Grab Bag

My energy has currently been sunk into getting the Haunted October blog tour up and running and all the graphics settled and books out and ... whew. Well, I suppose it's too soon for a "whew," but I'll take any accomplishment as a small victory. So this Tuesday's blog post is a grab bag o' interesting stuffs, making it in just under the wire, minutes before midnight local time.

Got a ghost story you're sharing on  your blog? Haunted October wants to hear about it!

A.E. Decker's fabulous "Viva le Macabre" is a glorious reveling in fall, "the season of dying." And Kristina Wojtaszek's series on Haunted Folklore at Enchanted Conversation magazine is an interesting start to a five part series running each Monday in October.

QR codes for bikes -- how smart is this? Stolen bike has easy to trace barcode dohicky that you can register with the police for free ... if you live in London.

Fifty Shades of Chicken is an honest to goodness cookbook/great Fifty Shades of Grey parody. Someone tried to shift my attention to Fifty Shades of Bacon after I mentioned the cookbook on Twitter. But Bacon is a novelized parody. And Fifty Shades of Chicken is a succulent feast of innuendo, from the "bound" and trussed chicken on the cover to the foodporn table of contents: "Dripping Thighs, Sticky Chicken Fingers, Vanilla Chicken, Chicken with a Lardon, Bacon-Bound Wings, Spatchcock Chicken, Learning-to-Truss-You Chicken, Holy Hell Wings, Mustard-Spanked Chicken, and more, more, more!" 

Mustard-Spanked, eh? I think "spanked" is a verb that ought to be used more in food description. Watch, in a year, it'll be on every high-end menu.

Beware the Highland werewolf. Rawr.

Mars Rover Curiosity finds evidence of water -- water! a Martian stream bed! -- and Honey Boo Boo gets more coverage on TV. Sadness. Good thing the wondrous nerds and geeks of the world (yours truly included) get their news online and from NPR. What will the Mars Rover find next? A three-fingered button that, when depressed, produces breathable air?

Bits and pieces

It's Friday and I'm scatterbrained. This semester (most semesters) Fridays mark the end of the regular work week and the beginning of my writerly work week. Or, erm, work weekend. Trying to get my brain around the shift and my body -- namely my fingers -- into gear, always poses a bit of a struggle. So I compensate by hanging out on social media for a while. Twitter, I've discovered, is either a pit of human mind barf, or a trove of sparkling little jewels. Today, thankfully, it's a bit more on the sparkly side, though not all of these gems were garnered from Twitter.

The Sci Your Fi Team starts off by amusing me with this notion:

Ever seen an intelligent troll? Ever seen a lumbering fairy? They’re all out there somewhere.

They have to be, right? Now I've got a half-baked idea about a fat fairy rolling around in my head. Hmm. (SYF Team Twitter and Blog)

DigiReader has up two new books as part of their Free Friday Romance eBooks promotion. I don't know much about either book, but you can check them out for yourself here.

Robyn at Seven Sassy Sisters discusses how bribery is the key to success and even provides a recipe. Saddest part of this blog post: she suggests inflicting the chocolate bribery on your family, not yourself.

Allison of Allison Writes discusses Annie Dillard's craft book The Writing Life. Which reminds me that I have a copy of Ursula Le Guin's Steering the Craft that I got as a Christmas gift sitting here on my coffee table that I really want to read but for some reason haven't gotten past the introduction. Perhaps because Le Guin is very strident about you taking her lessons seriously and spacing them out.

Book Ends (a blog and a literary agency) has posted an updated publishing dictionary -- frankly, knowing these terms is a must if you intend to write and publish whether with a traditional publisher, non-traditional publisher, or self-publish.

Linda at Visiting Reality takes the cake, literally. Oh those sprinkles are something else!

And lastly, agent Kristin Nelson who has been blogging for years at Pub Rants (which is a fab resource if you've not seen it), has started a new feature of Friday vlogs where she discusses questions she commonly receives at conferences. Below is her second episode which is about the difference between young adult and middle grade literature. I really liked this vlog because I honestly had no idea how to go about making that distinction but her theory works for me. The first episode was about how one might become a literary agent and (if she sticks to the schedule) there should be another video out today, but at the time of this posting, it hasn't yet hit the web.

Grab bag of life presents this week's findings ...

Catherynne M. Valente demands better vampires.  Vampires that have actual angst, not black pudding enthusiasts.

Two lesbians raised a baby and this is what they got.

Writer Zoe Winters and the theory of the 10,000 word day.  Winters says she started writing fanfic before she started writing her own worlds -- and that writes faster and easier because you eliminate the time spent on invention. But then she did it: she set out to have a 10,000 word day, and eight hours later accomplished it.

This chick in Manhattan made $1200 a month in free food off of Match.com.  It's pretty amazing, but the through of doing that is utterly exhausting. I think that sooner rather than later I'd be like screw it, I'm not putting on another pair of heels, I'm just going to eat ramen.

A really fabulous (and interestingly difficult) holiday writing prompt from Professor Ogden -- open to students and non-students alike.

