Hey Luke! You’ve got a zombie novel that doesn’t suck.
You should check out http://jlassen.livejournal.com/597517.html
Somebody wants it!
(Anyone else who has so far been too embarrassed to admit that they have a zombie novel in their bottom drawer should have a look too.)
Graham.
I made a lightning visit to Brisbane yesterday and, with half an hour to spare in the schedule, I thought I’d drop in at Pulp Fiction ro see what it was like. Believe it or not, although I lived in Brisbane for ten years and worked within a stone’s throw of the shop, I had never been there before.
Well, it took me about half an hour to find it – it’s tucked away in a little mall off Edward Street, part of a complex little rabbit warren they call Anzac Square – so I only had a few minutes to take a look. But that was OK because the shop was tiny. There were three shop assistants and two customers when I was there (me and another old guy) and the place felt full.
I’d imagined something at least four times as big, covered in posters, crawling with geeks, and packed with shelves stuffed to overflowing with obscure and hard-to-find sci-fi gems. Instead, it has the same, sterile atmosphere as any other modern bookshop. The half of the shop dedicated to SF&F (yes, another surprise, the other half is all crime stuff) amounted to a couple of neatly-arranged shelves. I suspect that a big city-centre bookshop (like the Dymocks not far away on Queen St.) would have roughly the same number of sci-fi books on display as Pulp Fiction. Talk about disappointing!
However, I did gradually realise that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. Although the shop looked the same as any other and the shop assistants were just as wrapped up in their own conversations as they would be in Dymocks, I started noticing that the books on the shelves actually included some local authors. I also realised that the ‘new releases’ shelf was a service to SF&F (but especially SF) authors that you wouldn’t get from a chain. There were a few (three, I think, maybe four) SF&F magazines for sale (ASIM, Orb, F&SF – possibly one other) and a small rack of ‘graphic novels’. I may be mistaken but it seemed the shelf-space devoted to franchise SF novels was smaller than you’d get in most chain shops.
Marianne will be pleased to hear that they had two of her books on the shelves. I’ve been trying to find a shop or library that stocks de Pierres since Bribie Island. I snapped them both up (Dark Space and Nylon Angel – which I think are the first of their respective series). Turns out they were both autographed too! (So, Marianne, if you’re reading this, you’d better get down to Pulp Fiction and sign another couple!)
So the shop gets no points out of ten for size or atmosphere but it gets a ten for actually stocking Australian SF&F authors and another bonus ten for stocking something I’d been looking for.
I wish I could think of something constructive to say about what they could do to improve the atmosphere of the place. I assume they know what they’re about but it was really disappointing. I felt I might as well be in Angus and Robertson.
Graham.
Hey all, the wonderful Marianne thought we might be interested in this. The Hub is a great market and well worth subscribing to even if you don’t want to submit.
Write for Hub Magazine
We’re re-opening the doors to submissions, and there are three ways you can write for Hub Magazine:1) Send a short story for consideration
2) Enter our short story competition
3) Review for us
1) Sending a short story for consideration
Hub Magazine is weekly. This means we need a lot of short stories in order to satisfy the voracious appetites of our readers. We’re looking for stories of between 800 and 6,000 words (we will consider longer stories from authors we have already published).Submission guidelines are on our website at www.Hub-Mag.co.uk
2) Enter our short story competition
We are about to launch a competition to find the very best in new “Bootstrap SciFi”. Twelve winners will be published in a winning anthology, and there is a first prize of £100. There is no fee to enter. Once again, details on our website.
3) Review for us
We need reviews, and lots of them! We get sent books every week by publishers from across the globe, and we just don’t have the time to read them all! If you’d like to become a reviewer for us, check out the review guidelines on our website. We don’t currently pay for reviews (we’re a free-to-read eZine, after all), but you do get to keep everything you review for us.
So, head over to www.Hub-Mag.co.uk where you can find further details on what we’re seeking.Be part of Hub.
Keep writing!
Jo A
Orbiteers, I’ve put a story up in the fiction section (I hope) and I’m looking for comments if anyone has the time.
Graham.
After two months of reading and thinking, I was dreading the process of rewriting because I couldn’t begin to wrap my brain around the organising of the material. All in one big Word file and how on earth was I going to wrassle it into shape?
Last night I downloaded Simon Haynes’s brilliant FREE software, yWriter – software written by an author with exactly the same problem.
I’ve already begun editing, rewriting and reassembling and suddenly it seems not only do-able, but exciting again! I’ve always been cynical about writing software but this one seems like just to tool I needed.
Highly recommend that if you’re struggling to organise your ms you check this out.
Janette
