I don't read romance

but I might have to start. Take a look at the blog of Joanna Bourne, who, underneath all the romance stuff, has a bunch of awesome posts about word choice and language and query letters. (Click on the "technical" tag to get around most of the romance stuff if you must, although the excerpts she's got seem pretty good to me.)

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On Mary Sue

I recently read a Very Popular Book in a Very Popular Series, which I was going to talk about here until I read the second book in the series and realized--OH NO--that the main character of the book is a total Mary Sue. sigh. For those of you who didn't spend time in the fanfic world, a Mary Sue is a character who everyone else loves. She's a stand-in for the author (fanfic is written mostly by women, which is why "Mary Sue," although there are some Gary Stus out there as well).She's beautiful (but not too beautiful), she's funny, she's self-deprecating, she's smart, and all the other characters will fall head over heels in love with her and think she's awesome. (An example, if I wrote Friday Night Lights fanfiction, Mary Sue would move to town and become Riggins' girlfriend, and Jason Street would have a crush on her, and Lyla Garrity would like her and even Tyra would must us some grudging respect, and their lives would all be better for k...

Monday Miscellany -- The New Year Edition

1. I saw "Harold and Kumar Went To White Castle" this weekend. It's not really my kind of movie, but it was mildly amusing and the scene where they sing "Hold On" by Wilson Phillips? Totally worth the price of admission.* 2. This? This is an awesome video: The United States of Pop 2009, by DJ Earworm. 3. Janet Reid has this to say: The Perfect Time Is Now . 4. I don't mind winter so much,** but I hate it when my feet are cold. Seriously. I will go to any extreme to avoid cold feet. 5. Happy 2010! ~~~ * I got it on Netflix, so there wasn't admission. But you get the point. ** This is true. I spent four years in New Mexico, where there really isn't winter, per se (we would sunbathe in February, no joke) and I really missed winter. I don't mind shoveling snow, or driving in it, and I love winter clothes. And cocoa, of course. So winter's all right with me.

Careful What You Wish For

I'm a lawyer at a company that employs a LOT of creative people, so it was no surprise to me that one of our employees writes novels. He writes "adult" novels (by which I means, books for adults, not dirty books), and he's got an agent and had a couple published, and gotten some good reviews, and rumor has it that they made a movie of one of his books a while back, although I can neither confirm or deny that rumor. And, according to friends of friends, he's unhappy. He doesn't like the way his writing career is going. He was hoping for more. I don't know what more, because that's not something that you can really ask someone, like--"hey, so describe the ways in which you're unhappy with your writing career"--but I imagine it's the typical writer stuff: fame, fortune, the respect of people of letters. But it's funny, because, um...he HAS the things I dream about. An agent. More than one book published. Books you can buy in, ...

How Do I Know What I Think Until I See What I Say?

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