October 2009

9 Tips for the Novice (Professional) Con-Goer

October 28, 2009

I had written a post before Anticipation (Worldcon 2009) about being a panelist at a convention, and a couple of people have approached me since about general suggestions for first-time convention attendees. Most of these suggestions assume that you’re a professional in the field, or an aspiring professional, but I think they can be applied [...]

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World Fantasy Convention

October 26, 2009

This weekend, I’ll be attending the World Fantasy Convention in San Jose, CA. If you’re going to be there and would like to say, please feel free to drop me a line. A comment or a note through the “contact me” page will get to me, and I’m @gabrielle_h on Twitter. I’m not currently scheduled [...]

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Gentle Horror

October 22, 2009

Just as I was sitting down and going over my list of potential blog topics, @paul_e_cooley asked an interesting question over on Twitter and graciously gave me permission to reprint it here. The Dragon Moon Press guidelines specify fantasy, science fiction, and ‘gentle horror’, so the question, “What’s gentle horror?” was probably inevitable. While I [...]

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Behind the Scenes, Part 1

October 19, 2009

Last month, I got a chance to sit down with author PG Holyfield and talk on the record about the editorial process. At the time, I was halfway through my first pass on his novel Murder at Avedon Hill, forthcoming with Dragon Moon Press, so it was great to actually meet the author and talk [...]

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Author Pages

October 15, 2009

If you are a published author, I strongly encourage you to go sign up for Amazon.com’s Author Central and create your author page. More than just a listing of your current works, author pages are designed to be a better-rounded promotional opportunity. You can put up a headshot, a biography, and link in your latest [...]

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Query Letters: What Not to Do

October 12, 2009

Last week I wrote about query letters, a topic near and dear to every writer’s heart… and often a source of much anxiety. Monday’s post was about the preparation, Thursday’s was on the actual components of a query, and today I’ll follow up with the little details. Because queries are such a source of anxiety, [...]

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Components of a Query Letter

October 8, 2009

This week, I’m talking about query letters. Not a coincidence, since Michell Plested posted our great discussion on query letters and submissions on Monday. Please go and take a listen if you have a chance. First, before I get into the actual parts of the query letter, a note on formatting guidelines. Formatting guidelines exist [...]

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Querying and Submissions

October 5, 2009

This week, Michell Plested and I met up for another interview over on Get Published, talking this time about query letters and the submissions process. It’s a great interview, even though I’m a little sniffly in places. We aimed to cover a lot of the questions that writers have when they start to send out [...]

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Shortcuts to Success

October 1, 2009

Here’s the only thing you need to know about shortcuts to a successful writing career: There aren’t any. There are alternatives to the traditional process. Lots of them. But none of them are shortcuts. Let’s look at a few. 1. It’s who you know. Connections, as I mentioned in my post on Dealing with Rejection, [...]

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