Monday 29 October 2012

Radio Opportunity

BBC Radio 4 are inviting submissions from writers "new to radio" for their annual season of short plays, Opening Lines. By short, they point out, they mean around a maximum of 2000 words, with an emphasis on narrative rather than dialogue. They are also at pains to point out that they will be looking for plays that successfully link the end back to the beginning. Helpfully, the website - see here, folks - gives examples from last year's entries.

The submission window closes on December 14th 2012. For full details, see the link above.

Sunday 16 September 2012

Fields of Opportunity

NewCon Press has announced a new flash-fic competition, in association with the Institute of Agricultural Engineers. No, really, this does make sense. They're looking for stories that explore the possible futures for agricultural engineering, farming and food production over the next century. Successful stories are in line for a prize of up to £75, as well as publication in both the IAE's journal and a themed anthology from NewCon Press itself.

Details can be found here; the word limits are strictly between 800-900; and all submissions must be received by January 12th 2013.

In other news, don't forget that tomorrow night is the groop's second meet of the month - as ever, we're at the Old Queen's Head from 7.30ish. Look forward to seeing y'all there...

Sunday 9 September 2012

Who keeps leaving all these doors open?

Hard on the heels of Angry Robot's Open Door period (well, six months down the line, perhaps) comes another opportunity from one of the big names in publishing. This time it's Harper Voyager, who publish stuff by the likes of George R. R. Martin, Kim Harrison, Raymond E. Feist, Robin Hobb, Richard Kadrey, Sara Douglass, Peter V. Brett and Kylie Chan - amongst many others.

Harper Voyager will be opening their doors to unagented, novel-length works of all subgenres (what they actually say is: "all kinds of adult and young adult speculative fiction for digital publication, but particularly epic fantasy, science fiction, urban fantasy, horror, dystopia and supernatural") for two weeks only from 1st to 14th October. Interestingly, given the seismic shifts in publishing over the last few years, they aim to publish the selected fruits of this window primarily through digital platforms, as "digital originals", though they are at pains to stress that all projects thus selected will receive exactly the same attention and treatment (editing, marketing etc) as standard print book projects.

They also state that they will consider novels that have already been self-published.

For more details, see the link below.

http://harpervoyagerbooks.com/harper-voyager-guidelines-for-digital-submission/

Sharpen those red pens, folks....

Thursday 23 August 2012

Robot Invasion!

Saturday 17th November 2012 is a date to mark into your diaries, folks, as Sheffield Libraries have picked that for their first ever SF & F Readers' Day. In a sort of extended "Meet the Author"-stylee affair, Adam Christopher, David Tallerman, and Gav Thorpe will all (subject to the usual caveats) be present - as will their publisher, Nottingham's very own Angry Robot Books, for a "Breaking into the industry" workshop.

The event runs from 1pm to 4pm at Sheffield Central Library; tickets can be obtained free in advance at the library itself. Beware, however, demand for this event is likely to be high, so you'll have to get in early.

Sheffield SFF Writers will, of course, be representin'. We'll see you there...

Tuesday 7 August 2012

Hey nice one Steve, blog going again!

Here's some sensible tips on writing: http://litreactor.com/columns/some-practical-writing-advice-from-douglas-coupland

I especially like:
'Don’t write for magazines you don’t actually read. People can tell you’re not 100 percent into it.'

See you in 2 weeks
Dave Lee

Tuesday 17 July 2012

Great novels of the 50s:

http://asknicola.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/indefatigable-weirdness-of-50s-american.html