re supposed to love all your children equally, but I confess that “A Time for Raven” has a very special place in my heart, and I’m stoked that it’s found such a good home as IZ.

“A Time for Raven” felt like a big break-through for me, craft-wise, when I wrote it (even though it had another title at the time that it turned out no one liked but me), and I still think its some of my strongest work. It’s set in British Columbia, and while I wrote it before I’d ever been to BC, I felt like I was returning to BC the first time I ever visited–I found that a pretty cool experience (though maybe I’d absorbed enough BC scenery and atmosphere watching all those sci-fi TV shows that have been filmed in Vancouver and environs over the last 20 years…)

“A Time for Raven” is also the most fantastical of all my stories, in that everything else I’ve published thus far has been some variation on science fiction (even “Borrowed Time”, which tried to dress up stealing time with quasi-rational pseudo-scientific explanations.) This story is straight-up fantasy, though hopefully not in the way you’d expect.

I’ve been a fan of Interzone for a long time: they publish fantastic stories (and I’m not just saying that because now one of those is mine…) and stuff that often has a very different sensibility from the kind of stories you find in the American magazines. It’s also an absolutely gorgeous magazine physically, probably the best looking in all SF (seriously–it’s measurements are 36-24-36.)

For those of you who don’t know, Interzone is Britain’s longest running science fiction and fantasy magazine, and since 1982 has published the likes of Brian Aldiss, Michael Moorcock, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, M. John Harrison, Stephen Baxter, Iain M Banks, Jay Lake, Kim Newman, Alastair Reynolds, Harlan Ellison, Greg Egan, Geoff Ryman, Charles Stross, and (a personal fav of mine) John Brunner, amongst others. They’ve also previously published stories by friends and fellow WOTFians Aliette de Bodard and Stephen Gaskell, and it’s great to be in such company.

Not sure what issue the story will appear in, but look for updates here!

– S.