I have always wondered what a serious wrangler of metaphor, like, say, Raymond Chandler, would have said about “Darmok.” I still can’t believe TNG’s producers let the writers get away with communication as the A plot, but every ST:TNG fan is and will be forever grateful they did. And just for fun, CaptRobau subtitled the…
Ah, yes. Titles. The article begins, “Walk into any bookstore and the book titles aren’t just bad, they’re outrageously bad; and they’re not just outrageously bad, but outrageously bad in very much the same way.” I couldn’t agree more (Gone Girl has so much to answer for), and with the rest of the essay, which…
This is why I can’t read reference works in e. You can highlight in e, sure, and you can search, but searching is not the same as dogearing or sticky noting, and forget about scribbling marginal notations. So I’m railing against Adrian Goldsworthy again, this time because of this passage in Caesar: Probably in late 46…
So there’s your formula: Select really excellent, high-quality curricula and aggressively teach teachers how to use those curricula instead of putting them through generic “skills” training that won’t impact their classroom practices much. Measure how well students, schools, and districts are doing and hold back kids who aren’t reading at the end of third grade.…
Some more essential reading for all writers at any stage in their careers, this time from the most recent edition of The Bulletin, a semi-annual magazine published by the Authors Guild. This article: Castleman writes During the entire 20th century, American publishers released 2.5 million titles. Today, that many appear every year. Bestsellers still sell…
So, okay, I admit that was more than I ever wanted to know about Raymond Chandler and The Big Sleep. It took me ten months to get all the way through it, partly because I’m not a huge fan of noir. The men are always so Alpha male and the women are always such one-dimensional…
Guest post from Jim Benn, to mark the twentieth novel in his superb Billy Boyle series. A few years ago, I began pondering a storyline for the twentieth novel in my Billy Boyle WWII mystery series. It had to be something special. As often happens, while researching the book I was currently writing, I found…
Impossible to absorb too much information when you’re writing about a time two millennia before your own. I hasten to add that I haven’t read all these books cover to cover, otherwise I would never have time to write any of my own. Often the most useful items in them are their maps and indexes,…
Like the image says, you get a 25% discount on the hardcover edition of The Harvey Girl if
“Everything I Know about Self-Publishing” by Kevin Kelly, an update on what’s available out there for writers at every stage of their professional lives. Some excerpts: The Traditional Route …the peak of this traditional system is gone, finished, over. Reading habits have altered, buying habits are new, and attention has shifted to new media. It’s…
