So You Want to Join the GAF… As A Staff Writer
You’ve read Tales from Space…
You’ve read all the articles on Encyclopaedia Galactica…
You’ve read Dalton’s Daughter and all the excerpts from the GAF Personnel Files…
In short, you’re enamoured of the GAF and the Galactic Association of Globes and Asteroids, with all the glitz and glamour and hard science and explosions and seamy sexy adventure it entails.
…But how to do it?
You’ve heard that the GAF welcomes new authors to its universe, to help expand the known Galaxy for the GAGA. You’ve got amazing ideas for outer space adventure and you’d love to get Captain Verily Wrought and the rest of Detach Detachment involved, but you’re not sure how.
Here’s the definitive FAQ for how to become a GAF staff writer:
Q: Are you accepting staff writers for the GAF?
A: Yes, we are, and will be for the foreseeable future.
Q: How does joining the GAF universe in existence as a new writer work?
A: Think of us as Wikipedia for science fiction writers. We have ensconced certain elements of the GAGA as immutable. These elements are included in Encyclopedia Galactica and GAF Personnel Files. You can use these as archetypal building blocks for your story, just like writing cogent fan fiction for LOTR, Harry Potter or (shudder) Twilight. These are all characters, conventions and plot devices that are widely known, understood and explicative to all of the GAF fans.
Use these building blocks as anchor points or driving forces in your stories. Add your own creative ideas on aliens, science, planets or plot.
At GAF Mainframe, we derive our strength and our satisfaction from seeing our universe and its characters have living, dynamic adventures. There is a canon of past experience that the core characters and settings share, but beyond that- fire off your ideas and we will help amalgamate them into our universe.
Q: How about copyright? How does that work?
A: In the GAFverse, the canonical characters are copyright the original creators. Every other new element is the intellectual property of the author. If someone wants to reference your ideas in their story, they will speak with you and you, as original creator, will help them with amalgamations. In each story, the individual elements of the GAF are credited to the creators.
We’re all adults, and communal creators here- if Dreamworks asks to make a movie of the GAF, we can all work out the details with appropriate percentages and aplomb. If Doubleday asks you to take your story idea and make a ten book series, we applaud you, and ask only that you remove existing GAF references and rework it, or credit us with it (and buy us a few good steak dinners, see adult comment above.) Any separate works you create with communal ideas we ask be addended with a reference to our StarkLight stories and the GAFMainframe. We believe that any publicity is good publicity, and success for one is success for all.
Any written materials posted on GAFMainframe.com or starklightpress.com will be credited to the author and the creator of the material, if they differ. Links to the authors’ pages on our sites, as well as to the authors’ own pages, will be maintained and promoted.
So it’s really that simple.
If you have an idea that you would love to see Captain Wrought, Sasha and Wodin Whatthehel experience, send it to starklightdesk@gmail.com. That’s all it takes to get the creative commons flowing, and to help us expand our amazing GAF universe.
You can find us at StarkLight Press on Facebook, www.starklightpress.com and www.gafmainframe.com, as well as calling or texting 250-467-2995.
I look forward to working with all of you!
Tony Stark,
Publisher and CEO, StarkLight Press.