Loose-leaf Links #26

Earl Grey Editing, Loose-leaf Links, loose-leaf tea, loose-leaf, Darjeeling, Taylors of Harrogate,

Loose-leaf Links is a feature where I gather together the interesting bits and pieces on sci-fi and fantasy I’ve come across and share them with you over tea. Today’s tea is Afternoon Darjeeling from Taylors of Harrogate. It’s a lighter tea (as Darjeeling tends to be) that resists overbrewing and is one of the nicest Darjeeling teas I’ve tried.

Community and Conventions

A quick reminder that the Canberra launch for Defying Doomsday is taking place at Harry Hartog bookstore in Woden on Saturday 6 August at 1pm. Hope to see you there!

The Melbourne Writers Festival runs from 26 August until 4 September. The program has just been released. There’s not a lot of genre writers, but you can see Lev Grossman, Rainbow Rowell, Melina Marchetta and Marlee Jane Ward.

On Equity

The Romance Writers of America announced the winners of the RITA and Golden Heart Awards earlier this month. Alexis Hall won the Erotic Romance category with For Real: A Spires Story (which has been on my wish list for a while and just became a higher priority). In his acceptance speech, he claimed it was the first time an LGBTQ+ book to win a RITA. However, it has since been pointed out this is incorrect. Alexis has therefore blogged some corrections to his speech. The post is gracious and touches on issues of bisexual erasure.

Carlie St. George examines fat shaming tropes as part of her Tropes 101 column for the Book Smugglers.

Over at Tor.com Rachel Cordasco suggests 15 works of SFF in translation to look out for this year.

I recently discovered this amazing resource from Worlds Without End: award winning speculative fiction books by women authors.

For Writers

The CSFG/Conflux short story competition closes on 31 July, so make sure you have your entry in!

Joel Naoum, who was until recently the head of Pan Macmillan’s digital imprint Momentum, has just started his own consulting business for authors and publishers. Among other things, he will be offering advice on marketing strategy as well as technical and production support for digital publishers.

Via Bothersome Words comes this article looking at how the era of big change in trade book publishing has already ended.

Kirkus Reviews looks at how small press is shaping the field of SFF.

Beginning next month, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America will be admitting game writers to their membership.  SFFWA President Cat Rambo answers some FAQs on the matter over at her blog. I’m interested to discover that this new category means I may soon be eligible to join. (More on that next Wednesday).

Rivqa Rafael recently shared with me this interesting post from Darcy Hsu on outlining stories with Excel.

Kat Clay discusses how to manage and format book manuscripts in Word.

The next part of the process is generally submitting the story. KJ Charles posts on writing query letters.

Lastly, Patty Jansen talks about getting book reviews. Needless to say, I disagree with her attitude towards book bloggers.

For Readers

Uncanny Magazine is currently Kickstarting their third year of publication.

Sarah J. Maas fans will be delighted to learn she’s publishing more books in both of her fantasy YA series A Court of Thorns and Roses and Thrones of Glass.

Over at Tea in the Treetops, Angelya shares her top ten SFF books set in Australia.