Occupation Writer Role Author Name James Macdonald | Period 1990s to present Nationality American | |
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Pen name Robyn Tallis, Nicholas Adams, Victor Appleton, Douglas Morgan, Martin Delrio Genre fantasy, science fiction, mystery Awards Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature Books The Price of the Stars, School of Wizardry, Tournament and Tower, Land of Mist and Snow, The Prince's Players Similar People Debra Doyle, Robert E Vardeman, F Gwynplaine MacIntyre, Sherwood Smith, Howard R Garis | ||
Education University of Rochester | ||
James Douglas Ignatius Macdonald (born 1954) is an American author and critic who lives in New Hampshire with his wife and frequent collaborator, Dr. Debra Doyle. He works in several genres, concentrating on fantasy, but also writing science fiction, and mystery and media tie-ins.
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Biography
Macdonald was born in 1954, and raised in White Plains, New York. He attended the University of Rochester, and went on to serve in the US Navy for fifteen years. He has been writing professionally since the early 1990s and has published 35 novels.
Educational work
Macdonald is well known for his work in educating aspiring authors, particularly for his advice on avoiding literary scams. Early in his career he was asked by such an author how much he had paid to have his books published, and in response began a campaign of educating other writers about the problems of vanity publishers. As part of this campaign, he coined Yog's Law, which states "Money should flow toward the author." This rule is named after "Yog Sysop", a nickname of Macdonald that refers to Yog-Sothoth. It is often quoted by professional authors such as John Scalzi and Teresa Nielsen Hayden when giving advice on finding an agent and getting published.
Atlanta Nights and PublishAmerica
One target of his campaign is PublishAmerica, a company that claims not to be a vanity publisher but a "traditional publisher" that accepts or rejects books based on their quality. Macdonald organized a group of professional authors to test whether that company was actually reading any submissions for clarity and realism before accepting them. One day after Macdonald issued a press release announcing that PublishAmerica had accepted a manuscript that was created to be as bad as possible, the company withdrew the offer to publish it.
Awards and honors
Knight's Wyrd was awarded the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's literature, 1992, and named to the New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age list in 1993. In 1997, he was awarded Best Young-Adult Science Fiction by the Science Fiction Chronicle for Groogleman.