- Still. working. on. it. (Though going well, on track I think, etc.) In the meantime, a few links.
- At the First Second blog, some reasons titles get changed.
- Writing fight scenes, advice from some experts: "The most common mistake is probably the one that cannot really be corrected. Most fight scenes with weapons go on too long. The saying in the Filipino arts that I do is there are only three good stick fights: thud; click, thud; click, click, thud. Anything else means you don’t really know how to fight. Since most of the time, stories are about extraordinary people with extreme skills, fights that last minutes–even a minute–are unrealistic."
- A profile of the divine Liz Hand.
- PW covers a panel on the YA blockbuster.
- I do love a missing (or imaginary) island.
- Fantasy heroines from the 1980s in art nouveau renderings; love these.
- Daniel Handler interviewed in the NYT: "You have to wonder if dictators muse about how scary they are to certain young generations. Nowadays, with social networking, you could actually just name somebody. That would be terrifying if you were a dictator and you said, “There’s no one I hate more than such and such,” an 11-year-old in Lincoln, Neb."
- Midori Snyder pulls out some of the Voynich Manuscript's most lovely pages.
- A nice Blackwood shout-out in Heroes & Heartbreaker's recent look at some YA and romance novels being adapted for the screen. (If you haven't seen the gorgeous first teaser trailer for the City of Bones movie, then what are you waiting for? It's also at that link. I. cannot. wait.)
- And another one among these recommendations from Suzanna Hermans of Oblong Books on WAMC–the one and only Libba Bray and I will be at Oblong at 4 p.m. on December 9. Come out if you can. (I'll also be in NYC briefly before and after.)
- With that, I'm back to work.