She Looked, She Leaped

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Our good friend Karen Palmer has taken over the helm at The Elegant Variation. We are not going to suggest that she’s already making us look bad by posting like a madwoman, but, well, she’s hit all the news that’s fit to report while we’re still staring at the coffee maker, wondering why it can’t read minds. Go visit Karen — ask her some tough questions in the comments (as you page forward through the site, there’s plenty of material to work with. We are so jealous.). She’s read the manual* and is prepared for anything. * – There’s a […]

Books/Mags/Blogs

Rejection: An Editor’s View

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Unless you are one of the lucky ones, you will be rejected at least once in your writing career. Depending on your constitution, this might be a punch in the gut or a confirmation of what you suspected. Or something in the middle. They’ll tell you it isn’t personal, and it likely isn’t. We are cynical and suspect certain behavior affects even the slush pile. Karma is our guiding principle. Anna Genoese, by all accounts, is a nice person. She’s also an editor at Tor/Forge; as previously noted, editors are lovely people, too. Anna Genoese has a job to do,

Publishers and Editors

Because We Could Not Resist…

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We’re not saying anything about our neighbors, but they might have some weird friends. Not that we’ve ever indulged in a game called “Dead Jazz Musicians” or anything (Sun Ra: dead or alive). We are not the sort. The Miles Davis thing was purely coincidence; Mose Allison is doing just fine, thank you. Let us suggest that some things make us feel good about our particular level of crassness: Like taking those expired Percocet, it seemed to be a good idea at the time. On some blog or another I ran into a mention of celebritydeathbeeper.com. Interesting idea: they send

Square Pegs

Not Lost in Translation

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We believe that being a translator of fiction must be one of the hardest jobs ever. Oh sure, some would say brain surgeon, but they’ve never had to guide sarcasm from one language to the next. Fiction does not have the advantage of immediate and direct facial and vocal cues. It’s all in the words — and getting the words wrong changes everything. Yeah, everything. What if a certain story had been translated as “Killing An Eskimo”? Dan Wickett talks to David Karashima, a translator who began his noble career translating manga. As we suspected, we are not suited for

Books/Mags/Blogs, Square Pegs

An Idea Whose Time Maybe Hasn’t Quite Come

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We’re confused. In our defense, it’s been like, oh, a day since that last happened. So we’re catching up on Publisher’s Lunch (or, in our case today, Publisher’s Afternoon Break Because Our Eyes Are Crossed) and we stumble across an item that seems, on the surface to be too strange for words. And not just because it’s buried at the bottom of the “Blogwatch” column. See, normally, we expect a blog-related posting. Not this time. Our old friends at Penguin (see all previous) have come up with an idea that’s either brilliant or bizarre. It’s not a situation where you

Publishers and Editors

We Guessed What the “A” In Agent A Meant

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We recently had the distinct pleasure of meeting Martha O’Connor, and are very excited about her book The Bitch Posse. She was very gracious when she gently noted that we were a bit behind on our reading…she’d gone ahead and done a Backstory while we were slaving away at the Evil Empire. We’re going to coerce her to drop by to share her thoughts on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (also strange men on airplanes). In the meantime, we’ll start the story here: In February of 2003, I was one disheartened and frustrated girl. After three failed novel

Books/Mags/Blogs

In Which We Confess to Our Secret Life as a Lamb

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We don’t believe in much, but we do believe in the collective unconscious. It fascinates us how certain themes seem to resonate through the ether, settling here, touching down there, moving on, only to reappear in another form. This week, it is the notion that you must be something to write about it. Our very first story was written from the point of view of a lamb — we were seven and making our first foray into the world of things we knew nothing about. It never occurred to us that we couldn’t be a lamb, if only for twenty-two

Tools and Craft

The Duck Test

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The latest post over at BookAngst 101 (we hear Mad Max will be appearing at a blogging panel at BEA in a costume; we are so hoping for a giant white bunny, but we’ve had dreams crushed before) is like the duck test. It looks like a rant, feels like a rant, walks like a rant, but sounds like a whine. Not that we’re going to complain as we found it fascinating reading. At the very least, we learned that sending a DVD showcasing our brilliance to publishers might not be a good career move. The author is writing for

Tools and Craft

Consider The Source

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Another expose, courtesy of the those hard-living, down-in-the-trenches journalists from the award-winning publication The Onion MONTREAL—Yann Martel, author of the Booker Prize-winning Life Of Pi, said he was distraught to see what other books Amazon.com customers bought in addition to his. “Customers who bought this book also bought The Five People You Meet In Heaven?!” Martel read from his computer screen Monday. “And The Rule Of Four? Really?!” Martel was also surprised by the “sloppy writing” in many of Life Of Pi’s five-star customer reviews. Author Dismayed by Amazon Customers’ Other Purchases

Square Pegs

We Pause For A Quick Game of Musical Chairs

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Laurence J. Kirshbaum is leaving Time Warner Books. This probably won’t affect many authors. David Young will succeed him. Ditto. Kirshbaum will take an appropriate period of time to reflect upon his success (his house is raking in the bucks!) before embarking on a more genteel career: literary agent. This will affect more than a few authors. “I hope to have the opportunity to focus much more on a handful of authors, building their careers and developing their books,” he said. “That is the part of the business I love the most.” Chief of Time Warner Books to Step Down

Agents, Publishers and Editors
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