This week provided my area of the country with some crazy-pants weather. Warm rain, then ice, then ten inches of snow all within 48 hours. Now, pay mind that the ten inches of snow did not fall where I live, or where I work ... it fell on the city I must drive through to get from where I live to where I work. Crazy-pants snow fell all Tuesday afternoon. It fell all evening. It fell during my drive home. It fell during the time I gratefully drove twenty miles per hour down a major highway just to stay behind the safety of the plow. Crazy-pants snow fell as the plow decided it had gone far enough in my direction, made a quick U-turn and started plowing the other of the highway. Crazy-pants snow fell as I blindly groped to stay in my lane and praised whomever came up with the concept of rumble strips. It fell as I neared the bright road-illuminating lights of civilization ... then left civilization and plunged back into the dark. Crazy-pants snow fell as I contemplated what it would be like to spend the night in a hotel, at a roadside rest stop, in the ditch. Crazy-pants snow fell as I finally reached town, got off an exit early and discovered that the city streets were pristine -- it was just the highway that was a death-trap-waiting-to-be-sprung.  Just pants. Lots and lots of pants.

But I survived. And as this fabulous Oscar the Grouch (non-disney endorsed) image tells us: Shit could be worse.

Link+Love

So there's been a delay in my regular blogging schedule. Damn you, things-that-get-in-the-way! I have about four half-written posts that I will devote attention to ... sometime in the near future. Until then, here's a long overdue Link+Love.


Sometimes I feel like the book review might be more interesting to read than the book -- or at least that's how I felt about his BookSlut review of Skinny.

What to do about listing those credentials you do or don't have on your submission cover letter.  A must read for those submitting to literary magazines. (Source, Glimmer Train.)

Allison Writes (on the road) at the Wigwam Hotel! I'm so totally amused. [note: that news is a few weeks old now, but the Wigwam Hotel pictures remain cool]

Game of Thrones meteorology style.  Winter is coming and all that jazz.

This weekend I totally wore my Red Riding Hood threadless tee while working on final edits of my Red Riding Hood short story for the Red Riding Hood themed issue of Enchanted Conversation. Window for submissions opens September 27 and closes September 30 (see posting for the specifics).  Back in the spring, Enchanted Conversation published my Rumplestiltskin story -- something I wrote specifically for their call for submissions -- but the "Garbage-to-Gold Spindle" was a humorous piece, and my Red Riding Hoods are a bit dark. Definitely eerie.  I thought about it, and unless I make the girl into a pissed off, eye rolling adolescent a la Hoodwinked, I don't know how to write a piece about a girl wandering alone in the woods not be creepy. Ah well, here's hoping the charm of my t-shirt will wear off on my fiction and the magazine will like the story in spite of it's creepiness!

While we're on the subject of fun t-shirts, threadless.com once again amuses me with their newest tee.  A nifty little map piece titled "What I know about the USA."

Friday: Link love + life

A quick hello to those of you who've arrived at Speak Coffee to Me via Rachel Harrie's Blog Campaign! If you've not yet joined, you have til the end of the month to do so here.  The rest of this post is relevant writing links, irrelevant links, an a few snips of news from life at large.

Ann Vandemeer steps down as editor of Weird Tales, releasing a formal announcement earlier this week.   Vandemeer has edited the magazine for several years now along with multiple anthologies. She's won a Hugo for her editing work and while there's only a handful of powerhouse sf/f editors out there, there's even fewer female editors -- so why is she stepping down?  Because Weird Tales has been bought by someone who wants to edit it himself. Okay, fine I guess. You buy a cool toy you want to play with it. I understand. And hey, if you've got lots of money and you want to run your own magazine, why not buy the longest running speculative magazine in North America? Guess it sure as heck beats starting from scratch. Vandemeer is magnanimous in her open announcement of resignation, but she makes it pretty clear that she didn't want to leave ... makes me wonder if she's feeling terribly magnanimous on the inside. Maybe under the new guy's direction the covers will get less eerie; the Ann Vandemeer covered always skeeved me out.

Best coffee jewelry EVER! 

Recently, while encountering a problem for an e small appliance I found my new favorite for instruction in a long list of don'ts: CAUTION: do not incinerate. Thanks. Because I generally burn all electronic devices I purchase rather than, you know, use them.

I totally want moo.com to hire me. For what, I'm not quite certain. But I would be awesome  as a Moo employee. I love the ethic, I love the product, I love the face which Moo presents to the world. I'm a creative thinker and doer (though I have no design education beyond a bunch of high school art classes and a couple college art classes which I really should have taken pass/fail). I'm a college writing teacher and that means I engage constantly in critical assessment and redrawn definition -- if my audience is confused the first time, I reach outside the box for a wacky-pants means of making understanding. Okay, admittedly, that may not be synonymous with "teacher" to everyone, but it is in my world. Love the visual and tactile and the world of words. People who have no artistic talent look at what I can do and tell me I should be an artist; people who make their livings doing art look at what I can do and pat me on the head: I know my limitations. I have basic web design skills; this means I can't build you a new look from scratch, but I  speak the language of those who could. I'm a good organizer. When I have a task and a deadline, I see it through to the end.

