Thursday, May 19, 2011

Science Fiction And Fantasy Writer's Chat 5/05/11 with Lou Anders

sffwrtcht: Next week, #sffwrtcht returns to its usual Wed night and time 9 pm EST with @sfsignal (Fri May 06 00:59:22 +0000 2011)
sffwrtcht: Welcome to Science Fiction Fantasy Writer's Chat. Our goal is to talk w/ writers, editors, & others abt the craft of writing, specifically related to writing speculative fiction. Our format is round table discussion. Please restrict questions to writing craft, business of writing & the specific works of the guest. No queries, no pitching, no politics, etc. Please wait until your question gets answered to ask another & use the hashtag #sffwrtcht for all questions and comments. It's up to the guest whether the question time will run longer than our allotted hour slot. Upcoming guests are: 5/11 @SF Signal 5/18 @Nnedi 5/25 @MBraneSF & 6/01 @AndrewMayer #sffwrtcht (Fri May 06 01:00:58 +0000 2011)
sffwrtcht: Many of you may be familiar with tonight's guest as he's active on Twitter and FB and at Cons. In my experience, he's the face of @PYR_Books, where he serves as Editorial Director and Art Director He's also the editor of acclaimed anthologies, including "Swords & Dark Magic" co-edited with @JonathanStrahan. A 2011/2010/2009/2008/2007 Hugo Award nominee, 2010 Shirley Jackson Award nominee, 2008 Philip K. Dick Award nominee. 2010/2009/2007 Chesley Award nominee/winner/nominee, and 2006 World Fantasy Award nominee #sffwrtcht (Fri May 06 01:01:42 +0000 2011)
sffwrtcht: Besides, PYR, he's edited anthologies for Solaris, Gallery, HarperEOS, Roc, Monkeybrain books and Wildside Press. Welcome @LouAnders! Thanks for joining us! #sffwrtcht (Fri May 06 01:02:08 +0000 2011)

LouAnders Lou Anders Thank you Bryan. Very good to be here. #sffwrtcht 5 May
BryanThomasS: @LouAnders So Lou, when and how did you discover your passion for speculative fiction? #sffwrtcht (Fri May 06 01:02:46 +0000 2011)


LouAnders Lou Anders Several times/places. If I had to boil it to a few key events I'd say the first was an exposure to the TV show Land of the Lost. I had no idea until years later how many actual SF authors wrote for that show - Niven, Sturgeon, etc. 
But it was a show with dinosaurs, wormholes, lost civilizations, micro/bubble universes, curved space 
5 May#sffwrtcht

LouAnders Lou Anders Remember when they stood on a mountain and, looking through binoculars, saw their own backs? #sffwrtcht 5 May

LouAnders Lou Anders Blew my young mind. Kid in deep south, whose teachers wouldn't even say word "Evolution" even in context of mathematical theory. A few years later, I found some battered paperback copies of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame volumes. #sffwrtcht 5 May

LouAnders Lou Anders
And then when I was 12 or 13, my dad shoved A Princess of Mars into my hands and ordered me to read it. I resisted of course. "It has a naked woman on the cover." "I know it has a naked woman, but it's still a good book." I ended up reading every ERB I could find over the next year, then moved on to Moorcock and Lieber. #sffwrtcht 5 May
LouAnders Lou Anders I saw Excalibur in the 5th grade. One of my teachers was there too. She held me after class the next day. Turns out she was afraid I'd rat her out. We agreed that the sex wasn't gratuitous but was necessary to the plot. And not to tell anyone else we'd seen each other there. #sffwrtcht 5 May

LouAnders Lou Anders In the 1990s, when the Land of the Lost script was floating around hollywood in development hell, my then-script writing partner and I tried to get on it. So upset with the Will Ferrell remake. #sffwrtcht 5 May


LouAnders Lou Anders It could have been like a Jurassic Park style film, only with a few sensawunder concepts #sffwrtcht 5 May



LouAnders Lou Anders Yes, suddenly we find ourselves in an era when only the movies based on novels/comics are any good. Odd that. But wonderful.#sffwrtcht


LouAnders Lou Anders Our first one got passed around. On it, we got hired by a production studio to do a work for hire for one of their directors. That never got made, but then a production company hired us to write another which also never got made. But for a while there was "heat' on us and we had CAA agents and lots of meetings. Michael Bey's right hand man wanted him to do 1 of our films. Turned it down as being 2 close to Armageddon. We shared scenes. #sffwrtcht 5 May

LouAnders Lou Anders 
Well, we also had a standing invitation to pitch Voyager. Which we did several times. #sffwrtcht 
5 May


LouAnders Lou Anders No, but I wrote The Making of Star Trek First Contact book and over 500 articles for Star Trek Monthly and B5 Magazine. #sffwrtcht 5 May

LouAnders Lou Anders I've had a very few short stories published. And I'm on draft 5 of my first ever novel right now.#sffwrtcht 5 May 

LouAnders Lou Anders 5 years in LA as journalist on SF TV sets, writing screenplays. So.. ex girlfriend, Harvard MBA hires me to move to SF and be the content person for an online reading startup. Oh boy... Long story. I'll condense. #sffwrtcht 5 May  


LouAnders Lou Anders 
So Bookface was "browser based reading" that tracked ad revenues and paid publishers for the time people read online. #sffwrtcht 5 May


LouAnders Lou Anders In one year, we had 42000 users, and thousands of titles in all genres, nonfiction, religion, computing, childrens, you name it. #sffwrtcht 5 May


LouAnders Lou Anders We operated on assumption SF writers would be most open to new tech. Wrong. Romance authors were. (and mystery authors were afraid of us) #sffwrtcht 5 May 



LouAnders Lou Anders So my boss sent me around the country to SF and romance cons signing up authors and publishers. When the ad market died, we folded. And I knew everyone in SF, so I freelanced a few anthologies and magazines (and Gardner Dozois loved my first Roc anthology Live Without a Net. Then Prometheus Books wanted to get into the fiction space, and were advised to pick a niche, so chose SF #sffwrtcht 5 May

LouAnders Lou Anders I joined in March 2004, shook hands with boss and went to China for a month, where I selected most of first season. We debuted March 2005 with John Meaney's PARADOX.  #sffwrtcht 5 May

LouAnders Lou Anders James, thanks. No plans for it. I have another steampunk western in Chris Roberson's Adventure VOl 1 I'd like to revisit though#sffwrtcht 5 May

Participants


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