I hate to drop in and just leave this, but I noticed that there was no place for announcements for members.

I've built a new place for writers called Writer's Create. We have challenges each week that put the winner on the front page, a private critique group, games, and writing discussions.

We're still very new, but be have a growing list of members. If you're interested feel free to stop by and take a look. The best part about it is its completely free. So it certain wouldn't hurt to take peek.

http://s13.invisionfree.com/Writers_Create/index.php?act=site

Good luck everyone in your writing career.

Yo mama!

Proofing reading your mother's graphic sexcapades. Um, please, just cover me with spikey caterpillars and stuff my mouth with slugs. Luckily, my own personal DNA donor can barely read the words "Bud Light" on her Zippo, much less write a book, so I'm okay here.


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Sex, Lies and Paperweights

The lies that writers tell themselves, and how Americans are better at self-deception than Canadians.


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The fabulous life of James Patterson
The NY Times business section has an interesting piece on bestselling author James Patterson (who apparently made $40 million last year) and his investments. It contains the interesting revelation that Patterson doesn't always write his books:

Mr. Patterson said he often worked with co-authors because he believed that he was more proficient at creating the story line than at executing it.

"I found that it is rare that you get a craftsman and an idea person in the same body," Mr. Patterson said. "With me, I struggle like crazy. I can do the craft at an acceptable level, but the ideas are what I like." He said the co-authors received a flat fee and, most often, credit on the book cover.

That irritated me at first, but then I figured what the hell. If you like his books, you like his books. At least you're reading. And he also plans to give away half his fortune to education. We all have those plans, don't we?

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Heinlein's lady trouble

Apparently he started out as a bra-burning feminist. Who knew? It was only that whole pesky thing called "the 70s" that ruined him. That fucking decade has a whole lot to answer for (WHERE'S MY SPACE STATION GARDEN, YOU SCHOLASTIC MOFO LIARS?? WHERE'S MY PERSONAL ROBOT?)


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"Are writers the new rock stars?"

I suppose that makes me the seedy bar band.

I do it for the groupies
Are writers the new rock stars? Minus the money and relevance, of course.

NO LONGER IS IT JUST ROCK stars who go on tour, attract groupies and perform live. Britain has gone crazy over writers and readings at literary festivals. There are now 207 UK festivals, from 20-seater village affairs to big-tent international events.
The key literary pit-stops are Hay-on-Wye, Cheltenham and Edinburgh. But there are scores more, as well as many abroad. The newest hotspot is Marrakesh, where Arts in Morocco (AiM) has invited some of the best British writers to provide a weekend of highbrow entertainment this month. Esther Freud, Hari Kunzru, Meera Syal and publishers and literary agents are descending on North Africa to talk up Eng lit.

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Edited by author 09-10-2005 05:35 PM
Can you really trust writers...
... when they're talking about themselves?

The writer too shy to be named has become a cliche, and a marketing tool. The Traveller, a first novel by the thumpingly pseudonymous John Twelve Hawks, is shooting up the bestseller lists, in part because the author has declined to be identified.
Yet there is also something deeply admirable, in the age of the ubiquitous author interview, in a writer who refuses to tell all, who deliberately obscures or distorts the past, or heads for the privacy of the hills. Writers like Salinger, Lee, Traven and Charriere are among the very few who managed to escape seeing their work banalised by public scrutiny of their own lives. They went on the literary lam, and got clean away.

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They're gone!!

Breathe, you lucky old folk with school-age kids. Enjoy! Get that book written. You've got until June. Go!


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Ever spot someone reading your book?
Just keep your mouth shut.


A well-known writer found himself sitting on a train opposite a woman reading the novel (his first) which he'd recently had published. Unable to contain his excitement, he leaned across the table, gave a small cough and told the woman that she was reading his book. She immediately lowered it and said how sorry she was, explaining that she didn't know the book belonged to anyone, and that she'd just found it lying on the table. Before the writer could correct her misapprehension, the woman slid the book across the table towards him. "It doesn't matter," she said. "I wasn't really enjoying it anyway."

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Speaking of trolls...

What happens to teen literary stars? Hopefully, years of obscurity followed by a long, lingering painful death in a SOR hotel somewhere.

Sure, she has money, but... well, that's a lot of money
What happens to teen literary stars?

a youthful sensation doesn't always translate into a distinguished literary career. For many teen authors, that first book proves a hard act to follow. Some never again meet with the kind of praise critics heaped upon their first offerings.
Perhaps that should not come as a surprise. Writing a great book before the age of 20 is an accomplishment so extraordinary that some adults struggle to understand how it's even possible. They wonder how one so young can manage to write with authority in an original voice.

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Send me your guesses. george @AT@ bookninja .DOT. com

The winner gets to share in my revulsion. (Lunchtime: I'm headed to said bookstore right now.)

G

Can we run a contest: guess that bookstore? Name that troll? I have my guesses ready to go. Maybe, to avoid poking the troll (there's a ready-made euphemism), or antagonising bookselling bystanders, we could arrange confidential contest entries. I don't begrudge independent booksellers their attitudes these days, though. The now-endangered knowledgable staff are themselves victims of having their talents undervalued.

So this is why everyone hates you...

Funny how topical this is, at least in my little life. It's like this little troll at a bookstore I go to quite regularly. Every time I go in he spews quiet hatred and ugliness at me. I'm as friendly as I can be, but nada. Other customers he seems fine with. Me, he's fuming. I asked a colleague of his whether I had done something to offend and he said, "Oh no, he just hates you because you're a writer." I said, "He hates writers?" "No, he's a writer too. He just hates ones more successful than himself." Ding ding ding. Truth bell.


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What's in a name?

If you're a writer, about this much. (From Maud)


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