More Other Sides stuff!

First, there have been reviews! Here’s three from Chris of The Pirate’s Bounty, Lyda of Day in the Life of an Idiot, and A Fanatic’s Book Blog.

But that’s not all! Isa K did an interview with Letitia Coyne about her story in Other Sides, Mifflin County Coke Blues, her web fiction moving to a publisher, and some other good stuff involving their web fiction publishing platform, fluffy-seme. It’s a good interview, and I offer my congratulations to Isa for finding a new home for Split-Self.

And finally, MeiLin Miranda has a guest post on Frances Pauli’s blog. Quite a round up, and it’s great to see reviewers picking up Other Sides and giving WebLit a chance.

Don’t forget; if you haven’t yet read Other Sides, you can always grab a PDF or ePub e-book for free from Ergofiction, or you can use the same link and help support the WebLit cause with a purchase of the e-book for your Kindle or other e-readers. Or if print is you thing, we’ve even got a lovely print edition for only $6. That’s a great deal for this collection, so I hope you’ll check it out.

On alternative writing

You might know the familiar lamentation that there’s never any books about the people you more readily identify with. There’s an obvious answer to people who say it: if you want to see books with your kinds of characters, you’d best start writing them yourself.

When I was a kid, I loved to read, but I often felt frustrated by how unrealistic the kids were. They didn’t feel like people to me, just caricatures of how adults thought kids should behave. Madeleine L’Engle changed my opinion with Meg Murray, and with her brother Charles. Here was a story where I at last felt that someone was “real” even if they were characters in a sci-fi/fantasy story. Along the way, there were other stories that also felt real to me, (Like from Ray Bradbury, who writes GREAT child characters) but the vast majority of the books I read left me wanting.

And yet, no one was touching the topics that I had to deal with in my private life. To be fair, the topics I dealt with were white elephants of massive proportions, and I felt it would take a writer with huge balls to tackle them.

Guest post double-shot!

I’ve got two more guest posts for my leg of the Other Sides blog tour. My first post was themed on WebLit as a community, and my guest post for Louise Bohmer covers my thoughts on WebLit as a writer. But with my post for Jerrod Balzer’s blog, I relayed my experiences as an avid reader coming into WebLit, and that’s where I really cut loose and hit my stride.

In a way, it’s a shame I didn’t get more slots for my leg of the tour. Cause if the third post was the funniest, you know posts 4 and 5 woulda been “pee your pants” funny. Alas, this is my last guest post for Other Sides.

BUT, don’t fret because the other authors will also have guest posts around the web, and I will try to keep up with links for them. I might miss one or two accidentally, but I’ll try to catch them all…like Pokemon.

I want to take one last time to thank K. H. Koehler, Louise Bohmer, and Jerrod Balzer for hosting my guest posts. All three are fantastic writers, and if you haven’t read them or their blogs, you should check them out. Folks, thank you having me as your guest, and I’m sorry about the smell. I probably shouldn’t have had all those burritos before coming over. (y_-)

Guest Post: Other Sides at Monster Factory

I’ve got a guest post at The Monster Factory on Other Sides, the speculative fiction collection from the fine editors of Ergofiction. I have a story in this book, along with fourteen other talented WebLit authors. (Two are co-authors.)

Check out my post here, or head on over to Ergofiction‘s ebooks page to snag a copy. There are PDF and ePub copies for free, but you can also find links to buy it, and a print version is coming very soon!

I want to thank the lovely and talented K.H. Koehler for hosting my article. If y’all haven’t read anything from her, you really should correct that mistake and check out her stories too!

Guest Poem by Lyn Thorne-Alder

Last night I read a poem from Lyn that really resonated with me, and it was so good that I wanted to post it here. So, with Lyn’s permission, here is her unfinished and untitled poem:

Yeah, they’ll crucify you in the name of science
Castrate you in the name of faith
Tie you down with those bars and chains
all because they wanna
keep
you
safe

They’ll proselytize you to their politics
Anesthetize you with the news at eight
They’ll tell you life is what you make it
While they take your
tools
away

They’ll homogenize you down to normal
And pasteurize those dirty thoughts out
Tell you it will all be better
when we’re all made
just
the
same

Blackmail you with your childrens’ futures
Then bribe you back with a loaf of bread
Steal from you to pay for grandma
Stole from her to pay the dead

If you liked this, you can check out this poem and more of Lyn’s work at her LJ account, Alder’s Grove, or read her serial dark fantasy, Addergoole.

My one complaint with YA…

I think it was shortly after I had read my second YA title and my fortieth YA book blurb that I complained on Twitter how many writers dumbed down their stories for YA. The stories have potential to be GREAT, if the writers would ever get out of their own way.

I WAS basing this off of limited reading of the books, and I was told I just wasn’t reading the right books. Now having sampled more YA I find…pretty much what I said was wrong.

Writers of YA can take a great plot with awesome main characters, and they can blow the whole deal by pushing the characters aside for lectures. Nothing is worse than a writer ignoring their characters and their story for the sake of making “a point.”

People don’t like this in any fiction. They hate being talked down to in the writing. But YA is the one field of writing where it’s a guaranteed occurrence in every single book.

I’ve only got one theory about why this is consistently true, and I may be wrong on this. But I think no sane YA writer puts in messages to quit smoking, or to wait until marriage for sex, or to really think hard about the dangers of peer pressure. But then they send the story off to a “helpful” agent who suggests a rewrite to make sure the book “sends a message.” Then it goes on to the publisher, where the editor with five daughters and a serious hate boner for pre-marital sex decides to drop a lecture right in the middle of the make out scene.

Coming October 14th: Other Sides

After patiently sitting on my hands for a few months, I’m happy and proud to finally be able to post an announcement about an anthology I’ll be appearing in. October 14th get ready for Other Sides! What’s it all about? Well check out the blurb and cover:

The advent of digital publishing has seen the rise of a new breed of writers: independent, experimental and unfettered by convention. This brand new anthology features a small sampling of these very writers, in a speculative fiction collection that will capture the imagination and dazzle the senses. The storytelling genius in this collection is most evidenced by its memorable characters: a young woman haunted by her ex-boyfriend’s sweater, time travellers with a suspicious interest in babies, a gender-changing alien desperate to heal a loved one… In these stories, fourteen independent authors display the imagination, insight and wonderful originality that characterizes the unique world of online fiction.

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I’m excited to be a part of this collection, and I hope y’all will snag a copy when it comes out. ^_^