ThumbThings For Free

A company a while ago was selling something they creatively called a ThumbThing (their website seems down as I post this). Which was a .000001¢ piece of plastic that you put on your thumb while you read a book which held it open for you freeing up your other hand for whatever you need it for while reading.

I was pretty astonished to see these things being sold for $2 or so in bookstores. There had to be something you could use that was readily available that did the same thing and wouldn't set you back $2 if you lost or broke it.



Yes, that's the cap to a drink bottle I had on my desk.

Why is a bottle cap better?
- Doesn't cause even more plastic to end up in our landfills.
- Flatter surface doesn't score a line into the pages of your book.
- Won't cost you a thing usually so you won't be bummed if you loose it.
- Convenient storage place at the top of your drink.

Choose Your Own Adventure Books

I LOVED Choose Your Own Adventure Books when I was a kid. Heck, I still do. In a more perfect world I'd have a complete collection. In fact I partially blame them for my obsession with writing because I think that when I was reading those books, and making my decisions and turning to those pages to see what happened I was trying to predict what would happen and many times what ended up happening just wasn't as exciting to me as what had already happened in my imagination.

However there are volumes that no one will ever collect because they're just for fun.

Some very funny people have retitled some familiar Choose Your Own Adventure Books and the results are hilarious. It was popular not too long ago to re-title scans of book covers. If you take the time to search around you'll find some very funny ones.

Coincidentally I did one myself for a friend just the other day:

Books As Art

Not the words inside, the actual books themselves. I've never been one to deface a book. To me they are like sacred objects containing fragments of the mind of their author. But someone named Georgia Russell does do some interesting things with books by eviscerating and goring them into misshapen splayed open objects.

It's a bit horrifying and intriguing simultaneously. The gallery is here.

What fascinates me is that while they're still books, they're now unreadable. Yet the fact that they are/were books is what makes them more than just abstract art. You can almost hear the information inside screaming.

The 100 "Best" Novels

Random House has a list of the 100 best novels. Actually there are two lists: The Board's List and The Reader's List.

There are some fun and interesting differences between the two lists. See if you can spot the trends here.

The Snowflake School of Writing

Randy Ingermanson has a page up with tips about how to write using what he calls the Snowflake method. While I don't generally like nuts and bolts methodologies (like Syd Fields books on screenwriting) when it comes to creating art some of his tips are more common sense and organization than rote hardcoded rules.

It's worth a read.

Plagiarism, Harry Potter & Dracula?

I'll admit I've never read any Harry Potter book and have no plans to do so. But, a post at a message board led to a search which turns up some interesting parallels between Bram Stoker's Dracula and J.K. Rowlling's Harry Potter.

So, when we arrived at the hunt for Voldemort's horcruxes in order to vanquish him, as made clear in HBP, I knew I'd met this plot device before.

I've read Dracula but not Harry Potter so my opinion is only half-formed ;)

There have been other accusations of plagiarism directed at J.K. Rowling before though.

Harry Potter was a character in a 1986 movie called "Troll." In the movie "Troll" Harry Potter was a dark haired, ordinary boy that discovered magic and battled a troll.

Many see striking similarities between "Harry Potter" and "The Worst Witch," by Jill Murphy. Murphy wrote the first "The Worst Witch" novel in 1974 when only 18. This book was made into a 1986 movie.

"The Worst Witch" is the original story of Mildred Hubble and her life at Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches," which Jill Murphy based on own school. A pointed hat was added to her normal school uniform, and spelling class actually became SPELLing class. "Miss Cackle's Academy For Witches." "The Worst Witch" was written almost 20 years before the first Harry Potter book, and the movie was made 15 years before "Harry Potter" was filmed.

Again, I have not read either but it's interesting if true.

Two Heads, One Idea

It's funny how some people far away from one another will basically have the same idea. Take the idea of a hero without a head.

The first time I heard of an idea like this was for a videogame called "Dead Head Fred" where:

The core gameplay revolves around Fred's missing head. By progressing through the game the player can collect an assortment of different heads which all have different abilities.

