1) Innovative ancient weapons. It’s weird to discover at this late age that the “hand on a stick” from HAWK THE SLAYER was a real thing.
2) Which font should I use on my Kindle?
3) Joseph Heller’s extensive hand-written outline for Catch-22.
4) The Black Person’s Guide to Game of Thrones.
5) A leading happiness researcher says we’re giving our kids bad advice about how to succeed in life.
6) Improve your bowling game by noting the hidden oil patterns on the lanes. Video.
1. Cracked makes an honest ad about the ways casual games are like crack for our brains. Video.
2. Chatbots built by Facebook engineers to negotiate with each other begin to develop their own non-human language. Time to re-watch Person of Interest.
3. Having power causes a degradation of certain mental functions.
4. M.C. Esher: Adventures in Perception: a 20 minute Dutch documentary about the way he created his work. Video.
6. How to build a bicycle with car tires for wheels.
7. The same song played on a $100 bass, a $700 bass, and a $10,000 bass. Which sounds best? Video.
1) Author Robert Jackson Bennet on raising kids who don’t give a shit about your nerd pop culture.
2) Scientists have eliminated HIV in mice using CRISPR.
3) An episode of 80’s Dungeons and Dragons cartoon with voiceover to make it seem like a real D&D session. Video.
4) A bucket of water with a camera in the bottom captures thirsty desert animals. Video.
5) My Family’s Slave. This is heartbreaking and awful.
6) How to remove unwanted shows from your Netflix algorithms. Maybe your ex cruelly favorited an Adam Sandler movie before dumping you. Maybe you didn’t think to create a separate account for yourself after a few drinks. Maybe you just have regrets.
7) Four people who were buried alive and how they got out. Spoiler: “knocking” plays a big role.
Yesterday I tweeted this:
Go big or go the fuck home. pic.twitter.com/GqWqHRtwAX
— Harry Connolly (@byharryconnolly) January 15, 2017
It’s not the first time I’ve tweeted that particular book cover, but it had been a while and it crossed my social media again, so I thought I’d make this point again: Don’t hold back. Have fun with your premise. People like fun.
A number of people have expressed doubt that this is a real book, but it is: The Angel Wore Fangs. If it sounds like a fun read, grab yourself a copy. Book seven of a series!
Now, you can glance at the stats on that tweet to see that it sort of blew up, 3700 RTs at the time I write this, and it’s only now slowing down. And my mentions have been flooded with quote tweets from people adding “Wow” or laughing smileys or whatever.
But some people have responded like fools.
First of all, if your first response to that back cover blurb is something along the lines of “And NY publishers won’t publish my books!” as though all mainstream publishing cares about is cheap trash when heartfelt human stories languish in rejection piles, I would suggest you’re learning the wrong lesson.
Simple fact: publishing is large and complex, putting out books for a variety of tastes. If an aspiring author is not writing light-hearted gonzo paranormal romance, the success of such a book has nothing to do with the lack of success Aspiring’s book has achieved. They’re in different markets, aiming for readers in a specific mood.
Instead of moaning, these Aspirings ought to be trying to learn something from it, like “Be fun.” And if “fun” is not your thing, then how about “people like fun.”
Even worse are the people who seem to think the author isn’t in on the joke. They call the description things like “train wreck” and talk as though the author is just piling random obsessions into a story without realizing it will make it funny. Guys, the author is in on the joke. Click the Amazon link above and read her bio. Assuming that she’s not making conscious choices about this is sexist bullshit. Unfortunately, it’s all too common, especially when the woman is writing paranormal romance.
My official stand on that blurb is that I think it’s amazing and hilarious and I’m a little envious. It makes me wish I were a romance fan because then I could write in the genre; the romance readership is HUGE. Instead, I’ve written nine novels, and not one of them has a decent romance in it. I’m stuck with the muse I’ve got.
What did make me happy, though, were the folks who took that blurb as inspiration. Reading that wild description seemed to give them permission to go a little wild with their own stories. At one point, someone tweeted that she wished she could have written that story herself, although it would have been “browner and queer-er.” I had to jump in to encourage her to do just that.
I spent much of last night and this morning skimming through my mentions, looking for people who seemed to need an encouraging word. I hope they go on to write their own.
And I’m sure that I helped Ms. Hill sell a few books. Hopefully, she’ll get a bunch of new readers out of it. (If you’re wondering, all those retweets have done nothing to sell my own books, but I wouldn’t expect them to.)
Anyway, I guess I should sum things up this way: “Fun! People like it.”
1) Portugal’s Example: What Happened After It Decriminalized All Drugs, From Weed to Heroin.
2) The Man Who Invented Bookselling As We Know It.
3) Self-Destructive Beverages: a Guide.
4) Creating unconscious emotional responses with shapes. Video.
5) This house could be yours (if you’re looking for a shrine to terrible awful horrifying bad taste).
6) Carrie Fisher’s Legacy as a Script Doctor.
7) How to be Persuasive: Seven Secrets of a Hostage Negotiator
2) This cat is way into Hitchcock. Video.
4) “I’m a judge and I think criminal court is horrifying.”
5) The “Spiciest Tortilla Chip in the World” is Sold One Chip Per Package.
6) The Woman who is Allergic to Water.
7) Teen Creates App So Bullied Kids Don’t Have to Eat Alone.
1) Guy writes ridiculous requests in the “Special Instructions” space of his hotel reservation, and gets what he asked for. I hope he leave fat tips.
2) Woman Sues After Police Destroy Her Home During 10-Hour Standoff With The Family Dog.
3) An action figure for “Bulba Fett”.
4) Like Tanith Lee? Live/want to live in the UK? Her house is for sale. I wish I were successful enough for a beautiful house.
5) This longread is AMAZING: How parents of an elementary school child tried to frame a PTA mom for a crime she didn’t commit. Wow. For a crime/mystery reader like myself, this is wild. And it could have gone the other way so easily.
1) ‘You are a coward’: Hate and misperceptions about substance abuse are broader than I thought
2) Gorgeous cars of the art deco era.
3) This pedal-powered roller coaster gets a massive NOPE.
5) How God Created Animals. <-- Funny 6) Investigative reporter goes undercover in N Korea to find out the truth about life there, writes book, sees book listed as a “memoir” because the reporter is a woman.
1) An end to showering Apparently, the problem with smelly guys at cons is not that they don’t shower enough. It’s that they shower at all.
2) Drug or Tolkien elf? A quiz. I scored 23 out of 30, which is better than I expected.
3) 17 completed webcomics you can read from beginning to end.
4) AMC threatens to sue fansite over posted spoilers.
5) The defeat of the Confederacy should be a national holiday.
6) Funeral business dissolves the dead, pours them into town sewers.
1) This is strangely affecting.
2) Should you fuck this rock? Science says no.
3) Cinema audiences reproducibly vary the chemical composition of air during films, by broadcasting scene specific emissions on breath. Another reason for social animals to see movies in a crowded theater.
4) The Trailers for Ghostbusters (2016) and the Art of Editing Comedy by the creator of Every Frame a Painting.
5) The 35-Year-Long Hunt to Find a Fantasy Author’s Hidden Treasure.
6) Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war, again. Guess who’s winning? Filed under: The Future Is Stranger Than We Expected