Bookish News and Publishing Tidbits 28 June 2012

RIASS stuff:

Excerpt: Holding Mercy by Lori Armstrong (Love is Murder blog tour)

Book Review: Crypt'Traitor's Revenge by Andrew Hammond'(Rating: )

Book Review: Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler and Maira Kalman'(Rating: )

A'giveaway of ten (yes, ten) book packs consisting of a copy of'Catch Up with the Sun'and a Book Seat!'(Aussies only, please)

Are you a nerdy type? My husband is looking for a top-notch web developer to join his company.'Details here.

Other bookish stuff:

Fitzgerald had it right: hitting the booze does make you more creative'

Spotlight on an Indie Bookstore: Lemuria'Books'I know I may be biased, but Lemuria is so different from anything else I have ever seen. Each book here, whether in the kid's store or in the main store, has been hand-selected by one of our employees. We are constantly re-calibrating sections, finding the best books on each topic. And the sheer number of books! Even if we don't have the exact book you are looking for, we probably have at least two books on that topic and can get the one you are looking for.

Kathryn Fox interview:'My family and friends suspect I sit home watching'Days of Our Lives'all week! After getting everyone out the door in the morning, I head straight to a local, quiet cafe and am usually writing by 8.30. Mornings are my most efficient writing time and without internet, phone or other distractions, three hours can be as productive as six hours spent in my office. Women writers rarely have time to wait for a muse!

Beta readers and why they are a good'idea:'So, I'm watching Bookaboo and they're reading a lovely story called'Don't Wake the Bear, Hare.' It's a gripping tale of a group of animals setting up for a picnic, preoccupied with the need not to wake the nearby sleeping bear.' Naturally, they assume that he will break up the party if he wakes.'This was all lovely.' But in the back of my mind, I couldn't help wondering'why they had set up the party right next to the bear in the first place.' There was a whiny actor voice in my head saying,''but what's my motivation?'

Veronica Roth Shares Her Philosophy of Character Death'But my real philosophy of character death in the Divergent series is that the world Tris lives in is supposed to be messed up. And theres a war going on. And from all Ive ever learned about war, if youre involved in one, people you care about will be killed, and it wont make any sense to you, and it wont be fair, and it will be at all the wrong times, and some people will lose more than other people, and thats just how it is.

Boom and bust in twenty-first-century lit:'The impulse to become a writer suggests a fundamental fiscal incompetence. Fiction writers, often deriving their income from their status as writers (by teaching) rather than from their actual writing, tend to carve out lives somewhere within the middle class but find themselves at a remove from the higher and lower echelons of economic activity. The campus'a zone that encourages all participants to make a pretense of classlessness'has become the default home of most novelists, and this may partly explain why class is an easier subject to avoid now than in the days of Wharton, Fitzgerald, or Ellison.

Interview with Karen Thompson Walker: It appealed to me to write a different kind of disaster story, one that would feel personal and intimate and that would focus as much on the meaning of ordinary life as it does on the extraordinary events that begin to threaten that life. Letting the slowing unfold gradually allowed me to explore all the ways that people would and would not adapt to the changes the slowing brings'from the ever-lengthening days to the dying-off of certain crops to the onset of a mysterious illness.

Which are Better for Co-reading? Print Books or E-books'Print books were more advantageous for literacy-building co-reading, while e-books, particularly enhanced e-books, were more advantageous for engaging children and prompting physical interaction.

Why Newspapers Are Dying, Summed Up in One Article

Technology and language documentation

Random House Explains What Publishers Do

An Agent Admits It's Hard to Make E-Books

Read It! Loved It!: Aussie Librarian Curates List of Great Kids, Teen Books

Dutch App Gives You Stories Tailored to Your Free Time

There's a Book About That! GLBT Resources for the Whole'Family

In Melbourne? Head along to the Bespoken event in Fitzroy tonight.'

Perth International Arts Festival looking for a publications editor

MC Lars with Flow Like Poe: