Blog
Ahoy, Critterfolk!
New entry Dec 07
Critter Notices
Critters is 23!
Yes, 23 years ago Critters was born. Wow! Thanks so much to all of you, who've made it such a resounding success!
Critters no longer accepting European Union members :(
It's with a heavy heart that I have to announce Critters can no longer accept people in the European Union as members. This is a result of the "GDPR" privacy laws going into effect. I'm a big fan of privacy, and applaud the general idea behind the GDPR, but the way it's implemented forces me to close the door to EU writers. [read more why...]Books from Critters!
Check out Books by Critters for books by your fellow Critterfolk, as well as my list of recommended books for writers.
New Book from a Critter Member
**NOW IN
PRINT EDITION
TOO!** Awesome new book,
HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR SPECULATIVE FICTION OPENINGS,
from a Critter member whose unearthed a shard of The Secret
to becoming a pro writer. Really good piece of work.
"...if you're at all concerned about story openings, you'd be nuts not to read what Qualkinbush has to say." —Wil McCarthy, author of BLOOM and THE COLLAPSIUMHow to Write SF
The Craft of Writing Science Fiction that Sells by Ben Bova, best-selling author and six-time Hugo Award winner for Best Editor. (This is one of the books your ol' Critter Captain learned from himself, and I highly recommend it.)
(Also via Amazon)
P&E Has a New Caretaker!
I'm very happy to announce that P&E has been handed off to a new caretaker! Check out the site for news and such. Hurrah!
Interviewed!
I'm being interviewed live on public radio for Critters 20th birthday. For those who want to listen, it's on the 10am (Mountain time) show on Thursday, 11/19/16, on Colorado Public Radio - www.cpr.org has streaming on the site or it's 90.1 FM in the Denver area. [Interview is done, you can listen on the site]
Free Web Sites
Free web sites for authors (and others) are available at www.nyx.net.
ReAnimus Acquires Advent!
ReAnimus Press is pleased to announce the acquisition of the legendary Advent Publishers! Advent is now a subsidiary of ReAnimus Press, and we will continue to publish Advent's titles under the Advent name. Advent was founded in 1956 by Earl Kemp and others, and has published the likes of James Blish, Hal Clement, Robert Heinlein, Damon Knight, E.E. "Doc" Smith, and many others. Advent's high quality titles have won and been finalists for several Hugo Awards, such as The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy and Heinlein's Children. Watch this space for ebook and print editions of all of Advent's current titles!
Network speeding up
I'm switching the connection over to a new, shiny 10X faster network because of all the load. There might be bits of downtime as your boxes learn new addresses and things. Should be brief. Let me know of any prolonged outages you see.
Preditors & Editors Changeover
With the very sad passing of Dave Kuzminski, who ran P&E, I've taken over the P&E duties. Lots of what I hope are improvements; check it out at pred-ed.com.
Critters Server is Dying has been Replaced
See important details here in my blog. Let me know if you find anything that isn't working right. (Manuscripts are now available for this week, FYI.)
Book Recommendation
THE SIGIL TRILOGY:
The universe is dying from within...
"Great stuff... Really enjoyed it." — SFWA Grandmaster Michael Moorcock
Announcing ReAnimus Press
If you need help making ebooks from manuscripts or print copies—or finding great stuff to read—look no further! An ebook publisher started by your very own Critter Captain. (And with a 12% Affiliate program.) [More]
~~~
FEATURED BOOK
~~~
Most Productive Critter (MPC) Awards
[To use an MPC, go here]
"Most" means...
There are two ways to earn an MPC award: The first is to earn the highest
score in any given week; the second is to do more than a certain number
of qualified critiques. Note that these are all within one workshop; credits
are not shared between workshops.
Loosely,
the winner is the Critter who did "the most" critiquing during the week,
defined (still loosely) as lots of lengthy critiques. More specifically,
the way I'll judge is this (done by a program, of course): Each
critique of 300 or more words is eligible (thus trying to outwit the
program with lots of short crits won't work). I'll run the program
sometime Tuesday or Wednesday (note emphasis on getting crits in early,
since you don't know when I'll run this). For each Critter, the program will
multiply the number of eligible critiques by the total number of
words in those eligible critiques. Note that this emphasizes number
of critiques slightly more than it does total number of words written
(but the 300 word cutoff prevents folks from cheating; the average critique
is about 450, so 300 is a pretty typical size).
For example, if
one Critter sends in four critiques of lengths, 200, 400, 800, and 1600
words, the eligible ones are the 400, 800, and 1600 (2800 words total)
and their score will be 3*2800 = 8400. If another critter sent in one
critique of 2800 words, their score is 1*2800. Highest score wins.
Sometimes we get folks who have, frankly, knocked the pants off winners
from other weeks in terms of productivity and yet still don't win, and
I think they deserve to be rewarded. Not to mention there's a certain
uncertainty about what it takes to win an MPC -- "How many critiques is
someone else doing? I'll feel lousy if I do 12 and someone else does
13," that kind of thing. No worries, mate!--
Anyone who submits MPC-award-qualifying critiques [300 words or more
and received before I run the program sometime on Tuesday] on 10
or more of the stories in a given week wins an automatic MPC award.
(For double-sized weeks, either 10 in the first week or 15 in both weeks;
and for a triple-sized batch, also 20 done over all three weeks or 25
in four weeks. But you can't earn more than two in multi-week batches.)
(And no, the 'regular' winner does not get two MPCs if they're
also above ten.) :)
A free "jump to front of the queue Pass"! Sort of like a
"get out of jail free card" in Monopoly. The winner can use the pass
any time (but only one use each) to move a ms. to the next week's batch.
Note that dedicated novel reader points DO NOT count toward the MPC
award (I don't track weekly reading on those -- and I don't want to!).
I hope this provides an incentive to write more critiques (and add content to
those barely-passing 100 word crits). I'll keep an eye on things, and if
it seems like this is just encouraging more fluff words, or lengthy
recapitulations of plot, or other tricks, I'll amend the scheme or even drop
it. (Hey, I've graded over a dozen years of class papers, remember? I'm
wise to all that clever stuff. :-) I might consider other prizes, if I think
of anything in the Critter spirit. (I considered "a month off", e.g.,
three free critique points, but that promotes _fewer_ not more crits...)
I'm also thinking about a monthly Most Helpful Critter award voted on by
the authors, but no details or programs to handle the work yet, so stay tuned.
One step at a time.
Anyway, Crit Early and Often!
To encourage mo' better critting, I've
decided to try a weekly award for the Most Productive Critter.
"Qualifying Critique" means...
Path to glory #1... Earn the highest score in any given week...
Path to glory #2... Do more than a certain number of qualified critiques
What's the prize?
[To use an MPC, go here]
