AUTHOR INTERVIEW: David Boop

Note from Nayad: The series continues. This week I'll post interviews with authors contributing to my speculative fiction anthology, WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination. If you want to read twisty tales about struggles with destiny, this anthology is for you. I hope you enjoy these author interviews!

As of this afternoon we have only three more days to go on the Kickstarter Fundraising Campaign for WHAT FATES IMPOSE. We're up to $4,663 from 192 Beloved Backers. That's an amazing 93%, but we still need $337 to get to $5,000. The Countdown Is Happening. We're SO CLOSE. :)

If you'd like to help out, you can easily tell friends about the book by clicking here. If you contribute any amount from $1 on up at our Kickstarter page, you will get our first bonus art download in addition to whatever rewards you choose, and we're only 8 backers away from making that TWO bonus art downloads. Will you help us? Because we would love to create this book and pay our authors pro rates for their work.

 

 

David Boop is a novelist, short story writer , and super-friendly guy. I first met him after he was on a panel at NorWesCon. I don't remember the topic of the panel, but I remember the title of his book, which was such a good title that I needed to compliment him on it: She Murdered Me with Science. He's is also in a table of contents with me in Space Grunts: Full-Throttle Space Tales #3, edited by Dayton Ward, as well as having stories in a bunch of other tables of contents! He offers flash fiction critiques for one of the reward levels in our fundraising campaign.

 

David's story for WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination is called "Dipping into the Pocket of Destiny." It shows how trying to get an edge over the competition depends on both the quality of your information and the context around it, so you need to keep an eye on cause and effect.

 

Here's David with some context for you! *as the strand of fate that brought you here is woven into place, Events of Significance begin to play out*

 

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Cat Rambo

Note from Nayad: The series continues. This week I'll post interviews with authors contributing to my speculative fiction anthology, WHAT FATES IMPOSE: Tales of Divination. If you want to read strange tales about predicting the future, you've found the right book. I hope you enjoy these author interviews!

As of this afternoon we have only four more days to go on the Kickstarter Fundraising Campaign for WHAT FATES IMPOSE. We're up to $4,356 from 183 Beloved Backers. That's 87%, but we still need $644 to get to $5,000. The Countdown Is Happening. But we're so close!

If you'd like to help out, you can easily tell friends about the book by clicking here. If you contribute any amount from $1 on up at our Kickstarter page, you will get our first bonus art download in addition to whatever rewards you choose, and we're only 17 backers away from making that TWO bonus art downloads. Will you help us? Because we would love to create this book and pay our authors pro rates for their work.

 

(Photo by On Focus Photos, http://onfocusphoto.com)

Cat Rambo lives, writes, and teaches by the shores of an eagle-haunted lake in the Pacific Northwest. Her 200+ fiction publications include stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and Tor.com. Her short story, “Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain,” from her story collection Near + Far (Hydra House Books), was a 2012 Nebula nominee. Her editorship of Fantasy Magazine earned her a World Fantasy Award nomination in 2012.

Cat's story in WHAT FATES IMPOSE, "To Read the Sea," is a powerful and unsettling flash fiction story about the magical objects that come from the ocean, and the dark motivations of the people who want them.

Here's Cat to tell you about divination and the many ways to do it, as well as her thoughts on writing. *tides around the world impossibly rise all at once*

Tips for Giving Useful Story Critiques

It's currently fashionable to give brutal critiques for fiction. The idea is that for a writer to improve at writing, she must receive the most blunt, strongly-worded responses possible from the people who evaluate her work. This will toughen her up. If she can't take this type of criticism, she is told, she will never, ever make it as a writer.

I'm not so sure that we need to be this extreme about critiques. A critique is a detailed analysis and discussion of a literary work. I think that, too often, people are encouraged to shift from a critical analysis of a story's merits and faults to being critical, or "inclined to find fault or to judge with severity, often too readily."

We speak English. We have so many words to choose from. You can clearly express thoughts about a story's strengths and weaknesses without being brutal, and without being too soft and fuzzy. There's a middle ground. For the purposes of this post, I'll think in terms of critiquing a short story, but this stuff should all be applicable to novels, essays, and even poetry.

On to my tips!

Corrections and Friday Reads

Good Friday! This will be a brief post, but I will fill it with links to make it worth your time.

First, a correction: I know I said in my upcoming schedule that I would be going to Odyssey Con this weekend, but I'm not going to be there due to a need to reallocate my time. I'll miss going, but nobody would want me coughing in the con's airspace, anyway. This recent respiratory ailment has been way too tenacious.

And now for the fun stuff. Books! On Twitter there's a tradition of posting #fridayreads, and I'm bringing it to my blog. I'm currently reading Paper Cities, edited by Ekaterina Sedia (whose website is beautiful. Click!). I have a thing about fantasy set in cities, but not necessarily always the Urban Fantasy category as we know it today with the vampires and the werewolves, so what I am saying is that this anthology is very good for me, so far. I'm not even halfway through it, but I want to recommend three outstanding stories: "The Bumblety's Marble," by Cat Rambo, "Promises: A Tale of the City Imperishable," by Jay Lake, and my favorite so far, "Ghost Market," by Greg van Eekhout. The book is worth its cover price for just these three stories, as far as I'm concerned, but I'm looking forward to reading the rest, because there are amazing writers all over the table of contents.

The other book I just started to read is Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories, edited by James Thomas, Denise Thomas, and Tom Hazuka. I have to admit that I've never paid much attention to flash fiction before, but recently I've read several excellent stories under 1,000 words long, and I've become nearly what one might call "obsessed" with the category. I've developed the ambition to write some, which by all accounts is not easy to do, especially when you're writing a genre story that might need a few words to go toward how the story world is fantastical or science-fictional.

That's it for now. I hope you have whatever kind of weekend you want to have!

Coming soon: Five Important Reasons to Worry about Divination

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