A Writerly Linkdump

I know I haven’t been blogging in several days now, but I’ve been busy writing and revising my upcoming collection of short crime fiction. However, I’ve found a bunch of links to interesting writing advice around the net.

But first of all, I talk a bit about the latest publishing gloom and doom predictions, gripe about the get rich quick mentality of certain indie writers and talk about hitting two genre bestseller lists at Amazon Germany over at the Pegasus Pulp blog.

At the New York Times Sunday Book Review, Colson Whitehead presents his not quite serious rules for writing.

Jay Lake has a nice post about dialogue tags with plenty of examples at his blog. And here’s some more good writing discussion from Jay Lake, this time about point of view. This post on balloon prick ideas is also well worth reading.

Aliette de Bodard has a great post on international naming conventions and how easy it is to get them wrong. I think we’ve all come across examples for this at times.

SF writer Joe Vasicek has a good post about gender stereotypes in fiction and life and why having your male (and female) characters cry can still make for powerful fiction. I actually read the Dave Farland post he refers to and though I often find Dave Farland’s writing advice valuable, his “Never let any of your characters cry, least of all men” horrifying. Part of this is probably cultural, because gender roles are more rigid in the US than in Western Europe and in Germany very few people would say that boys and men shouldn’t cry. And indeed I’ve come up against the rigid gender stereotypes in the US on more than one occasion, when my characters did not behave the way men or women should behave according to the gender police. But crying is a normal human expression of emotion and few things are more powerful than a normally stoic character, whether male or female, breaking down when the emotions get too much.

The 2012 Rita Awards for the best romance fiction have been awarded last weekend. I’ve read and enjoyed New York to Dallas by J.D. Robb and I should probably check out First Grave on the Right by Darynda Jones and Dragon Bound by Thea Harrison, because both books have been getting a lot of buzz and a Rita award in their respective categories. Not really interested in any of the others.

Finally, the literary world lost two very different writers last week: Irish writer Maeve Binchy died aged 72 and American writer Gore Vidal died aged 86.