Reading, Writing, and Publishing Links: 2/6/13

All right, technically it's the seventh now. Sorry! Have some Queen while you read.

 Queen, "We Are The Champions"

1. "The writing career and all the moneys," or, why it's especially impressive that J.K. Rowling lives in a castle. By Mur Lafferty; via Rebekkah Niles. (I think some of these others are from her, too, but can't remember which. Sorry, Becky! -_-)

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.

3. "President of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management Jane Dystel: Agents Unwilling to Adapt Won't Last." Interesting interview with the agent who first represented Barack Obama, and who now represents WOOL author Hugh Howey. Via dbw.

4. "Why online book discovery is broken (and how to fix it)." By Laura Hazard Owen, via paidContent. A short but interesting read that's been going around this week.

5. And, via the above: "Liability vs. leverage: How writers lose when 'piracy' gets harder." By Cory Doctorow, via TOC. Quick, and worth reading.

6. "Are you watching the Lizzie Bennet Diaries?" Well, are you? I haven't checked them out yet, but Ana of things mean a lot seems to have excellent taste, so I  might give them a try.

7. "7 rules for writing historical fiction," by Elizabeth Crook for Writer Magazine. An old piece (2006), but good advice (though I think I agree with Fraser Sherman, who posted the link, that the first-person thing is mostly a matter of taste).

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.

Et c'est tout. How are you?

XOXO,
Kate

Reading, Writing, and Publishing Links: 1/2/13

Not too many links today. While you read, here's Iron & Wine's "Flightless Bird, American mouth." Yes, I know it's from the Twilight soundtrack. The Twilight movies have excellent soundtracks.

1. "Loved Your Book, Can't Publish It." Lynn Price at Behler Blog writes about the frustration of trying to sell an excellent book that's not currently marketable.

2. "Just Shut Up." An excellent post about loving problematic media.

I don’t know about you, but when I was a child, nobody sat down with me after I watched Beauty and the Beast and said, “Okay, this is a movie, and it’s okay to enjoy this movie! It’s okay to think this movie is great! But just so you know, if someone in real life did to you the things the Beast does to Belle, that wouldn’t be okay. That wouldn’t be right.”  When my mind was young and malleable, there was no trusted adult pointing out, “This is a movie, and it’s okay to like this movie, but the relationship it shows is unhealthy.” And that’s not because I didn’t have those trusted adults in my life! I was lucky enough to grow up with two intelligent, liberal, kind, forward-thinking, active parents; they didn’t tell me because they didn’t know to tell me. They didn’t tell me because nobody told them. (via not language but a map)

3.  "Research -- All The Layers." An ode to research at YA Highway.

4. "How Long Should You Keep Trying To Get Published?" Jane Friedman discusses when not to try for publication, when to start thinking about it, and when it might be good to step back and take another look at what you're doing.

5. "Ten Things I Wish I'd Known." Julianne Lee at Book View Cafe talks about things beginning writers should know about the publishing process.

6. "Prophecies." Patricia C. Wrede weighs in on prophecies, why they often don't work in modern fantasy novels, and why they absolutely can work if used correctly. 

And that's all for this week! Going off to work on the winter story, and then to edit more of WOODS. Hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season, and that 2013 is your best year yet. : )

Year-End Book Recommendations: 2012

Happy New Year, all! I hope you had a great night last night. Here are the best books I read in 2012--in chronological order, since I couldn't begin to rank them by quality. Well, except for the last one, which was probably the best I've read in a long, long time.
 
I put off posting this list for several days, because I started reading Lindsey Barraclough's Long Lankin and suspected it might earn a place here if I finished it in time. As it turned out, I didn't even get halfway through before the end of the year, but expect to see Long Lankin on the 2013 list if it keeps going as well as it started.

Note: When I say that these were "the best books I read," I mean that they're the reading experiences I enjoyed the most. Different books on this list serve different purposes, and I try to keep that in mind when I read. That's why Suzanne Collins is next to Dostoevsky. : ) 

Drumroll, please:

Reading, Writing, and Publishing Links: 12/26/12

Since all the cool kids have been doing it, I thought I'd put together a little Wednesday links post every week. I'll keep it short, since the big news roundups tend to cover the major stuff. These are just favorite posts I've come across in my day-to-day surfing.

While you're reading, here's a song I revisited last week. Isn't it lovely?

"Soul Meets Body"--Death Cab For Cutie

1) Brilliant author/blogger Foz Meadows wrote a guest post for The Book Smugglers, which is one of my favorite book blogs.  The post is about literary bad boys, and astutely explains the difference between the "Classic Bad Boy" (the literary equivalent of Danny from Grease and Johnny from Dirty Dancing) and the more problematic kind that's become popular lately. This type--which Meadows describes as the "New Abuser"--includes specimens like Edward Cullen and his spinoff, who are bad not because they reject the status quo, but because they're actively dangerous for the (usually female) protagonist. Here's a snip:

And by abusive behaviour, I mean behavioural patterns which are listed by domestic abuse authorities as warning signs that you’re in a toxic or dangerous relationship. These are all clear indicators that something is seriously wrong, especially when they appear in confluence; and yet these are exactly the same characteristics which, time and again, I see being displayed by the male love interests in YA, PNR and urban fantasy novels, as though aggressive behaviour somehow becomes sweet and acceptable when the abuser loves their victim, or vice versa.

For those who are interested in trends and patterns in YA literature, this is definitely worth a read.

2) In a post called "Ladders," accomplished fantasy author Patricia Wrede reminds us that publication is not the end of a writer's journey.


3) In a brief post called "What's Not Working," agent and blogger Wendy Lawton considers whether several popular marketing techniques are really effective.  

4) China Miéville rants brilliantly against Belgium's reaction to the blatantly racist Tintin in the Congo. This post is from February, but still worth reading. I got it from a year-end link roundup on a great blog I recently started following, Things Mean A Lot. 

5) "Stories Are Genderless," another post by Foz Meadows, is another one from the link roundup in #4. It's from April, but an excellent read. It deals with the oft-cited conceit that boys won't or can't enjoy books by female authors. 

And that's it for right now! I had a wonderful holiday--quiet, at home, with family--and, hope you all did, too. New Year's is coming up! I have a "Favorite Books of 2012" list almost ready to post (that's read, not published, in 2012), and am working slowly on my winter story. I hope you have a safe and happy New Year!

XOXO
Kate

Overall, 'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey' Was Pretty Fabulous

Note: I had the chance to see The Hobbit at 12:00 a.m. Friday with some of my friends. I saw the movie, and wrote this post, before I'd heard about the Newtown shooting, and so this post has nothing to do with that. There's not really anything I can say about that that hasn't been said already. It's horrible, and I wish it hadn't happened, and I'm firmly on the side of increased gun control. Fin.

Moving on:

Before I start, I have to admit that I'm not really that familiar with Tolkien's canon. I read The Hobbit in elementary or middle school, attended a panel on its literary roots at Dragon*Con in 2011, and, at the panelist's suggestion, begged a copy of The Annotated Hobbit for Christmas that year. Didn't really get into it until a few weeks a go, when I skimmed the book and looked at a number of the footnotes in preparation for a book club meeting. I have a pretty good idea of the story, but not a firm grasp on the specifics. As for The Lord of the Rings, I slogged through it in... high school?... and watched the first two movies when they came out. Yes, I know. If it makes you feel better, I'll surely be returning to it after this.

Anyway, the point is that I'm not a purist. This is atypical for me, actually, as I usually feel the neurotic need to see the story represented in its entirety. If you are a purist, and don't like things added or subtracted, then you will probably take issue with this movie. However, I felt as if... Episode I... kept to the spirit of the story remarkably well, and felt the changes made were understandable.

More specific reflections (and a number of spoilers) are under the cut.

Pixar's Brave is Cool and Sweet and Funny, and You Should Go See It.

Like it says in the title. There are spoilers below the cut, so if you don't want to know anything about Brave before you see it, then you'd better click away now.

New thing

So: if you were wondering: I'm (probably) starting a new thing. I will try to start each day's writing with 20 minutes on whatever short story is in the works. Once I finish a piece, I'll submit it down the list of the SFWA's qualifying short fiction venues, in descending order of probable interest. (I doubt, however, that I'll have the patience for the ones that don't allow online submissions.) If none of them bite, I will put the piece up here. That way you (three) get to see what I'm doing, and I get to... practice submitting things.

The first story is tentatively called "Snow on the Beach."

Before writing this, I tabbed up a lot of those venues' websites for a look-see. It just so happened that Apex Magazine has a story about an undine. Who loves a good undine? You know I do. Best: It's not fantasy so much as horror. Very funny; very creepy; beautifully written. An author to watch!

That's all.