“The woman behind the infamous e-mail that aired criticisms of Sarah Palin to millions across the cyber-globe sat at a computer screen scrolling through unread messages, as dozens more popped into her inbox. “Let’s see, what is the next one?” Anne Kilkenny said with a smile, killing time before her family attended a Saturday evening church service. She clicked and skimmed the words: “Hateful liar.”

Kilkenny, 57, lives with her husband and son in a one-level home surrounded by raspberry bushes, crab apple trees, birch and fireweed. She speaks in a high-pitched voice, cheerful as a grade school teacher, pausing for deep breaths between thoughts. She parts her steel gray hair down the middle, wears ankle-length skirts, irons meticulously and grows potatoes and asparagus in her backyard.

After Sen. John McCain named Palin, the governor of Alaska and former mayor of Wasilla, as his Republican vice presidential running mate on Aug. 29, friends of Kilkenny’s in other states began asking, “What do you know about her?” Two days later, Kilkenny decided to set down her observations about Palin in a 24,000-word sober critique, e-mailed to 40 of her friends in the Lower 48.”

(via The L.A. Times)

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In a follow-up to the Plot Synopsis Project, author Joshua Palmatier has put together the Query Project, in which a group of authors post and discuss actual query letters that got them an agent or an editor.

“Hey, all! A while ago, when I ran the Plot Synopsis Project, it was suggested that I also do a Query Project. I didn’t have the time then to organize it, but I’ve put something together now. What you’ll find here (from me) is an old post that I’ve reposted with some changes, mainly dealing with the actual paragraph pitch that I included. In the first posting of this, I made a pitch up on the fly, and it sucked. This time, I put in the pitch I actually used in the queries I sent out to agents and editors regarding that particular book. I’ve also tweaked some sentences and whatnot since the original post.

So, here’s my advice on how to write a query and what it should include. At the end of the post, there are links to a bunch of other authors who’ve agreed to post one of their own queries (one that netted them an agent or editor) along with comments about queries in general. Some of the authors participating never used queries, and they’ll explain how they got published without them, or why they didn’t need them. But most of us used queries to catch someone’s attention. As always, this is just our experiences and our advice, which may or may not be the best advice out there. Use your own judgment after considering what we’ve all had to say. And good luck with your own agent/editor hunt!”

(via Joshua Palmatier’s blog)

(Thanks Smoking Pigeon!)

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There’s a bogus list of books that Palin wanted banned making the rounds on the internet these past few days. In reality the books listed were taken from a site listing books that were once banned in the United States. And while the list is clearly disinformation at its finest, it at least brings attention to the fact that Palin attempted to fire a librarian after inquiring into banning some books from the library. According to Anne Kilkenny who has known Palin since ’92:

“While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin’s attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.”

This poses a threat to the liberty of writers, book lovers, publishers, and libraries everywhere in the country. This means that it’s extremely important to put additional emphasis on this year’s “Banned Books Week-Celebrating the Freedom to Read” (Sept. 27-Oct. 4). Spread the word…

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“Transcriptase is a new website that has launched, featuring fiction by some very familiar authors. You may remember the Helix debacle from a while back, authors who asked for their stories to be taken down, and authors who felt they didn’t feel right taking them down but didn’t appreciate what the editor of Helix had done, have all banded together to create Transcriptase (n: the enzyme that copies DNA into RNA).

The site features the work of:

* Elizabeth Barrette
* Beth Bernobich
* Maya Bohnhoff
* Eugie Foster
* Sara Genge
* Samantha Henderson
* Janis Ian
* N.K. Jemisin
* Vylar Kaftan
* Ann Leckie
* Yoon Ha Lee
* Margaret Ronald
* Jennifer Pelland
* Vaughan Stanger
* Rachel Swirsky

From their introduction:

In July 2008, Helix editor William Sanders stirred up controversy in the community with remarks that many found offensive. The blogosphere exploded with discussion. You can find a summary of the events here. As the controversy continued, several Helix writers asked to remove their work from the magazine and were met with unprofessional treatment. This upset all of us. We agreed that we would not stand by in silence.

Transcriptase hosts reprints of our stories and poems originally published at Helix. During the controversy, some of us removed our work from Helix; others left it up. There are valid reasons to make either choice, and we hope you’ll respect that we had difficult decisions to make. We offer our stories and poems at Transcriptase so that you can enjoy our work away from Helix, if you choose.”

