Snapshots XX

Ten developments of interest to fans:

(1) Hear, hear! SFFaudio asks an excellent question: Where are are the Charles Stross audiobooks?

Seriously, the guy is super talented. There have only been three commercially released Charlie Stross audiobooks (all from Infinivox). The were terrific, but they’re not enough.

If Saturn’s Children and Halting State were available as audiobooks they’d shoot up to the top of my listening stack.

(2) The Los Angeles Times says a new Mark Twain collection is on the way, with no love for Jane Austen:

“Who Is Mark Twain?” is due to hit shelves next month. It’s the first collection of Mark Twain’s unpublished short works and will include both fiction and nonfiction. In one essay, he wonders if Jane Austen’s intent is to “make the reader detest her people up to the middle of the book and like them in the rest of the chapters?”

(3) Coming soon: a new Card trilogy:

Simon Pulse senior editor Anica Rissi has acquired world English rights to the first three books in a new fantasy series by Orson Scott Card written specifically for a YA audience; Barbara Bova of the Barbara Bova Literary Agency made the sale.

(4) Do you study Google Analytics’ map of the hits on your blog? The other day File 770 got a hit from Gabarone, Botswana, the locale of the #1 Ladies Detective Agency. Spammers beware! Precious Ramotswe reads my blog.

(5) The Virginia legislature has declared June 27, 2009 to be Will F. Jenkins Day. Steven H. Silver is soliciting reminiscences about Murray Leinster/Will F. Jenkins, or pieces talking about how he/his writing has influenced writers and fans, for a memory book that will be presented to Jenkins’ family. Written pieces or photos of Jenkins/Leinster for inclusion should be sent to Steven at [email protected] no later than May 31.

(6) Alexis Gilliland’s website is up and running. Lee Gilliland announces, “We are slowly adding cartoons (we have an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 total to post) and we also now have a forum.” It’s quite nicely designed.

(7) The fastest growing category in the iTunes App Store is: books. O’Reilly Radar explains:

Granted releasing an e-book for the iPhone is a lot easier than writing a gaming application using the iPhone SDK. Roughly 6 out 10 of the Books on the app store sell for 99 cents or less, and 1 in 20 are free.

(8) Laurraine Tutihasi’s Feline Mewsings #35 can now be downloaded at http://homepage.mac.com/laurraine/Felinemewsings/index.html.

(9) Have you already heard about the Dalek found in an English pond?

I got the shock of my life when a Dalek head bobbed up right in front of me. It must have been down there for some time because it was covered in mould and water weed, and had quite a bit of damage. One of the dome lights was smashed, but the eye-stalk was intact and the head and neck stayed in one piece as I carefully lifted it out.

(10) Guy Gavriel Kay’s piece for the Toronto Globe and Mail tries to make sense of readers’ intrusive demands on writers who blog:

These days, writers invite personal involvement and intensity from their readers. In direct proportion to the way in which they share their personalities (or for- consumption personalities), their everyday lives, their football teams and word counts, their partners and children and cats, it encourages in readers a sense of personal connection and access, and thus an entitlement to comment, complain, recommend cat food, feel betrayed, shriek invective, issue demands: ‘George, lose weight, dammit!'”

[Thanks to Francis Hamit, Andrew Porter, Steven Silver, David Klaus and John Mansfield for the links included in this story.]


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3 thoughts on “Snapshots XX

  1. Pingback: NAKED FANS! | The Crotchety Old Fan

  2. Hi Mike, sorry to disappoint you but it was not Mma Ramotswe reading your blog. It was me, Lennart U, Swedish fan, being there on holiday.

  3. That’s actually better — the fictional Mma Ramotswe wouldn’t be likely to comment here. Did you know about those novels?

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