This song came on the radio a few days ago, and I realized it was one of the first songs I ever remembered hearing. My mom confirms that my dad bought it a few days after it came out (I would have been about five). If I were to make a playlist of songs illustrating important aspects of American culture, this one would be on it.
Links:
1. "SFWA De-Lists Hydra; Random House Responds." Drama! The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have decided that Random House's new e-imprint, Hydra, will not count as a qualifying market for SFWA membership. Random House feels they're being unfair. Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware reports at SFWA's website.
2. "Losing interest." Fantasy writer Patricia Wrede discusses some things that can make a writer want to abandon a story halfway through.
4. "Omniscient." An interesting post by Ann Leckie on the rarely-discussed subject of third-person omniscient point of view. Worth reading!
5. "Why Not to Register Copyright for Unpublished Work." By Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware. Basically: it's probably a waste of time and money, and it might get you spammed by vanity presses. Those self-publishing, or publishing with small presses, on the other hand, should at least look into it. (Thanks as always, Ms. Strauss!)
6. "Publisher as Prestige Brand?" Wendy Lawton of Books & Such has an interesting speculation: that publishers are going to focus more and more on branding, creating recognizable consumer experiences like big design houses now do for fashion. Which I guess would put authors in the position of in-house designers? I don't know. It's odd to think about, but makes a certain amount of sense.
For writers, what this means is that innovation is in your hands. How
will storytelling or publishing change? Stop looking to “the industry!
the industry!” as Porter Anderson would call it, and begin creating it yourself.
Your random song of the week: "The A Team," by Ed Sheeran. Added this song to my soundtrack for the upcoming WOODS sequel (none of it's written, but the bits and pieces are starting to come together.
Sad video, isn't it? The music reminds me a little of James Blunt.
1) "Is Your Agent an Asset?" By Lynne Price of Behler Blog. This is actually really scary. Apparently there are a lot of agents who send out query letters that misspell words, leave out wordcounts, and fail to include a book's target audience? Price's takeaway point here is that if you work through an agent, you should always ask to see the letter that's being sent out to editors.
2) This interview with Chuck Sambuchino at Literary Rambles raises a couple of good points. My favorite is in question five, where he describes three different ways to focus your blog. I've been using a blend of #1 and #3 for this one--that's a combination of "related subject matter" and "writer's journey"--but I think I'd like to steer more towards #1. That will probably mean a bit more focus on fairy tales and ghost stories--and, as a result, more reviews of fantasy movies. I hope that's okay with y'all. : P
4) "Perpetual WIPs: Literary Agents." By The Daily Dahlia. This is another "Gospel According To Agents"-type post, but the questions are good and the answers are interesting. Probably a must-read for those considering traditional publishing.
6) "Romance novelist 'Jessica Blair' is an 89-year-old man." By Today News. You often hear about this happening the other way--lots of female authors use male or gender-neutral pseudonyms--but this is the first specific case I've heard of where a male author used a female one. I'm kind of interested in reading his books, now!
7) "Serials, or, How to Make Your Readers Hate You."According to Angela Benedetti, there are people out there marketing serials by pretending they're selling complete stories and surprising their readers with cliffhangers. Um... maybe don't do that?
8) "An Ode to the Series, Contemporary YA Style." By Kelly of Stacked. I actually never got into contemporary--by the time I hit middle school, I'd discovered fantasy, and never really looked back. If one were interested in seeing what's cooking now, though, this would be a pretty good place to start (her list is short, but there are lots more suggestions in the comments).
Hey folks! Happy almost-Valentine's day. I have lots of links for you today--it was a good news week. (Actually, these are more than a week old, because I'm way behind on my reading. I'm trying to catch up though!
While you read, please enjoy Efterklang's "Mirador." It's beautiful, isn't it?
I love weird videos.
1. "Shocker: B&N to cut a third of stores over next decade -- WSJ." Writeup by Shara Tibken of cnet. Apparently Barnes & Noble denies it's doing anything differently at all, but in light of this article from a few weeks ago I'm not sure I believe them. I do know that my regular B&N has cut its operating hours by five a week. Something to keep track of, I guess.
3. "Secret Ingredient for Success." Opinion piece by Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield, of The New York Times, on the importance of self-awareness. Not specifically written word-related, but relevant to anyone trying to make their own career.
Why do they have ray-guns? A better question would be, WHY DIDN'T THEY BEFORE?
