Lavie Tidhar is the World Fantasy Award winning author of Osama, of The Bookman Histories trilogy and many other works. He also won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novella, for “Gorel & The Pot-Bellied God”, and was nominated variously for a BSFA, Campbell, Sturgeon and Sidewise awards. He grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and in South Africa but currently resides in London.

Lavie can be found online at lavietidhar.wordpress.com or on twitter as @lavietidhar.

For this interview, Lavie Tidhar talks about the second World SF Travel Fund, the recipients of which are Csilla Kleinheincz and Rochita Loenen-Ruiz.

CHARLES TAN: Hi Lavie! Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. For those unfamiliar with the World SF Travel Fund, could you tell us what it is about?

LAVIE TIDHAR: It’s a small initiative, to help people involved in genre fiction – writers, editors, translators, bloggers – from outside of the main Anglophone world travel to a major convention. Predominantly, we have been associated with the World Fantasy Convention, which is a more professionally-aimed convention, and can offer the most benefit.

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I’m very excited to share, at John DeNardo’s invitation, the genesis of Raygun Chronicles: Space Opera For A New Age. My latest project as an anthologist (provided our Kickstarter succeeds), it’s an anthology of new and reprint space opera stories, contemporary but with a classic bent. For many SFF fans, space opera is part of what made them fall in love with speculative fiction. Such was certainly the case for me. I grew up watching Star Trek reruns every night before dinner and then Star Wars hit theatres and I was in love with the possibilities of storytelling. While I shunned the cheesy Dr. Who, I loved Space: 1999, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century, and movies that followed like The Black Hole, the animated Hobbit, and so on.

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Crowd funding is the in thing for obtaining money to fund a variety of projects, with Kickstarter being the most prominent of these sites. With new projects going live daily, it’s a chore to keep up with, let alone find, interesting genre projects. The Crowd Funding Roundup will be our effort to bring projects we think are interesting to your attention so you can, if you so choose, decide to help out. These posts are a collaborative effort between James Aquilone and JP Frantz.

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Crowd funding is the in thing for obtaining money to fund a variety of projects, with Kickstarter being the most prominent of these sites. With new projects going live daily, it’s a chore to keep up with, let alone find, interesting genre projects. The Crowd Funding Roundup will be our effort to bring projects we think are interesting to your attention so you can, if you so choose, decide to help out. These posts are a collaborative effort between James Aquilone and JP Frantz.

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A few weeks back in our Crowd Funding Roundup post we covered the Kickstarter campaign for a crowd-sourced SF movie called Project London (and with 2 days left to go, they’ve met their goal, congrats!). While perusing more info about the movie, I ran across this music video, made for the movie, by the band Half-Acre Day. It features scenes from the movie and you can view it as a different movie trailer set to a kickin’ beat. I rather like it.

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Crowd funding is the in thing for obtaining money to fund a variety of projects, with Kickstarter being the most prominent of these sites. With new projects going live daily, it’s a chore to keep up with, let alone find, interesting genre projects. The Crowd Funding Roundup will be our effort to bring projects we think are interesting to your attention so you can, if you so choose, decide to help out. These posts are a collaborative effort between James Aquilone and JP Frantz.

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SF Signal welcomes Bradley P. Beaulieu and Matt Forbeck as they discuss their respective experiences with crowdfunding through Kickstarter…

Brad: I’ve just launched my first Kickstarter, and one of the first things I’ve noticed (only a few days in as I write this) is that it brings the author, or any Kickstarter team, much closer to the consumer than ever before, even more than I thought it was going to. Not only is the consumer interacting directly with author by pre-ordering their products, the author is almost by necessity interacting with the consumer. I say “almost” because technically speaking, the Kickstarter owner need not interact with their backers, but boy are you missing out on an opportunity if you don’t.

First of all, your backers have a lot to say. They can add comments to the Kickstarter itself or to the updates that you occasionally add. They give encouragement on stretch goals and even offer up ideas for new ones, especially if you ask. Furthermore, interacting with the people who are buying what you’re selling is immensely gratifying. Having the chance to talk to those who are already champions of your work, or those who might be, is a great way to explore and benefit from the human aspects of Kickstarter. Writing is a lonely business indeed, and the chance to have a high-traffic virtual store for a month or so is an exciting and heartwarming experience.

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Crowd funding is the in-thing for obtaining money to fund a variety of projects, with Kickstarter being the most prominent of these sites. With new projects going live daily, it’s a chore to keep up with, let alone find, interesting genre projects. The Crowd Funding Roundup will be our effort to bring projects we think are interesting to your attention so you can, if you so choose, decide to help out. These posts are a collaborative effort between James Aquilone and JP Frantz.

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Matthew Wayne Selznick is a creator working with words, music, pictures and people. Through MWS Media, he provides a variety of creative services to independent creators, agencies, and entertainment companies. He lives in Long Beach, California and on the web at http://www.mattselznick.com

As an independent creator, I believe a creative endeavor isn’t truly art until it’s experienced by others. As an advocate of the DIY ethic, I’m committed to minimizing the separation between author and reader. I’ve watched with interest over the last six years as the neo-patronage / crowdfunding movement gains steam.

As I write, a Kickstarter campaign to fund the creation of my book “Pilgrimage – A Novel of the Sovereign Era“ is exactly half over and slightly over half funded. From within this Schrödinger’s box of crowdfunding, I’d like to share my particular experience. It’s my hope authors might learn something they can use, and readers will have a new perspective on the process.

I’m repeatedly asked: “Why not just write the book and publish it the normal way, instead of asking for funding up front?”

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REVIEW SUMMARY: A picture book from Jules Sherred replete with visual Easter eggs references, and yes, zombies.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Canadian youngling Fred tries to escape his own personal part of the zombie apocalypse

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Good use of repetition and rhyme; colorful art.
CONS: The Easter eggs are sometimes too difficult to see; the book probably could have stood to have been a bit longer.
BOTTOM LINE: Shoot the zombie in the head, Fred!

Fred is a Canadian child who has come face to face with his personal slice of the zombie apocalypse. Five zombies are after him, and his only lifeline is a Royal Mounted Policeman, a Mountie, with repetitious but practical advice in dealing with the zombies chasing after him. Shoot them in the head! But will Fred survive?
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[GUEST POST] Jules Sherred on Five Little Zombies and Fred, A Not-For-Children Children’s Book

Jules Sherred does way more than should be legal. Most notably, she is the General Manager and Programming Director of The Look 24/7, host of the Geeky Pleasures Radio Show and the offshoot website, Geeky Pleasures, and core contributor to Wired’s GeekMom. She’s already written two non-fiction books — From The Mundane To The Insane: A Wonderful Journey Without A Destination and Tales Of A Lupus Butterfly — the partial proceeds of which go to lupus research and treatment, is working on another book called Nerd Love, and is beyond excited to make Five Little Zombies And Fred a real thing for people to hold, read, and love. You can follow her on Twitter @GeekyJules. Also, SHE LOVES STAR TREK.

If you are a creative, then you probably know what it is like to be plagued with idea after idea. Some of these ideas may be so ridiculous that they should never make it past the idea phase. Others may be so ridiculous that they MUST go beyond the idea phase. Sometimes, it can be quite difficult to tell the difference between to two. That is when you call on the help of friends you trust to tell it to you straight; friends who are willing to put aside any worry that they have of hurting your feelings when they have to say, “Dude. That idea is stupid. Move onto something else. Now.”

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In the past few weeks, CtC has asked a couple of pertinent questions: What makes a convention worth going to, and what did you love (and hate) about WorldCon, DragonCon and PAX? The feedback was intriguing, and it gave this rookie convention programming director some actionable (but painful) insights into running a successful con.

Bottom line: It’s a big-name guests that get people to a convention, but it’s the sense of community that keeps them coming back…

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This weekend, three major geek conventions throw down all at once: PAX, DragonCon and WorldCon. Short of the Hollywood-infused spectacle that is Comic-Con, this will be the biggest convention weekend of 2010. As a rookie programming director for ConGlomeration 2011, it’s also my most hyperconcentrated research opportunity — so , of course, I’m unable to attend any of the trio of A-list conventions. (Stupid adult obligations)

That’s where you guys come in. Roughly 60,000 people attend PAX. Another 40,000 attend DragonCon. WorldCon averages something in the neighborhood of tenth of either previous figure. In any case, about 100,000 geeks — professional and otherwise — will be at a convention this weekend, and a bunch of you read SF Signal, too.

So spill it.

I want to know:

• What rocks and what sucks about each convention?
• What makes DragonCon so special?
• How did PAX double in size every year for the last seven?
• Are the Hugos really as awesome as we imagine?
• Who’s the geek ubermensch: Nathan Fillion or Wil Wheaton?

Cite specific examples and show your work.

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ConGlomeration — the half-mad sci-fi con occurring in Louisville, KY this Easter weekend — is once again turning to online fandom to direct our programming. This time, I ask whether trying to structure too much programming isn’t the problem.

As part of geek culture’s continued campaign to subvert civilization to our own ends, industry and business conventions have begun to embrace a supposedly novel concept called the unconference. Rather than having a set structure of meetings, panels, keynotes and breakout sessions, the unconference is intentionally unstructured. Attendees meet, gather, form discussion groups and organize programming on the spot.

Think of an unconference as a live-action discussion forum where someone starts a thread and, if it’s interesting, others join in. If the ad hoc panel isn’t to your liking, go elsewhere. Just like online, these discussion threads have moderators, which unconferences call facilitators. In most cases, unconferences produce better, more productive discussions and instruction than any structured set of activities could ever provide. (Though with most business conventions, that’s a very low bar to cross.)

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