At Tor.com, Emily Asher-Perrin argues why she believes that a married couple traveling in the TARDIS is a good idea.
I’ve stated before that I find it problematic that there now only seem to be two options open for women in the Doctor Who universe, marriage or death.
That said, I don’t mind a married couple in the TARDIS. Continue reading
I’m still rather busy, with stuff about which I will be able to say more soon. So have a few links instead:
I love Lynn Viehl’s response to the recent kerfuffle about some local politico from Minnesota calling Neil Gaiman a “pencil-necked weasel”.
The Galactic Empire Times reports about Darth Vader announcing the death of Obi-Wan Kenobi, most wanted man in the galaxy. Any similarities to recent newsworthy events in our own galaxy are entirely coincidental. Found via Jay Lake.
Nick Mamatas discusses the issue of art versus craft at Booklife Now.
More plagiarising politicians are biting the dust.
First of all, the commission at the university of Bayreuth, which was supposed to investigate the Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg plagiarism case (extensively blogged about in these pages), has published its report, which states – unsurprisingly – that yes, zu Guttenberg did indeed plagiarise.
Also today, Silvana Koch-Mehrin, another politician suspected of plagiarising her doctoral thesis, has resigned from her post as the vice president of the European parliament and also from her party office. Ms. Koch-Mehrin’s party, the FDP, is currently in the middle of regrouping and reorganizing itself, and it is widely believed that as a protegee of the outgoing FDP head Guido Westerwelle Ms. Koch-Mehrin was pushed to resign by incoming party head Philip Rössler.
And now for some writing and genre links:
Paul Jessup has some thoughts on narrative and linearity.
Juliette Wade has an interesting post on character relationships.
Ripping Ozzie Reads, a group blog of Australian fantasy authors, asks “Is fantasy a bit of a boy’s club?” I actually found this post, while tracking back a Twitter mention of one of my posts.
There is a discussion about indie publishing or – as they call it – digital self-publishing going on at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.
What I find notable about this discussion is that many of the commenters are reluctant to buy a self-published e-book by a new-to-them author. And I can partly understand that reluctance, because being burned by amateurish or just plain bad books hurts, even if the book cost only 99 cents. Still, this reluctance is something that indie authors will have to overcome.
As for my own e-publishing venture, expect an announcement very soon.
The friend with whom I traveled to Ireland is a huge cemetery geek. She’s not a goth, she simply likes cemeteries. And when she read Dublin’s about Glasnevin Cemetery, she wanted to visit.
Initially I wasn’t quite so keen on visiting the cemetery, because it is located a fair bit outside the city centre and only accessible by bus. Besides, I had a backache on the morning we planned to visit the cemetery and stumbling around among old graves is not exactly conductive to backaches. However, my backache improved over the course of the morning and so we took the bus out to the cemetery. And the visit was definitely worth it, because Glasnevin Cemetery is absolutely fascinating.
And of course, James Joyce mentioned it in Ulysses, appropriately in the “Hades” chapter. If anything, this trip makes me wants to look at Ulysses again, which I slogged through in university.
Photos can be found behind the cut: Continue reading
I’m tired, so I only have a short post today. Expect one last photo post as well as a longer genre rant tomorrow.
Meanwhile, my stats have shot up dramatically and the blog had 111 visitors yesterday. Not the best day I ever had, but close. And unlike the other days with lots of visitors, I don’t even know the reason for the spike. I haven’t been linked at a more popular blog, as far as I can tell, and the traffic is coming from all over the place. Odd.
On the plus side, at least the comment spam, which was threatening to overwhelm this blog mere days ago, seems to have stopped for the time being.
Finally, here are some links:
At Jennifer Crusie’s blog, Jennifer Crusie and Barbara Samuel a.k.a. Barbara O’Neal a.k.a. Ruth Wind discuss indie e-publishing.
The Washington Post also has an extensive article on the indie publishing phenomenon.
The Book View Café has an excerpt from a new book by Steven Harper Piziks on paranormal fantasy, magic systems and deus ex machina issues. An earlier excerpt on magic and its limitations is here.
I’ve got one last photo post coming up, but in the meantime here’s a linkdump. Romance, fantasy, writing, e-books, comics, plagiarism and dead celebrities – we have it all: Continue reading
This is part 3 of my selection of photos from my recent trip to Dublin. This installment is devoted to interesting signs and storefronts.
The linguist in me was particularly fascinated by the bilingual signs on roads and official buildings and I took quite a few photos to everybody’s bafflement, because people don’t usually take photos of roadsigns. Should I ever end up teaching introductory English linguistics again, these will photos will go into my presentation on the Celtic languages. I now have photos of bilingual signage in all three Celtic languages still spoken in the British Isles plus videoclips in all three languages.
Anyway, here are two bilingual signs: Continue reading
As mentioned yesterday, I will break up the Dublin photos into several posts. Here’s a look a park and monuments. Enjoy! Continue reading
As promised, here are some photos from my recent trip to Dublin. I’ll probably break this up over a few posts.
Let’s start with a few churches: Continue reading
Even though I’m back home, I’ve been intensely busy these past few days. In retrospect, planning my holiday so that I’d be home at half past nine on the night before I had to be back at school probably wasn’t that best idea. On the other hand, the Easter holidays were also really badly timed for holidays in general.
Photos will be coming over the weekend, but for now here is a roundup of interesting links posted while I was away:
The Cover Café‘s contest for the best and worst romance covers of 2010 is now open for voting.
I really like this interview with Western writer Jory Sherman at Booklife Now. Lots about writing in general and writing westerns in particular plus a little bit about e-books and indie publishing.
Booklife Now has run a lot of interesting interviews with Western writers of late. Here is the delightfully named Cotton Smith.
Libba Bray talks about those times, when everything you write just seems to suck. Yeah, don’t we all have those days? Found via Lilith Saintcrow.
Black Gate has a great post by Sarah Avery about teaching and fantasy fiction.
Daily Writing Tips has an article about the gradual demise of the relative pronoun/question pronoun “whom” in (American) English. I must say that I still use “whom”, where appropriate, i.e. as an object. I learned it that way and using “who” looks just plain wrong to me. Never mind that I suspect that the demise of “whom” is a largely American phenomenon, because Americans place little emphasis and value in grammar instruction and therefore grammar knowledge is often appalling. Germans probably overemphasize grammar by comparison, but at least my students understand what the passive voice is and what an object is.
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