Book pimpage, a bold student and Cora is out of touch with romance reader tastes

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Cora

First of all, happy book release day to Elke Marion Weiß whose debut crime novel Triangel is published today. Elke was one of my teachers at university.

In other news, today I had an eighth-grader ask me whether I had breast implants, which was a first. And the kid who asked the question is normally one of the nice kids. I suspect that one of his classmates put him up to it, probably a dare or something.

The results of the 2011 All About Romance annual reader poll are in. There’s also some additional commentary here. The results show once again how out of touch I am with the voter base at All About Romance. Except for the J.D. Robb books that got an honourable mention somewhere, I haven’t even read any of those books let alone voted for them. Though I should probably check out Thea Harrison.

Posted in Books | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Interviews, politics, celebrity deaths and sex

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Cora

First of all, there’s another interview with me online. This time around, I was interviewed by Peter Joseph Lewis at Why Did You Write That? Come on over and check it out.

I also have a new post up over at Pegasus Pulp with a bunch of interesting indie publishing links.

Pop diva Whitney Houston has died aged only 48 and joins the league of pop and rock stars who self-destruct much too early. Now only Madonna and Prince are left of the great pop legends of the 1980s.

I came pretty close to seeing Whitney Houston perform at the Stoppelmarkt in Vechta in 1999. Two friend of mine wanted to go and asked me, if I wanted to come along. I didn’t go, because the tickets were too pricey for the poor student I was at the time. And besides, I wasn’t too fond of her latest songs, the quality wasn’t up to previous standards. Later it became apparent, that Whitney Houston had already started her descent into addiction by that time.

In other news, Stuhr, the suburb of Bremen where I live, elected a new mayor today. The results are here.

As you can see, it’s a pretty obvious homerun for one of the candidates, who won almost 80 percent of the vote. Not really surprising, since he was vice mayor to a very popular mayor* for the past few years, while his opponents are political newbies. Plus, one of them had a program that annoyed the hell out of me (and not just me, considering less than 15 percent of the electorate voted for the guy), because he focused solely on the parents of young children.

Another thing worth pointing out is that of the three candidates for mayor, only one is a member of a political party and that bloke is not the one who won. The other two are officially independent, though one is affiliated with the Pirate Party (a Pirate as a mayor would have been cool, but the guy is too inexperienced). But then party affiliation doesn’t mean much in local elections.

However, Stuhr wasn’t the only place to elect a new mayor today. The city of Duisburg in North Rhine Westfalia also had a mayoral election, albeit one to oust the current mayor Adolf Sauerland. Sauerland has been blamed for the deadly crush at the Love Parade techno music festival in 2010, which killed 21 people, and particularly for his absolute refusal to either accept responsibility or resign after the disaster. Now the people of Duisburg voted overwhelmingly to oust their mayor. Good riddance, too.

More good news: In the face of protests, the German government has postponed signing the problematic ACTA agreement (similar to the SOPA/PIPA bills in the US), as have the governments of Poland, Latvia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. ACTA is not dead yet, but at least the protests have forced a rethink.

Finally, here is an article that came up when I searched Google News for an English language link about the Duisburg election. Modern Ghana reports about the Christian Wulff scandal, as seen from an African point of view. The headline says it all: “Politicians Are Everywhere The Same, From East To West!”

At the Book View Café, Sherwood Smith has a great post on unresolved sexual tension versus consumated sex scenes and which readers prefer. Plenty of good points in the comments as well.

*Our former mayor has been promoted to Landrat, i.e. head of the entire county.

Posted in General, Links | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Return of the Snow

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Cora

I just looked out of the window, because there was a rather noisy car out on the street with people (well, actually just the party-going son of my neighbours) getting in and out.

And what did I see? It had snowed again over night. Not much, it’s just a very light dusting, like icing sugar sprinkled on a piece of pastry.

Ah well, snow is vastly preferable to the freezing rain we’ve been promised for later tonight.

Posted in General | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Who is afraid of the sparkly vampire?

