Spec Fic for Newbies: A Beginner’s Guide to Writing Subgenres of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror

Beam aboard your own Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror classroom with Spec Fic for Newbies: A Beginner’s Guide to Writing Subgenres of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror (Luna Press)! This new writing guide by myself and Tiffani Angus is ideal for students or for those who always wished they could have studied these exciting fields! Indeed, it’s ideal for anyone who wants to try their hand at writing speculative fiction!

Based on our combined 20+ years of classroom experience teaching literature and creative writing, this book offers aspiring Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror writers (as well as those wishing to teach them!) a variety of entry points into these exciting and popular subgenres.

We’ve had a fabulous first month of Spec Fic for Newbies being out in the world, with the book garnering a #1 New Release banner from Amazon US and subsequently selling out at the Luna Press table during the recent Eastercon launch event! But don’t worry, there are still plenty of copies left! Check out our linktree for purchasing options!

Spec Fic for Newbies offers “a sense of fun and exploration that you don’t always get from dusty ‘let’s teach you how to write’ books”, as Pete Sutton said in his review. And I think that sums the project up well. Because this is not a book about gatekeeping, it’s about blowing the gates wide open and encouraging new (or even more established) writers to tackle subgenres they may not have experimented with before!

Spec Fic for Newbies is broken down into bite-sized subgenres with a fun, open, and contemporary approach. Each chapter contains 10 subgenres or tropes, with a quick and nerdy history of each derived from classroom teaching practices, along with a list of potential pitfalls, a description of why it’s fun to write in these subgenres, as well as activities for new writers to try out and to get them started! The thirty subgenres include the likes of: Aliens! Big Dumb Objects! Solarpunk! Urban Fantasy! Cosmic Horror! Vampires! Zombies! Spaceships! And more! It’s the next best thing to being in class with myself (SF short story writer and past winner of Aberystwyth University Lecturer of the Year!) and Tiffani (director of Underhill Academy and fantasy novelist!).

We recently had a chance to discuss the origins of the book and our intention on John Scalzi’s Whatever blog if you want to check that out. Or maybe you want to see us in action and want to click across to one of the most fun interviews we’ve done about the book with Lauren McMenemy at Horror Tree.

And, if you want to see what all the fuss is about, don’t forget the purchasing options!