Actually, fuck it, I’m ranting
Every now and then publishers I respect a lot go and do something stupid, and this makes me a little sad. This weeks’ case-in-point comes courtesy of the writer’s guidelines for Ticonderoga’s latest anthology, which I read through and had a complete WTF kind of moment when I stumbled across this. A masculine tone will be favoured but not sought exclusively (i.e. avoid becoming bogged down with intricate descriptions and fancy window dressing in your world building; save your word count for a solid scene – or 2 or 3 – of conflict, action, aggression, etc). (see the addendum below) I mean, yeah, seriously, what the fuck? Setting aside the fact that anyone’s daft enough to phrase their preferences like this in an online world where x-fail has become part of the dialogue and there’s a new generation of readers (and writers) sensitive to gender issues, I actually found this kind of disappointing because it runs up against one of
