Saturday, March 30, 2013

Next class: Worldbuilding Wizardry


Worldbuilding Wizardry


Add depth and reality to paranormal & fantasy stories

April 29 – May 24


One of the most appealing things about fantasy and paranormal is that it usually takes place in a fantastic and imaginative world. The mention of names like Middle Earth, Midkemia, Westeros, or Narnia brings up vivid images in a reader’s mind. But building a rich and vivid world takes a level of visual creativity that can be daunting to a writer.
How do you get your reader to feel the stones of your New World? How do you get him or her to feel the landscape and the world as if it were a real thing? How do you show your reader the world when all you have is words to explain it with? How do you show that your contemporary world is different?
The goal of worldbuilding is to create the context for a story. Consistency is an important element, since the world provides a foundation for the action of a story.
In this class, we’ll unveil the worldbuilding secrets of famous authors and learn techniques to build our own worlds to their creative best.
CLICK HERE to read more about this class or REGISTER “HERE at SavvyAuthors.com

Next class: Worldbuilding


Worldbuilding Wizardry


Add depth and reality to paranormal & fantasy stories

April 29 – May 24


One of the most appealing things about fantasy and paranormal is that it usually takes place in a fantastic and imaginative world. The mention of names like Middle Earth, Midkemia, Westeros, or Narnia brings up vivid images in a reader’s mind. But building a rich and vivid world takes a level of visual creativity that can be daunting to a writer.
How do you get your reader to feel the stones of your New World? How do you get him or her to feel the landscape and the world as if it were a real thing? How do you show your reader the world when all you have is words to explain it with? How do you show that your contemporary world is different?
The goal of worldbuilding is to create the context for a story. Consistency is an important element, since the world provides a foundation for the action of a story.
In this class, we’ll unveil the worldbuilding secrets of famous authors and learn techniques to build our own worlds to their creative best.
CLICK HERE to read more about this class or REGISTER “HERE at SavvyAuthors.com

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Congratulations to our RITA and Golden Heart finalists!

 All hands on deck!

Brigade, it's time to recognize two of our fine writers who accepted the challenge, wrote amazing books, and who are now RITA and Golden Heart finalists!

Kay Hudson's JINN AND TONIC is Golden Heart finalist and Sharon Lynn Fisher's GHOST PLANET is a RITA finalist. Everyone gives these two fabulous authors a round of applause! We'll be cheering for them come RWA time.


Saturday, March 23, 2013

The SFR Brigade Presents - 3/23-3/29 #sfrb #sfrbp

The SFR Brigade Presents snippets should now be live. Read, share and enjoy!

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Bippity Boppity Science

With the recent trend in the retelling/re imagining of fairy tales, there's an under-tapped avenue for SFR. Most science geeks rebuff the "magic concepts" behind fairy tale stories and look for more "serious" concepts and themes in the science community for their novels. But if you take a step back, remove the fairy from the tale and just look at the basics behind it, you can see the science in the tale.

Here are a couple examples. For the purpose of this post I'm going to use Grimm's watered down version of fairy tales, but if you're looking for darker takes as a jumping off point, definitely research the original tellings...trust me, they're not for young ears or eyes and can add a real twist to the story.
 
By Toshiaki Kato
Beauty and the Beast: Woman comes to the aide of her beloved father and takes his place as prisoner in a beast's home. There, she come to love the beast, who turns out to be a shapeshifter with a broken heart who'd refused his human for until he falls for the woman.










Source: Art Passions
 Sleeping Beauty: Several generations before the story an opposing person/party kidnaps a woman from a rich/ruling/government family and traps her in suspended animation. The kidnappers are caught and killed but not before they jetty her out into space. The parents put out a reward for her rescue. Decades go by with no luck, until an recently retired military man takes up the challenge on a dare during a stop at the planet.







Source: Art Passions

Snow White: A jealous family member "poisons" a young woman with some Nano viral infection and she falls into a comatose state. Grieving, the family places her in a stasis chamber in the hopes that one day they can find a cure. Several years go by when the galactic government get sword of the incident. They send out a team to research the case for any benefit/advancement in their own warfare arsenal.
 
That's just my mind wanderings of 3 fairy tales. And, of course, they can be retrofitted for any sub genre or theme. The male/female roles can be reversed, or changed out for male/male or female/female.

What is your favorite fairy tale and how would a SF spin look on it?

(By the way, if any of these ideas sound good, feel free to use them. I've got hundreds of electronic post-its with ideas that I'll probably never get to and I'd love to see some of these fleshed out into a full story.)

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Anthology Call for Swords and Lasers

Heads up! Swords and Lasers has an open anthology call for fantasy and sci-fi short stories (SFR welcome). The pay is $200 for any story accepted. You are selling world anthology rights, ebook and audio anthology rights. You retain the right to resell or reprint your short story on your own.

Since they do welcome romance and sex this might be time to pull out your tamer SFR short stories and polish them up. Good luck! 

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Guest Blogging At Coffee Time Romance

Comfort reads are great, but what about when you want to shake things up a little? I'm at the Coffee Time Romance Blog with a post on exactly that topic: On Creating New Romance Conventions.

Come on over and tell me about your favorite risk-taking conventions in science fiction romance. While there, you can enter for a chance to win a digital copy of my steampunk romance, IRON GUNS, BLAZING HEARTS!

Friday, March 1, 2013

Cover Love Feature

I've just started a weekly feature with guest authors, bloggers, reviewers and editors posting their favourite covers, preferably in the scifi romance genre but others in speculative fiction and/or romance are welcome too. The first guest is Heather Massey of The Galaxy Express here, and we'd love to know your opinion on her choices or whether you have any to add. In fact, if you'd like to have your say or share your favourites, maybe you'd like to take part? Check out the details at the bottom of my Author Promo page here!

SFR Brigade Bases of Operation