Rock stars and authors, one and the same

No, I'm kidding, only Neil Gaiman gets to be a rock star author (except for celebrity memoirs). But Jeffrey Wasserstrom came up with 5 reasons author tours are like rock concerts. Among them is the knowledge that being the opening act for someone huge is bittersweet. He of course leaves out the drugs and groupie sex, to meet HuffPo standards of cleanliness.

A primer in technology

Do you feel overwhelmed by all the new doo-dads and interwebs running around? Well, I can't really help. But I can help if you're interested in the gossipy side of Silicon Valley. Behold, a reading guide to titles about the tech-mafia leaders. Nerds: they're so in right now!

Neil Gaiman charges $45k for four hours

Neil Gaiman recently spoke at a library event, and was paid $45,000 for a four hour talk (and before anyone asks, the money was earmarked for speakers, so they couldn't spend it on anything else).

Some people are angry, but I say, hey, I would also charge that much. Now taking speaking engagements! Mail cash, and I assure you I'll show up.

Vampires do shop at Whole Foods

An open call to Emily Colette Wilkinson: please be my friend. Although I ever so slightly mocked this conference on vampires in modern writing, and still think it is a little silly, Wilkinson has written a really amazing analysis of vampirism in the Twilight and Sookie Stackhouse books, which made my inner psuedo-academic fall in love. She writes:

Our vegetarian vampires, I think, are afflicted with the same crises of conscience that we are as first-world twenty-first century humans. We eat too much, we shop too much, we use too much fuel, water, land; we mistreat the animals on which we depend for food and the other peoples whose labor produces for us the cheap abundant goods we have all grown so used to....Contemporary vampire fiction mirrors our collective anxiety about our need for self-discipline and a return to a more humane approach to our fellow beings....From the shimmering pâleur of the vampire radiates something new and hardly otherworldly: an aura of white liberal guilt.

The whole post is absolutely worth the read, and is only the first of two. Is there such a thing as being a pop culture PhD? Because if so, I will start working on stuff like this posthaste.

In which stalking pays off

Step 1: Write a book.
Step 2: Get book rejected many, many, many many times.
Step 3: Find the address of famous people who run a television book club.
Step 4: Book deal!

Yes, this is the only way to get a book deal. Commence stalking, all ye who enter here.

Prison bloggers, unite

Lil' Wayne, recently incarcerated rap artist, has begun blogging from jail. Now, I don't particularly care about what he has to say, but Gawker put together a great post comparing Lil' Wayne's prison blogging to great prison writers of old, including St. Paul and the Marquis de Sade.

Prison: can super help your writing. That advice is free to all you aspiring novelists!

And the bans played on

Sometimes society feels a need to band together and say, "Heck no, our chittlins should not be reading!" And when that happens, Mommy kisses Daddy, and the angel tells the stork, and the stork flies down from heaven, and leaves a diamond under a leaf in the cabbage patch, and the diamond turns into a banned book.* Yes, the explanation doesn't make much sense, but the books that get banned also don't make much sense. Little Women? The dictionary? Nice work, America.

*Five imaginary dollars if you can tell me a) what movie that's from and b) why it is the greatest movie of all time.

The siren song of the bookstore

Some days it is hard to pass by the bookstore without getting juuuust one book. Sometimes you need to know when to quit buying, and to read what you already have.

I actually did this for about a year (not because I was being moral about book buying, but because all my money went to "housing" and "food" and other such things), and it was actually pretty fun.I read, among other things, Band of Brothers, The Bell Jar, World War Z, and half of Catch 22 until I wanted to stab out my eyes with a fork and quit. I finished books I had abandoned and titles with ugly covers that I had been avoiding (it turns out, they have very nice personalities!).

The best part was that it confirmed that I do, in fact, have great taste.

Reaping the writing rewards

Dear Sirs and Madams,

I feel that we've known each other for some time. Several months, in fact. Why, pray tell then, have I not received any $20,000 checks in the mail? I say important things! Like...that thing the other day...you know what I'm talking about. That one time.

Ok, for reals, I understand that I'm not super contributing to society or "journalism-ing." And I don't loath anyone a nice check, and anonymity makes it a little difficult to accept your monies.

I'm just saying. Some people like checks.

Sincerely,

Laura C. Ombreviations

Reality TV infects romance novels

In case you are too old for a personalized children's book with your name featured prominently, you can showcase your love in the new Vows imprint of HCI, which "will match romance writers with real life couples, turning the wedding column into steamy nonfiction."

So if your sex life isn't weird enough, you can now read someone else's steamy interpretation of your romance. Hell, send me $5 and a waffle recipe, and I will write you a story about your romance with a zombicorn (or in which you and your lover defeat a zombicorn? I'm flexible). It'll be super steamy.

Haitian history

For those of you who know nothing about Hatian history or politics (read: me), check out this reading list. Knowledge is power!

Not kidding about kidneys

Reader-types, it is now time to listen to me push politics. Be forewarned! (Or just skip this one if you are politics averse.)

I saw this post at Alicia's blog, and wanted to add: perhaps you too should consider checking the little "please give my organs to other people once I am no longer using them" box on your license. And if you're feeling especially giving, you can give a some while alive (one kidney and a big chunk of your liver, and I think that's it).

