- It's official: van Gogh was kind of a drama queen.
- Paging Dave Schwartz: Do you already read The Urban Pantheist LJ? If not, here's an elephant-full post for you.
- Via Deb Coates, a pointer to Kristin Nelson's end of the year post in which she reveals her agency got 38,000 queries last year. It's no wonder Colleen Lindsay is making wise resolutions about balance and fun and boundaries, because, wow. That's a lot of aspiring writers out there.
- Ed Park has some fun reviewing the Peter Straub-edited American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny.
- Christa Faust writes about crime fiction's obsession with the woman in distress. (via Sarah.)
- Elizabeth Genco establishes The Lost Symbol Drinking Game.
- Over at Jacket Knack, Julie Larios picks her favorite children's book covers of the year, and Carol Brendler does likewise.
- Finally: Preach it, J.L. Bell: "Originality is overrated. … Or, rather, our literary and artistic culture has, probably since the Romantic period in literature and for over a century in the visual arts, valued originality more than highly competent reworkings. If we look back on the art and literature of previous centuries, we see artists and writers unabashedly exploring the same topics and tales. The competition among artists over the same ground fueled both technique and creativity." Execution is (nearly) everything.