What Other Authors Are Saying

I fell behind in reading my author blogs. I've just had to gorge. Some interesting bits I picked up:

I'm sure many people read Justine Larbalestier's blog for her Ozie voice. Voice gets old for me. I read her because she periodically has very true things to say about the writing life. For instance, her recent post Money, writers don't have none, Part the Millioneth. Read it and be assured, she's not exaggerating. I met a couple of writers last month who had been published with big-time publishers. One of them said she wanted to make sure that her writing career didn't end up costing her family money. The other said her goal was that her writing pay for itself.

Justine also had a post on YA celebrity fairies. I am not included in this list because 1. I am not a YA celebrity and 2. I hate fairies. Unless, of course, they are drunken, Scottish, punk rockers. If I ever had a fairy, it had better be a heavy drinking punk rocker. And I believe I would like to substitute French Canadian for Scottish, since I can actually understand a French Canadian accent more easily than a Scottish one, drunk or sober.

Mitali Perkins has a very interesting post called Should Authors Describe a Character's Race? This is something I've actually thought about. I imagine many writers have.

Becky Levine writes about something I struggle with regularly, First Drafts: Fantastic or Just Fast? I also struggle with fifth, sixth, and seventh drafts.

Sam Riddleburger talks about the misunderstanding relating to the phrase "write what you know" in Harry Potter and the Good/Bad Writing Advice.

And, finally, I'm afraid I understand all too well how Chris Barton's kids feel about book festivals. Yeah, guys, all too often I end up feeling I'd rather be home reading.