But then a while later the Sci-Fi channel aired a pilot for a show called simply enough, "The Amazing Screw-On Head" where:

[The author] imagined a robot with a head that screwed onto different bodies to suit the occasion-hence the "Screw-on Head".

Just thought it was interesting.

Choosing Your Novel's Title

I thought this was interesting. I've been toying with the idea of a steampunk novel for a while so I've been looking around getting the feel of what the genre is about (no, I'm not calling it genre fiction, at least I hope I'm not) and I kept seeing one author's name popping up over and over but oddly enough, the title of his novel would change, seemingly with each interview.

I'm not sure with this person's story is but his name is Trent Jamieson (his blog, which I haven't really read is here) and in three different features on him his steampunk novel is called "The Night Beyond Land," "Roil" and "The Festival of Float." I'm beginning to think this guy is a fabrication of some kind but there are other interviews with him, like this one and this one. Fortunately he is listed on Amazon.

Anyway, the point is that you're allowed to alter the name of your novel all you want, authors do this all the time. However, it's a good idea to stick with one title once you go public with your manuscript because I think that changing the title of it so many times in the public eye doesn't reflect creativity so much as instability.

1500 Books Someone Thinks You Should Read

Someone named Calazet has compiled a list of 1500 books he thinks you should read as well as some serials.

You may have some trouble getting the long list to load. What's interesting is not what's there but what is missing as well as some texts which most would agree need explanatory companion texts. There are also, as of this post, some mistakes like listing Orwell's "1984" twice, once as a number and once as text. Also, Issac Asimov's "I, Robot" is seemingly listed as just "Robot" in the serial section at the end.

There are some good things on the list to be sure but there is a subtle bias present as I suppose all lists of this length would have. For example, there are several religious texts listed, yet no books against religion nor are any books listed that explain religious texts in context, historically.

Still it's worth a gander.

Writing Tips, Advice and Cover Letters

Here are two quick links with advice about writing fiction in general and some advice for writing cover letters. I haven't read much on these two sites, but the portions I skimmed though seem worthwhile reading. Hopefully I'll have time to read more on there in the next few days.

Wordsmitten's Advice on Cover Letters & Holly Lisle's general tips for writing fiction.

Post-Potter Depression

Post-Potter Depression is now listed at urbandictionary.com.

The empty feeling that comes from finishing the seventh book in the Harry Potter series and realizing there will be no more.

Dangerous Laser Printers

Okay, I know this isn't about writing but other than electronic documents the most common format to show off your work is the printed page. Now it happens that if you print things using a laser printer you may be breathing in particulates from the printer that you really don't want to be.

Here's the troubling story.

First-Time Author Gets Six-Figure Deal

And she probably deserves it.

The pitch intrigued the publishing world: "Forrest Gump wins Powerball."
And with that, Patricia Wood's new novel, Lottery, was launched into a bidding war that nabbed the first-time writer a six-figure deal.

And for more inspiration there's this:

She had written three earlier novels and has "a stack of rejection letters" to show for them. Lottery came to her quickly last year. She spent eight hours a day, seven days a week for three months writing it, she says. "I was consumed."

She sent e-queries to agents, hoping to attract interest.

"Most of the time I'm so busy, I don't read the e-mail queries," says Dorian Karchmar, a literary agent with William Morris in New York. But on a slow day last summer, she read Wood's and was hooked by the Gump line and five manuscript pages Wood included.

Full Article Here.

Self-Publishing Online For Free

David Wellington has done well for himself. He's written several popular novels that have been published in real life yet he still publishes them for free, in their entirety online.

They're worth checking out.

It's something I'm thinking of doing with my next "throw-away" nanowrimo novel using something like the Creative Commons Licensing deal. What I'm toying with doing is publishing each day's writing to a blog not only so others can read it while it's still warm from my fingers, but so I can keep track of myself and my word count and hopefully keep myself encouraged and motivated throughout.

We'll see.

"I could care less" vs. "I couldn't care less"

I ran across this page earlier today and just remembered it. Have you ever said "I could care less" something or other? You may not have ever realized it but that's probably not what you meant to say. What you probably meant to say was "I couldn't care less."

Here's a fun little page about it.