Hi, everyone. Blue Night is back online after 1) a bit of scheduled maintenance Saturday night led to 2) a Jet-Pack update that went horribly awry. Oops. Since Sunday morning, I have learned the following: John Stewart is breaking my heart, Brian Williams is breaking my heart, the 24-hour news cycle needs to take a…
Read More We’re baaaack!Go here and laugh: https://twitter.com/levostregc
Also, weep, smile foolishly, and hold your heads up high, all you students of the humanities. We may be out of fashion, but we’re not extinct yet.
(Go here, even only to see the glory of a Rickroll or American Pie rendered in 13th C English. Things of beauty.) ∞
For authors unfamiliar with show business, few words will evoke the sheer magic of ‘They’ve optioned my book!’ That means someone has paid an author a certain amount of money to allow least the possibility (the ‘option’) of making that story into a movie, television drama, series, webcast, etc. Hold on there, pilgrim. You’re not…
Read More Option daydreams and nightmaresI’m an unrepentant chocoholic. When everything goes downhill and we’re living in a post-apocalyptic, climate-ravaged wasteland, I might actually miss chocolate more than hot water. Just sayin’. So I’m very disappointed in the Hershey Company, for deciding to use legal threats to keep the British version of Cadbury’s chocolate out of the US. They cite…
Read More Boo Hiss, HersheyBlurb: Five thousand years ago, the Atreianii transcended humankind, reducing men and women to slaves and pets. These post-human demigods reigned for centuries across their world and throughout the solar system, and for a time they created their paradise. Yet it could not last; they warred amongst themselves, reduced the globe to dust and ash,…
Read More A Requiem Dawn, by J.L Forrest<Takes a deep breath.> I need a word to describe the feeling I got when someone I only vaguely know (from a large genre marketing site, where we exchange no more than pleasantries) announced proudly they’ve just had their first book published, and I was really happy for them, until I looked up the book…
Read More I need a word, pleaseI tend not to read much commercial mainstream fiction, for many reasons. I certainly avoid it if the Hype Machine insists I read it. So I was unfamiliar with ‘The Rosie Project’ until this morning. I can’t give a full review of a story unless I read all of it, and I managed only a…
Read More The Rosie Project: failAww, I’m really sad that this two-day conference is all the way across the country from me. But if any romance readers or writers are going to be near the Washington, D.C. area in mid-February, it might be worth the time to register: “What Is Love? Romance Fiction in the Digital Age” will be held…
Read More Romance conference at the Library of Congress*That’s ‘I am Charlie!’ in French, if readers have been under a rock the last twenty-four hours. Earlier today in Paris, three masked gunmen brandishing AK-47s and shouting “Allahu Akbar” stormed the offices of the satirical* newspaper Charlie Hebdo. They murdered twelve people – the editor, cartoonists, journalists, and police officers – before fleeing in two stolen automobiles. Police…
Read More Je suis Charlie! (harsh language)And somehow, I’ve ended up with a third marketing post. But this one might be useful to a few people, so bear with me. Wu Wei is the Chinese term for ‘effortless action’, the attainment of a purely natural way of being. It is often physically represented by a loose, graceful circle: In the NYTimes, John…
Read More Try, but not too hardThere’s an old saying: I wouldn’t join any club that would have me. I’m considering all sides of that argument, right now, for reasons I’ll clarify in this post. A very kind and enthusiastic reviewer just nominated my M/M erotic romance space opera Moro’s Price for the 17th Annual Preditors & Editors ™ Readers’ Poll.…
Read More Moro’s Price up for an award!It’s December 30 again. That means a quick look at the past year in my Blue Night blog: why I have it, why it’s useful to me, what I hope it adds more than it takes away from the internet. Fifteen years ago when I first flirted with the idea of a blog, I was…
Read More 2014 blogging in reviewHappy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Solstice, Festivus, Saturnalia, and whatever other reasons you can think of to get together in the cold darkness and short days, and share a bit of light and cheer. There are enough pictures of pine trees and snowflakes around the web tonight. Instead, have some gorgeous, twisty tulips glowing in warm sunlight:
Read More Merry Christmas……I am lying to you right now, with this cheerful snarky blog post that purports to tell you all about the magic trick I’m doing, and that you shouldn’t fall for it. This blog sells absolutely nothing but my intermediate abilities as a writer and artist. But there’s a good chance that, if I were…
Read More All marketing is creepy lies…When you are in sales and marketing, you don’t want to come across like this guy, Harry Wormwood from the movie Matilda, played here by Danny DeVito. Harry is an all-out crook who turns back odometers, glues on bumpers, and puts sawdust in transmissions. You want to be like this guy, the late great Cal…
Read More Why your marketing shouldn’t seem like marketingEmily Asher-Perrin has a great post concerning the Marvel Comics Universe Loki’s apparently-canon genderfluidity. Emily brings up the point that gender is not about sex acts but identity. Loki-as-a-woman is not presented in the MCU as a guy who sometimes seems to look like a woman – but simply is female, a person who refers to…
Read More Genderfluidity(Sigh.) I’ve written about this before, but two stories that made the rounds this week have made an update necessary. As new authors, we’re told “Reviews are for readers, not authors. Don’t read your reviews.” Or we’re told: “Read them, learn what positive stuff you can, then let them go, and be a damn adult…
Read More More authors behaving horribly (adult language, graphic violence)
It must be a rule of nature and traffic that the driver of the biggest SUV in the grocery store parking lot absolutely has to do one or all three of these things:
1) Stop their vehicle right outside the doors in the walk zone, even when there is plenty of parking out in the lot. And stay there, idling while their passenger goes in and leisurely shops.
2) If they do park in the lot, they must take up at least two parking spaces.
3) Once leaving the parking lot, they must try to turn left into rush hour traffic, away from a traffic light.
(Scroll down for new info.) Or why it is not enough to research publishers once, at the start of your writing career. Diligent authors need to keep tabs on the industry at large, especially on already-established publishers. Because you never know when one is going to melt down… Anyone who has been involved in romance…
Read More Ellora’s Cave and Elephants in the RoomI’m blabbing about art and armor today. When I really began reading fantasy and science fiction in the late seventies and early eighties, I didn’t pay much attention to the different portrayals of men and women on book covers. I loved those cover artists equally, shrugged off their foibles, and learned some basic principles of…
Read More Real women, real armor, and worldbuilding