editing

ToC: When the Hero Comes Home

April 9, 2011

It is with great pleasure that I announce the table of contents for WHEN THE HERO COMES HOME, co-edited by me and Ed Greenwood. The anthology will be available in AUGUST 2011 from Dragon Moon Press. More info as I have it! A Place to Come Home To by Jay Lake and Shannon Page An [...]

Read the full article →

Belief [comma] Usage [comma] and Preference

February 7, 2011

I was asked, in response to last week’s post, if I believe in the Oxford comma. The Oxford comma, or serial comma, is the comma that sets off the “and” at the end of a list. It’s believed necessary for clarity by some, optional by others, and inefficient by yet others, and it’s one of [...]

Read the full article →

Things Editors Don’t Do

February 3, 2011

In a word: THIS. @CherylMorgan tweeted (and posted) a heads-up about this and I thought I’d give it a signal boost. Apparently a publisher decided to “straighten” the deliberately-ambiguous gender pronouns in writer Mima Simić’s story, turning it unambiguously heterosexual. In Mima’s words, “As this gender/sex ambiguity is one of the thematic pillars of my [...]

Read the full article →

Announcing: WHEN THE HERO COMES HOME

January 31, 2011

WHEN THE HERO COMES HOME, an anthology of fantasy and science fiction tales—co-edited by Bestselling author Ed Greenwood and Gabrielle Harbowy, Editor and Associate Publisher, Dragon Moon Press—will be released in August of 2011 by Dragon Moon Press. When the epic battle, the mission, the quest are over, can the hero go home again? Is [...]

Read the full article →

The Space Debate

December 13, 2010

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 space bar 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 [...]

Read the full article →

Naming Characters

November 18, 2010

(Occasionally, I repost entries that newer readers might have missed. Today’s post is originally from 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 [...]

Read the full article →

Guest Post: “Be Gentle… It’s My First Time” by Philippa Ballantine

September 13, 2010

Be Gentle, It’s My First Time…. What to Expect From Your First Professional Edit by guest blogger Philippa Ballantine You’ve made it! You have your first professional contract under your belt. Full with your success, you are excited about your first professional edit. Well, that was how I felt back in 2004 when I got [...]

Read the full article →

Creeps to Watch Out For

August 23, 2010

A manuscript is not a linear creature. We go back and change things. We revise a sentence. A paragraph. A concept. We reorder chapters. New content integrates with old. Ideally, it does this seamlessly. However, a manuscript is also not a body of water. The changes made to the pages don’t ripple naturally through the [...]

Read the full article →

Editing and Short Fiction

July 26, 2010

Should I bother hiring an editor to look over my short fiction, or is it a waste of time? While it’s often dismissed as not being worth the effort, there are a lot of advantages to hiring an editor for short fiction. 1. It’s short! That means it’ll be considerably less expensive than hiring an [...]

Read the full article →

Renaissance Woman

July 22, 2010

Interview: Gabrielle Harbowy, Renaissance Woman, courtesy of The Dead Robots’ Society Podcast It was a pleasure to meet up with the wonderful crew of the Dead Robots’ Society Podcast this week for an interview. It was a particular honor because the DRS interview with editor Juliet Ulman had been so inspirational for me. Working in [...]

Read the full article →