Penguicon HO!

This weekend's Penguicon. *

Thirteen years and still going strong.

It will be fun.  There will be Doctors and Daleks, anime and gaming, lots of Linux and computers -- and the Chaos Machine, liquid nitrogen ice cream, authors and parties and fans, oh my, and Stuff.  All manner of Con Stuff!

Pic from this blog: Four Doctors and their Dalek

Absolute Write: huzzah! (Also agents.)

Dear Absolute Write's forums, source of much usefulness, knowledge, wisdom... and they answer my tricky copy editing questions rather more than you might guess.

Anyone looking for answers is well advised to look here.  I've been using the Bewares Index (link below) for years to research publishers.  You should too.

As a copy editor, I know that if a publisher won't pay its writers, then I won't get paid either.  Against that, any publisher who treats writers well gives me a far better chance as a freelancer, of getting paid and being treated well myself.  I also learn from the AW forums which publisher communicates readily versus one who never replies.

We lost Terry Pratchett today.

The last Tweet may make you laugh -- that's why it's at the end -- because you may have been weeping ever since you found out.  Like me.

How to be a writer, by Terry Pratchett: pic.twitter.com/vqc3wzwiRo
— The Beer Nut (@thebeernut) March 12, 2015

Jim Hines made a storify of Terry's final Tweets here.  If you read any of Terry's books, these three will make you weep.

Jo Walton's anecdote about Terry Pratchett refusing a Hugo nomination is, well, both very Terry and very teary. http://t.co/6geWR1rGrn
— Ferrett Steinmetz (@ferretthimself) March 12, 2015

Teen scientist/author Jack Andraka.

Today I was watching MSNBC, and I found out about this teen scientist who has invented a way to test for pancreatic cancer.  Which tends to kill people before it's discovered in 85 percent of cases.  He invented this while he was in high school, mind you -- see how your dreams can define you!

His test's not saving people yet.  But I hope it will be.

His name is Jack Andraka.  I want to read his book.

Links of interest...

Kameron Hurley: The Privilege to Publish; the Power to Persevere at Locus; also Spotlight on: David Pomerico, Editorial Director.

PW's March picks of last week.


Publishing's Big 6:  Who are they? from Scott Marlowe's blog in 2010.

Tobias Buckell's Together, let’s break the Amazon monopoly on Kindles! in 2010.  It isn't entirely what you think it is...  and Toby's piece shows his brilliance. [Context:  this is about the Macmillan-Amazon negotiations of 2010, and I've linked to Toby's blog there.]

He definitely demonstrates the weirdness of the original statement!

Action, punctuation, dialog!

Punctuating action beats inside dialog.  It's a little tricky if you haven't done it before.

Howe'er, after much hunting, I found the answers in the 2012 Grammar Tip Tuesday: Punctuating Interrupted and Continued Speech.  Which came from PMS's Em dash page.

Bit of a diversion here.

When the holidays come around, I tend to reread the Golden Age of Detection... i.e., my favorite mystery authors.  Lately it's been Ngaio Marsh -- somehow I've managed to collect a third of her oeuvre, almost without noticing.

I long to reread Margery Allingham's Police at the Funeral.  (It is one of my very favorite Campion novels.)  My copy is, alas, buried deep in the storage unit.  So are nearly all my other Allingham books.  8(

The library hasn't got it, either, which is why I never got to read it until I moved to Vegas.

Margery Allingham, along with Ngaio Marsh and Agatha Christie, was one of the queens of crime fiction.  Except... you never knew if an Allingham would mean a mystery or a thriller or something else.  That's part of what I love about her work.

The Telegraph calls Margery Allingham: the Dickens of detective writing.