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RIASS stuff:
An interview with Jane Heller in which we chat about sexist marketing terms and the death of chick lit: 'There will always be stories about women finding their way in the world. (+ Giveaway)
Narrative scope and insularity and Laura Powell's Burn Mark
Book Review: Ever by Gail Carson Levine'Rating: 
'A YA hero's journey set in a quasi Ancient Mesopotamia.
Last night I attended a great chat with Leanne Hall and Adele Walsh on writing YA. Ill put together my write-up today, so stay tuned.
Other bookish stuff:
What do librarians really look like? Surprise: its not all tweed and spectacles!
Apparently genre-benders are the next big thing in YA.'SF is in, particularly when mixed with a bit of romance; paranormal is all good so long as it has a steampunk setting; literary blends such as Railsea (Moby Dick with moles) and Alice in Zombieland'(my review soon) come to mind. Also, if you can pitch a YA version of'Downton Abbey youll rake in the big bucks. (Assuming its good and that you can get past the thousands of others pitching the same.)
A map of the world based on book publishing'Europe, the US and parts of Asia have huge publishing industries; most of Africa and the Middle East not so muchthese areas publish far fewer books than other countries, but represent areas for potential growth.
Why Having a Rock Star Agent Matters'Author Kristi Helvig talks about the various benefits of having an agent, including: an agents editorial relationships, their ability to negotiate contracts, and their deep knowledge of the market. She also touches on how a good author-agent relationship involves trust and goes beyond a mere business agreement.
On the state of big print debuts'18 print titles this year have sold more than 50,000 copies in their first week; 12 with more than 100,000 sold, with figures up from last year. A few more big titles are still to be released, so this number will likely increase. However, titles are slowly moving from print to ecopy.
Nathan Long on first person writing'Long says that the appeal of first person is all about voice. Rather than a characters actions or dialogue being the only tools to get across character, he says, first person voice allows every single word to do so. (Personally Im not usually a huge fan of voicey first person novels as I think they can be overly reliant on the characters internal voice to get these things across.)
Even if you dont write historical fiction, you still need to do research'Irene Latham, author of'Dont Feed the Boys talks about the zoological research she had to do while writing. She did plenty of reading, put together a series of notecards about life in a zoo, and conducted interviews with zoo staff.
Jeannie Lin on romantic love as male fantasy'Lin talks about how romantic love is so often seen as a female domain, but that this isnt necessarily the case. The theme of Romantic love as a male fantasy in my story comes from the reality that men in imperial China, especially the Tang Dynasty, were the ones who had the luxury and the power and the privilege to think about love in this way. And they definitely had the education and the leisure time to write about love in this way.
Cormac McCarthy likes to edit.'McCarthy is famous for spending huge amounts of time rewriting, revising, clarifying, and checking. The author of this article pores over McCarthys notes and drafts and offers a fascinating insight into McCarthys writing process.
Melburnians might want to pop along to this Bus of Books launch at Melbourne Uni this Friday at 7pm.
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