Women taking their place in speculative fiction

My story, "Trapped Star", appears in the brand new anthology by Dark Quest Books Beauty Has Her Way, edited by Jennifer Brozek. Read it to see if Debra manages to steal and use the crystal that turns your run-of-the-mill transport booths into mega transport booths that span the whole galaxy. There's so many worlds that have never heard of her. They'll never know what hit them.

The British Science Fiction Association has published its shortlist of nominees. Paulo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl made the best novel list.

The Philip K. Dick Award shortlist is as follows:

Yarn, Jon Armstrong (Night Shade Books)

Chill, Elizabeth Bear (Ballantine Books/Spectra)

The Reapers Are the Angels, Alden Bell (Henry Holt & Co.)

Song of Scarabaeus, Sara Creasy (Eos)

The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, Mark Hodder (Pyr)

Harmony, Project Itoh, translated by Alexander O. Smith (Haikasoru)

State of Decay, James Knapp (Roc)

Winners of both will be announced April 23rd at Norwescon in Seattle, WA and Eastercon in Birmingham, UK respectively.

Norwescon features mostly women guests of honor this year with Writer GOH Patricia McKillip, Artist GOH Kinuko Craft and PSIence GOH Marie D. Jones. Nevermind "ladie's night", it's our year! Seattle is also home to a new convention for women in the genre. Say hello to GeekGirlCon.

GeekGirlCon Releases Date and Location of Their Long-Anticipated Event

Seattle, WA -- GeekGirlCon, a female-focused, geek centric convention that celebrates the feminine involvement and contribution in Geek Culture will be making its debut Saturday and Sunday, October 8th and 9th, 2011 at the Seattle Center’s Northwest Rooms.

Erica McGillivray, GeekGirlCon’s President and Marketing Director says, “GeekGirlCon is a one-of-a-kind convention celebrating geeky women and the wide variety of geeky things they are interested and involved in.” The first of its kind, GeekGirlCon strives to be an event that celebrates women in the fields of math, the sciences, fiction, games, comics and more.

“Planning this convention has shown me that I am not alone,” Michelle Pearson, GeekGirlCon’s Treasurer and Account manager says. “Meeting other geeky women and realizing that there are men in the community who appreciate and support us has been the best part of this journey so far. I’m excited to be a part of this and can’t wait to see our plans and ideas become reality.”

And the staff members aren’t the only ones excited about this event. GeekGirlCon already boasts a very talented special guest list; authors Bonnie Burton, Trina Robbins, Greg Rucka and Jen Van Meter have already signed on to appear at the convention and support its cause.

Passes to GeekGirlCon can be purchased through convention’s website: both two-day passes for the entire weekend ($35) and single day passes ($20).

GeekGirlCon is a non-profit organization of 30 staff members and roughly 80 other volunteers equally passionate about promoting women’s contributions to geek culture. The group will be continuing to hold fundraising events leading up to the convention date. To find out more about GeekGirlCon visit http://www.geekgirlcon.com.

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Contact: Kiri Callaghan

GeekGirlCon Public Relations Manager

Email: pr@geekgirlcon.com

*End press release*

All my literary friends are probably sick of me extolling the virtues of reading and writing flash fiction (that's fiction generally under 500, 750 or 1,000 words depending on the venue). Well, just hold your ears. I'm back on the flash wagon. Debi Orton, founder of Flashquake, passed the flash baton (in the form of Flashquake ownership) to Cindy Bell. Read more below.

Flashquake under new ownership

Cindy Bell of Eagle River, Alaska, took over leadership of Flashquake as

editor and publisher in January 2011, making changes to the design and

bringing new talent to the literary publication.

Flashquake, an independent, quarterly, web-based and print-on-demand

magazine, focuses on works of flash fiction, flash nonfiction (memoirs,

essays, creative nonfiction, humor), short poetry and artwork. Flashquake

aspires to no less than the publication of literary works of flash and

fine art.

To celebrate its new inauguration, there is a call for submissions of any

topic, and a special contest with four talented winners. The contest theme

is “new beginnings,” and the entry fee is a low $5. The winning work comes

with a grand prize of 35 percent of the pot (the pot being the total from

all entry fees). There will also be 3 runners up with first runner-up

winning 20 percent of the pot, second winning 15 percent, and third

winning 10 percent. Grand prize and runners up will also be awarded

publication in Flashquake’s electronic and print publications.

Flashquake was founded by Debi Orton in 2001, and to Bell’s knowledge, the

term “flash” was coined by Debi's team at that time. For more information

or to submit a piece of work, visit www.flashquake.org.

*End press release*

Now that I've started this whole "women in spec fic rock" theme, I can't leave you without sharing the new Broad Universe website. Very snazzy.

On a personal note, I have started out the new year by getting all of my reprints back in circulation. I put a couple stories that haven't found the right homes yet back into play last week, too. Mike Resnick has inspired me in this endeavor with his 19 foreign and reprint sales in one week!

I'm looking forward to meeting some of my SFOO staff at conventions later this year. My next science fiction convention is FogCon in San Francisco, where I'll hopefully be on some panels and hosting a Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading. Then there's BayCon in May, Westercon 64 in July and Renovation (WorldCon 69) in August. The best part? I don't have to buy a single plane ticket. I even have a cousin who'll put me up for Renovation.