I seem to have caught some kind of bug, because I haven’t been feeling well these past few days. Plus, I managed to scald myself with hot tea today, when the handle broke off my tea cup and the contents of the cup poured all over my lap and legs. Thankfully, I don’t think there’s any serious damage – it just smarts a bit.
And now for some links:
At the Pegasus PulpYA blog, I have a post about Indie Publishing, Politics and the Future of the Novel, which sums up several recent and not so recent discussions.
At Terrible Minds, Chuck Wendig writes about trendchasing and why it’s usually a bad idea. I totally agree.
Talking of trends, Kathleen Valentine wonders about the popularity of erotica, particularly BDSM erotica featuring controlling billionaires and innocent virgins. I can certainly sympathize, because I have no idea why those darned things are so popular either. Whatever fantasies those books serve, I don’t have them.
The Guardian has an interview with Jane Rogers who won the 2012 Clarke Award and was longlisted for the Booker Prize for The Testament of Jessie Lamb. I met Jane Rogers a few years ago, when she visited Bremen and gave a reading/talk at the university, and even ferried her around the city in my ancient Jetta.
The Guardian also offer a summary of the latest racism uproar in the SFF community, involving a dystopian YA novel that sounds like a spectacularly bad idea, Weird Tales and the Vandermeers among others. For more about why Save the Pearls is offensive, see this post on Foz Meadows’ blog.
Aliette de Bodard has a great post on cultural appropriation. Because as the regular racism and cultural appropriation uproars in SFF attest, we still need them.
Pussy Riot, the Russian girl punk band whose unconventional prayer so enraged Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox church that it had three members of the group thrown into jail, has a livejournal. Alas, only in Russian. Found via Nick Mamatas.
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