There is a definite upside to blogging about hot potato subjects like I did in yesterday’s post. Because February 17th, 2011, was the busiest day since the relaunch of the site with 85 visitors altogether according to the WordPress Stats system, even beating out the post about the misappropriation of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah (there are a lot of Leonard Cohen fans out there). My most popular post of all time, by the way, is still the post with photos of snowy winter woods.
Also, someone found this blog via the search term “blood piss shit sex stories”. Sorry, fellow, but whatever you’re looking for (and I’m not sure I want to know), it’s not here.
So back to the controversial topics and some new developments:
More on the plagiarism allegations against German secretary of defense Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg from the Süddeutsche Zeitung (in German), The Economist (in English – ignore trollish comments) and The Wall Street Journal (also in English). There also is a Wiki, where users are constantly logging new suspicious passages.
More on the other controversial topic, which actually brought in all of those visitors (you didn’t think anyone cared that much about plagiarism allegations against a German politician most of my readers have probably never heard of, did you?):
More reactions on the nihilism in fantasy dust-up from Scott Andrews, BC Woods, Hippogriff and Lenty’s Blog.
Sam Sykes believes that a fear of innovation lies at the root of such debates and also singles out the silliest and most offensive comment to the original post. Cause you see, it’s the women who are to blame for the debasement of fantasy. Never mind that all of the examples given in the original post were books by men and that gritty epic fantasy as a subgenre tends to be dominated by men.
Talking of which Floor to Ceiling Books wonders “Where are the women in all this?”, a sentiment I can fully get behind. It’s also very telling that the original article praises Robert E. Howard’s heroic fantasy but makes no mention of C.L. Moore, probably because Leo Grin has no idea that she exists. And if Mr Grin ever were to read Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel series (mentioned in the Floor to Ceiling Books post), he would probably have a fit at all the “depravity and nihilism” on display there.
Cheryl Morgan weighs in as well here and here and also wonders whether responding to obvious troll posts such as Leo Grin’s original post and Martin Amis’ recent dismissal YA writers is worth it at all.
I’d say that drawing attention to such posts is worth it. That and I was too tired and busy yesterday for extensive original content and just threw out a bunch of links, especially since it was a day of many fascinating links. I’m not going to get involved into any discussions called Whatever-fail, though.
Speaking of tired, Theodora Goss has another great post about writing while tired. Her blog is quickly becoming one of my favourites.
In other news, here is a great interview with Mary Bly a.k.a. Eloisa James about romance fiction, genre stigma and anti-romance prejudice and her relationship with her parents from The Southeast Review. Found via All About Romance.
Rose Lemberg has a great posts on why snail mail submission excludes many writers and why electronic submissions are important. I totally agree with this.
sending...
*grin*