*turning chair around like Captain America in the detention video* So, you're a white person in the publishing industry...
You should read Arley's essay, internalize his findings, then peruse the works of the quoted authors and buy a few.
Personal Recs:
L.D. Lewis
Yoon Ha Lee
&
P. Djèlí Clark
"What are the experiences of people of color in the publishing industry?"
arleysorg.com/by-the-numbe...
Look, if you tell me that you love movies and then you tell me that you don't love the movie where Idris Elba yells that they are canceling the apocalypse...then what I'm hearing is that you don't really love movies.
This is more or less the narrator of the novel I'm currently writing, and I'm not even remotely joking.
Anyway, here's Wonderwall.
"The position of a man u m, d."
Yeah. Like, what even is the position of a man?
What is it??
Come on please
I started to make a joke about killing one's creative ambitions only to end up with undead soul wolves, realized that sounded like a sick-as-hell way to end up with liches, and goddammit, I'm doing it again...
What I'm saying is that there are two wolves inside every writer and these days both of them have rabies.
I read this and one part of my brain went "at least he's actually doing the coloring and not using AI" and another part of my brain went "maybe the next unsellable thing you should write is a neo-noir superhero in an otherwise modern world..."
Nice write-up for the local writer's group I've been getting to know this past year. I'm actually in both of these pictures, but you can't see me unless you already know I'm there, like some kind of authorial Where's Waldo.
Rubbing_Hands_Together_in_Greedy_Gleeful_Anticipation.gif
I also loved the way this premise allowed us to skip over the "the characters refuse to believe the obviously haunted house is haunted" trope and slide right into the comfy-jeans-feeling of "dammit, not again."
Have you read the Moonday Letters? I think you'd really like it for many reasons, this one among them...
"I thought being a leopard meant I was immune from having my face eaten," said a leopard of the of the leopards-eating-faces-party
Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei.
The alt-text on these is just straight up exemplary. I'm going to be thinking about "a blowjob of a person" for a while.
Really love seeing one of these where every single word makes the sentence better and better and better.
Who am I going to see at ICFA??
Who am I going to see at ICFA??
Looks like the rabbit from Groening's Work is Hell.
My reaction to this is the Spiderman-Dinosaur-baddie-don't-want-to-cure-cancer" meme, but it's "but I don't want to selectively breed animals over generations, I want a potion that turns us into rubber people."
It's really amazing how a copyeditor's track changes can go from "this is a perfect human and also a genius and I will chew glass to try to meet their lofty, but perfectly reasonable, expectations" to "biiiiiiiiiiiiitch.gif" just by mentioning a single punctuation mark.
Or! Maybe they have a potion that lets them truly become "rubber people" and they just bounce everywhere like Gummi Bears.
Olmec: Why is that person strapped to that cart?
Other NPC: Oh, you don't know what horses are? *explains the concept of beasts of burden* Guess you folks just have to walk everywhere, huh?
Olmec: My god answers the prayers of travel by making me a jewel-scaled, many winged serpent.
NPC: Oh.
Animated_Spiderman_Pointing_at_Animated_Spiderman_in_a_Dank_Alley.gif
Much else can be said about Dan Simmons, but what I remember is that he created a whole message board, voluntarily, with which to communicate with developing writers, and then chose to rebuke them when they dared to be disappointing.
The author's reply?
Mu.
A zen koan that means "You asked a question with faulty starting logic." He didn't explain this. Didn't explain what was wrong with my question. Just, "Mu."
Two letters to say, "Ha ha, what a dumb question." Concise, at least.
As a young writer, thirsting for some font of wisdom to drink from, I discovered an online writing community on the professional site of a SF&F writer I enjoyed. More, the author engaged with the posts! Answered questions about craft and the creative life! A gift! I gathered nerve; asked a question.
Me: Leland Gaunt's 'Needful Things' gambit would never get me, for I am too clever and...
'The Past and the Curious': We're open!
Me: Oh, a store just for me!
