Friday, March 23, 2012

In this week's news

Cross-posted from World Weaver Press as "Books & Pieces" where I'm in charge of their weekly round-up of news and factoids.

If you enjoyed Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog there’s more Dr. Horrible in the works according to wired.com! Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion will both be returning for the sequel.
This is your brain on fiction. A New York Times article highlights recent research which shows the brain functions at a different level when reading fiction than it does when doing other types of reading. Particularly that it processes sensory details like sound and smell as if it was receiving real stimuli — all the more reason for to incorporate more and more awesome sensory details in a story!
Writer Jay Ridler gives us five reasons to love short story collections.
And speaking of short story collections, there are contests going on right now on two blogs for free copies of Susan Abel Sullivan’s first collection Cursed: Wickedly Fun Stories.  Check out Fang-tastic Books and I’m a Reader, Not a Writer to find out how to enter.
Last night, the Hunger Games movie took in an estimated $20 million just from its Midnight showing according to Publisher’s Marketplace (via). Even Weather.com's lead story is Hunger Games related this morning.
The top ten sword fight scenes  ever were  given to us by io9 this week (sci-fi and fantasy only). We have only one thing to say on the topic: My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die.
World Weaver Press answered the question this week: Just what is “speculative” fiction, anyway? 
World Weaver Press author Susan Abel Sullivan stopped by the UK-based Becky’s Barmy Book Blog to give a fun little post about first realizing that she was a humor writer. On her own blog, Susan crafted an insightful post about her early love of monster movies.
Lastly, these little robot-dudes are so cool. And supposedly Amazon is going to have a whole warehouse full of them along with Walgreens and a few other American companies that already employ the inventory-finding bots.

Highly Recommended