Sci-Fi/Fantasy Writers – We need YOU! [NOW CLOSED]

Hi,

We are running a competition as part of my publishing course, and we are looking for Science-Fiction/Fantasy writers who want to get published to enter their stories! All the information you need is below, so if you are interested, please read on!

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Science Fiction and Fantasy Competition

At UCLan publishing we are dedicated and passionate about what we do. Small but perfectly formed, the press will go to extreme lengths to publish a title we believe in – last year we travelled to Kenya to write letters with schoolchildren from Maasai tribes. This year we intend to go to the furthest reaches of space.

We’re holding a competition to publish a truly unique, standalone Science Fiction or Fantasy short story or novella of 2,000 to 10,000 words that’s aimed at adults, with one prize of £150. The winning novella is going to become a highly innovative and interactive eBook so we’re looking for submissions that will lend themselves to this format. Ideally your story will be so leap-off-the-page cutting-edge that readers are going to want to literally be a part of it.

We’re open to experimentation with the genre. With Science Fiction and Fantasy there are no limitations and we want our eBook to reflect that. Don’t treat us gently: your words should grip us, shake us, move us, shock us, run wildly into the night with us and leave us gasping for more.

The umbrella term for what we’re looking to publish is Speculative Fiction. It’s not a clear cut or strictly-defined genre which means its boundaries can be stretched. It also means it can continue to surprise and delight readers, which is what we aim to do with this eBook.

So – are you a Science Fiction writer at heart? We’ll accept hard or soft science fiction, time travel, space western, cyberpunk, alternative future/history/reality, dystopia, utopia, humorous, military, pulp, superhero, or, dare we say it, space opera.

Maybe you’re more of a Fantasy buff. Try us with high or low fantasy, traditional fantasy, contemporary, dark fantasy, fairytale, romantic, sword and sorcery, mythic, heroic, alternative world/history, steampunk, comic or urban fantasy.

And we don’t scare easily, Horror writers, so you’re going to have to push us to our limits. Gothic, supernatural, body horror – bring it on.

If none of that fits your style, why not surprise us? Cross a few genres, mix it up a bit. The Phantom of the Starship Opera: a gothic space opera, if you will (there’s a reason why we’re not the writers).

It was a dark and stormy night…

As you’d expect from a dedicated publisher, we want to avoid cliché like the plague (ha ha). So if you are going to submit a time travel story, crosscheck it against H.G. Wells first. Here are a few pitfalls we’d like you to steer clear of:

• Star Wars-lite science fiction
• ‘The butterfly effect’ – we don’t want to know how the untimely death of a butterfly affected a family tree
• The ‘Doc’/mad scientist character
• The Luke Skywalker – the plot-mechanism protagonist who has zero charisma
• Little green men – enough said
• Clones – ditto
• Nanobots/nanotechnology
• Tolkien-lite fantasy
• The Harry Potter – the unlikely youngster who discovers he’s really the Chosen One
• Prophecy – another word for convenience
• Good vs evil – we like shades of grey
• ‘The Hero’/‘The Villain’ – must it be so obvious?
• Magic caused it/solved it – no ‘one size fits all’ answers, please
• Kick ass heroines and moody males – urban fantasy, we’re looking at you
• Soul mates – Twilight has this covered
• Anthropomorphism – no talking animals (or dragons)
• Magical objects – sentient or otherwise
• ‘Quest’ fantasy – avoid long walks for little reward
• Random Capitalisation – if it’s important, the prose should speak for itself

Basically, avoid this: http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/

One final piece of advice: if you can’t avoid cliché – then at least obliterate the mould.

To enter into the competition you will need to submit a complete story of 2,000 – 10,000 words in length and a short, snappy biography of yourself by 18th March 2011.

Please email your submission as an MS Word document attachment to Debbie Williams (DJWilliams1@uclan.ac.uk), and include your name contact details within the document.

Entries are accepted from the UK and the US!

