December 2008

Back to Work

December 29, 2008

I had a lovely holiday with family, and now I’m back in the office looking at the two manuscripts on my desk. In the spirit of the season, my mother had asked me if I would like one of those “I am the grammarian about whom your mother warned you” shirts. I graciously declined, and [...]

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Tips on Naming Characters

December 22, 2008

1. Choose names for members of a culture that follow a cultural thread. Names don’t have to be so similar that they’re indistinct, or rhyme, or all have the same vowel-consonant patterns. But in most successful science fiction or fantasy, names from a given culture have at least something in common. Think about the ways [...]

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Capital I is for Internet

December 18, 2008

Your editor is hard at work. I’m juggling three manuscripts, with a fourth soon on the way, and I’m trying to clear my desk before the holidays. If I haven’t been around in the usual places — Twitter, Skype, or wherever you might normally find me — now you know why. One common thread I’ve [...]

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Contracts

December 12, 2008

Are contracts really necessary? Isn’t making someone sign a contract for editing work like saying you don’t trust them to pay? There’s a lot more to a contract than just “Ha! Now you HAVE to pay me!” and “Ha! Now you HAVE to do the work!” Contracts set out the expectations of both parties. If [...]

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Nomination!

December 8, 2008

Congratulations to Philippa Ballantine — her novel Digital Magic has been nominated for a Sir Julius Vogel award. I was privileged to work with Pip on Digital Magic, so this is exciting on a personal level, as well. She’s a great writer and podcaster, and it’s always a treat to work on a novel with [...]

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How many spaces?

December 4, 2008

How many spaces should you put after a period? In this electronic day and age, this editor’s preference is for one space, please. Hitting the spacebar twice after a period is something a lot of us (of a certain age) learned in school. It’s a hotly debated topic, mostly because it’s a practice that becomes [...]

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Professional Opinions

December 1, 2008

This morning, I went for a haircut. It wasn’t a very good haircut. It was mediocre, maybe, at best. The problem I had with it was that my stylist didn’t want to express any opinions. I would say, “I’d kind of like a change. I’m thinking about doing this, but I’m not sure how it [...]

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