Did I just pitch myself on my blog where no one with a job to offer will ever likely read it? Oh yes, I did.

Newborn mammals are cute no matter what they are: sloths!

I bought the cats "indoor cat food" which differentiates itself from the regular stuff by the same brand as having 10% fewer calories and more hairball-fighting fiber. I mixed it with the remains of their old food, as per food-changing-instructions, and they managed to eat ALL the old food and leave the new stuff. Picky bitches. Actually, I'm more amazed that they could isolate individual kibbles than put out at their eating habits.

On Facebook this week, people realized how many friends they had who lived on the east coast as status messages regarding the earthquake flooded personal news streams.  Meanwhile, Californian's snickered ... but they may have gotten snobby too fast. Because when an earthquake hits the East Coast unexpectedly, it's not the physical destruction that you have to worry about, it's the naked men with knives.

I'm reading Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke for the first time ever -- and I'm loving it! (no spoilers, plz! I still have another 100 pages to go) Clarke has such great, simple prose. As a writer, I'm totally in love with his style! That's not to say his sentences are all short, blunt, and uncomplicated. Not at all. The sentences themselves are often complicated in construction, and the man knew how to use a semicolon. But they stay clean and unadorned with poetic quirks that could trip up the reader, especially as Clarke is describing some mentally complicated situations such as explaining all the different ways of orienting and reorienting one's sense of "down" in a low gravity situation. That sort of imagining and reimagining of space had me thinking that this narrative would make a great film using today's technology and a sense of space and inversion akin to that we saw in Inception. And lo and behold! IMDB.com says there's a Rendezvous with Rama film due out in 2013! ... and apparently Morgan Freeman, of all people, is pushing for the project to happen/finish.

Post Secret is coming out with an APP this September!

I wrote several secrets and sent them in years ago to Post Secret. They didn't make the website or books (as far as I know). I wrote a few more -- real secrets this time not just the "barely a secret" items I had first sent).  But I never sent them.  I kept them in my apartment. And then I moved them. And now, I don't know where they are. I wish I knew. Because I would send them. Their absence both scares and excites me.

Edited to add: oh and if you were following from last weeks' linklove+life post, know that the foot is slowly getting better. I'm still annoyed by it, at times and it lets me know if I stress it out with too much walking, but it is much, much better.

Grab-bag: TV, non-alcoholic wine, and a real fast talker

I've never gotten into American Idol.  Never have.  But I am in love with the new singing competition show The Voice.  I've been watching for the past six weeks when they did blind auditions and duet face-offs.  Love it.  Four established singers picked teams of eight and then the eight had to face off against their own teammates to whittle the teams down to four each.  Tonight they go to live shows where I have no idea what the format will be.  But I'll get all tripped up in the stories and the sining and we'll all watch Christina Aguilera's big eyes, Blake Sheldon narrowly miss putting his foot in his mouth in that brash country-boy way of his, Cee Lo's sly smile, and Adam Levine perk up and sort of jerk around like a gopher -- a gopher with the world's most amusing range of expressions.


Of course, I'm also enamored of Covert Affairs on USA -- season two starts tonight as well.  I'm a sucker for spy flicks.  It'll be a tough night for me as I have to decide between the two.

At the grocery store the other day, I saw that they had "alcohol removed" red wine for sale.  It's less two-thirds the calories of real wine, so I figured I'd try it.

Verdict: It tastes like unsweetened grape juice.  There's a slight hint of wine-ish-ness in the aftertaste.  So if you like sweet wines and can't stand the dry or oaky types, this might be right up your alley.  I just cut it with real wine.

And finally, the real fast talker makes some interesting points in a very entertaining way:

Four ways to amuse yourself on Monday

I found a kindred spirit over at Ass Over Tea Cup: someone else who fell in love with Anne McCaffery books as a teen/pre-teen and consumed them relentlessly.  Our favorite?  It was and remains Dragonsinger.  Erin posts about Dragonsinger illustrator Elizabeth Littman, whom you will instantly love for her heart and care.

10 simple ways to write faster started off really nice.  Maybe I found it nice because I'd already converted to the Church of the Outline and the article writer was preaching to the choir.  Then as it went on, I sorta wanted to deck the preacher.  Probably feeling pugnacious because I've been sitting too long at my desk.

Your life in photos: your life, that is, if you lived at IKEA.

From xkcd -- read it on its original page

Since you're not at AWP, the Grab-bag: Laugh, cry, and shake your fist

It's Friday.  It's AWP week.  If you're reading this, then you're likely not at the busiest day of the AWP conference.  I decided not to go this year.  I've been to the two past, and while I really enjoyed my previous trips to AWP (except for the part where the Denver airport limos didn't take me to the right hotel and caused me to have a cab ride that was twice the cost of the airport limo ride to get to the right hotel), I decided that I'm doing enough this year trip-wise.

On to the grab-bag.

Laugh: The Journal of Universal Rejection is now accepting submissions.  They are committed to rejecting your submission no matter what it is.  Although, I've heard that no one's gotten an actual rejection yet, just an automated message stating that they're backlogged.  Sounds like they've lost sight of their mission.

