2011 Contest???

[Christopher_Heath]

Jordan, you seem to be taking some misguided flack for your success since winning WotF. I thought it was actually cool to see someone I've shared ToC with (3 offhand, that I can think of) and talked to about writing over the period of a couple of years to advance to the level that you are at. I really liked your Sails and Sorcery story The Second Voyage of the Stormreaver's Blade, and the others, and it is obvious you have talent. I'll never attend Clarion West, as I'm not that sociable and generally uncomfortable around strangers, and Writers of the Future--my chances are greatly diminished since I don't want to write anything but S&S/dark fantasy (maybe a few S&S tales have done well there, I'm not sure, but I think percentage-wise it's a very uncommon). I've only tried them twice a long time ago. At any rate, you've done something really amazing, that I know I couldn't do, so a tip of the hat to you, sir. You put forth the effort and succeeded.

[Jordan Lapp]

Chris,

Thanks! I definitely perk up whenever I see your name on a ToC too, and I've dropped into your website a couple of times over the last six months to see how you're faring. It's cool to see you getting back into the RPG writing!

As for the contest accepting dark fantasy, I won with an Urban Fantasy piece, and that helped to get me the gig writing S&S/dark fantasy for Warhammer (as well as the other line I'm not permitted to announce yet). I know that Jim Hines wrote a S&S comedy piece that won a few years back, but I admit the anthologies that have come out since K D Wentworth began editing them have been heavily skewed in favour of sci-fi shorts. I'm not quite sure why that is, but I'll be sure to ask K.D. when I see her in April.

I think what's truly important is developing networking connections, and for that I'd suggest attending various workshops where you can meet and bond with pro-writers. I've been to Clarion West, WotF, and am going to be attending Superstars at the end of April. A LOT of this business really is "who you know", so I try and cultivate those personal connections. Granted, it's expensive to attend those workshops, but if you look at it as an investment in your career (much like tuition for a degree), it tends to pay off. You can deduct tuition against your writing income (one of my writing gigs is paying for Superstars), and honestly, each of these investment, though they were a severe hardship at the time, have pretty much paid off economically through the contacts I made there.

[Christopher_Heath]

Jordan, that's all very sound advice. I'll try to look into some of these avenues. I've been outlining a sci-fi story for WotF, maybe it'll get written some day.

[Jordan Lapp]

Chris,

I guess what it comes down to is "name recognition" or "audience building". At this point, I feel like name recognition is far more important than audience building. I mean, unless you're being published in Asimov's, likely the markets we're hitting right now consist of hundreds of readers tops. Do you remember Daniel Blackston mentioning that under his management Flash Swords was getting 10s of readers? What's the point of publishing in those venues?

Far better to spend your time getting published in the majors than building an audience. I study markets, figure out what they want, and then practice writing that kind of story. In addition to better pay, the name recognition you can get from such a sale is, I'm betting, far greater than what you'd get selling S&S to some flyspeck magazine.

Even as a novelist, I'm open to writing different genres. The Warhammer stuff is S&S, but the other series is Urban Fantasy. I "co-wrote" a military thriller with a bestselling author with almost no speculative elements in it that will hopefully sell thousands of copies because of his name. I mean, when you have a "brand", which you get from name recognition, maybe then it's okay to specialize. But certainly not as journeymen writers like we are.

YMMV of course, but being able to write broadly is a skill we should all develop...

Jordan