- Real posts soon, promise, but for now some links.
- Golden Retriever Festival in Scotland. These photos are my new happy place.
- Great piece by Michael Erard at The Morning News, "Rumors of Tribes": "I collected high school names using Twitter and Survey Monkey and came across “crumbsters,” a label for the popular kids, and the “queer cult,” for the semi-populars, though if awards were given out for creative crowd labels, the kids at one New Jersey high school in the mid-2000s might win for naming their popular crowd in the aftermath of a food fight that happened in ninth grade, when one of the most popular girls shrieked and generally overreacted after she was hit in the face with a flying chicken patty. The popular kids became known as “chicken patties.” "
- The super-fancy Robin Wasserman interviewed Ann Patty, the editor who pulled V.C. Andrews from the slush pile. See also: an essay from Patty and a piece by Sara Gran and Megan Abbott in the Believer.
- The fab Kelly Braffet wrote a great piece about persevering in the face of naysayers: "After school, I drove to the mall. Soon enough, as always, I found myself in the bookstore. There, surrounded by all of those lovely shelves, row upon row of lovely books, I realized: They hadn’t written themselves. People had written them. Clearly, writing books was not impossible. I was a person; therefore I could write books. And also, Mrs. Smith could go to hell."
- A micro-lesson on the importance of varying sentence lengths.
- Stephen Blackmoore and Chuck Wendig tackle the kinds of questions that usually get posed only to ladies, over at Whack! The results are hilarious.
The Woken Gods release day continues its approach:
- Quick reminder that today's the last day to send the preoder proof if you want a relic typed up and sent to you via the mail. I'm really looking forward to doing these. *twirls fingers evilly*
- A happy-making new review at SF Signal by Paul Weimer. Snippet: "In addition to Kyra as a character, the other feature of Woken Gods that really stands out to the reader is its creative use of mythology. Before reading it, I had expected the usual suspects of Greco-Roman mythology, or perhaps, if I was fortunate, a Norse Goddess or two thrown into the mix. … To my surprise and delight, the Gods we see in the Woken Gods are none of the usual suspects."
And a new pretty image et quote:
More soon!