Cry: Tracy Hickman talks in this podcast  about the power of just words, and just writing, and what it is that we do as storytellers whether we realize it or not.

Shake your fist:  If you read this essay, "Don't date a girl who reads," you won't shake your fist at the writer -- you might heave a sigh at the end though -- you'll shake your fist at the dumbasses leaving comments after the essay.  Don't read the comments after the essay.  At least, I didn't, and I don't recommend spending your time, emotions, or brain power that way.  But the combined essay and comments did produce this conversation between me and theLiz.

theLiz: Just sent you this: "Don't date a girl who reads,"  Borderline pretentious, but I really really like it. Thought you might too.

me: From that I'm affirmed and saddened. Yes, I'll walk away from you. Dream bigger, schmuck.

theLiz: LOL

I think this may be another case of people over-reading/analyzing? The comments are SO pretentious and irritating they make my eyes bleed.

I'm not seeing this as an insult to the "girl who doesn't read" (or the "small town girl" which may be a stereotype but why the heck not use it? Doesn't bother me in the slightest) but an insult to himself, like "damn girls these days are so much more well-read and intelligent and self-sufficient than they used to be that they aren't willing to just settle for anything anymore." You have to WORK at it and really want to be with the woman. She has to KNOW that. There has to be really passion between the two of you, not just a house and babies, because they know there is more to life.

I think about the girls from [town lived in long ago] I know who who've had babies and aren't doing anything with their lives. Because not only are the uneducated but they "don't read" ie don't realize that there is anything else they could have done with their lives and it depresses the hell out of me.

I wouldn't settle for this schmuck either.

And I'm a girl who will never be satisfied unless I have the real thing.

Am I totally off base here? Are there layers to this that I'm just not seeing? This is why I don't want to be in an English class -- not everything that people write has to have 50 layers. I think he's just saying that it's easier to please a girl who doesn't think for herself. Women who know there is more out there are harder to keep happy. As well we should be.

I thought it was amusing.

me: If there are comments, I didn't read them. I've discovered that "comments" to pieces like these in journals and newspapers are for people too small and too stupid to find their own 15 min of fame and must therefore they must comment on someone else's. (they should at least start a blog-- it's not that much more work!-- and talk about it there, rather than argue in the comments of a published piece! ) 

This piece isn't an insult or a compliment. It's about a guy who got dumped for all the right reasons and he knows it, but getting dumped hurts like hell.

theLiz: THANK YOU. See I'm totally with you. And I like it and I find it amusing.

And you are totally right about the commenters with their big words and overanalyzing just trying to find their 15 minutes of fame.  Ugh. Don't read the comments. They ruined my initial enjoyment.

(a little bit later ... )

theLiz: LOL these people pissed me off so much I commented.

No in a sick kind of way I WANT to be in that English class with the asshole so I can go toe to toe with him.

Anyway. I'm really sad if there are a bunch of angry or angsty comments to this essay in the comments section because I loved the essay when I finished it because that feeling of I know why I got dumped and I really can't blame her ... but I really want to blame her was just so damn human. We are messed up little creatures with convoluted logic. And I loved that the piece highlighted that.

Grab-bag: fairy tales, Twilight, and a Ski-doo

It came to my attention last fall that the National Book Award bars fairy tale retellings.  WTF?  As Laura Miller points out they allow retellings of Shakespearian or Biblical tales.  Kate Bernheimer and Maria Tatar are on a mission to get this changed.  Meanwhile, Disney has no plans to make another animated tale -- then again, NPR thinks Disney is going through an identity crisis.

TheOatmeal explains what the Twilight formula is and how it works on so many people

Can a book save your life? Literally.  In the event of a shooting, would you rather get caught with a book or a kindle?


And please, you really have to do this:

1. Go to Google Maps
2. Choose 'Get Driving Directions', and enter (A)New York to (B)China
3. Scroll down to step 31
4. then Step 105

Grab-bag

Iconic face of Rosie the Riveter poster died recently. I really wish I'd known this story, ya know, before she passed away.  She was a Michigan factory worker and seeing as her service is being held in Lansing, I'm betting she lived in Michigan all her life.

Odyssey Workshop has a new podcast up online from editor David Hartwell's 2010 Odyssey Workshop lecture on titles, titling, and using pseudonyms (Podcast #43). It was great because I find that a lot of writers worry about how to title or when to use a pseudonym and it seems like something the knowledgeable people in the industry don't want to talk about--perhaps it is more tedious than other aspects, but here we have a guy who's been an editor in the SF/F industry for over 40 years and he's willing to talk seriously about the small stuff.

The Kenyon Review Writers Workshop is now open to applications. As is the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop (early admission deadline: Jan. 31; regular deadline: Apr. 8). Both are great workshops.

One of my Odyssey workshop classmates (or Odfellows, as the alums are called), put out a novella (40,000 words) for Kindle titled Nocturne: Son of the Night.  I haven't read the whole thing, but my understanding from the first chapter is that it's a high fantasy vampire world.  40k is an awkward length to sell to a publisher -- it's about half as long as a novel and a about 20k too long for all but a couple magazines to deal with (though as I understand it, it might be the kind of thing BlackGate would serialize).  You can read the first chapter on Smashwords or buy at amazon.com.  And maybe even buy at Samshwords if you need non-Kindle formating.

