the essential kit

a momentary reality check

We’re looking for somewhere new to rent, and I mumbled about a lovely place that costs an impractical, um, *checks conversion rate*, $2350 a month. This caused someone (that I have known since childhood, so while it was cheeky, well, actually, total strangers ask these questions too, so) to ask the following question, and since I wrote out the answer anyway, I thought I might as well post it. “I thought successful authors like yourself made a lot of money? Am I way off base?” Yes. :) Here. I’ll talk…

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Recent Reads: TOUCH OF POWER

Maria’s one of the other Luna alumni who got picked up at the same time I did. She’s done a kind of splendid shooting star rise, reaching the NYT with first book, and going on to take the YA world by storm since then. This book might work better for that audience. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it (except a language thing Maria’s chosen to do in all her books which I understand but find jarring), but I was underwhelmed, which leaves me feeling like probably I just wasn’t a…

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More on genderflipping

After last week’s post on genderflipped covers, my friend Flit dug up an article she remembered reading about a a bias study regarding female playwrights. The article is well worth reading, but for the TL;DR folk among us (sorry, I only just learned that TL;DR meant “too long; didn’t read”, so now I have to use it at least once), the take-away is “in an as-controlled study as is possible, it turns out women discriminate against female playwrights more strongly than men do, even though plays written by women make…

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Genderflipping covers

So Maureen Johnson, YA author, threw down a gauntlet a couple of days ago regarding the way books are marketed and asked her jillions of Twitter readers to gender-flip some of their favorite book covers. To make a cover that might have been offered up if the book was by a person of the other gender, or was gender neutral (initials instead of full names. She’s written a terrific article about the whole problem of gendered covers here, and it is truly worth a read. Really truly honest to God.…

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the essential kit

crowdfunding across the universe!

Two things: first, the most awesome car commercial ever made: Second, and completely unrelated, a friend of mine is running a crowdfund project for a performance piece this summer that my sister and other persons of my acquaintance will be performing in. It’s in dire need of support, with seven days and 75% of the way to go yet. Perhaps you will go support it because I have just shown you the most awesome car commercial ever made (*hopeful*! O.O), or maybe just because you’re awesome, or maybe you can…

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