jimhines

Sexism:

Slut Shaming and Concern Trolling in Geek Culture – “The discomfort came from a constant stream of microaggressions. A constant flow of women leaning in and stage whispering in mock-concern about how short my skirt was. A constant flow of men grilling me about whether I had watched the series, and trying to trip me up on trivia.”

Rape Survivor Sues over “False” Accusation – One more example of our society’s eagerness to see women as liars, making up false accusations of rape. The police refused to believe D.M. had been raped, despite physical evidence, and instead ended up charging her with filing a false claim. Her rapist was arrested three years later.

Kickstarting/Fundraising:

Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for Science Fiction Authors – I’ve wanted to attend this for a while, and haven’t gotten to it. Sadly, Launch Pad has lost their NASA and NSF funding, so they’re looking to raise the money to continue the program.

A Knight in the Silk Purse: Tales of the Emerald Serpent 2 – Volume two of a shared-world anthology that includes folks like Julie Czerneda, Howard Tayler, Lynn Flewelling, Martha Wells, and many more.

Clarion Write-a-thon: The Clarion SF/F writing workshop is looking for authors to join their write-a-thon.

Miscellaneous Awesomeness:

N. K. Jemisin’s Continuum Guest of Honor Speech – As next year’s GoH, I have one year to prepare a speech that lives up to the one Jemisin gave this year. I…don’t think that’s going to be enough time.

Delia’s Shadow ARC Contest – Author Jaime Lee Moyer is giving away ARCs of her book Delia’s Shadow [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy]. I gave a blurb for this one: “Moyer creates a hauntingly real San Francisco, full of characters you can’t wait to get to know better. Except for the killer, of course. He’s just disturbing as heck. Delia’s Shadow is an engaging debut novel, one that cost me a good night’s sleep.”

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Returning to a Review; Not a Spoiler Warning: After reading my review of The Dragon Slayer’s Handbook, author Merrie Haskell blogged about why she chose to write a heroine with a clubfoot, and why Tilda does not get magically healed at the end of the book.

The World SF Travel Fund: This project was started in 2011 with the goal of helping one or two international persons to get to a major SF/F event. As of this morning, they’ve met their $3000 goal, which funds the project for the next two years. But there’s 10 days left, and wouldn’t it be awesome to see it hit at least $4500 and provide them with a bonus year? The rewards are great, too. Donate $10, and you’ll get the e-books of the Apex Book of World SF, volumes 1 and 2.

Con or Bust Auction Begins Saturday, February 9: “Con or Bust helps people of color/non-white people attend SFF conventions.” You can read more about the founding and history of the project on their About us page. Items up for auction includes books, critiques, Green Tea Yoda Oreo cookies, and much more.

Weregeek, a web comic, talked about the Hawkeye Initiative yesterday and suggested that someone should do something similar for fantasy RPG art. Hm…

What do you think of John Scalzi’s new tattoo? Okay, so maybe I Photoshopped it. For background and better picture of Gamma Rabbit, see John’s post here. I’m impressed and amazed at how effectively he’s taken a rather irksome annoyance and transformed it into a fundraiser which has drawn international attention and brought in more than $50,000 in pledges for causes such as RAINN, NAACP, Emily’s List, and Human Rights Campaign. Think we can convince him to get the tattoo for real if the pledges hit $100K?

Some friends of mine are Kickstarting Glitter & Madness: The Speculative Nightclub Anthology, a collection to be filled with “Roller Derby, nightclubs, glam aliens, (literal) party monsters, drugs, sex, glitter, debauchery” and more. If they meet their fundraising goal, you’ll get stories from Amal El-Mohtar, Diana Rowland, Sofia Samatar, Tim Pratt, and many more. Including a 16,000 word InCryptid novella from Seanan McGuire!

Finally, Darth Maul would like you to know that he is awesome. (I’ve had this stuck in my head ever since we watched the whole LEGO Star Wars “Empire Strikes Out” show over the weekend.)

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

The Fundraiser for Rape Crisis Centers raised more than $500 in the first 24 hours, which is wonderful! Our next goal is $750, at which point a book by Anton Strout gets added to the prizes. Thank you to everyone who’s donated and spread the word so far!

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I’ll be doing a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) tomorrow, April 13, starting at 7:00 p.m. CST. Having read some of the AMAs they’ve done with other authors, I expect this to be fun.

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ARCs of Libriomancer have been spotted in the wild! Cranking up the authorial anxiety in 3…2…1…

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A blog post by author Adrienne Kress: How to Write Female Characters (or as I like to call them, Characters).

