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Book publishing in the age of Coronavirus, and more…
How the coronavirus will change book publishing, now and forever (LA Times) Bookstores outside of shelter-in-place zones have done their best to shift to telephone or online orders (though many still don’t offer online ordering). To sell a book, they generally have two options: They can pull one from their own shelves and deliver it…
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Doomer Lit, Pandemic Fiction, and more…
Fever dreams: did author Dean Koontz really predict coronavirus? (The Guardian) According to an online conspiracy theory, the American author Dean Koontz predicted the coronavirus outbreak in 1981. His novel The Eyes of Darkness made reference to a killer virus called “Wuhan-400” – eerily predicting the Chinese city where Covid-19 would emerge. But the similarities end there:…
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Climate Fiction, Science Fiction, and more…
Indigenous authors celebrated as readership skyrockets across Canada (CBC) Pauls, whose work aims in part to revitalize the Southern Tutchone language he grew up with, is one of many authors featured at the Vancouver Public Library’s new Indigenous collection at the Central Branch. The collection includes fiction and non-fiction books, films and music from Indigenous authors, and about Indigenous issues. Most…
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Flash Fiction Contest! Submissions open…
Flex those writing muscles and have a little storytelling fun! Write a piece of flash fiction (up to 1500 words) based on the following image: Contest Guidelines: Submit your story as a Word document or PDF attachment to Questions@BernetaHaynes.com for a chance to have it featured in Waking Writer. In the body of the email,…
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Martin Roy Hill, author of The Fourth Rising
Are you a full-time or part-time writer and how does that affect your writing? I retired at the beginning of 2019, so technically I am now a full-time writer. Prior to that, I was only part time. However, when I retired, I started a freelance book editing service—M. R. Hill Publishing—which keeps me busy. I…
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A Literary Contest that Excludes Men, the Success of Indie Booksellers, and more…
A Code-Obsessed Novelist Builds a Writing Bot. The Plot Thickens (Wired) A native of India, the 58-year-old Chandra supported himself as a graduate student studying creative writing in the United States by working as a programmer. He is as comfortable with code as he is with prose, and his startup, Granthika, is a geekily sublime merger…
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Middle-aged Women as Heroes in Crime Fiction and more…
What is speculative fiction? (Book Riot) Margaret Atwood writes in her book In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination that science fiction and speculative fiction are fluid terms. The worlds of science fiction and speculative fiction “don’t exist, and their non-existence is of a difference in order than the non-existence of the realistic novels.” Additionally, Atwood…
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Gentrified Comic Books, Podcast Stories, and more…
Romantic fiction awards cancelled after racism row prompts mass boycott (The Guardian) The US’s most prestigious awards for romance writing, the Ritas, have been cancelled after a host of judges and entrants pulled out over an ongoing racism row involving the industry’s largest trade group, the Romance Writers of America. Twisted timelines of a double dystopia…
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Authors’ websites, horror fiction, and more…
A Beginner’s Guide to Chinese Science Fiction (BookRiot) Chinese science fiction is a diverse, undeniably unique type of sci-fi. And it contributes to the worldliness of the genre as a whole, one whose strengths rest in societal critique and philosophy. How can we only have societal critiques from the West? We need global perspectives to…
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The Erris Starship by Denis McClean
Erris has defied Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way for far longer than people have been in Ireland or even in Europe for that matter. This remote and timeless landscape exudes a bittersweet melancholy for things tragically lost and now largely forgotten. The result is that each breath of its salty humid air is anathema to visions…
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By Berneta L. Haynes
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