I got my cats a "cat bed" so that they would stop sleeping on top of my cloth suitcase. They seem to have mixed feeling about the bed, so I doused it in cat nip and now Rosie's all about it. Ash is currently sleeping in the old box lid on my desk. I guess they'll never be happy until they have the ultimate house for cats.

Kristen Lamb has had a great series of posts of the last week about dealing with "Crappy Excuse Trolls and Procrastination Pixies." The posts are long, but it's worth scrolling back to her Dec. 31 entry to catch the entire week's notions of how to behave better beyond the New Year's Resolution.  This awesome picture is from her blog as well.  It's a "Rare Photo of Actual Procrastination Pixie Disguised as a Hamster Cage that Needs Cleaning Instead of Doing Edits on Novel."   Love it.

Over at Third Coast, Nathan Norton posts his thoughts on Resolving to Remain Resolute with Regards to Writing Resolutions.  Nathan's post, as always, is insanely witty.

Speaking of which, my New Year's Resolutions are sorta holding. I've already finished reading one novel--another freebie download from eHarlequin. What can I say? I'm a sucker for free books that you can read quickly. And the writing 500 words a day goal? ... well I have written everyday, which is a start. Haven't really broken the 500 mark every day though and that's worthy of a demerit.

In the spirit of all of the writing is what I love posts I've read and *ahem* written myself, I bring you this from The Onion:

I guess you could say I have always had a love affair with the written word. The simple, solitary act of contemplating the white expanse of the blank page, and then putting pen to paper and seeing where the words take me, is my one constant solace in an otherwise turbulent world. Yes, I must admit it: I am only truly happy when I'm writing.


Or if I'm having dinner with family and friends, or a new and interesting acquaintance I happened to meet that week and hit it off with. I'm pretty happy then, too.


But for me, it always comes back to the writing: the discipline, the stamina required, the unrelenting determination to give voice to my innermost thoughts, thoughts that illuminate the cracks and crevices of the human condition. That is my only satisfaction. That and watching a really good movie on late-night TV, like Suddenly, Last Summer. That's a great feeling, especially when you haven't seen the film in some years, and you discover anew just what it was that you loved about it in the first place. I also enjoy canoeing and windsurfing when I get a free weekend down at the beach.


And Frisbee. I love Frisbee. (read more)

The more I read about the publishing business the more I think ahead. This is good, right? Maybe. It's hard to tell when your tell your friend, "hey I'm thinking about this and this, what's your advice?" and her advice is to stop thinking so far ahead and write the damn book. Then there's things like this very interesting guest post about author branding on Sierra Godfrey's blog. And the post says yes! think about it now!

I know, I know. Those of you out there who are plugging away at writing your book or maybe just sticking your toe in the writing waters are probably thinking...look, I just need to get this book written, find an agent, get a book deal, etc. etc. and then I'll worry about a public image. I've got time for that. Publishing is a slow business.


You're right. The book should be priority number one and publishing IS slow. I got my book deal a few months ago and my book won't hit the shelves until 2012. But let me tell you, when all the good stuff starts happening, it can happen fast. And you'll be thrust from "writer" to "Author" with a capital A in a moment's time.


That's great news. You won't really feel any different (though you'll be excited) and writing will still be just as difficult (believe me.) But the change means your blog, website, twitter, facebook, etc., you know all those things you've been doing to build your platform/presence, are now your brand.


So if you've spent your time on your blog bashing books you don't like, cursing like a sailor, or only posting pictures of cats in doll outfits (or even *gasp* not blogging/tweeting/pick your poison at all), you may have to do a major overhaul or start from scratch. You don't want this stress when you're going to be facing the new stress of being contracted, editing and writing against a deadline, and figuring out all it means to be a paid author. So why not get your brand in place NOW?

And then I'm like, aha! gotcha Roni Loren, I comprehend now. (read more of her guest post).

Lastly, I am in love with Lightspeed magazine!  All SF, all online (although they have other formatting options if you're interested).  They have a really intriguing layout/look--both clean and enticing.  And they're publishing a range of writers, lesser known folk and then, last month, Ursala Le Guin.  Though I could tell it was a Le Guin story because I finished it and went huh?

Grab-bag: tweet me

I spent the past two days curled up with blankets and tea watching episodes of Firefly on Netflix while trying to shake the head cold that had been tailing me--and I think I managed to lose it. Although I now understand both why Firefly had a cult following and got canceled after only one season on TV.

Also this week I discovered that perhaps the most informative time to be reading your Twitter feed is between 8:00 and 9:00 am. At this time very few people are tweeting about their dog or their fatigue or their efforts to find air tight kitchen containers ... no, wait, someone was tweeting about that ever six minutes and trust me, it's even more annoying before 9:00 am than it is after. But I found some rather interesting bookish articles out there.

New book reviews for indie press books including that of a collection of poetry produced by New Issues Press (which is cool because I know people here in town who work for New Issues.

The Slate tells us How to Write Like a Victorian.