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Finally, because I haven’t done anything LEGO in a while, have a LEGO Game Boy. That’s also a Transformer. With a LEGO Tetris cartridge. That transforms into a bird, Laserbeak-style. Oh, just click the pic and check it out! This was built by Baron von Brunk.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

We’re back! Got home late last night, and began working through the backlog of e-mail and comments. It looks like folks enjoyed my trio of guest bloggers. Of course, the problem with bringing three very smart people in to do those posts is that now they’ve gone and raised the bar, and I’m gonna have to add at least 50% more cleverness to my own posts.

But not today. Today is my catch-up day, including some of the links that went by last week…

• A post for Ex Libris on why I wrote the princess books.
• Fantasy Matters declared it fairy tale week, starting with a review of Snow Queen’s Shadow.
• I also had a guest post for Maria Lima’s “Summer of Discovery,” wherein I talk about discovering Tom Smith and filking.
• I posted a few pics from vacation over on Twitpics. Including sunsets and freaky ice cream bars.

I was supposed to have a guest post for Fantasy Matters, but I blew it. I’m still annoyed with myself about that one. I hate, hate, hate missing deadlines, and I love the FM folks. They invited me to be a guest back when they were an academic fantasy convention. That’s when I first got to meet Pat Rothfuss and Nnedi Okorafor and lots of other cool people.

Oh, and I’m also on Google+ now, talking about things like lightsaber-wielding dinosaurs. As one does.

I’ll probably do a Snow Queen’s Shadow discussion post this week. Any preference as to what day?

I think that’s all for now. Normal blogging service shall resume soon.

Hope everyone’s having a great weekend!

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

A few links for your Saturday morning…

Cat Valente on e-book pricing.

C. E. Petit on the Google Books Settlement.

A Dreamwidth post which talks about the politics behind the DDoS attacks on LiveJournal (via Sherwood Smith).

Tobias Buckell on his first year of selling his e-published short fiction collection Tides from New Worlds. (Lots of data and graphs here.)

Why your Self-Publishing Service Probably Didn’t Cheat You, from Writer Beware.

And finally, Jim C. Hines’ Fundraiser for Rape Crisis Centers, which has raised more than $700 so far. If we pass $1000, I’ll pick one winner and give him/her a cameo in Libriomancer.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

1. Alma Alexander has been chronicling the Rebirth of a Novel, publicly rewriting an old manuscript.  She’s interspersing this with guest posts by various authors, including yours truly.  I talk about how I got started writing, and even share two paragraphs of my very first (very bad) unpublished novel.

2. Beth Bernobich’s debut novel Passion Play [B&N |  Mysterious Galaxy | Amazon] comes out this Tuesday.  Sherwood Smith and I talk about the book over on the Book View Cafe blog.  Some of the early buzz for this book has focused on Bernobich’s portrayal of rape.  We discuss that, the characterization, the Cool Stuff theory of fiction, and more.  (It’s a fairly long chat.)

3. A question for anyone in Denver, Seattle, or Portland.  My agent noticed that sales of the goblin books had spiked in these three regions, mostly in “nontraditional” venues.  I’m told this usually indicates a few supermarket chains, and stores like Toys R Us and Starbucks.  Has anyone out there seen Jig & crew popping up in Kroger or Fred Meyer or anything like that?  We’re curious where those extra sales are coming from.

4. More on e-book pricing.  One of the complaints that came up a lot in response to my e-book post was the ridiculousness of e-books costing more than hardcovers.  Writer Beware explains why this happens.  (Short version: it’s the effect of two competing sales models.)

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

“Tor.com is afraid of nothing.  Except goblins.  And Cthulhu.”  And this is why the goblin series was published by DAW, not Tor :-)  (Link and commentary from M’jit.)

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SFWA has created a Sample DMCA Generator for authors, with instructions. 

“Legally, DMCA notices must come from the copyright owner or their legal representative, such as an agent, publisher, or literary executor. Since SFWA legally cannot act on behalf of anyone from whom we do not have specific permission for a specific infringement, we are instead providing a sample DMCA notice generator for use by authors…”

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Maurice Broaddus on The PC Challenges of Being an Editor.

“At no point did I worry about any sort of “PC testing” of my table of contents (will I have enough POC?  Will there be any women?).  That’s a ridiculous way to go about putting together an anthology.  The other reason it was a non-worry?  It’s not that difficult to produce a table of contents that has diversity.  Now I’m not even talking about forcing the issue of diversity in a TOC.   I’m saying that these days you have to almost go out of your way to produce an anthology without diversity.”

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Finally, combining two great tastes that taste great together, have some LEGO steampunk.  Click the pic for a close-up.  This was created by V&A Steamworks.  Click here for more of their LEGO steampunk creations.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.