Storyville: Writing About Sex

Column by Richard Thomas September 5, 2012 19 comments
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Storyville: Writing About Sex

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WARNING: This column will talk about sex in a graphic and frank way—so if you are underage or easily offended, please do not continue reading.

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What's Your Style?: Style Guides and How to Use Them

Column by Taylor Houston September 5, 2012 3 comments
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What's Your Style?: Style Guides and How to Use Them

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What the *bleep* is a style guide?

I am not saying that my high school English teachers failed me, but I arrived as a college freshman without the slightest idea what a style guide was. At matriculation, the college president handed each of us a copy of The Elements of Style. I didn’t know what it was for and therefore shelved it for nearly my entire college career.

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Library Love: Archives - The Hidden Room of Research

Column by Stephanie Bonjack September 4, 2012 2 comments
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Library Love: Archives - The Hidden Room of Research

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If you haven’t read Deborah Harkness’s A Discovery of Witches, it’s worth a try. There are witches, vampires, and demons spelled with an “a,” not to mention a heroine who spends days researching and consulting manuscripts at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. It got me thinking about rare materials and archives, and how truly foreign and inaccessible they seem. “Serious scholarship” is somehow embedded in the word “archives,” leaving them a mystery to most.

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Ask The Agent: Clarifying Industry Semantics and Advice on How to Become an Agent!

Column by Bree Ogden September 3, 2012
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Ask The Agent: Clarifying Industry Semantics and Advice on How to Become an Agent!

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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 two of the industry’s mysteries, straight from the shoulder.

Question from Heidi

Could you talk about the differences between query letter, cover letter, and pitch?

These three items are very much the same thing, but in different contexts.

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New Release Roundup: Recommendations for September 2012

Column by John Jarzemsky September 3, 2012 3 comments
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New Release Roundup: Recommendations for September 2012

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Every month I'll be toiling in the dank, dark mines of literary obscurity, scouring the catalogues of every major publisher to bring the LitReactor faithful a few choice titles hitting the shelves. The following is a brief look at what's worth checking out in September. Full disclosure: unless otherwise noted, none of the below books have been reviewed by myself or other LitReactor staff. These are just a few recommendations based on publisher's notes and my own opinions. Without further ado:

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A Game of Literary F, Marry, Kill

Column by Joshua Chaplinsky August 31, 2012 2 comments
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A Game of Literary F, Marry, Kill

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Alright people, time for a little Friday fun. Who's up for a rousing game of F Marry Kill, but with a literary twist?

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Top 10 Reasons People Use To Justify Pirating Digital Content (And Why They’re Wrong)

Column by Rob Hart August 31, 2012 83 comments
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Top 10 Reasons People Use To Justify Pirating Digital Content (And Why They’re Wrong)

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Pirating digital content is illegal. Full stop. 

Yet people continually steal eBooks and movies and television shows and treat it like it's no big deal. There's a couple of reasons it happens: Torrenting is easy and the chance of getting caught is low. And saving money is fun, especially when the economy isn't at its strongest. But an eBook is a luxury, not a right. If you can't afford it, too bad, but that's life. 

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UPDATED WITH WINNER: LitReactor's Flash Fiction Smackdown: August Edition

Column by Rob Hart August 31, 2012 39 comments
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UPDATED WITH WINNER: LitReactor's Flash Fiction Smackdown: August Edition

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Flash fiction: A style of fictional literature marked by extreme brevity.

How This Works

We give you something. It could be a picture or an idea or a sentence. You write a flash fiction piece, using the thing we gave you as inspiration. Put your entry in the comments section. One winner will be picked, and awarded a prize.

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The Good, The Bad, and The Sadly Deluded: Actors Who Write

Column by Cath Murphy August 30, 2012 16 comments
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The Good, The Bad, and The Sadly Deluded: Actors Who Write

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If there’s one commodity actors are not short of, it’s ego. The trouble with egos is that they’re very like the insatiable plant in Little Shop of Horrors (feed me Seymour!): demanding of constant sustenance. Acting is rarely enough for most actors. In their search for a bigger share of the spotlight, some actors turn to directing, some to music. Some even turn to art.

And some – inevitably - turn to writing.

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