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Cora

At the Guardian, Stuart Heritage complains that vampires, werewolves and zombies just plain aren’t scary anymore and blames Twilight.

The list of complaints are things we’ve all heard a thousand times before. Vampires and werewolves are no longer scary these days because they’re no longer monsters and besides, there’s way too many of them. In short, creatures and tropes that used to be the province of the red-headed stepchild genre horror have been appropriated by the mainstream and hardcore old time fans don’t like what the mainstream has done to their genre.

And who is to blame for this sad state of affairs? Well, of course it’s women. As a matter of fact, the whole Stuart Heritage article – like many of its kind – is dripping with more or less subconscious misogyny. Take this choice quote, for example: Continue reading →

Posted in Books, PhD, TV | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Still Frosty Linkdump

Posted on February 11, 2012 by Cora

We’re still stuck with frost, though the weather is less extreme than it has been these past two weeks. Tonight we’re experiencing “only” five degrees below zero.

I haven’t blogged a lot at this place of late, but I blogged the latest indie publishing sensation and German responses to Amazon’s publishing ventures at the Pegasus Pulp blog. And at the ABC Buhlert blog, I talk about a new oil spill combating technology and how the US and France continue to hold on to nuclear power.

And now for some other links:

Patricia C. Wrede has a wonderful rant about misunderstanding grammar and particularly the peculiarly American blanket condemnation of the passive voice, often without knowing what the passive voice even is. The post offers plenty of examples, including when passive voice is appropriate and why forms of “to be” are not always passive and have their uses.

At OCD, Vampires and Rants, there is a hilarious look at how romance clinch covers would work in the real world (hint: not very well). The gender-reversed versions are particularly interesting, because they reveal how silly, not to mention sexist, those covers really are. The same site also did an urban fantasy covers in the real world post.

Finally, take a look at this awesome Steampunk house in Massachusetts.

Posted in Links, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Worldbuilding, speculative noir and a public service announcement

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Cora

If you’re a self-publisher, please consider taking part in the Taleist 2012 self-publishing survey. For more information, visit the Taleist or David Gaughran’s blog.

Julie Ann Dawson of Bards and Sages has a great post on worldbuilding and plausibility in speculative fiction.

The King of Elfland’s Second Cousin has a great post on the relationship between speculative fiction and noir and whether both are mutually incompatible or not. I don’t agree with everything he says – for example, he underestimates the relevance of urban fantasy in this context – but his points are definitely something to consider.

Posted in Links, PhD | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

No blog tonight, dear – I’ve got a headache

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Cora

Yes, I’ve really got a headache, thanks to the continuing high air pressure, which does not agree with me at all. And the very noisy and very energetic fifth-graders I had to teach yesterday afternoon didn’t help either.

One of my cheekier fifth-graders explained the Playboy bunny logo as follows: “It’s a rabbit that likes to have sex a lot.”

I confess that made me smile, though I corrected him when he went on to explain to a classmate that when a girl was wearing the Playboy bunny logo on a t-shirt or as jewelery or something, it meant that she wanted to have sex. “Some people just wear the Playboy bunny logo, because they think it’s cool”, I explained, “You cannot jump to conclusions.” I left out the addendum about how even if you think you know what a girl/boy wants, you should always ask him/her for permission before kissing/intimately touching them/doing anything more, because I figured they were a bit young for that.

Going by what I’ve observed at school, Playboy seems to be mainly a brand for teens and preteens these days with kids wearing Playboy branded t-shirts and using Playboy branded aftershave or perfume. Not that these things weren’t around when I was that age – I had Playboy bunny earrings as a teenager. But it’s still bizarre to think that Playboy – which was pretty much a passé brand among adults these past fifteen to twenty years – is now suddenly hot among the teen and preteen set.

In other news, I have collected a round-up of responses to Jonathan Franzen’s anti e-book rant over at the Pegasus Pulp blog.

