Today, Mystery Writers of America announced its Board’s unanimous decision to remove Harlequin and all its imprints from MWA’s list of Approved Publishers, effective immediately, as a result of Harlequin’s recent rollout of DellArte Press, a pay-to-publish division.
If you want to go beyond the level of just assigning different skin tones and heritages to random characters, you’re going to have to do some research. Because yes, all people are the same, but they’re also quite different. For now, we’ll set aside the argument that race is an artificial construct, and concentrate on how someone outside a minority group can gain enough knowledge of the group’s common traits to realistically represent one of its members.
The Google Books Settlement has released a Supplemental Notice that has a summary of the changes between the original version and the 2.0. It is only six pages long and worth looking over, though it is not comprehensive.
Of the many issues highlighted by the recent launch of pay-to-publish divisions by two major commercial publishers (Harlequin Enterprises’ DellArte Press–nee Harlequin Horizons–and Thomas Nelson’s West Bow Press), one of the most interesting, to me, is how blurred the distinction between self-publishing and vanity publishing has become.
So what is Pragmatics? Basically, it deals with those areas of meaning which aren’t really meaning. What does that mean? It deals with implications (in the lingo, “implicature”), and with presuppositions, and with using language to do things rather than just send messages.
One of the most common pieces of advice for new writers is “Keep your seat in the chair.” The downside is that it becomes all too easy to sit at the desk for hours without moving. This can lead to stiffness and circulation issues even with an ergonomically correct desk and chair. Ergocise.com is a program which pops up a reminder to stretch at pre-set intervals.
Good post which goes through the math on what it would take to break even with Harlequin's DellArte. http://is.gd/56Yrq #
Robert Holdstock
1949-2009
The SFWA Western Regional Business meeting is at 10 am in the Hawthorne room at #orycon. # Welcome to SFWA's newest Active member, Kenneth Shufeldt author of "Genesis" from Tor. #
Congratulations to David D. Levine (@daviddlevine) whose collection, "Space Magic" has just received the Endeavor award. #
From the multi award-nominated author of SHIGIDI, a stunning new collection of stories that investigate the rapidly changing role of technology and belief in our lives as we search for meaning, knowledge & justice; converging to our future selves.
Laurie Stevens is the author of the multi-award winning Gabriel McRay suspense series and The Return, a new sci-fi/fantasy that pits AI against human consciousness.
