I know there are certain words that are overused in fantasy titles. It even has a title generator to lovingly mock it ( Read more... )

This is an honest question ( Read more... )

Summary: PublishAmerica, bottomfeeder author-mill "publisher," advertised to their suckers victims authors that they would, for $49, present their book to J.K. Rowling ( Read more... )

Scalzi this morning provided a link to an article about the Korean college entrance exam, and how the whole country goes into a cone of silence for this one day in order not to distract the students ( Read more... )

What is with all the authors writing novels whose protagonists are novelists?

I understand the concept of "Write what you know," but come on. Way to live the stereotype, guys.

I thought fiction was supposed to be creative.

Let's start with this, from this morning's Lunch Weekly:
Sarah Gray's WUTHERING BITES, a retelling of Wuthering Heights in which Heathcliff is a vampire, to John Scognamiglio at Kensington, in a very nice deal, for publication in September 2010, by Evan Marshall at Evan Marshall Agency (World).
For those who don't know Publisher's Lunch codes, "very ( Read more... )

Proofread your cover letters. Set them aside for a week to gain fresh eyes. Hand them to six friends to proof. Read them sentence-by-sentence from the end to the front. Read them out loud ( Read more... )

Dear Ben Stein,

Your article about how Americans have been irresponsible with money, and behaving like children assuming their parents could always bail them out, was very interesting. There are, however, a few points that make me want to smack you across the head.

( First, your inherent classism )

This article talks--very shallowly--about how when the writer was a boy, other boys wanted to be grown ups, but now men want to remain adolescents.

A long, somewhat amusing, and relatively unobjectionable column begins its conclusion with this:
Halsall would be a very lonely voice today. Nowadays it seems grown-up men aspire to being perpetual ( Read more... )

In this post, kelly_swails gives a con report, but also mentions this oft-observed phenomenon:
One thing I noticed this weekend: the SF community skews older. It's sometimes strange to go to a panel (or be on a panel) where the panelist talk about Heinlein and Asimov and other writers in the genre that frankly I haven't heard of. I am by no means well-read in ( Read more... )