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Angel’s Bits

Angel’s Bits – How Not To Anger the Acquisition Deities

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Getting that story finished is important. Beating it into the best story you possibly can even more so. But guess what? You can have the perfect story and still be chucked off the acquisitions table without ceremony if you’ve ignored your formatting. Way back when we all still used typewriters, formatting was more difficult from a technical standpoint, but more standardized. There was only so much you could do with even a fancy-schmancy typewriter. We all learned one way, and that’s how we did it. Even some of the younger peeps who learned to type on computers were still being … Read more

Angel’s Bits – Who Are You?

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QSF membership has a large percentage of authors. My acquaintances online, friend lists, contacts, are in large part authors. I know a lot of authors. Except that I don’t. All of these names in lists and feeds and such don’t always have any associations for me. I look at posts in my Twitter and FB feed and think, who are you? This is bad. So bad. Not necessarily for me (though I do worry about my memory some days) but for the authors I can’t place. Authors get a lot of advice thrown at them about branding and, yes, this … Read more

Angel’s Bits – You Asked for Queer Cons…

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convention

Not too terribly long ago, QSF’ers on the Facebook page were asking for a list of queer friendly conventions. We thought that was a fabulous idea. This first stab at a list is by no means complete. It’s far too US-centric, for one thing, and is most likely missing some great local cons that don’t make the national press. Criteria for inclusion on the list were: A) queer focused or queer friendly B) some flavor of spec fic focused or friendly C) event where authors have opportunity (large or small) to promote Now we need you guys. Using the criteria … Read more

Angel’s Bits – Genre Matters

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There’s a piece of advice I see tossed at authors a lot lately. Don’t worry about genre or tropes. Write what’s in your heart. Okay, setting aside the somewhat treacle-y nature of this advice, I’d never tell an author to discard their writing passions. If you’re not writing from your core, your passions, the whole thing becomes a cold, unhappy business. But throwing out genre? That’s a different kettle of Antarian singing blood eels. Sure. It would be lovely to say go nuts, write whatever! Writers should be free! Free, I say! Which is great, in theory. Thing is, writing … Read more

Angel’s Bits – Avoiding Author Leg Traps

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I confess – I used to think about this a lot more, publishers preying on authors. Finding ethical publishers has made me more complacent until a request for information from one of our QSF’ers brought the subject roaring forward again. Are you self published? Lovely! It’s a viable option these days, though not without its own pitfalls. But that’s a subject for another day. This post is geared toward the author submitting to publishing houses and the dangers lurking in the process. Anyone with a few years of publication under belts, skirts, or kilts has run across author leg traps, … Read more

Angel’s Bits – The Pod People

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It’s quite possible that I was the last person on the Intertubes to understand what a podcast is. Tech and I have an uneasy relationship and anything new sends me backing away and snarling. But podcasts are simply an old friend in a new medium – prerecorded radio shows on the digital highway. Once I figured this out, I sent the luddite in me packing and downloaded an app. Wonderful thing – since know I can see the podcasts I like in one place. The one that convinced me that podcasts were not another evil plot by Skynet was Welcome … Read more

Angel’s Bits – From Famine to Feast

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A few years ago, when I was starting out in this genre, finding safe convention space for LGBTQ+ fiction was difficult. Sure, there were cons who said we could play, there were even some who welcomed us, but it still had that feeling of being the odd man out, the oh, and also those part of the weekend. Now we’re trying to decide which conventions to attend next year, and we’re finding we have to choose, that we can no longer attend all the LGBTQ specific events out there. The last convention I’ll be attending this year was one we … Read more

Angel’s Bits: It’s not Science Fiction, but…

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In regard to Queer Sci Fi, you have no idea how many times I hear this. Someone posts to the group, the page, or comes to Scott and I, and says, “I know it’s not science fiction, but I’d like to share this (fill in the genre in question) story.” While we love that people want to check first, we want to be clear that we don’t want to limit the discussion to science fiction. Queer Sci Fi has science fiction in the title, but we’re all about the speculative fiction. Sometimes I wonder if we should have called it … Read more

Angel’s Bits – All the Little Details

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Who out there already knows I’m something of a luddite? Yeah, yeah, put your hands down. It’s no big secret. I come from a time when most of us still wrote term papers on typewriters and only engineers learned about computers because they needed to talk to them in complex languages. I learned the basics (though not Basic) and enjoyed interacting with the new electronic friends to some extent, but I still wrote stories out longhand. Fast forward several years *cough cough decades cough* and I manage, but I’ll never be one of those people who always needs the newest, … Read more

Angel’s Bits – Genre Fiction by the Numbers

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(chart from authorearnings.com) It’s not a big trade secret. Genre fiction outstrips all other book categories in sales, and not by a small margin. It’s the monster in the room. Woohoo for us! In one form or another, that’s what we all write. We can argue about what’s a more deserving genre or what we enjoy more, but when we look at sheer numbers, where does the money fall? (Please note: I’ve ignored any charts that list a category of “women’s/romance” since I feel this is both misleading and an improper labeling.) (From publishingtechnology.com – Neilson data) Again – this … Read more