Author Jackson Pierce explains how the NYTimes bestseller list works--a must see video for all bookish and writerly types:


Oh and then NPR has an article/podcast on why independent bookstores will survive the failing chains, you know be the wily mammal to the sickly, giant dinosaur.

And lastly, five authors talk about their book editors.

Grab bag

Suggested by Michael, 50 Strategies for Making Yourself Work and getting the damnwriting done.

Nathan Norton, a Third Coast Magazine intern, posted a great article on the Third Coast blog about why your story's title is important and ways to think of making it better. He had me laughing several times along the way.

The principles of physics meet real life in Unpopular Science, a comic from NYTimes. I find most of them amusing, but you'll probably get a real kick out of them if you have kids.

Here's some practical magic for writers: a blog post from Writer Unboxed which inspired me to get a copy of this book. The book hasn't arrived yet (no bookstores still stock it), so I'll let you know in a week (or month) how it is.

Speaking of magic and the fact that it's almost Halloween, how annoying is it that you can't get your hands on a Halloween movie from Netflix for the past ten days? You must have to plan all your Halloween orders ahead, submit them at the beginning of them month and then hang on to them all Smog-like until the actual holiday. Bummer. Guess I won't be listening to Thackery Binx tell me how to defeat a trio of witches this weekend.

When I was a teenager I thought Thackery Binx--though human only for 20 minutes of the entire movie--was oh-so-cute.  But it wasn't until I saw a Thackery Binx photo today that I realized that actor is the same one who is now McGee on NCIS.  Ha. Crazy.

Grab-bag

Writing by hand makes us smarter  ... and Margret Atwood can't touch type. Who knew?

National Coffee Day was on September 29. Totally missed it. The good people of America were handing out free coffee around the country, but I was too mired in my 10 Day Slog Through Hell to notice. But I did belated find this article from CBS on the day. Apparently "heavy caffeine consumption" is six or more cups of coffee a day and can lead to health problems. Guess that means my 3-4 cups a day makes me an addict but not a junkie ... or something.

They think they've found the honeybee hive killer -- and since the NYTimes only ran this article on October 6 of this year, all those idiots who previously told me that "oh no, they've figured it out," can stuff it. People are so full of shit. More accurately, they love speaking authoritatively about things they know nothing about.

Speaking of which, it's just a few weeks until elections and the advertisements abound, in my area they're almost all of them for the State Senate race. Except there's going to be a sharp decrease in them. Not because the Republican candidate agreed to stop her smear campaign and step up and take the Democratic candidate's positive campaigning pledge, but because the Democratic candidate passed away suddenly on Monday causing the Republican party to yank all of their negative print and TV ads. Apparently, it takes a death to get through to them this campaign season. (Update: in my mail today there were 3 smear campaign mailers)

This guest blog at Nathan Bransford's blog is wonderful. Covers a lot of ground and several different ways of thinking about the first pages of a novel.

And a little bit of love and one sad orphaned comma from Reasoning with Vampires:

End of week grab-bag o' links: odds, ends and social networking

I now have to read the Hunger Games books because I suddenly noticed everyone on the internet flipping out about the release of Mockingjay. (Okay, not everyone, but at least all the YA bloggers.) I did not know I was supposed to be waiting with bated breath for the release of the third book.  My bad.  So I will perform odd acts of anticipatory breathing while waiting for copies to become available from my local library. There's a wait list there as well, so it's almost the same thing, right?

There's a blog party going on this weekend. Are you going? I am.  And if you're here because of the labor day blog party: welcome!

On Speak Coffee to Me, the "About" page is now fully updated.  Before there had been all that boring shit about education, etc.  Now the education stuff is buried in an enchanting narrative.  At least, it's meant to be enchanting.  Or at least engaging.  Anyway, it's a story not a CV, so hopefully it's interesting.

If you lurk, but do not follow, now would be a great time to click on the "Follow" button on the right-hand sidebar, just between the eileenwiedbrauk.com logo and the advertisements.

Funny and funny, corporate style.

Recent articles on the web about writers and social networking.

• From Writer Unboxed, how to use your facebook page to your advantage. Also from Writer Unboxed, why you don't need a facebook page.
• From Fine Printe Literary Management blog, "Social Networking 101" -- except all they really say is that you need a blog, then they discuss what to blog about. Answer: books! And be aware of your voice. Look! Now you don't even have to follow the link! As an example of voice they recommend the Bloggess. Sheesh. Talk about telling newbies to aim high.
• And lastly, a not-all-that-recent article from Writer's Digest on the subject of social networking.  As always, Writer's Digest is only good for covering the basics in a bare fashion, but it's a good place to start if you don't know where to start.  
• Next week I'll put up the semi-related links to thoughts regarding social networking and author promotion.

And finally, to wrap up the grab-bag I will answer some recent questions: Yes, I made the header for my blog. Made it from scratch.  I used a good camera to take a picture of the black coffee mug (with coffee in it) and then Photoshoped it into header greatness.  Back when I paid for hosting as well as a domain name, I had a series of headers all made by taking photos of objects on a large piece of white paper.

