Every January, I look back over this blog and pick out what I think were the most useful, interesting, and/or important posts of the previous year. Here goes.

So…if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know I love the crazy stuff, the little nuggets of publishing weirdness that I run across from time to time. Like author reality shows.

If you’ve read my two previous posts about All Classic Books, you already know this story. If you haven’t, here’s the gist.

If you’re a writer, I’ll bet you’ve been spammed by JM Northern Media.

Don’t recognize the name? Maybe these will ring a bell. The Los Angeles Book Festival. The Hollywood Book Festival. The Paris Book Festival. The Beach Book Festival. The Halloween Book Festival. Animals, Animals, Animals Book Festival. And at least nine other annal festivals, all owned and operated by JM Northern Media (click the Properties tab).

Nominations are now open for the 2013 Nebula Awards. The nominations are open to Active, Lifetime Active, and Associate members. Voting closes February 15.

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Back in August, I blogged about the latest effort by Cheryl Lee Nunn, owner of vanity publisher American Book Publishing Inc., to expand her author-fleecing efforts with a network of new publishers, bogus…

As reported by a number of sources, including USA Today, Macmillan is launching Swoon Reads, a new teen romance imprint, under its existing Feiwel and Friends imprint. It’s looking for submissions of previously unpublished manuscripts.

I have always thought that it’s a little strange that fantasy tends to concentrate on what’s really a very small slice of history (basically 13th or 14th century England) when there’s so much available to use as an archetype. So I was really excited about the idea of basing a fantasy world on something else, and when I started reading about Napoleon I thought, “Okay, this is it!”

I had this post ready to go on Friday, but it was pre-empted by news of Ann Crispin’s death. I was considering letting the blog sit silent for a week–but in light of the fools and trolls who are dreaming of Writer Beware’s demise, I’ve decided to carry on as usual. It’s what Ann would have wanted.

Author A. C. Crispin (b.1950) died on September 6 after a year-long battle with cancer.  Crispin began publishing in 1983 with the Star Trek novel Yesterday’s Son.   She continued writing media tie-in novels, including for the television show V and the films Star Wars, Alien, and The Pirates of the Caribbean.  In 1989, she published her first original novel, Starbridge, and co-wrote six sequels to it.  In 2005, […]