We Write!
I've been giving some thought to creating truly wicked characters and I came across this article on the science blog about words and how computer analysis makes them windows into the soul of a psychopathic killer. The researchers analysed the stories told be 14 psychopathic male murderers and compared them with 38 convicted murderers who... Continue Reading →
You have to admire people who go to this much trouble with their costumes! Well, I'm off to Supanova this weekend. Depending on the city, 15 to 25 thousand people come through the door. It's the biggest event of this kind in Australia. I think it is probably like Comic Con in the US, although... Continue Reading →
Or are Hybrids Hardier? I was at the SheKilda crime convention a couple of weeks ago and attended this panel on Cross Genre Writing. It is amazing how many speculative fiction writers also write mysteries. Or you could say, how many crime and mystery writers include a bit of the paranormal in their books. With... Continue Reading →
Over on the Entertainment Salon Brian McGreevy wrote a piece about Why Teens Should Read Adult Fiction. His point was fair enough. When writing about the teen age person he says: 'this human being is building an infrastructure for critical reasoning in a frequently bizarre, paradoxical universe where fairly miraculous and fucked-up stuff happens on... Continue Reading →
I came across this article about Steph Swainston, author of the Castle Cycle. She's decided to step back from her writing and train to be a chemistry teachers. She says: 'I have to get back to real life again. It wasn't an easy decision, because it took a lot to get to the stage of... Continue Reading →
(Note: I was away from the computer most of yesterday and didn't see that Rowena's post didn't go live. So I'm putting it up now and will be back to put up my own post around noon CST -- Amanda) This weekend I'm at the crime writers convention in Melbourne. SheKilda. This is run by... Continue Reading →
As writers we can't get away from writing dialogue. My son is currently reading Dostoevsky and he showed me a passage he'd just read which was one paragraph that went on for pages. Of course that book was written 150 years ago, but you only have to pick up a book from the nineteenth century... Continue Reading →
I came across this list on the Forbes site. 'Ten happiest jobs, as reported a General Social Survey by the National Organization for Research at the University of Chicago.' What interested me about this list is number 4: '4. Authors: For most authors, the pay is ridiculously low or non-existent, but the autonomy of writing... Continue Reading →
In the cultural desert that was my childhood, there was one bookshelf in my home with about five books on it. There was only a black and white TV- it was all anyone had in those days in Australia. There were 4 TV stations which ran re-runs over and over until I felt ill at... Continue Reading →
Cross posted to Rowena Cory Daniells' blog. There's been quite a bit of commentary recently on the blogs about gender - talk of how there are too few books for boys in the YA market, talk of the number of books by female authors that get reviewed as compared to books by male authors and... Continue Reading →
Mad Genius Club 