Ode to English Insulation

Oh English insulation,
Troubles a-plenty you've got.
Are you a figment of my imagination,
Or are you made of naught?

I daydream of triple-glazed panes,
With argon-filled hermetically sealed gaps.
I realize I may be insane,
When I hope for hot&cold-mixing taps.

Dear English insulation,
I wish to put you at ease.
The people of your stiff-upper-lipped nation
Are fortunately used to this freeze.

RIP Alan Rickman

Oh, Alan Rickman. :( Another loss to both great stage acting, and strong influences on genres of fantasy and scifi:

Posted by JessEdit on Thursday, January 14, 2016

Alpha Workshop for Young Writers

Retweeted A.C. Wise (@ac_wise):The application process is now open for the @AlphaWorkshop for Young Writers. Spread the word to teen SFF writers!

Posted by JessEdit on Tuesday, January 12, 2016

RIP David Bowie, The Musician who Changed Science Fiction

Posted by JessEdit on Sunday, January 10, 2016

The Daily Word Counts of 39 Famous Authors

Posted by JessEdit on Tuesday, December 29, 2015

More calls for stories!

Three new anthologies are in the works at JayHenge Publishing. Have a look to see if anything is up your alley!
http://jayhenge.com/index.html#callforstories

Encounters is out!

I'm happy and proud to announce my second anthology, Encounters, with a whole slew of new stories by talented authors. You can find it as a Kindle book or paperback from Amazon around the world!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00ZJD1O26

Review from Fenix is out!

The Swedish gaming magazine Fenix has reviewed Other Days and we're giddy to present their review:

http://www.speltidningen.se/fenix1-15.html (The relevant issue.)




English translation:

From space to Moscow, plus a few shortcuts through mystical forests with polite strangers via computerized houses complete with projections of current owners and digital poltergeist phenomena… Truly, Other Days, an anthology edited by Jessica Augustsson, is astounding on many levels. Mermaids, politicians, traveling technicians—there are plenty of people in these other worlds. How about an old space captain who smuggles…things? Everything created by a number of intrepid authors—some better than others, but all better than average. Each of them has contributed a variety of different texts. Other Days offers a broad spectrum of stories, from cozy, almost fairytale-like shorts to longer novellas. Yours truly fell hard for the action-packed Escape Velocity by Melissa Swanepoel, not least because the heroine is named Elvis (what a thing!). Here and there, you can feel the winds of inspiration from established—or in any case more famous—authors. The above-mentioned computerized house, for example, House Call by Brandon Nolta, has an air of William Gibson. On the other hand, Fire in the Bones by Marguerite Croft feels altogether new, a never-before conceived idea, as if the muses at random sent out a molecule of Narrativium into the universe and it just happened to land right in the creative portion of Croft’s brain. There are a few weaker points, but what one reader feels about a text is individual. What is “weak” to one person might feel strong and true for another. It would be presumptuous to explain what is “right”. Thus, there is something for everyone to read on their Kindle (or whatever form you wish to read). One thing is certain, however: you should definitely not miss The Mer-bell by Kimber Camacho.
As anthologies go, Other Days feels completely right. It is an excellent collection of texts by authors who might have otherwise gone completely unnoticed. Depending on your preferences, it is well worth keeping an eye out for these names during your excursions on the net. Attached to each short story is a small author bio, and some have their own websites, so it’s as simple as surfing on over.

Call for Stories!

JayHenge Publishing (i.e., me!) is putting out a call for stories for the next spec-fic anthology, Encounters. Check the right-hand column for more info: http://www.jayhenge.com

If you submitted to the Other Days anthology, we'd LOVE to hear from you. If you didn't, we'd still love to hear from you. :)

Calls for Submissions

• Indie Author's Press is looking for Valentine's Day stories. http://www.salgado-reyes.com/submissions/#LOVE
• Ghostwoods Books have two open calls for submissions. The first, Cthulu Lies Dreaming, in which the theme is how Cthulu's dreams interact with the real world. Second is Haunted Futures, where short fiction interprets the romantic idea of haunted. More info here: http://www.gwdbooks.com/calls-for-submissions.html
• Lots of open submission calls from Horrified Press, from scifi to fantasy to horror, and just about everything in between. Have a look: https://horrifiedpress.wordpress.com/open-for-submissions/

My own anthology!

