Welcome to the inaugural linkspam!

I keep tossing links up on my twitter and then not being able to find them because everything is a jumble, so – it occured to me collecting them in one place might be a good idea. Mostly this is stuff related to writing and reading – cool things to think about, cool places to submit your work.

Stuff to Read

Things I’ve enjoyed this month that are available for free online:

• Zen Cho’s super short story Unterminator. God all her fiction so good *__*

• Karin Lowachee has apparently been posting little vingettes from her Warchild universe on Tumblr! Here’s her vingette tag, warning for FEELS if you’re at all familiar with that universe.

• M Sereno’s gorgeous poem Reasons I Checked Out of the Diversity Discussion Du Jour.

 Submit Your Work

Places to submit your short stories:

• Lightspeed Magazine is accepting submissions for PoC Destroy Science Fiction. Get your stories in by February 19th!

• Booksmugglers has an open call for short stories. Theme: superheroes! Deadline: December 31st.

• Queer Africa II is open for submissions until January 31st.

Meta on Writing

I’m not a huge fan of writing advice – it tends to stress me out more than help me – but this month I’ve found quite a few really cool/inspiring tidbits.

• Junot Diaz’s thoughts and advice on writing has been some of the best, for me, and this short video interview is no exception. “What’s the use of being in mapped territory?”

• Author Kameron Hurley’s 5 things every writer should know about book marketing is some really great advice. I’m a marketing professional by day (god that’s still weird to say, but it’s true) and some of these are sort of obvious things I hadn’t articulated to myself re: writing.

• A really great post on why stories deviate from their outlines and how that’s totally okay. As someone who relies heavily on outlines this post was extremely educational.

• Author Jessie Burton shares her 10 tips for finishing your novel. Thinking of printing some of this out because it’s so spot-on.

 Cool Stuff From All Over

• This hostel in Tokyo lets you sleep surrounded by 1,700 books.

• New Yorker profile of amazing young poet Warsan Shire.

• Old article that’s new to me: Lise Meitner, Jewish woman who got written out of history after helping to discover nuclear fission in the 1940s. Did some of her work while fleeing from the Nazis.

• Star Wars has been featured prominently in the recent elections in Ukraine, but my favorite instance of it is still my hometown turning a Lenin statue into a wifi-transmitting Darth Vader.

• Vernieda Vergara on 5 sports-themed mangas you should check out.

• Review of a movie I desperately want to watch: Australia’s first contemporary Indigenous dance film.

Help Out!

I grew up in online fandom, and one of my favorite aspects of that community has always been the ability to help each other out and sponsor niche projects. So, a few things you might consider donating to:

• Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, writer of SF/F and non-fiction, among other things, has recently experienced a loss and could use some financial help. The fundraiser friends have set up for her also offers some amazing rewards for donors:Funds for Rochita.

• #INeedDiverseGames, an initiative to bring more diversity into video games, is looking to expand their base of operations.

OK, that’s it for the October linkspam! If you have any comments or suggestions for next time please do let me know.