Joshua Palmatier was born in Coudersport, PA, but since his father was in the military he moved around. Alot. He’s lived in the states of Pennsylvania (three times), Florida (twice), Washington, California (briefly), Virginia, Texas (twice), and now resides in upstate New York. He has spent the majority of his life so far going to school, earning a Bachelors of Science and a Master of Arts degree in mathematics from the Pennsylvania State University, followed by a PhD in mathematics from Binghamton University. He is currently teaching mathematics (what else) at the State University of New York–Oneonta, taught for two years at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, and taught for three years at Bloomsburg University while taking a break between his masters degree and the PhD.
Joshua started writing science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories in the eighth grade, when the teacher assigned a one page Twilight Zone-ish short story. He wrote a story about Atlantis. It was from the perspective of one of the inhabitants as he escaped in a spaceship, watching his world being destroyed by water from one of the viewports of the ship. He got an A. Joshua has never stopped writing since, mainly focusing on novels.
Writing Tip: Generating Ideas for a Themed Anthology
By Joshua Palmatier
Zombies Need Brains is running a Kickstarter for three new SF&F themed anthologies right now at tinyurl.com/ZNBApocalypse (swing on by, back the project, we could use the help!) and one of the unique things about ZNB is that we do an open call for submissions in order to fill out half of each anthologies. The other half is filled with known, published authors, some of them New York Times bestsellers. So I figured I’d offer up a suggestion here for how to generate an idea that fits a theme AND make certain that it’s an idea that will stick out in that slush pile. After all, you don’t want to submit a story with a fairly standard concept, since we’ll receive a ton of those. And while we take a few “standard concept” stories for each theme, we usually only take one or two and you don’t want to be in competition with two hundred other people who used that same idea in some form. Much better to submit a story that’s NOT standard and that catches our attention, one that is unlikely to have been used by anyone else. Continue reading
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