There's battle lines being drawn.
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.
Young people speaking their minds
getting so much resistance from behind

Sunday, July 1, 2007

More Publishy News

Frequent commentors (and sometimes the only commentors I get, what's up with everybody else, I know you all are looking) and very nice people Littlebird Blue and Todd Wheeler both were accepted in that anthology I mentioned before. My friends are filled with awesomeness.

LBB also writes commentary and critiques over at GreenMan Reviews, one of those places I read off and on. One, because their name rocks out, and two, because they really know their stuff. And Todd Wheeler is running a summer reading contest.

I feel like such a slacker next to these guys.

Just as a note, I would write about other friends, but many of them get published so often that I would feel like a press release office. Also, another friend has finished his first novel that he's going to try and get published. So I'll make a special shout out to Karl (whose supposedly reading this blog now, he doesn't normally read them). Health issues ate this weekend, so I still have one novel to read and critique, and another quarter of a novel to read and critique before the 15th. Once I'm past that, or I might start before that, I'll be reading Karl's novel and doing markup and critique.

I'm also toying with writing my own reviews of the novels and stories I read. I do that a little now, but it's as I'm reading them and are not a full review. The reason why I haven't is because, frankly, I don't know how to do reviews. And I think if I write them as critique many people wouldn't understand that I really like what I'm reading (life it too short not to like what you're reading) and what I'm saying shouldn't be taken as "trashing" the work.

4 comments:

Todd Wheeler said...

Thanks for the links. Sorry your weekend was not a happy one. Hope everything is heading toward normalish.

Steve Buchheit said...

We're getting closer to normal, Todd. Thanks.

I was waffling on the story contest link, not because I didn't want to do it, but I didn't want to spike your numbers. 'Cause you know just how many people read my blog, I didn't want it to be a stampede. :)

Camille Alexa said...

Reviews are a tricky business.

Obscurity is worse for an artist than a couple bad reviews. Way worse. And a good reviewer should give her readers as much room as possible to make up their own minds about a piece. By giving links to the author's website and places to buy the reviewed book, even if it didn't work for you you've spread the word about the piece.

To sum:
#1) Author Obscurity=Not Good for Books

#2) Spreading the word about things you read, linking to other author websites, taking part in an interactive community of readers & writers=Good for Books

Camille Alexa said...

O, and THANK YOU, Steve, for being so supportive of your fellow writers.