Category Archives: Authors

April 23: International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day

Posted on April 17, 2007 by Keren

Author Jo Walton has declared April 23 to be International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, to be celebrated by authors giving away free, professional-quality work online.

This is a reference to author Howard Hendrix’s controversial “webscabs rant“, in which he accuses authors who give their works away for free on the internet of undercutting other authors, “rotting [the SFWA] organization from within” and of “converting the noble calling of Writer into the life of Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch”. (Yeah, strong stuff.)

In honour of Dr Hendrix, I am declaring Monday 23rd April International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day. On this day, everyone who wants to should give away professional quality work online. It doesn’t matter if it’s a novel, a story or a poem, it doesn’t matter if it’s already been published or if it hasn’t, the point is it should be disseminated online to celebrate our technopeasanthood.

Whatever you’re posting should go on your own site. I’ll make a post here on the day and people can post links in comments to whatever they’re putting up on. If you are a member of SFWA, or SFWA qualified but not a member (like me) you get extra pixel-spattered points for doing this. If other people want to collect the links too, that would be really cool. Please disseminate this information widely.

Link (via BoingBoing)

Posted in Authors, E-books, Events |

Author tries to interest Canada's president in the arts

Posted on April 17, 2007 by Keren

Concerned that Canadian president Stephen Harper lacks interest in the arts, Yann Martel, bestselling author of Life of Pi, has vowed to send him a book every two weeks.

“For as long as Stephen Harper is Prime Minister of Canada, I vow to send him every two weeks, mailed on a Monday, a book that has been known to expand stillness.”

The first book Martel sent Harper was “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” by Russian author Leo Tolstoy. Those wishing to keep in touch with Martel’s campaign can log on to http://whatisstephenharperreading.ca.

No one in Harper’s press office was immediately available for comment.

Link to the Yahoo News article

Posted in Authors |

Pulitzer winners announced

Posted on April 17, 2007 by Keren

The results of 2007′s ultra-prestigious Pulitzer prize have been announced.  Here are the winners in the literary categories:

  • Fiction: The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Alfred A. Knopf)
  • Drama: Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire
  • History: The Race Beat by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff
  • Biography: The Most Famous Man in America by Debby Applegate
  • Poetry: Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey
  • General non-fiction: The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
Each winner takes home $10,000 (£5,000), except for the recipient of the public service journalism award, who gets a gold medal.

Read the BBC article here; see the complete list of winners on the Pulitzer site here.  The journalism categories are also worth a look.

Posted in Authors, Awards |

Vonnegut's rules for short stories

Posted on April 14, 2007 by Keren

Some excellent short-story-writing advice from recently deceased author Kurt Vonnegut, most of which is applicable to all writing, not just short fiction:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Link (via BoingBoing)

Posted in Articles, Authors, Resources, Short stories |

Writers discuss their inspirations

Posted on April 14, 2007 by Keren

As a preview for the upcoming book How I Write: The Secret Lives Of Authors, the Guardian has released an interesting excerpt in which several authors write about “what gets their creative juices flowing”.  The list includes some unlikely things (including earplugs, chocolate and a squeaky chair) as well as the more usual pictures, music and taking a bath.

Read it here.

Posted in Articles, Authors |

Booker International shortlist released

Posted on April 13, 2007 by Keren

The shortlist for the second Man Booker International award was announced yesterday.  15 authors from all over the world are in the running for this prestigious award; some well known (Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan) and some more obscure.

The judges said: “With this list, we offer a gift to readers all over the world, an opportunity to join a conversation on 15 writers, diverse in nationality, language, themes and techniques, but united in their dedication to the power of the word.”

The award, designed “to highlight one writer’s continued creativity, development and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage,” is presented to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is available in translation in the English language.

The International Booker prize, unlike the annual Booker prize, is open to English-language authors of any nationality and is awarded for an author’s entire body of work rather than a specific title.  The 60,000-pound prize is awarded every two years.

Link to the Guardian article.  Yahoo News has two articles on the subject: 1 2

Posted in Articles, Authors, Awards |

Mother's Day writing contest

Posted on April 12, 2007 by Keren

Borders, Gather.com and Mitch Albom are teaming up to run a writing contest for this spring’s Mother’s Day.  The challenge is to write “an original story that relays a childhood memory of a particular moment in which their mother stood up for them.”

The first prize is a seven-day cruise for two.

Essays must be 300 words or less and will appear on Gather.com, where the top 10 picks will be selected. The winner, chosen by Albom, will be announced May 10 on “The Early Show.” The nine finalists each will receive a $100 Borders gift card.

Submissions will be accepted starting Wednesday, and continuing through April 25.

Link to the Yahoo News article

Posted in Authors, Contests |

Kurt Vonnegut, RIP

Posted on April 11, 2007 by Keren

Kurt Vonnegut, one of the top science fiction writers of the twentieth century, died yesterday of brain injuries suffered from a fall. He was 84.

The author of at least 19 novels, many of them best-sellers, as well as dozens of short stories, essays and plays, Vonnegut relished the role of a social critic.

“He was sort of like nobody else,” said Gore Vidal, who noted that he, Vonnegut and Norman Mailer were among the last writers around who served in World War II.

“He was imaginative; our generation of writers didn’t go in for imagination very much. Literary realism was the general style. Those of us who came out of the war in the 1940s made it sort of the official American prose, and it was often a bit on the dull side. Kurt was never dull.”

Rest in peace.

Link to the Yahoo News article

Posted in Authors, Obituaries, Science fiction/fantasy |

Vidal to receive new PEN/Borders award

Posted on April 10, 2007 by Keren

Author Gore Vidal has been declared the first recipient of the new PEN/Borders Literary Service Award (which, incidentally, does not come with a cash prize).  The prize is given to “a truly distinguished American writer whose critically acclaimed work helps us to understand the human condition in original and powerful ways.”

“The breadth and depth of Gore Vidal’s brilliant work, his courage in speaking out, even at times when free speech has been at risk in our country, and his lifelong commitment to democracy, justice, reason, and common sense make him the ideal recipient of the inaugural PEN/Borders Literary Service Award,” Borders Group CEO George Jones said Tuesday in a statement.

(From the Yahoo News article.)

Posted in Authors, Awards |

Do free ebooks push sales?

Posted on April 9, 2007 by Keren

Interesting article from Bloggasm, discussing whether releasing a book under a Creative Commons license really does increase sales. Their advice: get BoingBoinged.

“The thing is, there’s a confound here,” Watts explained. “It wasn’t the CC release per se that gave me the boost; it was all the people talking about it. Boingboing doesn’t pimp every novel that comes down the pike. It has to be newsworthy in some way, and an author giving his work away is, for the time being, newsworthy. It attracts attention.”

“So what happens when this catches on?” Watts said. “What happens when everybody releases their work through a Creative Commons licence? Then it’s no longer newsworthy, and while it will certainly continue to make my work more accessible to people who already know of my existence, it certainly won’t lure in any new readers the way the Blindsight campaign has done. It’s a niche strategy, in other words. It only works as long as most artists aren’t doing it– and as long as that’s the case, I’d certainly consider releasing my future books under a CC license.”

Link (via Futurismic)

Previously:
Peter Watts releases SF novel under Creative Commons license

Posted in Articles, Authors, E-books, Interviews |