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For more information, contact details, or to know more about UCLan Publishing, click the link: http://www.uclan.ac.uk/schools/journalism_media_communication/literature_culture/publishing/publishing_new_material.php

Calling all parents! – reminder of deadline

Hello,

A few weeks ago, i posted a blog telling you about the project we are doing on my MA Publishing course, in which we are publishing a book of stories on parenting.

‘Blessing and Bother: How to Have Children and Live to Tell the Tale’ is going to be published this summer by UCLan Publishing, and is basically a selection of stories on parenthood.

If you would like to submit your story to us, the deadline for submissions is fast approaching on Monday 28th February 2011.

For further information and guidance, please visit UCLan publishing website at UCLan Blessing and Bother Call out – website

For my original blog post on this project, please see Calling all first time parents – looking for submissions

Book Review: “The Girl Who Played With Fire” by Stieg Larsson

Cover of The Girl Who Played with Fire

I just finished reading The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson, and thought it was a very good read, really gripping! I loved reading more about Lisbeth Salander and the aftermath of the previous book in the Millennium Trilogy, and was desperate to find out the truth behind the murders!

This book is quite dark in places, with violence cropping up constantly, and we delve deep into many people’s secrets, the most crucial of all being Salander’s. Slowly her mysterious past is uncovered and we discover so much about her character and how she came to be the way she is.

It ends quite dramatically with the mystery being solved, but the book ends on what can only be described as a cliffhanger, which immediately made me want to get on and read the 3rd book!

Another well-written book, which keeps you guessing until the end! Gets a little bit frustrating when you are fed little tidbits of the mystery all the way through and your brain goes crazy trying to piece it together and then the ending always surprises you!

I give it a 9/10 for originality and some excellent writing. I’m definitely starting to see why it has been such a bestseller!

Majority of E-readers bought by over-50s

The Bookseller announced today that there are more over-50s who own E-readers than there are young people owning them. See More over-50s own e-readers than youngsters – The Bookseller.

The over-50s are a heavy book-reading group and have always been traditional in buying physical books, but now the digital age seems to be gaining in popularity among this group of people, possibly because it is so much easier to have all your books in one place on one easy to use e-reader.

I’d say that maybe it’s not so popular with younger people because they may not be able to afford them, or just because they don’t like reading books, whether paper or digital.

Book programmes on the BBC

Tonight, i watched two BBC 4 programmes on books.

Firstly, The Beauty of Books.

An interesting program about the history of books, looking at the issues of religion and religious books like the bible, and in particular the Codex Sinaiticus, and the Winchester Bible.

I already knew the basic history of the development of the book, but it added a lot of detail to my existing knowledge with facts about the development of the ink and parchment used by scribes in the early days of the books.

It was an interesting programme, with plenty of information on books, but was a little bit short (half an hour long)

Secondly, Birth of the British Novel.

This is a greatly interesting programme, looking at the British novel. It started with Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe which was a fiction book which shows writing at its best. It gives us a popular account of self-sufficiency.

This lead onto the tale of Jonathan Swift and his Gulliver’s Travels which was very provocative when it was published because of it’s controversial content and his opinions and ideas, and the fact he used satire to attack the issues of society. It was very interesting to learn about, and made me want to read Gulliver’s Travels again.

The programme explores the intimacy of the novel and being able to see into someone else’s world. It looks at Clarissa by Samuel Richardson, in which the tragic heroine searches for virtue but suffers at the hands of a man. It was also one of the longest novels in the English language. I have never read this novel but i am intrigued by it and have put it on my list of books to read.

It looks at the idea of  the “foundling”, a child lost and found by stranger, considered to be sinful and shameful, but Henry Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling managed to change this view.

Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne was a very different kind of novel, very original and full of random images and patterns, but covers several themes. Sterne was a very interesting author, who created a fascinating novel which never gets to the point.

Genre fiction is then born. Horace Walpole wrote The Castle of Otranto, the first gothic novel written, and inspired by Strawberry Hill, a gothic home which he built.

It covered a fair bit, and was very interesting as i learned loads which i didnt know already, and i’m really eager to read the books it talked about, just so i can understand them a bit more.

If you get BBC Iplayer, then check them out!