Columns

Ask The Agent: Marketing to a Middle Grade Audience, Having Multiple Agents and More

March 18th, 2013

Navigating the rough terrain of today’s publishing industry shouldn’t be a solo event. This week in Ask the Agent, I’ll explore and dissect a few of the industry’s mysteries, straight from the shoulder.

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10 More Words You Literally Didn't Know You Were Getting Wrong

March 15th, 2013

Original header image by Andrea Piacquadio Last October, I gave you 10 Words You Literally Didn't Know You Were Getting Wrong, and it generated a lot of discussion about common usage, which is often incorrect or imprecise usage; and good usage, which is usually the best way to use a word.

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Library Love: Your Library's Disgusting Friends

March 15th, 2013

[Photo by Comtesse DeSpair]

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Sixguns & Sorcery: The Weird Western

March 14th, 2013

One of the great things about fantasy fiction is that it mixes well. Fantasy elements can be added to most other types of fiction quite easily. Mix it with noirish mystery and you get urban fantasy. Stir it with science fiction and you get science fantasy. Splash it on romance and you get paranormal romance.

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Finding Your Writing Rhythm

March 13th, 2013

[Pictured: Legendary drummer Neil Peart] The question was to be expected. It's asked almost every time you put a group of authors in front of an audience. "How do you become a writer?" The student who asked the question was younger than the four us on the science fiction panel at Comic Con Portland. It usually works that way. I gave the obvious answer. "Write," I said. Then I followed up by saying, "and make sure you call yourself a writer."

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Comic Book Death Is Irrelevant

March 13th, 2013

It’s one of the first things you learn as a comics reader — don’t get too emotionally invested in the death of a character, cause they’ll be back. Usually before you can even miss them. The latest to suffer an irrelevant death is Batman’s most recent Robin, aka Damian Wayne, Batman’s son, aka the grouchiest Boy Wonder ever. This death, spoiled prior to the release of the comic just about everywhere, was a long-planned plot point of Grant Morrison’s in his Batman Inc. series. While the book itself (Batman Inc.

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The Blagger's Guide to Jack Kerouac

March 12th, 2013

To blag (v): to sound like you know what you’re talking about when you don’t. The Blagger’s Guide to Literature (n): an invaluable resource for those who wish to blag about books without actually reading them.

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Comic Book Plot Developments That Are No Longer Twists

March 12th, 2013

We all want to read a story that can surprise us. Every time you open a book, you do so in the hopes that it will be at least different enough from everything else you’ve read to be interesting. Even when we read the same kinds of stories over and over again, we do so with an appreciation for the variations of the familiar form. Often the most damning criticism one can offer an otherwise brilliant piece of writing is that it’s been done before, thus lessening its value. Perhaps that explains popular fiction’s recent obsession with twist endings.

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Storyville: Writing the Grotesque

March 11th, 2013

One of my favorite sub-genres, next to neo-noir and transgressive, is the grotesque. It’s actually quite similar. Let’s talk about what this style of writing is all about, and how it can help you to write better fiction and tap into your veiled weirdness.

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A Literary History Of Oz

March 8th, 2013

"The land you know. The story you don't." That's the tagline to Disney's $200 million Wizard Of Oz prequel, Oz: The Great And Powerful, which hits U.S. theaters today. But do you really know the Land of Oz? Sure, you've seen the 1939 classic starring Judy Garland. It is, after all, not just an inextricable part of pop culture but also one of the most watched films of all time.

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