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Link Soup!
Thanks to everyone who commented with congratulations yesterday. I appreciate all the good thoughts!
My first blog entry for Flames Rising went up today.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
matt_m_mcelroy and I had been talking about my doing a column on the site for ages, so I'm going to make it my goal to write about the ins and outs of speculative fiction genre classifications once a week. I'm certainly no expert, but I've read a lot of interesting ideas about where urban fantasy comes from and where the genre really fits, so it'll be a fun think to talk about over there.
Another of the Flames Rising contributors, Monica Vallentinelli has a great blog post up about publishing advice in person on her own blog that's well worth checking out.
In other links this week, it's International Blog about Racism Week, which I picked up fromjimhines. It's a good moment for blogging about race to come up, particularly given the recent outburst on the cover of Justine Larbalestier's new novel, Liar. The main character of Liar is an African-American girl with short hair, and the girl on the cover is quite clearly a white girl with long hair.
The argument from the publisher is that the narrator lies about everything -- why would you believe her about her race? This is not holding much weight with fans, and Larbalestier said it undermined a lot of her intent with the story. Larabalestier wrote about it on her blog, andslwhitman has done several really good posts about the issue recently. While the publisher has said they hope this opens dialog about race in teen novels, I agree with the outcry -- doing something the *wrong* way is not how to go about opening dialog. Doing it the *right* way is.
Larbalestier has another really interesting blog entry about why she writes novels about characters who aren't white, though she is white herself. It's a great topic for discussion, particularly given the way the SFF community was discussing those ideas earlier this year.
On the topic of perspective, male author Bev Vincent recently discovered that he writes like a girl. Vincent goes into a detailed discussion at Storytellers Unplugged of an editorial letter he got back from an editor that railed against his unconvincing male protagonist.
Lots of excellent topics to discuss!
My first blog entry for Flames Rising went up today.
matt_m_mcelroy and I had been talking about my doing a column on the site for ages, so I'm going to make it my goal to write about the ins and outs of speculative fiction genre classifications once a week. I'm certainly no expert, but I've read a lot of interesting ideas about where urban fantasy comes from and where the genre really fits, so it'll be a fun think to talk about over there.Another of the Flames Rising contributors, Monica Vallentinelli has a great blog post up about publishing advice in person on her own blog that's well worth checking out.
In other links this week, it's International Blog about Racism Week, which I picked up from
jimhines. It's a good moment for blogging about race to come up, particularly given the recent outburst on the cover of Justine Larbalestier's new novel, Liar. The main character of Liar is an African-American girl with short hair, and the girl on the cover is quite clearly a white girl with long hair. The argument from the publisher is that the narrator lies about everything -- why would you believe her about her race? This is not holding much weight with fans, and Larbalestier said it undermined a lot of her intent with the story. Larabalestier wrote about it on her blog, and
slwhitman has done several really good posts about the issue recently. While the publisher has said they hope this opens dialog about race in teen novels, I agree with the outcry -- doing something the *wrong* way is not how to go about opening dialog. Doing it the *right* way is.Larbalestier has another really interesting blog entry about why she writes novels about characters who aren't white, though she is white herself. It's a great topic for discussion, particularly given the way the SFF community was discussing those ideas earlier this year.
On the topic of perspective, male author Bev Vincent recently discovered that he writes like a girl. Vincent goes into a detailed discussion at Storytellers Unplugged of an editorial letter he got back from an editor that railed against his unconvincing male protagonist.
Lots of excellent topics to discuss!
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Sheesh. I usually /feed/ off of internet controversy, but the past two weeks or so have been downright exhausting.
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I'm glad that Bloomsbury is pleased that they've started some conversation, but really, that seems to be missing the whole point.
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You're completely right about Bloomsbury missing the point, but yeah, at least they're acknowledging an ongoing problem. On the other hand, it's hard to get past the fact that the cover in question wasn't just another example of an ongoing problem, it actually undermined what the author was trying to do. Larabelestier handled it all with a lot of class. I think I would have been much more tempted by the tantrum-throwing option.
Oh, and 'cause I didn't say anything earlier--Congratulations on your first blog post at Flames Rising! I wasn't familiar with the site before, but I will definitely be checking it out regularly now.