(Transcriptase site via Tobias Buckell’s Blog)

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“In 2009 Fantasy Magazine will add audio dramas to our suite of podcasts. To that end, from September 1 - November 15, we will accept audio script submissions for the first season.

Scripts should run 30 - 60 minutes and follow traditional radio play format. We prefer plays that will require five or fewer actors.

Though we will lean more heavily toward dramas in the fantasy genre, we will look at science fiction and dark/horror tales. Any good script with elements of the fantastic is game. Keep in mind that we’re looking for many of the same qualities in audio drama that we look for in our fiction. Scripts should emphasize character, dialogue, and a good story over relying heavily on sound effects and cool tricks.”

(via Fantasy Magazine)

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“Melanie Kroll probably doesn’t appreciate the irony of her situation. She was fired this week from her job at 1-800-Flowers.com, a floral delivery service, after a death threat was sent to popular science blogger PZ Myers from her work email address. The irony stems from the fact that she most likely heard about Myers only because the Catholic League had attempted to get him terminated from his job at the university where he teaches.

Myers, an associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, Morris, had published a controversial blog post on July 8 titled “IT’S A FRACKIN’ CRACKER!” The cracker in this instance was referring to a Eucharist — a small wafer considered by Catholics to be the body of Christ — that had been smuggled uneaten out of a church by a Florida man. The incident caused public outrage from some Catholics and after the Catholic League condemned the action the man received multiple death threats. He finally succumbed to the pressure and returned the wafer to the church.

Myers is a vocal atheist and his blog post expressed incredulity and anger that a person would be harassed in such a way over what Myers considered a…well, cracker. At the end of the post he called his readers to action. “Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers?” he wrote. “There’s no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I’m sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare.”

Eventually Myers’s writing reached Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, and in his typical fashion he went on the attack. The Catholic organization sent out a press release encouraging Catholics to email the president of the University of Minnesota and demand that action be taken. But Myers received a large number of emails as well, many of which were vitriolic and hateful. A few of those threatened the blogger with physical violence or even death. Citing a disclaimer on his blog that he has the right to reprint any emails that threatened violence, he posted two such messages on July 13, making sure to include the addresses and other identifying information of those who sent them.”

(via Bloggasm)

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In the aftermath of the Violet Blue episode and in the midst of the PZ Myers controversy, racism reared it’s ugly head in the SF community. Aspiring SF writer Luke Jackson published a rejection letter written by an editor for Helix, William Sanders, in which was said :

“I’m impressed by your knowledge of the Q’uran and Islamic traditions. (Having spent a couple of years in the Middle East, I know something about these things.) You did a good job of exploring the worm-brained mentality of those people - at the end we still don’t really understand it, but then no one from the civilized world ever can - and I was pleased to see that you didn’t engage in the typical error of trying to make this evil bastard sympathetic, or give him human qualities. {…] the narrator seems to be saying that it was this incident which caused him to take up the jihad, but he’s being mendacious (like all his kind, he’s incapable of honesty). […] most of the SF magazines are very leery of publishing anything that might offend the sheet heads”

Unfortunately the letter was deleted in fear of a lawsuit threatened by Sanders. Putting the ethics about publicly posting a rejection letter aside, this is one that needed to be seen. Author Tobias Buckell has a great post on his blog summing it up. In an interesting development writer Yoon Ha Lee got a taste of Helix editor Sanders professionalism after asking to remove her story:

“Sanders flounced off in a huff, stating that the story “never did make any sense” and that he only accepted it to “please those who admire your work”–what altruism!–”and also because (notorious bigot that I am) I was trying to get more work by non-Caucasian writers.” If I were a writer currently submitting to Helix, I would kind of worry about that bit–all things considered, if a story really does suck, I’d rather have it rejected so I can fix it.

He then played psychic and claimed that I only asked for the story to be withdrawn “because, let’s get real here, you feel the need to distance yourself from someone who is in disfavor with the kind of babbling PC waterheads whose good opinion is so important to you, and whom you seem to be trying to impress with this little grandstand play.” He closed with: “There was a suggestion I was going to make, but it is probably not physically practicable.”

After that he pulled the story and replaced it with these professional words: “Story deleted at author’s pantiwadulous request.”

Sanders is now demanding anyone who wants their stories removed from Helix to pay forty bucks!

(See also: Tobias Buckell: “Asimov’s Forum Ickiness”, Buckell: “Keeps Digging”, K. Tempest Bradford: “William Sanders, Senior Bigot, Helix”)

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Jeff VandeMeer offers advice for writers who blog:

“I’ve been thinking over the past couple of days about the evolving nature of the internet and how that relates to writers and writing. Here are a few guidelines I think make a lot of sense for writers. I am sure someone somewhere has already codified all of this, but it’s important to me to state it for myself, and to remember how I want to strive to conduct my own communications.

(1) Choose your level of involvement with the internet, and stick to it. If you want minimal involvement, create a static website about your book or other creative endeavor. If you want medium-level involvement do a blog. If you want more, do more. But decide upfront what your approach will be, how much time you can spend, and whether you can actually follow through or not. As in any area of life, you will be judged by what you do, not what you say you’re going to do. The disconnect between words and actions will determine how much integrity you have in other people’s eyes.”

(via Ecstatic Days. h/t: SF Signal)

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“The Religion and Popular Culture group on Yahoo! recently issued the following call for papers: Call for Papers: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays on the Zombie.

We are seeking proposals for an interdisciplinary edited volume discussing the zombie from a wide variety of perspectives and within a wide range of contexts. We encourage submissions from any discipline, including but not limited to English literature, film studies, media studies, cultural studies, gender studies, queer studies, philosophy, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, history, psychology, economics, and political science. We especially welcome new approaches to the study of zombies. In addition to theoretical essays on zombies, we also welcome critical discussions of specific zombie films, novels, and graphic novels, including those both pre- and post-Romero.”

(via TheoFantastique)

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Good article on the future of writing and publishing with Tim O’ Reilly, Stephen Abram, Douglas Rushkoff, and Frank Daniels:

“It’s a snowy February Monday in midtown Manhattan. Publishing magnate and tech guru Tim O’Reilly’s “Tools of Change” conference has just opened at a Marriott off Broadway. The timing is fortunate; publishers HarperCollins and Random House have just announced that they will be offering more book content online and au gratis. The affable O’Reilly—who has been urging publishers to go digital since the early eighties—refuses to gloat (much). “They weren’t even trying to keep electronic copies [of manuscripts],” recalls O’Reilly. “You look at these announcements today, they seem too little too late,… but it’s allowing them to start innovating, to become part of the technology process.” “Twenty years ago, people wouldn’t have listened,” says Sara Domville, president of F+W Publications book division. “They’ll listen now.”

As the publisher of an extremely popular series of computer manuals, O’Reilly is a bright star in a field of drab. Dubbed the “guru of the participation age” by Steven Levy in a 2005 Wired profile and a “graying hippie” with a “hostility toward traditional media” by author Andrew Keen, O’Reilly makes millions of dollars promoting open source at his conferences and selling do-it-yourself know-how to anyone who browses the computer aisle at Barnes and Noble. His message to the world’s publishing elite exudes a Wizard of Oz simplicity: Give more product away on your Web site, thereby attracting more people to sell on something pricier than a book— like a bunch of books or a conference ticket. The approach works for him at least. Some 900 publishing execs from Simon and Schuster, Norton, etc., have paid $1,100 apiece (on average) to learn how to give content away.

“I think I’m optimistic,” said Sonia Nash of Random House, echoing the uncertainty of the attendees, editors, and publishers from around the world eager to find some reason to feel good about the future of what they sell.”

(via The Futurist)

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“The following commentary about Borders — the US uber-bookstore — came from our good friend Alan Beatts, who, along with Jude Feldman, owns and operates Borderlands Books, a truly fine specialist bookstore in San Francisco. Extracted from his monthly newsletter, it’s kinda long, but it’s crucial information for all who read and write books, and will have a major impact on how the latter will sell their work to the former.”

“First off, a quick disclaimer — I don’t like Borders. I like them better than Barnes & Noble but still, like any independent bookseller, I don’t like them. Despite my intention to be as objective as possible in the article, I’m sure that my bias is going to creep in here and there. But, if you were looking for objective, dispassionate news, you wouldn’t be reading this I’m going to start with what has been going on with Borders over the past year, then I’m going to talk about the implications, and I’ll finish off with the reasons that it matters to everyone who loves books.”

(via Doc 40)

(Original article via Borderland Books Newsletter)

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