• My Life,  Writing Resources

    On Spec Subscriptions for the Holidays (and an announcement)

    As a different sort of gift for the readers you know you might consider giving them a magazine subscription. I’ve always enjoyed getting magazine subscriptions, especially when they were to magazine I might not otherwise have known about. If you know somebody interested in fiction — specifically science fiction, fantasy, and horror — might I suggest On Spec Magazine? This is a fantastic Canadian magazine and I’m not just saying it because I’ve sold three stories to them (“A Ragman’s Vow”, “From the Sea” and “Touch the Dead”). I was a fan of the magazine long before I started selling fiction to them. So if you are interested, the subscription…

  • Writing Resources

    Recent Story Sales

    Realized that I hadn’t paired titles with markets for my two recent sales so here goes: I sold my fantasy story ‘Onion Farmer‘ in October to Aoife’s Kiss and my more recent sale to Abyss and Apex is another fantasy story called ‘Stone Eater‘. As always I’ll let you know when these stories are available to be read. In the meantime you might want to check out ‘From the Sea‘ or ‘The Tale of Lady Spite‘, two other, previously published stories of mine, also set in the same fantasy universe as these two new sales.

  • Writing Resources

    "From the Sea", nice mini-review

    Thanks to Tom Waters, a Writers of the Future finalist and up and coming writer for his review of the On Spec issue in which my story “From the Sea” appeared. His rating system is quick and to the point and he gave “From the Sea” a four out of five star rating. Yay! You can read the full post on his blog

  • Writing Resources

    Prix Aurora Awards

    The shortlist for the Prix Aurora Awards have been announced. BEST NOVEL IN ENGLISH : THE AMULET OF AMON-RA, by Leslie Carmichael, CBAY Books DRUIDS, by Barbara Galler-Smith and Josh Langston, Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy WAKE, Robert J. Sawyer, Penguin Canada STEEL WHISPERS, Hayden Trenholm, Bundoran Press TERRA INSEGURA, Edward Willett, DAW Books BEST SHORT-FORM WORK IN ENGLISH: “PAWNS DREAMING OF ROSES”, Eileen Bell, Women of the Apocalypse. Absolute Xpress “HERE THERE BE MONSTERS” Brad Carson, Ages of Wonder, (DAW) “LITTLE DEATHS” Ivan Dorin, Tesseracts Thirteen “RADIO NOWHERE” Douglas Smith, Campus Chills “THE WORLD MORE FULL OF WEEPING” Robert J. Wiersema, ChiZine Publications BEST WORK IN ENGLISH (OTHER) :…

  • Writing Resources

    New review for On Spec Fall 2009

    Up at EssentialWriters.com is a review of the Fall 2009 issue of On Spec. Nice things are said about this issue of the magazine, including a new review for my story “From the Sea”. Thanks to Judy Darley for the kind words and kudos go out to all the other authors who produced such fine work for the issue.

  • Review,  Writing Resources

    Review for "From the Sea"

    A nice review from SFCrowsnest about my story “From the Sea” in On Spec #78 …This story is not very heavy on fantasy but it’s perceptive about humans. The bleak setting and the hard life of a fishing village were well conveyed and the story was quite moving. Read the full review here. In all they really liked the issue.

  • Writing Resources

    Review On Spec #78

    Cover by Cristy Road Just finished reading the latest On Spec. This is issue #78 (Fall 2009). From the Sea by Brent Knowles Well, I kind of know the author of this one so I’ll just keep my mouth shut here. Every Witch Way by Joanna M. Weston This story is about the only man in a family of witches and how he copes with the powers used by his mother and sister. I liked this story. It dealt with family issues and struggles — as did most of the stories in this issue, it seemed a theme of this issue, whether intentional or not, I’m not sure. Favourite by…