Posted in Personal, Work | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

An Interview with Cora and a frosty linkdump

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Cora

Tonight is shaping up to be the coldest night yet ever since the extreme frost period began more than a week ago with temperatures of minus 15 degrees Celsius. I already got out my flannel pyjamas and ultra-warm fluffy socks a few days ago, because it’s getting too cold even for my tastes.

In other news, I am interviewed by singer/songwriter and paranormal romance writer Marie Symeou at her blog today. Come on over and check it out! You can also find links to all the online interviews I’ve done at the interview page.

I’ve also got a new post up at Pegasus Pulp, in which I dissect the latest stupid “Wah, e-books are the end of literature as we know it” article from the Guardian.

And now for some links from around the web:

At the Book View Café, Sherwood Smith has got a great post on the differences between Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer.

At Storytellers Unplugged, Gerard Houarner has a great post on writing, inspiration and “the zone”.

And yet another post on inspiration: Ian Duncan on how to use mind maps to beat writers’ block.

John Christopher, author of The Tripods and The Death of Grass, has died aged 89.

And since I forgot to post a link, German actor and director Vadim Glowna died last week aged 70. Vadim Glowna was a member of the ensemble of the Bremen theatre during the legendary Kurt Hübner period in the 1960s. Vadim Glowna’s mother-in-law, actress Ada Tschechowa, was killed in the only plane crash at Bremen airport to date back in 1966. My father drove past the crash site on his way home from work very shortly after the crash had happened. He told me that he didn’t even realize that there had been a crash, all he saw was a burning field. He actually thought it was a regular fire at first and only heard that there had been a crash when he came home.

Posted in Links, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Some Rivers Freeze

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Cora

Taking advantage of the gorgeous if icy weather, I went hiking in the woods yesterday. Driving past Warwer Sand, a popular hiking spot in the area, I noticed that plenty of other people had the same idea. But my own preferred hiking spot, a piece of woodland called Westermark, wasn’t overcrowded. I saw maybe two or three people while out hiking.

Afterwards, I drove down to the river Weser at Dreye. The so-called “harbour of Dreye”, an dead river arm used as a marina during summer, was completely frozen and a couple of brave souls were ice-skating.

There were a few ice floats drifting on the Weser, but the Weser itself doesn’t freeze. The annual ice bet hasn’t been won since 1946, though my father reports that he was able to cross the Weser with his car in Dreye, i.e. at the very same spot where I was yesterday, sometime in the early 1960s. And there isn’t a bridge at this spot.

The reason why the Weser doesn’t freeze is the high salt content due to alkali salt mines in Sachsen-Anhalt. Though it’s kind of depressing that the salt content still hasn’t come down twenty years after the unification, since shoddy environmental standards in what was then East Germany were blamed for the high salt content in the 1980s.

Meanwhile, the river Elbe some one hundred kilometers to the North of us remains unaffected by alkali salt mines and is more or less frozen. Shipping has been suspended from Hamburg on down, though they’re probably taking measures to keep the port of Hamburg accessible. The photo that goes with the article shows the same spot is one of the rotating header images on this site, by the way, the view across the Elbe at the Blohm + Voss dock. It’s also the header image at the ABC Buhlert site.

Posted in General | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Frost, Ice and Snow

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Cora

Over the past week or so, much of Europe has been experiencing extreme frost. Yesterday night, the temperature dropped to minus 13 degrees Celsius, at the moment it’s minus eleven degrees. And I’m in North-Western Germany which rarely gets extreme frost due to the relative proximity of the North Sea.

Nastier than the frost, at least for me, is the high air pressure zone that is the cause of it. Because my body really doesn’t like high air pressure – it reacts with headaches to high air pressure or extreme changes. It doesn’t help that many people don’t take weather-related headaches seriously – quite a lot of people chalk it up to hysteria. And if you have the misfortune to be affected by high air pressure like me, it’s even worse, because the majority of people get symptoms from low pressure, not high pressure.

Friday night, we even got some snow to go with the frost. It wasn’t a whole lot, just a light dusting really, but this may nonetheless be the most lasting snow we’re seeing this winter.

Behind the cut, there are a few photos: Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments