Author Lou Antonelli is running for a SFWA board position, and as he’s looking into the process, he discovered SFWA runs their elections all through a survey site called survey monkey — where a couple of people have access to its results.

I run my author surveys through this site to see what my audience wants me to write, and there’s no safeguards involved. I could just vote myself twenty times and no one could be the wiser.

It would make sense if something like this is happening in SFWA as it’s odd the decisions that get made (and the awards that get won). It calls into question whether they would even allow votes for people like Mr. Antonelli to be tallied properly, or if they go in and simply hit buttons for others to drive numbers up.

The same could be happening for their awards like the Nebulas. There was a large group of good authors who were nominated last year, who were completely shut out by the club (and name-called and worse by the folk in charge of SFWA), who had some of the most popular books on Amazon last year and more. It didn’t make sense that they received nothing when their works are so universally hailed.

SFWA needs to make their process more transparent so the people can see how these votes are tallied and if there’s any possibility of shenanigans. It’s hard to trust much of the current leadership involved, as they’re known for being dishonest pedophile advocates.

On Amazon, you can vote with your dollar and vote for cultural change away from this craziness and back to what made sci-fi great in the first place — a sense of wonder, real science fiction. Pre-Order Colony Launch now and read the best sci-fi book of 2020 on its release! 

I’m a fan of the classic pulps, having studied what made our American culture so great in the first half of the 20th century, which then declined as the entertainment industry became weaponized as a political tool. Normal people, consequently, exited culture, which led to its slow spiral which started in the 60s, but reached its apex in poor quality in the 90s-2000s, where the culture collapsed and never recovered.

Books went from selling millions to selling thousands. People stopped seeing movies. People stopped reading comics and they became a niche market. You know the drill if you’ve read along.

Both the content and the business models have been failures from the mainstream industry, and it’s why I’ve spent time on my last several projects doing something different.

My work on Dynamite Thor was a study of a golden age character, redoing a hero as an actual hero, adding humor to comics, making comics fun again. It highlighted that 1950s Americana which we lost as a culture.  It may have seemed an esoteric concept to pursue, but it was a great work and test as a writer to learn to revitalize.

Another area where I’ve found needing revitalization is short comics. I started and continue to release them on my Patreon as I get them done after reading wonderful works by Steve Ditko in a Masters of Suspense compilation. I reviewed the book here:

Back when comics were a thriving industry, Marvel, Charelton Comics, EC, and others had magazines every month dedicated to shorts. They’d make punchy, witty, concepts and really exercise the mind creatively by doing different things — Jack Kirby even made romance comics into something super popular.

All of these had short concepts, packing a ton of story into 5 or 10 pages. Each story had something wildly different than the next. They made for incredibly refreshing reads.

This is what inspired me to do shorts on my patreon, which I’ve been coming out with and producing monthly in conjunction with my regular comics.

With the quarantine, I figure it’s best to get those out to a bigger and wider audience, so I compiled what I have to date into Spectacular Comics #1. This book has a little of everything — cute wholesome stories, horror, samurai, I wanted to use my comic storytelling to try something different each time, and with short comics it gives me more luxury to follow the creative instinct.

It’s already at #3 on Amazon and has three 5-star reviews. This is a great comic to bring back classic-style culture and you’ll really enjoy it. The print edition is “processing” right now so I’m just waiting on it to go live, but you can get Spectacular Comics and make comics great again on kindle for only $3.99.

Read today, and see why short comics are so fun!

It’s unbelievable how dishonest and destructive SFWA is as an organization toward both readers and authors alike. Over the years, we’ve detailed on the blog their lack of standards for entry to the organization, their abject lies about minority authors, their troubles with pedophilia — and now they’re taking another step in their point and shriek mob tactics: targeting disabled readers.

There’s a website called the Internet Archive, which is a non-profit organization specializing in creating a free library — universal access to all knowledge — a noble endeavor to give the people the chance to be educated through reading. It’s got a treasure trove of knowledge, almost every ancient text under the sun, plus a ton of public domain works from the early 1900s which would be considered “problematic” for publishers to get out there today. The archive works with various libraries for ebook lending programs and the like also, really the library of the future today.

SFWA, an organization which is anti-literature and anti-free thought, of course has a history of rabble rousing about this site. Instead of actually helping authors, they work to remove sources where people actually read where they don’t control the content — thought police in action.

They attacked the Internet Archive in 2018, but started again yesterday claiming the Internet Archive was “pirating” Chuck Wendig’s work.

Wendig — who has attacked your favorite Hispanic author unprovoked on social media — went ballistic on social media, documented here:

Chuck Wendig: Capitalism is bad unless its "muh books."

He has 12 total downloads on the Internet Archive Library. pic.twitter.com/moT68yMNIA

— Dataracer (@Dataracer117) March 30, 2020

Their President Mary Robinette Kowal also joined in the fray attacking the archive, spending her time as president chasing windmills like this rather than actually doing anything to help authors in these times.

What’s ridiculous about this whole situation, and puts even more egg on SFWA’s face for this, is the internet archive is NOT pirating Wendig’s work. The Library of Congress uses the site in a library capacity — and they have a program for disabled people to be able to get access to literature. There is an encrypted code someone needs to have access through the Library of Congress to obtain Wendig’s work through this site.

So Wendig is attacking libraries as “piracy.”

12 disabled people downloaded his book through the program. Wendig and SFWA do not want disabled people to be able to legally have access to fiction, apparently.

It’s also important to note that SFWA place politics with who they “defend” in such instances. Award-winning and highly regarded author Richard Fox had a legitimate piracy complaint in 2019, where the hate website, File 770, launched an attack on Fox and tried to distribute his work for free from their website. SFWA was largely silent on the matter. Kowal did not make twitter posts about it. Fox is a member in good standing of SFWA. So why wouldn’t they protect him from a legitimate piracy case?

It’s all outrage mob of the week — SFWA hates authors who are productive, hates disabled people, hates minorities. Their track record is clear. This organization is a complete disaster and has absolutely no purpose other than to harass and troll.

My new science fiction Colony Launch is available for pre-order. It’s a story of building a noble future, getting away from the troublemakers like SFWA, bringing out the best in humanity for a new future — just like Science Fiction was always meant to be. Pre-order here and enjoy great sci-fi. 

If you watch my youtube streams, you’d know I had to move houses this week in the middle of this nutty pandemic.

It was a rather stressful ordeal. I kept my family away from the new house and the movers while I coordinated everything, unpacked most of the items myself, disinfected the entire house with Lysol and clorox, made sure it’s safe for the week.

…only to find the new house has a gas leak. Joy!

Now heat and everything is shut down, family is still not here, I’m trying to handle this. Yikes.

It killed my writing schedule and energy to do anything creative, but I was able to get a couple of formatting things done.

One, Flying Sparks Four, Five and Six (which comprise volume 2 for those who supported the crowdfunds) are now out as single issues on Amazon for Kindle. I’ve made the series available this way for folk who don’t want to spend big chunks at once. There will be print versions available later as I’m able to get them formatted.

Finally, and much more exciting, Colony Launch, my new science fiction novel, is available for download. As the title suggests, it’s about launching a new colony in the future, dealing with all of the bureaucratic hurdles the government puts in place, with all of the deep characterization you’d expect from my work. You can pre-order it here. 

I’ll hopefully get back to writing soon with some pretty cool announcements. There’s a lot coming down the pipeline so thanks for your patience!