- Jody Rosen uncovers blatant and prodigious pilfering from other news sources at a free weekly in Texas called The Bulletin.
- Jim Emerson with some very sensible questions about the critical and cultural reaction to The Dark Knight, which I found more flawed than not (barring Ledger’s indisputably amazing Joker turn and Gary Oldman’s excellent take on Commissioner Gordon).
- Welcome to Clingstone, the picturesque mansion built on a rock. The slide show has some great photos, including one really striking image of two little girls dancing inside. (Via Matt Ruff.)
- Kelley Eskridge meditates on where publishing models may be headed from the writer’s perspective: But what if the definition of Real Writer is changing? What if it’s expanding to include the possibility that maybe an audience will bring you a big advance a lot sooner than a big advance will bring you an audience? Or that maybe there is no big advance, there’s only big audience and the small amounts of money they’re willing to pay individually to download your work or contribute to the PayPal tip jar on your website? What if some writers develop a here you go, what do you think, should I work on this idea? relationship with their readers, so there’s some kind of push-pull between the artist and audience? Read the whole thing.
- Ekaterina Sedia writes about one of my favorite novels, Sean Stewart’s Mockingbird, over at Jeff VanderMeer’s. It’s the third in a series about underrated novels/writers.
- World Fantasy Award nominations. Congrats to all those so honored — this is the first year in awhile that I haven’t read a sizeable chunk of the nominated stuff, and so I’m particularly intrigued.
- J.L. Bell on misdirection in magic and fiction.
- Lizzie Skurnick writes in praise of Stephenie Meyer’s quartet in the Chicago Tribune.
- Roger Sutton dips a toe into the strange and miraculous world of fanfic.