I’ve got another reason to brag, for mere days after cracking the Spanish e-book market I also managed to crack the Italian market by selling a copy of Courier Duty at Amazon.it, which even briefly put me on the respective bestseller list above George R.R. Martin and Game of Thrones.
At the New Statesman, Laurie Penny comments on the Lara Croft rape debacle. Good article, only that Laurie Penny seems unaware that the “Let’s explain how James Bond got to be who he is” approach of Casino Royale is straight from the eponymous book including the sexual torture (which is still a stunningly disturbing scene sixty years after it was written), which was the first Bond novel. But then, the Bond of the novels is a very different (and darker) character than the Bond of the movies whom people are more familiar with.
At the Guardian, Damien Walter sums up various gender discussions currently going on in the wider geek community, including the ongoing discussion about Game of Thrones (which I’m finally watching and will comment on soon), the equally ongoing RequiresHate versus the writers of grimdark fantasy conflict (though Charlaine Harris definitely doesn’t write grimdark, though one can have issues with her work) and the Lara Croft debacle.
The New York Times has an interesting article on the so-called Automat cafés/diners, which were a fixture of American cities in the first half of the twentieth century. I’d love to have one of those show up as a location in a Silencer story some day, provided I can come up with a plot to go with it.
Finally, Jeff Vandermeer announces what looks like an absolute must-have in the realm of creative writing books. I’ve already put the Wonderbook on my “books to get” list, even though it’s not out until next year.
sending...
Damian Walter came to the party when it became safe to attend, but better late than never. Some of the comments are priceless (“fantasy has the strongest female characters in literature”… I’m guessing this person reads solely comics… and Bakker is “a secret feminist” — probably among the best-kept secrets of all time). And then there are the outright trolls who say that Anita Sarkeesian “deserves the abuse she got”.
Unfortunately, the Guardian comment sections, like many news sites out there, is infected with misogynist trolls. I mostly ignore the comments, unless I want to either despair about the future of humanity or get very angry.
Bakker used to hang out on a forum I moderated ages ago. He was insufferable even back then. I could barely stand to read his posts, which kept me away from his fiction. Probably for the better, based on what I’ve heard.
How anybody can believe that Anita Sarkeesian deserves the abuse she got is beyond me? She’d have to advocate for baby eating to come even close to deserving that kind of abuse. But the privileged videogame fanboys don’t want anybody to come between them and their games, I guess.