By Nat | Published:
August 9, 2010
Publishing: Dorchester goes digital, and B&N looks to go private. It’s all a bit rock&roll reunion tour in print publishing too right now, isn’t it? Oh, but ebooks haven’t stopped: Conneticut is investigating agency publishing as being potentially anti-competitive.
Interest-Piquing: Joy Berry, children’s author, threatened to sue Joy Berry, erotica author, on the basis the erotica author was deliberately and commercially attempting to trade off the children author’s good name. The erotica author was published through Smashwords, who did not cave to the legal threat (though the erotica author bowed out with good grace) since they felt it was unfounded. Good for them! And honestly, if you were going to try and sell erotica using someone else’s name, I’m fairly certain that unless you’re writing a very particular (and in a lot of countries, actually illegal) niche in erotica, you’re not going to try and ride the high of an author most famous for her books in childcare, including a potty-training app.
InsPiring: Science in my Fiction puts forth a theory explaining sparkly vampires. Meanwhile, I think I’ve found a new blog to glom.
Procrasination: Orisinal, adorably cute and utterly addictive little flash games.
By Nat | Published:
August 7, 2010
Found the first pirated copy of Tease yesterday. I feel like a proper author now! I’ve joined GoodReads as Mina Kelly, and changed my LibraryThing name to MinaKelly as well. Pimped the book everywhere, and one of my friends has already read and reviewed it (and she bought it! If I’d got my head around this whole author business I’d have sent her an ARC).
Having dropped back to part time work, I’m currently working a 6 day week. It’s technically part of the time, right? It’s front of house work, so no more internet or phone all day. So if I’m hard to get hold of, that’s why. I’m applying for another full time job at the moment, which would involve starting work at 7AM some days. But also Romans and dinosaurs. Those are things I’ll happily leave the house for before the sun comes up.
I also have conjunctivitis, which means my housemates have had to put up with me whining about my eyes for a week, and the pharmacist seemed to think I was about a bit of a hypochondriac until I mentioned sometimes I lose the ability to focus properly, at which point she tried to point me at my nearest doctor post-haste. I don’t think it’s that bad (hey, I’m typing merrily away, aren’t I?) but I will attempt to make use of the NHS at some point next week if I’m ever not at work. In the meantime I have some eyedrops that sting, which means they must be working. I don’t need to be able to see when I’m working with swords, right?
By Nat | Published:
August 5, 2010
This week we’ve got something slightly different: Alison Whetton was involved in a self-publishing venture that began in the 90s, but it wasn’t a novel. No, she published a role play game.
Parents leave their offspring to do as they please, defending the evil that results, as they wish not their own to be recognised or blamed. They give nothing and take constantly, uncaring of those they take from, for they believe they are owed – perhaps they should think of the sick and the dying whose money they steal.
Doctors help those they can to live, even when life is pain, for they cannot do otherwise. Were the pain inflicted by another the victim’s suffering would soon end, yet when it is disease or injury who are the tormentors, the doctors must be their accomplices.
Above this, in steel and glass towers, corporate knights duel with diamond pens in a war of words, striving to rule a fantasy world of stocks and bonds and numbers. Each day another triumph, another victim, but no one keeps the crown for long, or is remembered by those who succeed them. Corporations, like dinosaurs, tear and strike at one another in the insane pointless dance of trade, healing setbacks in moments. Until at last one falls and the others tear it apart and subsume it, while lesser companies fight for the scraps, and asset-strippers scavenge what they can.
There are those out there, not merely part of one world, but of them all, seeking a living in the shadows inside the steel spires, unnoticed by the corporations they are part of, fearing the half seen darkness on the streets around them. In the day they work as they live, in the night return to their homes and watch their television and pretend that everything is alright and that there was nothing they could do if it was not.
The good among them fight for others’ rights. They comfort a few and in places their work endures for a few moments and makes others feel happier with the lie that nothing is wrong. Most will not act – yet do not think of themselves as evil. They are happy in their lives and blind to the shadow at the edge of vision and if on occasion they feel sorrow or unease, they do not know for what it is they grieve.
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By Nat | Published:
August 2, 2010
Publishing: Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news this week from the retailing giants. The good news is that agency pricing is NOT coming to the UK. Amazon are finally launching a Kindle store in this country (and Kindle 3), and have confirmed this. The bad news? Apple are censoring their bestseller lists (not their content, just your ability to find it easily). It’s the same as with the iPod apps, except they didn’t even announce it this time. Transparency they lack.
Interest-Piquing: It’s an old article now, but it’s still pretty interesting., Jim C Hines discusses some of the big myths of self-publishing.
InsPiring: I thought these articles could help inspire stories in two very different genres: Romance and Horror.
Procrastination: Dear Girls Above Me. Annoying neighbours? Become an internet sensation!
By Nat | Published:
August 2, 2010
By Nat | Published:
August 1, 2010
By Nat | Published:
July 31, 2010
By Nat | Published:
July 30, 2010
By Nat | Published:
July 29, 2010
This week my guest is Sara-Jayne Townsend, who’s been published by Lyrical Press. Her novel, Suffer the Children, is set in my home county of Surrey!
Fear has a face…
Orphaned at eighteen, Leanne’s life is adrift in a sea of grief and drug use. She washes up on the shore of estranged relatives, the Carver family, struggling with loss of their own. The transition from her South London council estate to her new home in the Surrey middle-class suburbs is difficult for Leanne.
But beneath the respectable veneer of the quiet neighborhood, something terrifying lurks. Displaced and troubled teenagers are disappearing. Leanne recruits her cousin Simon and his girlfriend Carrie to help get to the bottom of the sinister mystery. Can the three of them stop a creature of unimaginable evil before Leanne becomes a target?
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