Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Hardware Wars

So glad to find this. I've never gotten over it. Chewchilla the Wookie Monster was such a formative influence on me.

Part One

Part Two

Saturday, April 07, 2012

The 2012 Hugo Award Nominations

The finalists for the 2012 Hugo Award have been announced. I'm delighted to be nominated a sixth time in the category of Best Professional Editor - Long Form. I'm thrilled to have made the ballot again, and also thrilled to see so many other deserving people (many of them friends) all over the list. The awards will be presented at Chicon 7, the 70th World Science Fiction Convention, which is to be held on August 30 to September 3, 2012 at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, 151 East Wacker Drive, Chicago, IL 60601. Good luck to us all!

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Chiseled in Rock

Today, I am interviewed by Chiseled in Rock, the Official Blog of the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. We talk about science fiction and fantasy publishing, but also about film and television, and answer the all important question Star Trek or Star Wars. Here's a taste, but please check out the whole interview:

CIR: Is there a type or style of science fiction and fantasy that you would recommend aspiring writers pursue or avoid? For example, are there topics that are overdone or ones that you think need greater exploration?

LA: That’s a dangerous question. You can’t really write for what you perceive the market to be, because by the time you’ve put the year or two in that it takes to write a novel, spent the year or more it takes to sell it, and then gone through the year it takes to publish it, whatever you thought was the hot category is half a decade out of date. We have a husband-wife author team, Clay and Susan Griffith, who have a very hot vampire-steampunk novel. You’d think they were capitalizing on a trend, but the truth is that steampunk wasn’t hot when they started and they joke that they saw vampires fall in and out of fashion twice while they were working on the first manuscript. That being said, as long as Game of Thrones is on HBO, the industry will be looking for another gritty, epic fantasy, and I personally am curious to see someone bridge the gap between urban fantasy’s core female readership and classic sword & sorcery fiction. But don’t write to someone else’s expectation. Write what you are moved to write. If it doesn’t excite you, how can it excite anyone else?