Ever been on a photo shoot?  Okay, better question: ever seen a photo shoot on America's Next Top Model?  You know how they have those white backdrops that curve from backdrop to floor covering without a harsh fold?  Yeah, that was my inspiration.  And for small objects, a piece of white printer paper held up with one hand works just as well as those fancy backdrops.  All other coffee mugs except the one at the top are stock photos found on the net.

I'm not in possession of the black coffee mug at the moment; it's living at my father's house where it is sheltered by sentimentality surrounding it of which this blog is a symptom rather than a cause.

Grab-Bag: Friday Links

An old pay phone booth becomes a book booth. Really cool looking.  I love it when people get creative with their recycling.

Nathan Bransford gives us how to write a novel.  And manages to condense the entire writing process into one blog post, to which I say, Bravo!  I particularly liked the bit about styling your characters based on what the character wants.  I find this aspect particularly helpful when I know a character should be in the story, but I'm not in love with said character and therefore can't really get into them.

Bransford says: "Now, the best protagonists are complex individuals who may want multiple things. They may think they want one thing but in reality want another, or they may want two things that are at odds with each other. But once you know what a character wants, their personality (funny? brave? weak?) becomes an expression of how they go about getting it."

Kay Kenyon gives us some notions on having a writing schedule, or in some cases, fooling yourself about having a schedule.

Grab-bag: Friday Links

Amazon.com presents their list of the best books of the first half of 2010. Funny, I haven't read any of them, and haven't heard of most of them. Honestly, the only one I've heard of is The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, and all I really know about it is that it's in every damn bookstore I go into and that the author has been dead some four or five years.  Everybody loves ya when you're dead, I guess.

The New York Times real estate section shows you what you can get for $350,000 in three very different cities. Be sure to check out the photo slide show.

From the blog that brought you "Alot is better than you," we get "things that don't turn out like I'd envisioned."  Both are complete with illustrations.  Very cute.

A new promo video for "The Guild" is out.  Every time I see one of their promos, I wonder why it is that I don't watch their webisodes.  Then again, it might be that, as a non-gamer, I just don't get all the jokes.  Still the promo video is fab.



And, if you're like me, you watched that video and tried to get a good look at the cover of the book she's reading.  I wasn't able to identify it, but the good news was that Kristin Nelson of Pubrants satisfied my curiosity for me: it's Bewitched and Betrayed by Lisa Shearin.

I recently came upon this post from Uncanny Valley (via), which lays out the blogger's pedagogy for his first time teaching intro to creative writing at the college level. He promises to keep blogging about his expectations and realities as the semester progresses, and I certainly look forward to those posts.

And lastly, today is International Left-hander's Day, started in 1976 to remind the world that "Lefties have rights."

Grab-bag: Friday Literary Links & Dialects

This is the 100th Speak Coffee post in 2010!

Ohmygod I love this cartoon.

Ohmygod, I hate when people say -- aloud -- "oh-em-gee." %*&@! Just say the real fucking phrase would you?! Understand the origin of the phrase is words that have been abbreviated down to letters, not letters that have any meaning on their own. Besides, when you say it you sound like a asinine 16 year-old girl. So unless you are asinine, or sixteen, please restrain yourself.

Since we're on dialect, I'll confess that mine is now dated -- I don't talk like a YA author on Twitter or like the YA audience that they're writing toward whom I've also seen using this lingo on line. My biggest dating feature: I don't call anything "epic." I'm much more likely to say "X was uber-successful" than "X was epic." Epic and uber are not entirely interchangeable in their slang usages but alas I'm dated. Use of uber = totally obvious that I went to college in the 00's not the 10's (gasp!). I don't write awesomesauce blog posts made of win, just the occasional kickass one.

In response to my post about the psycho intern applicant from hell, Rachele Alpine wrote a fake (thank god) query letter in the style of the would-be intern's psycho-ness.

I've come to realize that the compilation-blog is the new writer-blog. I've started following Writer Unboxed lately, which is great, and then a friend of mine launched Seven Sassy Sisters Blog with her writing group -- the Sassy Seven are all romance writers targeting different lines and imprints. When they started out as a critique group none of them were published, now it's a different story. Way to go ladies!

Grab-bag: Friday Literary Links

The Power of the Blog -- now the question is whether the power will be used for good, or for evil.

Author Jody Hedlund has compiled a list of top writing books based on public opinion. Some of which I've reviewed on this blog (and others which I haven't).  My review listings have been added to the Best of the Blog page under "Books on Writing, Reviewed."  I'm a little surprised that John Gardner's Art of Fiction didn't show up on Hedlund's poll if only because the old guard loved that book.  Then again I think it's the kind of book that you should read someday because Gardner comes across as a prick.  You gotta have a thick skin and a good sense of self (and a hefty dose of doubt for authority) to get something productive and not destructive out of that book.

Grab-bag: Friday Literary Links

A list of things to (not) do while you're querying agents including not placing a voodoo hex on agents who reject you. To that I'd like to add that engaging the supernatural -- be it negatively or positively -- in pursuit of publication is probably something you want to avoid.

But before you query an agent you should probably know what it is an agent does -- a really nice informative essay by author Steven Harper Piziks on the things his agent has done for him that he would have never done himself. 

