Cross-posted from the comic’s blog:
Hi guys! As some of you may know, Strange Horizons recently posted a critical piece on women SciFi novelists. The article addresses how women SciFi authors rarely get reviewed in the book community, and this reduces publicity and popularity for women authors. This article has led to a lot of attention/renewed attention for women SciFi authors who might have been overlooked.
I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that I’m now one of those authors. And a reader just emailed me to let me know that Amazon is pushing advertising for Digital Divide today. If you haven’t yet bought a copy, please consider buying one from Amazon today. It’s a measly $5 and this could be a make-or-break day for the novel. Here is the Amazon (US) link again. Links to international Amazon sales sites are available at the Book page.
Thanks, guys. I never expected to get here, and I’m starting to wonder if I can get somewhere else.
(And support women SciFi authors in general, because jeezy-peet! Genitals don’t dictate who dreams of going to the stars.)
K.B. SPANGLER 
Is this why you use a name of indeterminate gender on your book?
Nope! I’m just a privacy buff. I wanted to start building a portfolio of work under my own name, but didn’t want the full driver’s license info on the covers. That’s somehow… creepy to me. Seeing your own name stare back at you… And pseudonyms can open up a whole new world of challenges. I split the difference, but it has nothing to do with being a woman.
Two of my favorite three sci fi authors are female, if we don’t count you. Three of four if we do. If we expand that to fantasy and urban fantasy as well, we add four more women, one more guy.
I’m probably atypical, but I like stories about Characters Doing Things, and somehow those tend to be more from the women so far. There are vast tracts of my shelf space given over to guys whose writing I enjoyed for years, until they just started dribbling acres of word-vomit onto the pages instead of telling stories (lookin’ at you, Weber, would be looking at Jordan, but he has since passed)… but the women seem to be consistent performers across time. I honestly have no idea why that is- maybe the guys just decide to stop listening to their editors, or maybe the publishers stop telling the editors to shoot the bad prose in the head? Or maybe it’s all just magical coincidence.
My list of favorites, though:
Bujold (F), Cherryh (F), Spangler (F), Drake (M)
Briggs (F), Vaughn (F), Lackey (F), Novik (F), Brust (M)
Someday when I get all the money in the world, I shall own every book ever written by the authors on this list 🙂
’til then, I’ve made a pretty good start.
6 of the 9 Hugo- and Nebula-nominated authors this year are women.
That makes it a little hard to argue that women SF authors are being overlooked.
I don’t dig women authors for the most part because their military sci-fi or fantasy isn’t quite “hard” enough. Even if they’re writing something gritty it doesn’t seem to have the same feel of violence and aggression. When the pillage is being wrought it isn’t pillagey enough. When the tracking down of the pillagers is happening it isn’t at all costs enough. When the revenge is finally taken it isn’t angry enough. They just seem to be playing at anger/violence as opposed to having it in their souls if you can dig what I’m saying?
Seems like in the last few years since the Twilight phenom I can’t get on Amazon to check out new books without having to wade through book after book of some bare chested Native Am. werewolf or Fabio-esk bloodsucker before I can find some decent scifi/fantasy.
Also as someone else pointed out, most male sci-fi, fantasy readers don’t want to read about a sexy broody vampire who may or may not love her for all her inner/outter clumsiness.
Absolutely not saying women can’t write scifi. It’s just not the type of scifi most outdoor plumbing humans will read. Congrats on the publish!