Bookish News & Publishing Tidbits 14 May 2012

RIASS stuff:

A giveaway of'Barry and the Fairies of Miller Street'(Aus only, ends 20 May)

A review of Margaret Drabbles The Millstone, an examination of unmarried motherhood in 1960s England. (Rating: )

Other bookish stuff:

Adrienne Kress on female characters (aka characters): A female character is seen as female first, person second.' I realised this while working on Waiting for Godot (I was playing Vladimir). The role I was playing was typically played by a man, and had a male name, and clearly was meant originally to be performed by a man.' But it didnt matter if it really was a man.' There was no discussion in the play about being a man, about manliness (whatever that is).' He was a cypher for ideas.' He was an everyman.' Almost more of a thing than a gender.' And I wondered, could such a character exist and just happen to be female?

Why are attics so appealing to authors?'So just what does an attic do that other rooms can't? A dining room, for example, or a nice ground floor lounge? An attic is more than just a useful storage spaceI'll be honest. As a child, the thought of being able to creep from house to house through the upper loft space was somehow appealing. Illegal? Likely. Sinister? Maybe. But breathtakingly appealing, nonetheless.

The always brilliant historical YA author Mary Hooper goes exploring gravestones: When we moved to our present house I was very happy to find that it overlooked a church, because one of my favourite things to do is trail around a churchyard reading the epitaphs on the stones. I don't much like new graves, mind you, I find them too stark and shiny, too suburban. What I like are mouldering stone, avenging angels, covered urns and broken columns with a few twists of ivy ' just enough to reveal an epitaph which will give a frisson of fearful anticipation.

The Maurice Sendak tributes continue, this one from Art Spiegelman: I think Sendak invested his work with the understanding that the distinction between children and adults is probably one of hypocrisy more than anything else. And ultimately what has become important to me over the years is watching the line between adulthood and childhood being erased in our culture. And whatever class anxiety, status anxiety that might have come with feeling like, Oh, gee he wasn't getting to be a full grownup by being an artist working for children'obviously, Sendak didn't have contempt for the work he was doing, he made it fully, and now it can be seen fully.

Broadthink launches Broadlit: Broadthink, a boutique branding and new business development media company, is bringing the world of vintage and new romance content to the underserved target market of women through its newest company BroadLit. By combining the popular genre of romance with the emerging world of new media technology BroadLit is putting a new slant on romance and delivering it to todays women. With the launch of its online romance hub'TruLOVEstories.com, BroadLit is featuring ebooks, casual digital games, customised avatars, licensed merchandise, and other features to fulfil every romance seekers desire for more.

Rachael Johns on editing'for the international market: What I find most fascinating about my Carina edits is the words/phrases I'm asked to change because they are too Aussie. It's strangely fascinating because I'd never have thought of myself as having a particularly Aussie slang dialogue ' my family is British and I think this has influenced a lot of my speaking habits, at least I thought it had.

Charlotte from Charlottes Library gives us her favourite cat books

This years Aurealis Award winners have been announced

Visualising the meals in Murakamis 1Q84 (see also our review)

Are these the 10 best historical novels?

Its been announced that the thirteenth and final book in the Sookie Stackhouse'series is titled Dead Ever After, and'will go on sale May 2 2013.

Bookish videos:

M&B editor Flo talks us through her latest adventure with Medical Romance book, The Nurses Not-So-Secret Scandal by Wendy S. Marcus