5. "Hell is my own book tour," by Adam Mansbach at Salon. This post basically had me at the first sentence. However, the second and third are pretty great, too:
The publishing industry stopped having new ideas out of respect for the
untimely death of Ernest Hemingway in 1961, and has been doing
everything the same way ever since. Usually without adjusting for
inflation.
Fantastic. However, I must point out that Bonobos aren't monkeys.
8. Miriam Forster, author of the upcoming City of a Thousand Dolls, shows us some lovely promo swag. I hadn't thought about quote cards, but they'd be easy to do, and would work for self- or traditional publishing.
10. Via the above: "5 Ways Authors Can Get the Most Out of Goodreads," by Brian A. Klerns of Writer's Digest. A little chirpy, but does have some good ideas. I decided after my manifesto a few weeks back that I wasn't comfortable leaving negative reviews of books by people I might encounter socially (seriously, there are a lot of authors around here). However, an "Inspirations" shelf is a great idea, and I've been meaning to set up a proper author page.
14. "Have You Planned For Success?" Lynn Price of Behler Blog lists things authors should think about before they make it to the "publication" stage. She raises some good points, but I'm not sure an author who's only gotten one offer of publication is going to turn down that offer just because s/he's not happy with the editors or distribution at that house.
16. Also via Cuddlebuggery: "Tamora Pierce wince 2013 Edwards Award for Song of the Lioness series and Protector of the Small quartet." Congratulations, Ms. Pierce! The Song of the Lioness quartetwas really important to me when I was in elementary and middle school. Alannawas one of the first books I picked up off the YA paperback shelf at the library when I moved to North Carolina. (Two others were The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword.) I was nine at that point, and I think these books had a lot of influence on what heroes, and stories, I looked for after that. So thank you very much, Ms. Pierce, and please keep writing. : )
And I think that's enough for right now, don't you? Have a great day!
2. "The Business Rusch: Editorial Revisions." In a response to this blog post by editor Lynn Price, Kristine Kathryn Rusch is starting a new blog series on the relationship between editors and authors. Very informative.
8. "David Rintoul: The Best, Yet Least-Loved, Mr. Darcy." Another for P&P fans. (I'm not an Austen fanatic, per se--I just really like that particular book.) Shari Perkins of DramaticImpulse argues that Rintoul's stiff, awkward, formal portrayal of Darcy is actually much closer to the book than any of the others--and, when you think about it, she's right. Book!Darcy can be a huge asshole. : ) I actually was not a huge fan of the 1980 BBC Pride and Prejudice when I first saw it, but I like it more every time I watch it.
10. "Where Kristin Discusses The Importance Of Metadata," by Agent Kristin of Pub Rants. The video quality isn't great, but this is definitely something to think about, especially for people who are interested in self-publishing.
For those of you wondering what the heck is metadata, these are the
descriptive tags included in product description and in a lot of cases,
embedded in the content file itself of electronic books, that allow a
novel to be searchable and discoverable on distribution venues such as
Amazon, BN, and Kobo.
The overall gist is that flexibility and responsiveness are important here, as they always are in self-publishing (or publishing in general).
11. "A love letter to books that aren't exactly mine (or, why I love foreign rights)." By agent Molly Jaffa.
3. "2012 Writing Income." Fantasy author Jim C. Hines is kind enough to give the internet details about how much money he makes and where each bit comes from. Thanks to Rebekkah Niles for the link.
Ownshelf, a free web service that launched in beta Friday, provides
readers with a cloud storage platform to share e-books with friends and
family. Think of it as a simpler Dropbox intended specifically for
e-books, but with a social element built in to foster discovery. Users
sign into the service through Facebook and can quickly upload e-book
files to create a digital bookshelf or borrow e-books from their
contacts' bookshelves.
Via Mashable. So it's like Goodreads but... with sharing? Not quite sure what to think about that.
Before I begin, let me say that I think I was unfair in my last post. In my Friday writeup, I suggested that the all-male panels I'd seen had been the result of some negligence on the part of the con's organizers. Yesterday, Margaret McGraw told me that the panels were actually self-selected--that the guests had chosen whatever panels sounded interesting. There was still a gender imbalance among the guests themselves, but if this is one of those cons where you have to apply to be a guest, then the organizers really can't be blamed for that. Sorry I implied it was their fault!
