Interview with Gord McLeod on Community Fridays

Welcome to Community Fridays! During this weekly event, I interview authors, editors, publishers, and pretty much anyone else who I can get my hands on from the writing and publishing community. Hope you enjoy, and feel free to suggest new participants. Check out current and past interviews here. Only have a minute? Click here for interviews at a glance.

Today's guest is Gord McLeod, tech blogger, fiction writer in the steampunk genre, and owner of the new site Fiction Improbable.

In the comments section on a post on your blog, we had a little mini-brawl over whether it was better to write the first draft quickly or slowly. Just kidding; it was all very civil. Honestly, I'm still on the fence on this one. What, in your opinion, are the benefits of taking your time on a first draft?

The big benefit that comes to mind first is that when you take your time on a first draft you have the time to plan it out well and make sure you’re not missing any vital pieces of the story. Rushing carries the risk that your draft will have giant holes. The potential problem is the same thing though—you have the time to cover ground. A lot of ground. So much ground that you risk not finishing at all, of getting caught up in an unending cycle of editing that leaves you unable to write and make progress.

Interview with Dianna Gunn on Community Fridays

I'm thrilled to be bringing Community Fridays back to my blog!

During Community Fridays, I interview authors, editors, publishers, and pretty much anyone else who I can get my hands on from the writing and publishing community. Hope you enjoy, and feel free to suggest new participants. Check out current and past interviews here. Only have a minute? Click here for interviews at a glance.

Today's guest is Dianna Gunn, an intern at the speculative fiction emagazine Penumbra, and also a writer and blogger. Stay tuned for promotion ideas for writers and tips about getting published in e-magazines.

You're working as an intern at Penumbra eMagazine, which publishes speculative fiction. Tell us a little about the magazine's focus, and how it's different than some of the others available.

First off, Penumbra is an eMagazine. Running everything online means we have a pretty low overhead compared to other magazines in the same genre, so we can afford to sell Penumbra for less without sacrificing the authors' pay. Second off, we pay our authors the professional rate of five cents per word. There are only a handful of other magazines that pay the professional rate for stories. So when you buy from us, you know you're not just supporting Penumbra--you're supporting the authors you love.