As some of you might recall, when the Internet Review of Science Fiction sadly closed its doors recently short fiction reviewer Lois Tilton joined the extended Locus family as a short fiction reviewer for Locus Online.

The third instalment of Lois’s reviews just went up (they’re appearing three times each month*) and she looks at:

• Asimov’s, April/May 2010
• Analog, May 2010
• Clarkesworld, March 2010
• Apex Magazine, March 2010
• Electric Velocipede, Fall 2009

 You can also see her first two columns here and here.

* ETA: I originally thought Lois’s reviews were going up weekly. It’s since been confirmed they go up three times per month.

Some years ago I flew from Australia to California to meet up with Charles N. Brown, spend some time with him, and then head on to a convention. I don’t remember which one, but I remember that he met me at the airport with the newest Locus employee, a very sweet and kind woman named Amelia Beamer.  Over the years going to Oakland and going to WorldCon or World Fantasy was made much, much more fun because Amelia was going to be there.  We’ve eaten in restaurants in half a dozen cities, gone on road trips together, bought phones, accepted awards, taken pictures, laughed, cried, and basically become very good friends since that first meeting. I’ll never forget Wisconsin cheese hats or Liza’s first birthday party or any one of dozen other things. 

And over the years it became clear that not only was she sweet and kind and generous, she was tough and smart and talented, so when I heard she was writing an novel for my buddies over at Night Shade I was delighted.  The book, The Loving Dead, is only a few months away now.  It’s a zombie romance and I’m going to read just as soon as I can, but you can read it now (or at least start to) over at ameliabeamer.com. It’s a first novel, Connie Willis called it “a rollercoaster ride of a read” and it does have girls, zombies and zeppelins, along with a whole lot of other goodness.  What are you waiting for!?

The good folks over at Subterranean Press have just announced pre-orders for The Best of Larry Niven, a book I spent some time editing last fall.  It’s due out later this year and is a book I’ve always wanted to exist.  I love big career retrospectives and Niven’s initial burst of short fiction stands, in my opinion, alongside those from John Varley and Greg Egan, as one of the most impressive and important starts to a career in SF history.  I’d always been somewhat dissatisfied with the two big Niven retrospectives, N-Space and Playgrounds of My Mind, because they included novel excerpts and such.  This book is just the pure quill – 27 Larry Niven short stories in one big book.  For me it passes the toughest test of all – if I hadn’t worked on it myself I’d buy it. I think it’s essential.

Tansy,  Alex, and Alisa have launched the Galactic Suburbia podcast.  Similar in conception to the late lamented (are you listening Tony C. Smith) The Sofanauts podcast, it involves three friends with an interest in science fiction (writer, reviewer, editor/publisher) talking about what’s happening in the field, what they’re reading, and other stuff they think is interesting.  I really enjoyed the first instalment of “Galactic Suburbia”, even if I wanted to keep arguing and interjecting with the trio (because I know them and tend to argue and interject, one way or another, though usually online).  Go listen and subscribe!

I should also mention John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley’s The Geeks Guide to the Galaxy which is often interesting and is also worth listening too.

When I stumble out into the real world where I might actually interact with writers I am, very occasionally, asked for advice. What should a new writer do about this or that? Do you, based on your experience, have any advice for writer? Normally I don’t have a good answer to that. A lot of the advice any editor, or reader, can give is repeated endlessly from one of end of the web to the other, and it gets fairly dull.

However, something did occur to me yesterday when I was doing a bit of business for Wings of Fire, and it was this. Manage your digital assets. It does not matter whether you are just starting your career, whether you’re in the middle of your career, or whether you feel your career is reaching a conclusion – there is ALWAYS value in having clean, digital copies of your work.

What prompted this was that I briefly was considering asking for permission to reprint Jack Vance’s fine novelette, “The Dragon Masters”, in my book. Time is short, the manuscript is due with the publisher in a couple weeks but I knew, because of the fine efforts of the Vance Integral Edition people, that Vance has clean digital copy of all of his works. If I wanted to include the story and he agreed to it, then it would be a simple matter to do so.

Contrast this to many, many writers who have no digital copies of their work whatsoever. I have contacted writer after writer for many projects, and the number of times that I’ve been amazed to find out that they have no digital copies of their work, despite it only having appeared quite recently, is shocking.

Now, you might say that from a writer’s perspective this is a publisher’s problem. And it is, but it’s not. You see every time someone reprints your work you get paid. It is literally, like the old song says, money for nothing and chicks for free. Someone asks to reprint your story; you say yes, you get paid. However, if your story is unavailable digitally that can be a real disincentive. There’s a cost in scanning, proofing and checking text. Sometimes, when digital copy is unavailable, it’s simply more economical to go elsewhere.

Beyond the financial incentive, making your work easy to reprint can increase the likelihood of it being reprinted. Go check some day how much more of Jack Vance’s work is available, and in clean nice copies, now that the VIE has done its job than was formerly in print. It also means less work for you in the long run. Should your work BE reprinted, there’ll be less checking of proofs and such because your text will be clean.   So, is it a pain to keep digital copies of your fiction, tracking changes through editions and so on, and then keeping it in an accessible format – yes!! Is it in your best interests? Definitely!