Agent's Value
There have been a few posts lately about the value of agents across the internet. Some by agents, some by writers who love their agents, and some by people who seem to think agents are on the far side child molesters on their list of favorite kinds of people. Leaving completely aside the debate of if an agent is needed to publish a book, I'd rather talk about the value of what you get from an agent. As is my habit I'll do it by way of wandering around the point for an innumerable measure of words on what my fifth and sixth grade English teacher called a “bird walk”.

Sunset without Shadows
Sunset without shadows   Let me start off by saying I’ve read more YA in the past three years, than I did as a young adult, or teenager, or adolescent or young person or whatever it is we’re supposed to call homo sapiens between twelve and eighteen. That said, the total number of YA books I’ve read all of is probably under twenty five.   Cory Doctorow is both right and wrong. What is he right and wrong about? We

Slush Wars
Well, the most recent run through the slush wasn't really warlike, sadly it wasn't terribly productive either. Only two or three died in one line, and several make it over five pages, which just means it took longer to get to some form of "no". I really do want to thank the person who gifted me with NAVU, I'm quite glad I didn't have anything in my mouth I'd have ruined keyboard and monitor. I think I laughed for a good five minutes. Sadly, nothing I felt was strong enough for the market at this point, but I soldier on.

Press release
BOOK VIEW CAFÉ LAUNCHES ROCKET BOY AND THE GEEK GIRLS Book View Café, the Internet's only professional author cooperative, announces the creation of Book View Press. Book View Press will expand the Café authors' mission of bringing the best online fiction to the readers by bringing new work ready-to-read on the most popular ebook devices, including the Amazon Kindle, the Sony eReader and a variety of cell phones. This group of award-winning and best-selling authors is launching their new press with its first science fiction anthology: ROCKET BOY AND THE GEEK GIRLS, a collection of rare reprints, hard-to-find favorites and bold new tales by some of SF's

Naming the beasts
I'm always curious how writers come up with the non-terrestrial names they do for animals, and other sentients they invent, or for their made up magical creatures. Sure there are tens of thousands of magical creatures already and enough variations on them from region to region that the need for something new isn't great, but still exists. James Enge pointed out this amusing collection of proposed collective terms for a list of critters we're all familiar with. Personally while I like the list, I think a few of them are a touch off. For instance I like Mr Enge's a guile of dragons, and my feast of vampires a touch