It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. And that’s all the Mr. Rogers reminiscing I plan to do. Instead, I’ll start with a little housekeeping to close out this week’s book giveaways.
The winner of Claire Wingfield’s book is
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Shelby Hogan!
Shelby and anyone else, please take note: Claire asked me to tell you about her latest offer:
In honour of all those attempting to write a novel draft in the month of November, anyone who buys 52 Dates for Writers:Ride a Tandem, Assume an Alias, and 50 Other Ways to Improve Your Novel Draft by 1st December and emails proof of receipt plus a short outline of their novel to contact(at)clairewingfield(dot)co(dot)uk will receive a list of questions and prompts to help keep their project moving.
Readers who review 52 Dates for Writers on Amazon or Goodreads before 24th Dec 2013 will be in with the chance of winning a year’s subscription to a writing magazine. Just email your contact details and a link to your review to enter.
The winner of Susan Fletcher’s book is
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Stephanie Stamm!
Congrats to you both! Shelby, please send me the email address used for your Kindle. Stephanie, please send your snail mail address. Here’s the email: lmarie7b(at)gmail(dot)com. I’ll try to get your book in the mail next week sometime.
Now, onto other items.
If the title makes you think of that 80s hit, We Are the World, written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie and sung by a racially diverse group of singers, good. That was deliberate.
We are the world, but we didn’t sing that song.
The other day I listened to a webcast on the future of epic fantasy, hosted by Publishers Weekly. The guests were James L. Sutter, senior fiction editor at Paizo Publishing, and Marco Palmieri, editor of imaginative fiction of Tor Books. If you want to listen to the webcast, go here. You have to register to listen.
Don’t feel like listening? I’ll give you the highlights. First, they defined epic fantasy. What makes a fantasy epic? The scope of the story—how much is changing in the world; major changes to nations. That sort of thing.
Second, they discussed how the genre is opening up beyond the Tolkienesque, Eurocentric, black-and-white thinking stories to darker, less fairy tale-like stories with fallible main characters. (Please note that these above mentioned Tolkienesque novels will still be acquired, however. The market just wants more variety.) Also, authors have the opportunity to tell “briefer” (aka, shorter, less phone-book sized tomes) standalone stories. Role-playing gamers have a huge part to play, especially those familiar with Pathfinder. (You really need to listen to the webcast.) Above all, diversity is all the rage.
Diversity. New flavors of characters, new settings, new, new, new. The genre’s opening wide and embracing the diverse world in which we live. That’s good news for me, though I’m a fan of Tolkienesque stories. But as far as my story is concerned, let me check the list. Diversity? Check. Fallible main character? Check. Shorter than a phone book? Um, I’ll get back to you on that.
Fantasy is changing. Are you on board with that? What changes excite you? Cause you dismay?
Um, fantasy might not be this diverse.
Diverse group from ispeakeasyblog.wordpress.com. Cat from LOL Cats.