Okay, I don’t ‘hate’ Lois Lowry’s famous children’s novel. I loathe it. I’m disappointed by it. I’m extremely irked by it, and what it has said about ‘mainstream’ Middle-Grade and YA writing for over 20 years.* I am too old to have suffered through it in my own school years, but I had the opportunity…
Read More Why I hate ‘The Giver’ (adult language)Yesterday afternoon I heard about the death of Robin Williams. Possible suicide.
I’d heard he was battling depression again, and I’m sorry to hear it took him away from us. Like many brilliant and creative people, his humor had the depth and edge of a person who learned early to hide pain with a grin.
I’ll miss him. ∞
If you look in the right places, you’ll see the internet simmering this week over many different cases of plagiarism brought to light. Some of it is mind-boggling. Some is just pathetic. Wait, didn’t I write this post last year? Yes, something similar. This may become an annual thing. Amazon’s Kindle and CreateSpace may have…
Read More CreateSpace and ChernobylC’mon, you know we all have them, in writing, art, work, and life in general. Those choke points where we stall, lose our grip, and can’t seem to drag ourselves away from old or even harmful ideas that hold us back. To be human is to exist in a fog of imperfect awareness, willful ignorance…
Read More Windmills, albatrosses, and self-erected barriersYou’d think, as a writer, that I’d be all for strict enforcement of intellectual property rights. No, actually. I’m for *sane* enforcement. The way things stand now, intellectual property rights are a welter of lockdowns, extortion, and exploitation long after the original creator has died. Museums hold fast to image copyrights of pieces they own*.…
Read More Doyle, Disney, and intellectual propertyThere I was this morning, with ten paragraphs of what I hoped would be an insightful, well-documented, though controversial blog post about ‘(X) affiliation being used as an excuse for predatory/bad practices and substandard work in genre publishing’. It would have been about one facet of certain substandard small presses, vanity publishers, predatory and/or incompetent…
Read More Self-censorship is a bitchAt this point in my life, I’ve realized that everything I say might offend *somebody*. Silence is the only way to avoid that. Sometimes, silence is the worst possible answer. Author’s note: No matter what I might write about fictional 18+ adults doing to or with each other, I don’t like to write about young children as…
Read More The MZB scandals (adult content, trigger warnings)If it is in your power, do something nice for a fellow human being.
Something *they’d* think is nice, not an imposition you force on them out of your own moral or social code. This might require actually paying attention or even – gasp! – asking them how you can really help.
Do that thing.
Then don’t talk about it.
You’ll know. They might know. The rest of the world probably doesn’t need to.
Haiku for fallen idols:
Gold crown in sunlight,
A distant beacon; come near
To see tarnished brass.
Anyone who doesn’t follow the FIFA World Cup (soccer, to Americans) will not know what those numbers mean. The rest of us do. 100 minutes of pure adrenaline. Unbelievable goals and heroic defenses. An underdog team against one of the legendary Group of Death teams. And the US players won. Pardon me for grinning foolishly…
Read More US 2, Ghana 1…has really been going on since Wednesday night, for a lot of people. I plan to be there sometime tomorrow, Saturday June 7. I’m not on panels, I’m not pitching my book, I’m not in the dealer’s room. I’m just going for fun. Here’s the main page: https://www.phoenixcomicon.com/page/1 So, it’s not as huge as San…
Read More 2014 Phoenix Comic ConOn May 15, 2014, a bunch of very committed activists are coming together to protest the sly, quiet way the Open Internet is being sold off to the highest bidders. You know the culprits, or you should: the corporate oligarchs who could not have made their billions in profits without open, government-backed systems like railways,…
Read More Save the Internet, collect valuable capitalI am a total sucker for architecture at its bleeding edge, when it leaps beyond the ticky-tacky houses and strip malls that many architects have to suffer through at some point in their careers. The future of architecture, like everything else, is likely to be something most of us would never guess right now. Check out these…
Read More Sand skyscrapersThere are some writer & publisher-related Tumblr blogs I follow and generally adore. But every so often, these sort-of, maybe, might-be tribes throw me for a loop. I have to step back and decide what I believe in. It’s a good exercise. There’s this musing from Liana Brooks, about artists who ‘alter’ existing books: http://lianabrooks.tumblr.com/post/79549092120/do-not-destroy-books-confession-i-hate-book…
Read More Every book is sacred: art or travesty?Based off my post yesterday about the decommissioning of the ‘Lifeinpublishing’ tumblr blog, some friends wanted to know how I feel about the recent charges that many new Young Adult dystopia novels and series are ‘derivative’. I have strong feelings about the direction YA has been going, especially in science fiction and fantasy. I have…
Read More YA dystopias, derivative or dynamic?Years ago, after a particularly tense quarter at a company I used to work for, some defiant soul hung this sign up in the break room. It was probably inspired by the bi-weekly forced meetings all departments had to endure before getting their paychecks. Meetings that followed one of two paths from management, depending on…
Read More ‘The beatings will continue until morale improves’Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, I’ve known something y’all haven’t for a couple of months, but I kept it on the down-low because the author asked me to. But now she’s spilled the beans, so I can too. Announcement thingy here: http://blog.alisfranklin.com/2014/02/27/you-gais-imma-gonna-be-an-author/ I know this unbelievably talented writer whose fan work knocked my sox…
Read More Wyrdtouched, the NovelWith all the media attention on various US states where ‘religious freedom’ bills have been floated in the past few months, it may be time to aim readers at this handy little Huffington Post article: How to test if your religious liberty is being attacked. The short answer: it probably isn’t. Point 1: these bills…
Read More The Religious Liberty Test (offensive content advisory)Added 11-13-2021, see note below!) Here in the US, writers are getting some interesting incentives. Late last year, we heard about Detroit’s plans to boost the local arts and literacy scene through a permanent residency program for authors. Basically, authors promise to stay in a Detroit house and put down roots in the community, and…
Read More All aboard: free houses and train residencies for writersA Publishers’ Weekly article today led me to Laura Miller’s essay in Salon.com, which in turn led me to Eleanor Catton’s essay in New Zealand’s Metro Magazine. Both should be read in sequence, and are probably a far more valuable use of reading time than my blog. I cite them because they hit a nerve with me,…
Read More Fancy ten-dollar college words