Yes, it's a fraught subject (especially if it's a kidney), and clearly it is understandable if you have thought about it and don't want to donate, but the huge jump between the number of people who donate in countries with an opt-in system (like the US of A) and those with an opt-out (like Amsterdam or Spain) speaks to a general disinclination to check boxes, not to give organs.

Crotch bomber may work for traditional publishing, is also a dick

As we all know, the crotch bomber tried to ruin America and Christmas by exploding a plane, but only succeeded in burning his testicles (one hopes very, very badly) before being jumped by a Dutch film director. The director subsequently made a ton of money off of his story, thus earning his American citizenship through a love of capitalism.

As a result, the TSA, known for its sanity and non-reactionary decisions, discussed banning anything vaguely electronic and standing during the last hour of international flights to the US (and then subpoenaed the bloggers who published the potential policy leak. Class. Act). So what isn't electronic, and can keep someone sitting and entertained for at least an hour? Clearly books!

Thus, books are the result of stopping terrorism. QED, folks.

Life is full of regrets

Including, sadly, book regrets. Check out this list of books people regret reading. And vote yourself!

And before you say anything: I do think it says something that all of the Twilight books are in the top 5. It says that like everyone has read those books. Aspire to the top of the list, people--no one can regret reading your book if they don't read it.

Delaying e-books for fun and profit

GalleyCat has put together a great round-up of thoughts on the delay of e-book releases.

I have to admit that I don't actually have much of an opinion on the delay of the e-book just yet. I don't like being denied immediate access to an e-version of a book, but I also don't like being denied immediate access to a paperback of a book, and most people deal with that pretty well.

So: is this publisher pigheadedness? Is this a fight against Amazon price fixing? Are there other viable ways to handle this? I have no idea. But the GalleyCat group seems pretty well versed, so click click and read away.

Letters rock emails (not for reals though)

Apparently today is the day of me not appreciating other people's appreciation of old tech at the expense of new tech (because isn't it slightly hypocritical to write an online article about why the internet is the devil?). At Slate, Megan Marshall writes about how emails will never replace letters for biographical research. Why? Because people write shit emails.

I rebut: people wrote shit letters as well as good letters—we just conveniently ignore the bad. So we can safely ignore the bad emails, and assume that people who write well probably write long, involved emails the way people used to write letters back in the olden days of the 1990s. And eventually we can hack into their email accounts and air their dirty laundry to the world.

Hooking the anonymous blogger

Longtime anonymous blogger Belle de Jour has revealed herself (I know, this was days ago, forgive my slowness) as scientist Dr. Brooke Magnanti. I was never that interested in Belle, but the reveal article was really compelling. An excerpt:

Despite all this, there is still 10% of me that expects to be met by some rubicund older man—some literary roué of the old school, guffawing at the joke—at the Soho hotel where we are doing the interview. Instead, there is Brooke: 34 years old, small, slight, wearing a purple sweater dress and flat boots with woolly socks folded over the top, her blonde hair in a clip, holding a box of biscuits she’s brought me from Croatia, where she’s just been for her medical work.

The article goes on to discuss her work as a scientist and as a prostitute, and shines a light on the varied experiences of prostitution. I do take issue with her dismissal of human trafficking as a problem for borders—legalizing prostitution always increases human trafficking, which makes it more than just a border issue—but her stance is interesting and worth the read.

Computers hate your writing

England is so over making people read the essays students write. Instead they have a computer program that analyzes the essays, and you know what? It sucks at its job (womp womp, computer).

It tried to analyze some Churchill, but "didn’t understand the purpose of the speech." A politician talking? Purposeless? Well...ok, computer. You can slide on that. Passages from A Clockwork Orange were "deemed incomprehensible," as well, although that may have had something to do with the Nasdat involved.

The program also gave Hemingway below average, which, you know, shame on it. But the worst part?

It is already in use in America, where some children have learnt to write in a style which the computer appreciates, known as "schmoozing the computer".

No, children, you're supposed to schmooze your teachers, by bringing them apples and sucking up, thus making yourselves unpopular and setting the world up for more teen movies. These are time honored traditions!

I know this is the audience to which I can say: if you're putting in the effort to write something, you at least hope a person will actually read it (no offense to my robot followers).

Finding poetry in all the wrong places

So here's a doozy for you: is "found" poetry plagiarized? Andrew Motion's recently published poem, An Equal Voice, is made up of quotations from several generations of shell-shocked soldiers. But Ben Shepard says that almost all of the quotations were taken from his book.

Shepard didn't write the quotes, but he did collect them (although, since they're from a number of generations, I don't think he conducted the interviews himself). Alison Flood wrote in the Guardian article:

Motion said his poem drew on "a long and honourable tradition" of "found" poetry, pointing to TS Eliot's The Waste Land, Ruth Padel's poetic biography of Charles Darwin and Anthony Thwaite's Victorian Voices. "It goes right back to Shakespeare," he said. "It's very well established."

So: plagiarized or not? And, if not plagiarized, ethically questionable?