Speculative Fiction News–15/05/11

Welcome along, folks. What’s does Speculative Fiction News have in store today?

Great stuff. As always. Read on to find out.

Let’s start off with a most excellent blog post by Beth Bernobich on the ‘rules’ of writing. Read it. That’s an order

Awards

Here are this year’s Locus Award Finalists.

The winners of the 2011 Ion Hobana Awards, a Romanian SF Awards set (thanks, Science Fiction Awards Watch).

The winners of the the 2011 Premio de las Editoriales Electrónicas, which are Spanish-language awards for online publication.

The winners of the 2010 Ursa Major Awards.

The Parsec Awards, for science-fiction podcasting, are open for nominations.

Interviews

Kate Wolford, editor of pro-paying market Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine, sat down with duotrope for an interview regarding EC. Read it here.

Here’s an interview with Nebula-nominated writer, Nnedi Okorafor, over at SFWA.

Excerpts

Here’s an audio excerpt from Rajaniemi Hannu’s novel, The Quantum Thief. This is read by Scott Brick and comes courtesy of tor.com.

Short Fiction

A whole heap of fresh short fiction for you this week.

New fiction at Fantasy Mag: Creation, by Jeffrey Ford.

At PodCastle this week: Household Spirits, by C.S.E Cooney.

New fiction at Lightspeed: Bibi from Jupiter, by Tessa Mellas. This is a reprint of a story that first appeared in StoryQuarterly in 2007.

New fiction at Strange Horizons: Young Love on the Run from the Federal Alien Administration New Mexico Division (1984), by Grant Stone.

New at tor.com: Crazy Me, by James Patrick Kelly.

Interzone issue 234 is out soon. Here’s a preview. Click on the images to enlarge them.

Here’s the TOC for the July/August issue of Analog, courtesy of SF Signal.

Markets

Crossed Genres is accepting submissions for a new anthology. Fat Girl in a Strange Land will be publishing stories between 2,000-6,000 words and will pay $10 per story. The protagonist must be female and overweight by today’s standards. Here are some detailed guidelines.

Liquid Imagination’s Dave Farland Kick Contest is now open for subs. Guidelines here.

While this isn’t spec fic, there aren’t all that many markets for historical short fiction. Tales of Old is a new market with that focus (and it appears they don’t mind a retelling of history, as long as the story’s set in a well researched historical setting). They’re paying 1.5 cents a word for stories between 1000 and 4500 words. Full guidelines here.

Redstone Science Fiction has closed to subs until August 1st.

And that’s about it for this week, apart from a plug for a new regular blog post right here. Recommended Reading is a weekly post, which will usually arrive on Friday evening, where i’ll choose my favorite short story read over the course of the week and discuss and dissect it from the viewpoint of a writer (me) working at improving his craft. This last week i looked at Elizabeth Bear’s award-winning story ‘Tideline.’

Happy writing everybody, and see you all soon!

Tags: Analog, Beth Bernobich, Crossed Genres, Enchanted Conversation, fantasy magazine, Ion Hobana Awards, lightspeed, Liquid Imagination, locus awards, Nnedi Okorafor, Parsec Awards, PodCastle, Premio de las Editoriales Electronicas, Rajaniemi Hannu, redstone SF, Strange Horizons, Tales of Old, tor.com, Ursa Major Awards