Writing Opporunities
Writing June 7th, 2006Remember the Science Fiction/Fantasy Gold Rush of the 1990s? That’s when publishers were scrambling to put out the next big, thick fantasy, ala Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind, George R.R. Martin, and Robin Hobb. All four of these authors (or pseudonymns) became big in this last decade of the century.
I think another “Golden Age” of fantasy is on the verge of exploding in the publishing community. Of course, it’ll be different this time around. At least I hope that it’s different. I’m excited to read new fantasies that aren’t exploitatively derivative of the big series I mentioned above. And I don’t think that we’ll see a resurgence of the truly “big, fat” fantasy novels (bigger than 200k) for a few years yet. But who knows? Any breakout book could buck that trend.
In the past few weeks, two large publishers have opened (or will soon open) their doors to manuscripts in advance of beefing up their fantasy and science fiction lines.
Orbit Books is one of the leading publishers of speculative fiction in the UK, and now they will be opening offices in New York and Australia according to this press release. Additional information can be found here.
Wizards of the Coast, of Magic the Gathering fame, is opening their doors for what they call “author property” submissions. Several years back Wizards bought out TSR, creators of the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms book lines/campaign settings. Wizards took up where TSR left off and continued to publish books in several of these “shared-world” settings. This is (to my knowledge) their first effort at branching out into the general fantasy publishing market.
I visited Wizards of the Coast in August of last year, and you wouldn’t believe the marketing power these guys have behind them. They also produce beautiful books and have wonderful editors working for them. Not only is their fantasy/science fiction line opening up for submissions, their Young Adult line—Mirrorstone— is also accepting author properties, as mentioned in these guidelines.
Exciting times!
Yesterday I wasn’t looking forward to coming home to the apartment. (The air conditioning has been broken for five days now and we’ve been having record high temperatures.) But when I came in the door, I noticed that my Amazon package had arrived. I just ordered two books on writing, Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass, the literary agent. And How to Grow a Novel by Sol Stein. Both of these books came highly recommended, so I’m looking forward to diving into them as soon as I have a free minute.
In other news, the Scotsman now has a name. Angus.
Here’s to the time when I’ll actually get him animated.
—”Stewart!”
June 7th, 2006 at 8:33 pm
I think TSR, Inc., the publishers of D&D that Wizards of the Coast bought, used to have an imprint of novels separate from their gameworld fiction. It didn’t go well for them, though. I think near the end they had trouble paying their authors, but they were going bankrupt, so that’s no surprise.
It all looks good, but it is kind of odd that WotC is asking for submissions to include a signed legal agreement.
June 8th, 2006 at 3:02 pm
I remember when TSR had their separate imprint for author-owned fiction. You’re right. It didn’t last very long. But I do remember reading at least one of the books and thinking it was pretty good, The Nine Gates by Phillip Brugalette. It was a fantasy set in a pseudo-Indian (as in India) setting.
June 16th, 2006 at 4:27 am
I remember you showing me that one. Do you still have your copy? Do you know if he’s written anything else?
June 16th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
I still have my copy here somewhere, and I’ve seen it selling on the amazon.com marketplace for something like a penny (plus shipping).
I did some research to see if he ever wrote anything else, and it looks like this was his only novel. He did some writing for the RPG market as well. Now he lives in the northwest and takes photographs that he uses as backdrops for his 3D characters.
His website is www.fotofantastique.com