How an agent =really= feels. Query critiques for the strong-at-heart.
e.g. Please don’t ever put I look forward to hearing from you soon in a query letter. It sets my teeth on edge. Other agents may not have quite the ..ah…toothy! reaction that I do, but why risk they do. Be safe. Don’t say it.
Hosted by Janet (Jet) Reid at FinePrint Literary.
Her voice may sound familiar to you.
Shhh.
Lost in Fiction – WSJ.com: Alexander McCall Smith on the intense personal relationships readers form with characters and the ways that complicates the lives of authors.
[...]
It can be very inhibiting for an author if he or she knows that what happens in fiction is going to be taken so seriously. I write serial novels in newspapers and have learned the hard way that people will readily attribute the views expressed by characters to their authors. In one of my “Scotland Street” novels a character called Bruce, a rather narcissistic young man, made disparaging remarks about his hometown. Although these were not the views I hold about that particular town, I was roundly taken to task, with the local member of the Scottish Parliament suggesting that I should be forced to apologize to the offended citizens. I pointed out that these were the views of a fictional character, who was just the type to make such remarks. That did not help.
In another novel, I had Isabel Dalhousie give up breastfeeding rather too quickly for the liking of the leader of a pro-breastfeeding organization. Again I was told that I should make a public apology to those who believed in persisting with breastfeeding. That sort of thing is quite alarming, and it is such people who need to be told, politely but firmly, that it is just a story.
[...]
Book Promotion Tips from the Pros: Featured Author: Marc Acito
Some interesting insights.
Read-it-First with Suzanne Beecher
Join St. Martin’s Read-it-First e-mail book club and sample a hot NEW release each week. Each weekday morning, we’ll send you a taste of the week’s featured title right to your inbox. By the end of the week, you’ll have read approximately a few chapters, enough to decide whether it is the right book for you…sometimes just before it even hits the stores!
And it’s all completely FREE!
I signed up just in time. Next week (April 13th) is featuring Louise Ure’s latest: LIARS ANONYMOUS.
Click cover image for more info.
TV interview on ABC News 10′s Sacramento and Co.
Simon talks about dyslexia and his writing and the back doors you learn to use to do what you want to do when the dyslexia is holding you back. Simon, for those who don’t know him, writes thrillers (as Simon Wood) and horror (as Simon Janus) and (under yet another pseudonym, Simon Oaks) has a nonfiction book out last month, WILL MARRY FOR FOOD SEX AND LAUNDRY.
Book trailers are like movie trailers, in a way. Movie trailers cut and piece from the movie to give you a taste of what you will see when you see the movie, to lure you into the theater to buy a ticket.
Book trailers are a video advertisement for a written book. They cut and piece from the book — add sound, action, pictures, sometimes live actors — and turn the result into what would be a mini-trailer for the movie the book would be if the book were a movie. The hope is that you will see the trailer and buy the book.
Came across this one just now and thought it was a good example.
There was a panel that included some talk on book trailers at LCC a few weeks ago. You can make your own trailer for something less than $100 (and up) and post it on Facebook or your blog or you can pay one of the companies that know what they’re doing (Circle of Seven Productions was specifically named) and for something in the range of $2K-3K (although the price can be much higher, depending on your needs) you get a professional video and the placement/marketing expertise of the company. Or you can make your own trailer and contract with a company like Circle of Seven to do the promotion.
Book trailers as advertisement. As lures. With hopes that the trailer will go viral and the fever will translate into sales.
This trailer (Michael Connelly, THE BRASS VERDICT) is a more sophisticated production with screenplay and actors.
Would you buy a book from a book trailer?
Do you ever send them on?
Brooksley Born – Prophet and Loss, an article in STANFORD Magazine, March/April 2009.
An article on his nibs’ cousin is the cover feature in the current STANFORD Magazine. Interesting writeup of the happenings at the CFTC in the late nineties.
If they’d listened to Born and implemented her proposals, could it have prevented the meltdown?
Update: She’s also getting one of the Kennedy Library Foundation’s 2009 Profile in Courage Awards for the days back then.
I was gone yesterday. Awoke a bit after 5A to catch the 9X over to the Cow Palace for the day-long Get Motivated! seminar (more on =that= experience to follow).
I left the seminar early (mid Michael Phelps’ presentation) to catch the 9X back to Washington Square Park, where I transferred to the 30 to get to Fort Mason where I met up with his nibs to kill time (kill time, check-in and get wristbands, kill time, stand in line outside in chilly breeze, kill time) until we were let inside (Front Row for us!) for the Zócalo/New America Foundation joint event with Craig Newmark.
“He’s just like I expected,” said his nibs.
“You should read his blog and Twitterfeed,” I answered. “He’s exactly as he is. Which is a good thing.”
(But then we’ve always identified with engineering rather than marketing and sales. …)
Writeup and video with photos here.
There I am! (We’re #3 & #4 in line. I’m wearing black, shades, carrying my handy-dandy AAAS-NSF bag stuffed full the night before with the paper/pens/stuff I thought necessary for the day’s events.)
We walked home. Walked up to Bay and headed east. Cut over onto Columbus and stopped off at LaTrappe (corner of Columbus and Greenwich) because I was in need of some moules frites and Koningshoeven La Trappe Quadrupel. Sal satisfied, we continued home, arriving after midnight.
Ada Lovelace Day had been and gone.
