Linktopia

Isn’t this a pretty picture?

It’s the one Blogger didn’t want to let me upload on Tuesday. Maybe it’s because it was 666 day and Blogger is one of Satan’s minions. Therese and I like graphics. We like them loads. So it’s really . . . what’s the word I’m looking for . . . SUCKY when our bloghost regularly craps out. I can hear you all saying you get what you pay for, but it’s folks like you and I who keep Blogger on the forefront of bloghosts. If Blogger were a car, it’d be a Yugo.

Rant over. On to linky goodness.

Will it never end? I guess not when you’re talking about millions of benjamins, but NYT has an article about a Vanity Fair “exlusive” with another author alleging plagiarism against Dan Brown. The author of the VF article, Seth Mnookin (scroll down for my post on groovy names) supports the claims of one Lewis Perdue, author of the largely ignored DAUGHTER OF GOD, alleging that Brown ripped off the “plot, pacing and structure” of Perdue’s book. Perdue already lost the trial and the appeal, and owes Random House $300,000 in legal fees.

Here’s the thing, and I’m surprised that Mnookin, himself a writer, doesn’t get this. If you’re going to write a thriller/mystery/suspense novel about an ‘explosive’ secret the Catholic Church wants to cover up, storytelling craft compels the writer to come up with a) a protagonist who has an investment in unearthing the secret and b) an antagonist who wants to keep the secret from getting out. Therefore, the protagonist in this type of story will be some sort of religious sleuth who can provide the reader context and background to all the mysteries of the Church that lay people are not privy to; the antagonist will be a hardcore member of the faithful who has let his/her zeal for the Church blind them to his/her sins. A chase will ensue. Bodies will pile up until the breathtaking climax. That’s what the thriller reader wants.

It’s Plot Points for Dummies. After Holy Blood, Holy Grail came out in the ’80’s and opened the door to all kinds of speculative fiction in this vein, a ton of writers used it as the basis for their books. Does Brown have to defend himself against all of them just because his happened to catch fire? [update: in a bizarre twist, Boston Herald plagiarizes the Mnookin article. Please, stop the madness. For the sake of the children.]

God, I’m in a ranty mood today. More links after the jump.

Surfing the best of the writers’ blogs so you don’t have to.

Piggybacking on Therese’s post below about interviewing your characters, this week we’ll be concentrating on links that will help your creativity go into overdrive for the long hot summer ahead.

The website Vision: A resource for writers has updated for May/June and has a ton of goodies for you to sift through. My favorite mini-feature is “Four Ways to bring Settings to Life.”

Scriptorium is also updated for May/June, and features a good article about writing a fast first draft. It doesn’t work for me, but others swear by it.

Mike Barker’s Writers’ Exercises offers 281 ways to get your juices flowing. I’m partial to the Handsel and Gretel exercise.

More after the jump

Surfing the best of the writers’ blogs so you don’t have to.

Book Expo America is over and we can all get back to our lives. Some of the gossip, tips and trends in publishing can be viewed here. The rumor, sadly, is true. Publishers across the board report that less books will be published in 2006.

But that won’t stop us writing ’em.

In other BEA news, Victoria and A.C. wander the expo and have some choice encounters with some of the scammers they’ve outed on their blog. GalleyCat also has a roundup of their BEA experience.

Cavan at Blurred Line blogs about the resurgance of adventure SF . . . .Melly on the perils of both blogging and writing . . . . my two favorite bloggers, Nienke and Ray, have their worlds collide over the writerly conundrum: finish the draft or keep tweaking . . . . For those who fall in the constantly tweaking category, here’s a list of “banished” words writers should avoid.

Now for the jump.

Surfing the best of the writers’ blogs so you don’t have to.

This is for the rash of bloggers this week who are sick, out-of-town, enmeshed in graduation / mother’s day / BEA / pre-summer funks. Hope it cheers you up. My apologies if it annoys you. I don’t read Japanese either, so I hope the text isn’t obscene.

Finally want to get paid for writing? Writer’s Digest is now accepting entires for its 75th annual writer competition. The grand prize winner receives $3000 and a trip to New York to meet with agents and editors. Might make it worth hauling out that short story you played with last year. If that fails, the Picolata Review is looking for new stories for launching their magazine. Unlike other literary magazines, they are open to genre fiction (hat tip Metaxu Cafe).

Evil Editor eviscerates another query letter . . . . not to be outdone, Miss Snark explains the difference between plagiarizing and “being influenced”.

