RIASS stuff:
Giveaway: MacRobertsonland and Chocolate Pack'(open to all)
Interview: Mingmei Yip on narrative, Chinese femmes fatales, and chicken's feet
Book Review: How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell'Rating: 
(in which I examine bogan parenting)
Well, its official. My lovely agent is preparing to send my MG out on sub next week. In the meantime Im going to go and busy myself doing stuff thats definitely not refreshing my email.
Other bookish stuff:
Twitter Apologises for Suspending NBC-Bashing Journalist'This is a coup, and hopefully has the Twitter team thinking about how its positioned itself. Twitter is, after all, all about the free-flow of information, isnt it?
NYTs Gore Vidal obituary
Andrew Curry on the reimagining of pulp fiction
Whats your genre kryptonite?'Like the author of this post, Im a sucker for epistolary novels. And, honestly, anything with a plummy, Pommy-sounding narrator anything set in an old mansion.
Get ready, August 9th is Book Lover's Day'Damn. I was born 4 days too late. On international left-handers day, as it turns out.
On cyberbullying and social media etiquette'We encourage our authors to blog, to put themselves out there whenever they can, and to be genuine.'But there is a downside to all of this. There are the authors who, in their efforts to connect with readers, reveal too much about their publishing process and end up unintentionally offending editors, publishers and publicists.
My quick thoughts: This makes me think of this interview with Robert Gottlieb, where he says Some writers need you to read their book as they're writing it. I worked with one writer who wanted to call me up every day and read me what she had written. I discouraged her. I think its easy to share too much about both yourself and the writing process, and its easy to ruin the magic for your readers by doing so.
In terms of the bully element of things: I guess theres always going to be someone who ruins it for everyone else. You just have to comport yourself as well as you can and hope that your own reputation stands up against whatever mischief these people are set on accomplishing.
Goodreads v. LibraryThing, Part One
J.K. Rowling events announced'(UK)
Dont write what you know'Part of me dies inside when a student whose story has been critiqued responds to the workshop by saying, 'You can't object to the _________ scene. It really happened! I was there!' The writer is giving preference to the facts of an experience, the so-called literal truth, rather than fiction's narrative and emotional integrity. Conceived this way, the writer's story is relegated to an inferior and insurmountable station; it can neither compete with, nor live without, the ur-experience.
My quick thoughts: I come from a long line of yarn-spinners, and one of my grandfathers favourite sayings is never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Unless, of course, youre writing a biography and making up Bob Dylan quotes.
The Periodic Table of Typefaces. Be still, my beating heart! (I do think they should do a spin-off entitled The Ten Circles of Helvetica)
Interested in Scholarly Communications/open access? Heres a giant RSS bundle
The fulfilled predictions in George Orwells 1984 vs. Aldous Huxleys A Brave New World in an infographic
Paula Morris has won the NZ Post Book Award for Fiction
An interview with author Alison Booth'and'journalist Anthony Lowenstein'(podcast)
An interview with Kate Forsyth (podcast)
Book vending machines?! Awesome.
I like your grandfathers saying, I never let the truth get in the way of a good story. I think most people can tell when Im spinning a yarn rather than relating, documentary style, an event that happened.
Im always spinning yarns. Never believe anything I say!