Friday Links is a Ladyblogger
Originally published at tansyrr.com. You can comment here or there.
Julia Gillard has been hosting drinks and networking gatherings for all manner of groups this month, because it’s CHRISTMAS, but when she invited a group of women involved in digital publishing (not all bloggers, not all mothers), the media phrased it as her sucking up to “Mommybloggers” - as if that was somehow something cheap and degrading. Anne Summers critiqued this attitude very sharply at SMH, pointing out exactly why Prime Minister Gillard is savvy to get these women on her side.
I particularly found it interesting when Summers talks about the effect of Gillard’s ‘misogyny speech’ on the women of Australia, and how she has slowly come to realise the changing perception of her because of that one YouTube video - and appears to be growing more confident in her freedom to address women’s issues more candidly.
Ambling Along the Aqueduct is doing their regular series of posts by a variety of ‘regulars’ talking about their year in reading, watching or listening. Mine is here, and I keep thinking of things I forgot to include! But I’m quite pleased with it. Do check out the blog as a whole for the end of year posts, they’re up to 21 already and it’s a lovely and diverse range of people talking about far more than just 2012 releases.
Fablecroft and Twelfth Planet Press are running a promotion where you can get the regency science fiction anthology New Ceres Nights for just $10 (within Australia) when you purchase any other book from either of their stores. To promote this, Tehani has been posting excerpts from each of the New Ceres Nights stories which are bringing back all kinds of memories for me! She’s also including the lovely internal illustrations drawn by Dion Hamill for each of the stories. Here is the excerpt from my piece, “Prosperine When It Sizzles.”
Stumbling Past sums up her year of using the Australian Women Writers Challenge as a reader of history.
Jason Nahrung and Kirstyn McDermott talk about their respective new novel releases from Xoum - Blood and Dust, and Perfections. Rowena also interviews Kirstyn about Perfections.
Laci Green, a sex educator and YouTube vlogger, has written a heartfelt post on Tumblr about how easily that format can be used for online bullying, the specific kinds of online bullying she has been a victim of, and the dismaying trend of bringing the internet down on the head of people for a single mistake (or perception of a mistake). It’s really worth reading her post in full, as one of the clearest explanations I’ve ever seen of why people shift so easily from genuine personal outrage or offence to a quite vicious form of online attack - and why they feel justified in doing so. One of those to bookmark for the next flamewar.
Sarah Rees Brennan has returned to her ‘movie parody’ roots with a hilarious response to The Hobbit: Thorin Dreamboatshield: An Unexpected Hotness of Dwarves. It’s not intended to be spoiler-free, so keep that in mind, but I don’t feel especially spoiled by having read it.
Tobias Buckell has written a long and detailed essay about his experience running a Kickstarter to publish the new novel in his series, and how it worked for him. It’s very compelling as well as educational!
Geekquality has a great essay about the problematic fan responses to Sansa Stark from Game of Thrones.
Kate Elliott confesses to reading reviews of her own work, and talks about what she gets out of it, and how she handles the etiquette of interacting with reviewers.
Sarah Brabazon passed this one on to me: The Business Rusch on ‘Writing Like it’s 2009′ - how the self publishing and digital landscape has changed radically in just the last three years, and what ‘truths’ about publishing then are simply no longer true.
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