More after the jump…

Surfing the best of the writers’ blogs so you don’t have to.

O happy day. Just when you couldn’t feel lower about your work, Therese found a blog to rival Miss Snark’s in terms of busting writers upside the head with reality checks. Evil Editor IS entertainingly evil, and also, gulp, perceptive.

Need to add a little juice to your creativity? Slush Pile links to the helpful and hilarious THIRTEEN WRITING PROMPTS by Dan Wiencek, hosted on Tim McSweeney’s blog. (Got that?) I’m already eyeing “Imagine if your favorite character from 19th-century fiction had been born without thumbs. Then write a short story about them winning the lottery.”

Linky goodness after the jump.

Surfing the best of the writers’ blogs so you don’t have to.

It’s difficult to decide whether to jeer or wince. Last week,the writer’s blogosphere was taken up with the antics of 19-year-old prodigy Kaavya Viswanathan and allegations of plagiarism for her ‘tween-lit novel that garnered a breathtaking advance. Today the NYT’s reveals that Viswanathan’s short career in writing is being scrutinized for other acts of plagiarism. This girl’s career is well on it’s way to being destroyed.

In other prodigy news, Lauren Weisberger is also thudding pretty hard after a meteoric rise on the heels her debut novel THE DEVIL WORE PRADA. Gossip mags are gleefully reporting Weisberger’s struggle with writer’s block, the thing that happens when you haven’t been busting your chops in the trenches learning your craft but get handed a juicy multi-book deal anyway.

At least Dan Brown suffered for his art first.

Linky goodness after the jump.

Surfing the best of the writers blogs so you don’t have to.

Wow, what a week. Our Erin Hunter interview is bringing us massive traffic. Part Two of this interview goes live tomorrow. If you write children’s or YA literature, you won’t want to miss it.

The other thing that blew my mind was Tor editor Anna Genoese’s post on crunching the numbers, and why editors buy Rolaids in bulk. After reading it, I wonder how anyone gets published in today’s world . . . . until I read about the exploits of this teen-wiz and the ridiculous amounts of money the publisher paid for her advance. Slush Pile sums up my reaction in a more elegant, less foaming-at-the-mouth way. Finally, GalleyCat was present at a talk Anna McCafferty gave at the NY Public Library, and unearths a few juicy nuggets. McCafferty’s publisher Crown also weighs in.

More after the jump.

Surfing the best of the writers’ blogs so you don’t have to, while coming off the choco-bunny buzz.

The hilarious rambles of SFF author Hal Duncan currently has us rolling. We’re going to interview Hal soon about his new release VELLUM, which is garnering great reviews. In the meantime, check out his latest.

Victoria gives us another head’s up on the latest scam floating around….Jack Slyde blogs about ending the love affair we have with our wips while Melly gives tips on how to get started . . . At Quantam, Eric makes the case for “why SF”…. Deborah LeBlanc over at Murder She Writes calls synopses ‘ten pounds of crap in a five pound bag.’ Indeedy. More after the jump.

Surfing the best of the writers’ blogs so you don’t have to, holiday edition.

It’s been a fairly slow week heading into the holiday, but the big news is that Dan Brown prevailed in his plagiarism lawsuit. Henry Baignent and Richard Leigh, authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, will have to use their royalty money to pay for the trial. Unfortunantly for Brown, another disgruntled psuedo-historian is lining up tilt at the windmill.

Risky Regencies is featuring an interview with author Jean Ross Ewing AKA Julia Ross…Grumpy Old Bookman reviews Jim Heath’s Your Dog is Watching You…..BuzzGirl has the latest release news from Penguin and Crown….Ray breaks his rule and reveiws the work of a newly-pubbed author, and like all writers tinkers with editing decisions….Paperback Writer profiles Allison Kent’s experiment in viral blogging for her latest release…Writing in the Trenches offers the best distillation of the hero’s journey that I’ve seen in a while…Jack Slyde reads my mind regarding bloated, derivative fantasy novels….

More after the jump…

Surfing the best of the writer’s blogs so you don’t have to.

In our quest to find good blogs on writing, we stumbled across prolific SF/F writer Crawford Kilian’s blog Writing Fiction. We’re also taken with another newish blog, Writing from the Trenches. They’re both good, check them out.

