Columns

Contents Unchanged: Don't Judge A Book By Its Packaging

October 3rd, 2011

Image by Mattox via Free Images Shortly after the new year, when it became apparent that Borders Books and Music would be shuttering its doors, my father wrote me an e-mail and reminded me that I might want to spend any unused gift cards I had laying around (these being a favorite of outer-orbit family friends and relations). Once the chain had sunk for good, they would be worthless.

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This Is Not Oklahoma: OK vs. Okay

October 3rd, 2011

Whatever prose sensibilities you have, they most likely don’t let you use, say, ampersands in your fiction. Why, though? Is it that that kind of symbolic shorthand foregrounds itself on the page, taking attention away from the words that are trying to mean by way of sound rather than sight? Is it that we associate that kind of symbolic economy with billboard signs, which need to be readable at highway speeds? Is it that the word the ampersand is replacing, ‘and,’ isn’t all that bulky in the first place, kind of suggesting that shortening it’s redundant?

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The 10 Best Sci-Fi Books That Should Be Box Office Blockbusters

October 1st, 2011

It seems as if Hollywood is entirely bereft of fresh material. Next year, three different live-action Snow White films will be released in the States. Disney is still terrorizing audiences with the threat of fifth and sixth Pirates of the Caribbean flicks. The undoubtedly abysmal ninth Hellraiser film was released this year. And yet the dudes with the deep pockets can’t find it within themselves to fund adaptations of some of the greatest sci-fi novels of all time? Producers, if you’re out of ideas, please allow me to help. I work for beer.

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Offline Marketing: How To Promote Yourself Without A Computer

October 1st, 2011

Image via Free Images I follow a lot of literary journals and independent bloggers, so about three or four times a week I’m hit with that update regarding so-and-so’s top however-many tips on social networking—typically, a litany of how-to’s in relation to Twitter hash tags and Goodreads book giveaways.  They never tend to be anything particularly enlightening (read enough of these and you start to see the same ones crop up), however, these posts seem to be contributing to a prevailing trend in literature that is: getting people to pay attentio

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