And while we're on the topic of agents, Jessica Faust has a great post on the Bookends blog about how writers (even those hoping to score a deal with a small academic press) need to think of agents not as contract negotiators but as career builders.  I know a lot of writers who wouldn't even think of attempting to get an agent after they've gotten a small press contract on their own, so this post was rather enlightening -- think of what an agent could do for that manuscript while it's still malleable. 

Writing a novel way too big an investment for you? Don't worry, the Hint Fiction Contest has been "reloaded."

Is hint fiction too short? Novels too long? Novellas too dead?  Wait!--they're not dead; they've just moved to Canada.

But if you're in workshop you rarely have the luxury of choosing your form; short stories are the gold standard.  So you write a short story and take it to workshop.  No one wants to go to workshop for therapy -- or at least I sure as hell don't -- but perhaps some people need it. "I have learned that sometimes the problem with a story is a personal problem, not a writerly problem." Damn. Yeah, I follow. It's a nice essay I just wish it spoke more to how she deals with it as a workshop instructor and not just how she deals with it in her own writing.

And for your gratuitous hot-men-reading-books pleasure I give you Hot Men Reading Books.  (found via)

Potpourri - Life (en Random) heavy with Links and Pictures

Project Runway Season 7 Finale was last night.  Seth Aaron, Emilio and Mila faced off at New York Fashion week.  My opinion of the verdict: the right designer won.  I adored the dark coat with the puff sleeves; that, and a couple of the dresses from his collection were the only things of all three collections that I would even think about wearing.

An insanely embarrassing typo by Penguin in a cook book that made it to print before said typo was noticed. A "$3300 a letter" mistake.

When the band Pearl Jam first hit the scene I ... well, I was too young to care.  Now, I'm retro-actively appreciative.  Now their recent release "Just Breathe" is among my most played songs of the week.

Say happy earth day! to the noisiest chip bag ever. Those plant fibers are crinkly! I don't compost at home -- I'm in an apartment and even if I did buy an apartment composter I have no place to use said compost -- but I figure even if I throw out a fully biodegradable bag it has to be better than the normal chip bag.  So I'm now only buying Sun Chips; I'll buy other chips when they too switch to better bags. When you touch it, the crinkly noise is so loud it's scary! But friendly-scary. And the Sun Chips themselves taste as good as ever.

Laura Donnelly pre-releases her book of poetry Nocturne - Schumann's Letters, forthcoming in June 2010 from the lovely Finishing Line Press, and is available for pre-publication sales until April 30th. Information for online purchase or mail order is available here: http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm. After April 30 I believe it will be available from Amazon.com.

Bugs have returned to the north.  I'm not thrilled.  There was a bug in my sink yesterday and today the fruit flies have returned to my fruit.  I hope Rosie is hungry because her secondary purpose in our relationship is to terrorize, kill and/or eat all insect life that enters my apartment.  Her primary purpose being to entertain the first cat.

I'm reading All-Star Superman vol 1-2 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely.  How can you not be sucked into a graphic novel/comic book when you open the cover and the first few pages are these big, dramatic, richly colored, romanticized images.  Big sigh.  I'm just starting my summer crash course on the graphic novel and the history of comic book and I'm already hooked! Suggestions welcome for what I should read next -- As are suggestions about places where one can read older comics when that was not a part of one's childhood -- my parents were all about buying me books, but those comic things? Not so much.

The topmost secret on Post Secret this week is heartbreaking.  So often people obscure the faces of those whose images appear on the post secrets.  I can't even imagine what it is to put yourself out there like this.

The Muppets are up for two Webbys!  But why didn't this get a "viral" webby nod?

I've dedicated myself to taking and posting more photos with my Nikon D80.  I'd like to say that the awesome photography of Margosita and Allison inspired me, but that would only be half true.  The other half is that the battery in my pocket-sized digital camera ran down. I have searched high and low for the batter charger but there's no sign of it.  I blame the cats for it's inexplicable relocation.

At the top of the blog under the header, you'll notice a new heading: BEST OF.  I'm creating a Best of the Blog listing under this tab.  It's got some stuff up there -- cats, AWP posts and "Tales of Woe: My Idiot Neighbors" -- but it's still under construction.  I'm adding stuff as I think about it.  If you have any suggestions of posts you found helpful or funny that I should put in there I'd be more than happy to take them.  

Today, a guy rode through my parking lot on a unicycle.  When I saw this in downtown Ann Arbor I wasn't that surprised, but in Kalamazoo?  Sadly, I did not get a picture.

And finally, since this is titled potpourri: how to make potpourri.  Though in this day and age I have no idea why you'd ever want to make potpourri.  I just get lavender sachets for my closet.  Mmmm, lavender.  Every time I find out of these guys in my closer (I frequently kick them since one lives on the floor under neath the hanging clothes and one in the shelf area safe from kicking) it reminds me of France, and of the smell of opening my luggage when I returned from France.  What the hell kind of 17 year-old was I?  No one else gave a damn that we were driving through miles and miles of lavender fields in bloom but my little romantic heart went pitter-pat at the sight.