Over at Writer Beware, Victoria continues her series on how to spot bogus agents…..the April horoscopes are out at Astrology for Writers, and again, my sign should have a stellar month. However, so did last month’s predictions and none of them bore fruit. Pesky details like that won’t keep me from checking it obsessively….Melly picks up where Slush God left off over the question of race and gender of authors and poses some provocative questions….Paperback Writer blogs about hooks…..Eric over at Quantum has burned off the flush from his vacation and has some interesting observations on the biggies of SF…..Conversations with Famous Writers has one with Ned Vizzini….the Bitches give us a head’s up about a new e-pub Moxie Press, currently seeking steampunk (god, I’m old) and gothic urbans, among other genres. More after the jump.

Surfing the best of the writer’s blog so you don’t have to.

This week, Therese stumbled across the deliciously twisted ramblings of dark fantasy author Hal Duncan. His blog entry for this week is a must-read for writers. I’m rather fond of observation No. 7.

Over at Writer Beware, AC Crispin discusses the merits of e-publishing, and, if you scroll down, Victoria Strauss helpfully posts a link to their list of 20 Worst Agents….some good agents who blog: Nephele Tempest , Anna Genoese, Miss Snark, Jennifer Jackson and Deidre Knight. If you know of any more, please pass their names along…..Publishing News recaps the final summations in the Da Vinci Code trial. Good news for DVC/HBHG junkies, now there’s talk of making a movie about the trial….Grumpy Old Bookman reviews Jacqueline Winspears’ MAISIE DOBBS and isn’t impressed…Jack Slyde blogs about e-books and his not-so-stellar experience….Neinke started a Write Along story, it’s pretty hilarious….Bookslut posts a link to an interview with author Paul Beatty….more after the jump.

Surfing the best of the writers blogs, so you don’t have to.

This week WU received an important hat tip from agent/author Diedre Knight over our interview with Audrey Niffennegger. We’ll be posting Diedre’s interview soon; in the meantime, go check out her blog. It’s pretty killer.

At Crime Fiction Dossier, David lists the 2006 Gumshoe Award nominees. If you scroll down, he also has a link to a blog that purports to list “100 Science Fiction Novels You Just Have to Read”. We don’t have time to read the pile beside our bed let alone 100 others, but if you have lots of time on your hands and a taste for sci-fi, check it out….Paperback Writer has a scary waiting room encounter….Jack Slyde blogs about being in the zone. Writers and athletes know what that’s all about….Miss Snark answers the question of what to do if a writer has TWO agent offers on the table….Melly blogs about the curse of the info dump, and Kathleen muses unhappily about yesterday’s dialogue infodump in her own wip….Hook, Line and Stinker gives us the first line of JD Robb’s latest, which we mention without comment…OK, this is too hilarious, compliments of the Publishing Contrarian. More after the jump….

Surfing the best of the writer blogs so you don’t have to.

At Flogging, Ray’s latest edit shows why prologues aren’t the best way into a story…DVC trial takes a poignant turn: now Dan Brown’s wife (and principle researcher for the book) is under fire, and Brown is fuming…Buzzgirl tells us what summer releases Farrar, Straus, and Geroux are excited about…Paperback Writer blogs about budget marketing….Sarah at Confessions has some news on editor shakeups at the latest publishing houses….

At Blurred Line, Cavan is offering a special on Apodis, a POD publisher. We confess to not knowing much about PODs, but those who are interested must check this deal out…yet another blogger contemplates shifting platforms, this time it’s Jack Slyde….AC Crispin blogs on the importance of using all your senses AND experiences when writing…Miss Snark on the Nifty Fifty, the first 50 pages of a novel (her judgement: in most cases they are the result of the author faffing around until he/she gets down to it)…Slushpile has an interview with author Michael Flocker…Alphabet Soup blogs about Kissy Bits, a podcast for romance writers….

More after the jump…

Surfing the best of the writer’s blogs so you don’t have to.

This week we welcome some new blogs to our blogroll: Beatrice, Conversations with Famous Writers, and Buzzgirl. The latter is another insider blog, so hopefully Buzzgirl will dish on some useful goodies.

A.C. Crispin provides some useful material for combating writer abuse….over at Flogging, Ray dissects POV techniques and provides some gems, as usual…MediaBistro has an interview with editor Zareen Jaffrey, who explains the difference between chick-lit and women’s fiction (hat tip to Booksquare)…if you scroll down Nienke’s blog, she’s airing the outline to her latest work of fiction, and it’s pretty impressive in terms of scope and complication….Jack Slyde has a post up about finishing his current wip (cue the applause)…Robin Wright interviews agent Pam Strickler, who pretty much reiterates that this business ain’t for sissies….