Over the weekend, the 2012 Hugo Award nominees were announced(full list). Awards to be presented September 2, 2012 at Chicon7. Voting is open to members until early August. Last year they streamed the awards ceremony live online; hopefully they’ll do the same this year for all of us who can’t get out to Chicago.
Speculative art and design rules: There are these great “Urban Astronaut” paintings by Jeremy Geddes that I’m absolutely in love with, and then there’s the Dark Shadows Barnabas Portrait Project a Deviant Art contest with three winning artists to be chosen for monetary prizes by Tim Burton himself.
Chuck Wendig’s 25 things you should know about word choice is a tour de force article on writing. An entire workshop’s worth (or five workshop’s worth) of prose style and word choiceadvice vulgarly put.
My absolute favorite discussion this week comes from the podcast Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing: It’s a panel discussion on the publishing industry’s recent “turmoil” regarding authors vs. Amazon and Paypal vs. Smashwords — the end summation? A good dose of common sense. All these crazy things are just businesses practicing business; writers should keep writing and not worry about it. They make other wonderful statements directed at writers:make your name, diversify, and don’t turn down any market. And then get in a few good nudges at publishing, suggesting that publishing needs to become more like other businesses, get out of [the] Madison Avenue offices and out of the the golden age mindset of “owning writers.” The podcast is about an hour long and I can’t recommend it enough.
(Books&Pieces was cross-posted on the World Weaver Press blog.)
(Books&Pieces was cross-posted on the World Weaver Press blog.)
