Category: Writing

the essential kit

Escaping Stockholm: Part 2

May 29, 2013

Escaping Stockholm: Second in a series of publishing industry essays by author Judith Tarr, about whom the following is all perfectly true: Judith Tarr hates writing bios of herself. She would rather write historical fantasy or historical novels or epic fantasy or the (rather) odd alternate history, or short stories on just about any subject that catches her fancy. She has been a World Fantasy Award nominee for her Alexander the Great novel, Lord of the Two Lands, and won the Crawford Award for her Hound and the Falcon trilogy.…

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No Dominion

this…this is meaningful…

May 25, 2013

Author Kristin Kathryn Rusch writes about a major change in book distribution and what it potentially means for writers. It’s a really long article. It’s really worth reading. The *exceedingly* short take-away of it is that you may soon be seeing copies of NO DOMINION on bookstore shelves near you…

the essential kit

a momentary reality check

May 22, 2013

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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More on genderflipping

May 14, 2013

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

May 8, 2013

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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