Wouldn’t you love to be trudging along on a terrible day and then suddenly find a new-to-you book to take home and brighten your day?
Well, okay, you’d probably prefer to avoid the terrible day in the first place and just find the new book on an already-awesome day. That’s good, too.
Anyway, both possibilities can be real, and you can help make it real for yourself and others, by participating in the first Hide A Book Day. Continue reading
No, seriously, it’s all that simple. (Well, and you have to click a link or two.)
First up: Nova and Reaver, my highly-trained war unicorns from my story “Rue the Day” in the fantabulous upcoming Equus, have advanced to the semi-finals.
Ready for action? Click here and comment that you want Nova and Reaver to win. Sure, a kelpie is cool and all, but we’re talking trained war unicorns. Just click and comment. Continue reading
I tried a new bookstore the other day. It was delicious.
Porter Books and Bread is located on the grounds of the old Fort Harrison and features fresh-baked, homemade breads and desserts. Sandwiches are named for literary figures. I had a Dumas, if I recall correctly. (Which wasn’t a Monte Cristo, curiously.) I took home a gothic tale which I haven’t started yet.
That puts me at three of the five on this Best Bookshops of Indianapolis list. It begs the question: What makes it a “best” bookshop? Selection? Service? Side quests, like tasty sandwiches? Tell me your favorite book haunts and why. (Can be shops, libraries, readers’ groups, whatever!)
It’s here! The Mythic Indy anthology is releasing!
That’s a photo of the print version there on the left. Isn’t it pretty? You can join us if you like for the official release party, in the hip space at Well Done Marketing in the heart of historic Fountain Square in Indianapolis. The party starts at 5 pm on February 5, 2016 — or the party starts when I walk in. Whichever comes first.
I mentioned my visit to the Lilly Library in conjunction with the From Gillette to Brett Sherlock Holmes conference, and how amazing it was. Today I’ll tell you exactly why it was amazing.
First, a bit on the Lilly Library itself. Lilly Pharmaceuticals is of course a household name (you’ve heard of Prozac, right? Or Cialis?), and the Lillys have traditionally been generous. Josiah K. Lilly was a collector of stamps, coins, rare books, and more. In the late 1950s he donated more than 20,000 books and 17,000 manuscripts to the university, which became the foundation for what is now a major rare book and manuscript library.
Inverted Jenny (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I took notes because my brain couldn’t retain all the fascinating facts being explained. J.K. Lilly’s stamp collection was so large and so significant, at 77,000 pieces, that since its breaking up and sale, there’s not a major collection in the world which does not contain Lilly stamps. To give you an idea of the caliber of the collection… You’ve probably heard of the Inverted Jenny, the 1918 stamp on which the plane was printed upside down? Only 100 of these erroneous stamps were recovered and they are among the most prized. Mr. Lilly had a corner block of four. Continue reading
Just a note…. I’ve had a number of questions about obtaining Fae, the anthology of fairy, and now there’s a simple answer: You can pre-order it here, in paperback or ebook.
Of course it will also be on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and a gazillion other sites (and your favorite independent store can easily order it, if they don’t already have it stocked).
Have I mentioned that Fae includes one of my favorite short stories?
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I respect books. I hate to see books damaged, even — especially — in the name of decor. At a decorators’ show house recently, my sister, mother, and I looked in horror at shelf art made of cut up books. “Oh, thank goodness,” my sister soon identified, “they’re just Reader’s Digest Condensed Books.”
Walking through a decorating fair using vintage books and paper as disposable materials makes my blood run dark. The current trend of tearing up old books to get aged or interesting paper is infuriating and wholly unnecessary. My mother has decorated her bathroom with delightful antique book illustrations, everything from Sinbad to Sherlock Holmes, all color-copied from the originals for a neat aesthetic with no damage.
Continue readingI found this quote while flipping through an older book, in a section on electronic publishing:
“…Will [electronic publishing] ever be more than an intriguing fringe for a literary avant garde and those who just can’t make it in traditional publishing?”
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A while back I wrote a humorous post about goals which would let me know I’d “made it” (whatever that means) in my writing career. Since then I’ve passed some pretty impressive personal milestones, and while I wrote that post primarily for my fiction writing, it would be wholly ungrateful of me not to acknowledge the great things which have come my way thus far in my non-fiction work as well.
Sometimes we achieve goals we didn’t even mean to set, and it’s good to find the joys of these surprise achievements. So here are some awesome things which have really happened, some of which I hadn’t even thought of as goals until I was delighted by them.
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I remember laughing when Patrick Rothfuss confessed to book-signing performance anxiety. (I suspect he’s rather over that by now, by simple necessity.) I hadn’t ever practiced my autograph, either. But I did read Pat’s final word on the subject:
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