 

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! The Other Days spec fic anthology kindle version is now available for FREE starting tomorrow and extending through Wednesday. Get it while it's hot. Or free. Recommend it to your friends! There's a story in there for just about everyone! Please like and/or share

US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P72L24O

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Other-Days-Kimber-Camacho-ebook/dp/B00P72L24O

Finding an Editor

Finding the right editor for you or for your particular project is not always the easiest thing to do. Here's a great article that addresses those issues, plus a few other general editing questions: http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2014/07/14/how-to-find-the-right-editor/

More Publishing Opportunities

• Glimmer Train's New Writer contest is now open for submissions. 1st prize is $1500: http://www.glimmertrain.com/faqs.html
• The Biblical Legends Anthology series has extended their deadline. See more here: http://gardengnomepubs.com/submissions/biblical-legends-anthology-series/
• New publisher, The Novel Fox, is open to ebook, novella, and other submissions: http://www.thenovelfox.com/author/
• New anthology An Alphabet of Embers is looking for submissions: http://roselemberg.net/?p=911

When to start editing?

I have often been asked by authors, "When should I send you my manuscript for an edit?" Sometimes they have just finished writing, and sometimes they are still in the process of writing. Some have already done some self-editing and beta reading, and so they know how important this process is already. But for those new to the writing process, here are some important tips for doing your self-edit before submitting to your editor. Because if your editor has to focus on all the little things, you're not getting the other, more in-depth valuable feedback s/he can offer you. And I'm sure you want to spend your money in the best way possible, right? :)

http://writetodone.com/how-to-write-well-self-editing-tips/

Where do story ideas come from?

And for your final viewing pleasure today, Neil Gaiman on where ideas come from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-C48jAkVlI0

More Publishing Opportunities

• Postscripts to Darkness is now open to submissions for their 6th Volume. Be sure to check out their new guidelines: http://pstdarkness.com/
• Tales of the Unanticipated is open for submissions THIS MONTH ONLY. Check out their guidelines here: http://www.totu-ink.com/guidelines.phtml
• I Am the Abyss is looking for horror adventure and dark fantasy submissions: http://www.darkregions.com/pages/Submit.html
• Songs of the Great Cycle is a fantasy anthology focused on stories in the Pre-Columbian New World, specifically Mesoamerica. http://www.longcountpress.com/
• Torn Pages. No genre limitation. Their ideal submission will deal in issues such as religion in the science classroom, censorship, historical revisionism, chilling effect, book (media) burning, net neutrality, or Orwellian concepts like Newspeak and Thoughtcrime. Watching the recent Nye/Ham debate we were reminded of Burrough's assertion that language is a virus. Think books. Think classroom. Think logical fallacies, partisan politics, and education standards in the balance. http://www.weirdbard.com/p/page-one.html

Punctuation! :)

Commas are boring and not that important, right? Not necessarily: http://authorculture.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/punctuating-to-dramatize-action.html

I've had several clients ask me about hyphens, en-dashes and em-dashes lately, so I wanted to give a quick run-down:

Hyphen (-)
En-dash (–)
Em-dash (—)

The en-dash usually replaces "to" or "through" between ranges:

Please join us on Saturday, 1:00–9:00, to watch a Star Wars marathon.

New Zealand beat the West Indies in cricket today, 6–0.


The em-dash can be thought of as used in place of a colon, commas, and parentheses:

I have two pets—a tauntaun and a bantha. (Dash used in place of a colon.)

My two pets—a tauntaun and a bantha—are quite rambunctious.  (You could replace the dashes with commas or parentheses, but note that dashes shout this extra news, where commas and parentheses whisper it. If you really want your reader to pay attention, use dashes.

Some English publications, such as Penguin, use en-dashes with a space on either side in a similar manner, but others, such as Oxford University Press prefer the closed em-dash, as above. When in doubt, go for closed em-dash, as no one will mistake your intent.)


Use an em-dash to indicate that a speaker has been interrupted:

"Han Solo was going to tell you that—"

The em-dash can also be used to signify an abrupt change in thought.

"I was going to tell you that—hold on, C3PO is at the door."

A hyphen is used to join words in a compound construction, or separate syllables of a word, like during a line break.:

pro-Kashyyykian
cruelty-free fynock eggs
em-dash

Finally, just throwing this in the mix, a minus sign − is distinct from all three of the above.

4 − 2 = 2.

What are editors really saying?

Sometimes it's hard for authors to communicate to their editors exactly what it is they're looking for in an edit. But it's also difficult for the editors to tell authors certain things as well. We all know how important clear editor-author communication is, but that doesn’t mean it's always achieved. Unspoken expectations on both sides of this relationship – about fees, timelines, who is responsible for what – can lead to disastrous results, and both parties pay a price. Remember, our goal is to make your manuscript the best it can be. But different editors might do this in different ways. So, here follows:

10 Things Your Freelance Editor Might Not Tell You—But Should

http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/10-things-your-freelance-editor-might-not-tell-you-but-should

Publishing opportunities

• Call for short story submissions: http://www.infiniteacacia.com/submission/infinite-science-fiction-1/

• Interested in stories that focus more on YA SF? http://kaleidoscope.twelfthplanetpress.com/?page_id=42

• Spec Fic with an anthology theme: http://ericreynolds.livejournal.com/100520.html