My post praising techie women would be late. Alas.
Let us now praise techie women
Ada Lovelace Day is/was an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.
Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Entrepreneurs, innovators, sysadmins, programmers, designers, games developers, hardware experts, tech journalists, tech consultants. The list of tech-related careers is endless.
The list of people I could honor is near endless. Grace Hopper was my first choice, but I decided my Ada Lovelace Day post should honor a living WIT. (Others chose differently, honoring, among others, Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, Hedy Lamarr, Rosalind Franklin, and Marie Curie.)
Who to choose? Who to choose? Who to choose?
Let us now praise, Jessamyn West, purveyor of librarian.net (since 1999) and her personal blog abada abada.
Back in 2001, I wrote the following about Jessamyn.
[n.b. This extract is from my Feb 2001 column for Computer Bits [RIP]. The column was titled, ROLL OUT THE CARPET – PASSIONS GREET THE MILLENNIAL DAWN, and covered a batch of sites run by people who were passionate about a subject. The Degree Confluence Project was mentioned earlier in the column.]
I thought I was so clever. I thought, “I’ll pop the Degree Confluence Project into Altavista [yes, Altavista was my search engine of choice in those days] and see who else links to it and maybe write about those sites.” and got sucked into hours of roaming the links of Jessamyn (not that Jessamyn) West’s personal site. http://www.jessamyn.com
West linked to the Degree Confluence Project because she has a quirky page where you can note a latitude and longitude and find out where you’d end up if you tunneled through to the other side of Earth. I knew West was a kindred spirit because her tunneling page also links to the Library of Congress map pages, mentioned in my November 2000 column.
West has links to everything that interests her and beyond: Naked Librarians (indeed!), Tracy Kidder, confluences and her journal, abada abada — and a fine journal it is. I’d heard of the huge numbers of people these days who keep their journals upfront and personal on the Web, but I’d never had the inclination to check out the sites. “Boring, self-centered clods,” I thought. Boy, was I wrong.
West’s journal includes such life slices as the description (with pictures!) of how she wound up with a printing press last year. “It started out innocently enough, playing pool with my friend Margaret talking about getting a hobby. Next thing you know, I’m en route to a scrap metal place in Burien and before you can say “dingbat” I am the owner of a tabletop letterpress machine. As my Mom said to me ‘this is how your father wound up with the pipe organ…’ “
Dad, by the way, is Tom West, featured in Tracy Kidder’s Soul of a New Machine. On her Tracy Kidder page, West remembers how Kidder stashed himself on the couch at the Wests on weekends as he wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning book.
West’s journal starts in January 1997. I turned my mouse to this month, then that, another year, a different month, fascinated, clicking links, watching West’s writing style and interests grow and change over the past four years. Check out West’s journal and site and you will discover what the attraction is, why I’ve becoming a peeking Sal, peering into someone else’s life and passions.
Is Jessamyn technically a technological woman? She doesn’t do HW design. She’s not a SW engineer. What Jessamyn is is a community technology librarian, a guide to the wonders of the Web and technology, a friendly host, an answerer of questions. She works to get technology working in small community libraries. She is a moderator at MetaFilter.com and runs the Q and A part of the site, Ask MetaFilter. She is the visible face (and the sometimes cranky voice) of library technology. People like Jessamyn West are the link between the technically inept and the technology available these days at your local public library.
There is a boatload of information online and for those who can’t afford to have a personal connection in their home, the public library is the nearest and friendliest place.
So, what do we need to do? Get the technology into libraries. Get the library staff up to speed on using the technology.
Add patrons with questions and problems. Voilà! Solutions. Questions answered. Problems solved. Here is how you fill out the online food stamp application. Here is how you file an SSD or SSI application online. Here is how to use Craigslist or other online resources to find rentals. Here is how to file a complaint online. Learn to budget. Repair a faucet. Find a mechanic. Be a mechanic. Here is a site that lets you study and practice for your driver’s exam.
Let us now praise Jessamyn West and her sisters in library and technology who are wielding the machetes of technology to lead the lost and bewildered through the jungles of confusion to the “good” stuff available on the ‘net.
Let us now praise Jessamyn West and her sisters in library and technology who spend their days at sometimes thankless work, without whom the interWeb and its resources would be unavailable to a large swath of the public.
(‘sted, K, Eva, others. You know who you are. Consider yourselves praised as well.)
“Is Frost out of copyright?” his nibs asked.
“Could be, I suppose,” I answered. “All depends on whether his heirs and assigns renewed during that period when copyrights needed to be renewed.”
“Well, look at this. I’ll send you a link.”
The link was to Creativity, whose links self-destruct soon after they’re posted.
Here’s another link. Ford and the Road Not Taken.
Carl Sagan’s Cosmos is available for free! at Hulu.
In 1980, the landmark series Cosmos premiered on public television. Since then, it is estimated that more than a billion people around the planet have seen it. Cosmos chronicles the evolution of the planet and efforts to find our place in the universe. Each of the 13 episodes focuses on a specific aspect of the nature of life, consciousness, the universe and time. Topics include the origin of life on Earth (and perhaps elsewhere), the nature of consciousness, and the birth and death of stars. When it first aired, the series catapulted creator and host Carl Sagan to the status of pop culture icon and opened countless minds to the power of science and the possibility of life on other worlds.
[via JDRoth’s twitterfeed]
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