David Lubar's Blog, page 20

Dead letter orifice

I just received a nice letter from Madison W., an 8th grader at Jefferson Jr. High School in Columbia, MO. Madison had read Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie. Unfortunately, Madison is now nearly a 10th grader. The letter, mailed to me c/o the publisher and dated Oct. 27th, 2009, took a year and ten months to get here. I suspect any reply I send now won't help Madison's GPA. Alas, this isn't a record. I think the latest mail I ever got had sat for three years. Letters sent to authors via the...

AWAD

This whole month, Laurie Halse Anderson is encouraging her readers to Write for Fifteen Minutes a Day (WFMAD) via her blog. (I don't need to include a link since all of you already read her blog. A Venn diagram of her readers and mine would look like a fried egg with a tiny yolk.) This is a noble effort on her part, but in the spirit of yin and yang (hey -- two fried eggs with tiny yolks), I think I should balance things with AWAD. Avoid Writing All Day. This is not as easy an exercise a...

Petered out

Pete Haupman has an amazing post about his decision to become collateral damage (or perhaps a weapon himself) over a censorship issue. My favorite line: "That is a form of censorship as damaging and inexcusable as setting fire to a library."

Model behavior

On Saturday, a cover model licked my face. She jumped in my lap, too. You can see her latest cover work here.

Fatalism Friday

I just figured it out. We work hard because this distracts our minds from dwelling on the futility of working hard.

"Sparkle!" she enthused

The other day, in a moment of either boredom, inspiration, or curiosity, I searched for speech tags in Twilight. (For those of you who haven't heard the term, a speech tag is a word used to describe how dialogue is spoken. Many writers feel that "said" is the right choice nearly all of the time. Some writers prefer to have their characters burble, cajole, chirp, and implore. I suspect most readers don't care either way, but if you are aware of speech tags, they tend to leap out.) I can't...

Publishity

I stumbled across the following question (shown here, in its entirety, exactly as it was posted) on a web site for smart, successful people:

how can I get a book publish without costing me any money?

I do give the poster points for knowing about question marks. But I can't help thinking that maybe the death of the printed book is not as close as some might fear. Once electronic publishing reaches the point where anyone can easily publish a book (or, more likely, many books), there will be ev...

Spanks a lot

Many years ago, my daughter and I devoured the series of four Playstation 2 games that began with Baldur's Gate. They were perfect two-player cooperative adventures. We explored vast realms, fought monsters, solved puzzles, and acquired increasingly powerful weapons and spells. After that, I checked out every available two-player game, looking for something as good. There were a couple decent choices, but nothing that created the same rewarding experience. (We prefer single-screen games...

The plot quickens

Most mainstream articles about YA literature manage to damn the fiedd with faint praise, or dismiss it as insignificant or flawed in some way, and I'm sure the blogosphere will find reasons to hate the article article just published in the NY Times about the joys of reading YA. But I think Pamela Paul nailed it. My favorite quote: "The themes are serious and the discussions intense, but the books are fast-paced and fun." For sure. As someone on the supply side of the industry, I know tha...

The Adventures of Smoky the Pig

Warning -- sensitive vegans need to flee immediately. For the rest of you, here's how I made bacon last week (and how you can, too). Yup -- home made bacon. (Insert suitable pause for Homer Simpson sounds.)

First, get some pork bellies from your local Asian food market or other purveyor of fine semi-recognizable meat parts. 



They are surpisingly affordable.



Sprinkle them with nitrates or nitrites. I used Morton's Tender Quick. Ignore the alarmists who say these are deadly chemicals. Life wi...