S. Andrew Swann's Blog, page 34

Merry Christmas

For you last minute shoppers out there. . .

Thriller writer J.C. Hutchins has compiled a sampler PDF of gift ideas:

That's the idea behind this In the Nick of Time! holiday sampler PDF. Inside are excerpts from a dozen new novels and nonfiction books by these New York Times bestselling authors, successful entrepreneurs, and wickedly talented storytellers.

Cool idea.

X-masy videos

via here, here & here

Crazy Authors Continued. . .

More inappropriate author behavior from Candice Sams from the ever-growing comment thread on Amazon.  Here an enterprising commenter found an interesting plea on her Facebook page. (And here's an LJ post with the full text in case Amazon deep-sixes the original comment.)  So here we have someone pulling a reverse Deborah MacGillivray, piling on a reviewer and then calling out the internet stormtroopers to game Amazon.  What follows is her Facebook plea, with my commentary in green.

Hi all,

If...

Self-Imploding Authors, just add crazy

I'm late to this party, but when I found it via Making Light I couldn't resist blogging about it:

Candace Sams, author of Electra Galaxy's Mr. Interstellar Feller (mass-market paperback, Dorchester/Love Spell), has exploded all over a comment thread on Amazon. She's posting as Niteflyr One, but the comment thread has her ID'd as the author as of comment #8.

Head's up, newbie writers, it is a bad idea to comment on reviews of your work.  It's a really bad idea to start a flame war over your...

Random Video Thursday

Five more stories more important than Tiger Woods

Border cops beat up a Hugo winner.
Australia plans to censor the Internet.
D.C. says "f@$k the recession, we're getting our bonuses".
Random House says "all your e-rights are belong to us".
Larry Flynt sues his nephews over misusing the "Flynt" brand.

Character

I just recently finished the last  rewrites on Wolf's Cross, and it got me to thinking about Character in fiction.  This is mostly because what my editor wanted, for the most part, happened to be character-related.  Seems I understood everyone, and why they were doing things, but a few places it was also helpful to let the reader in. . .

I've written before about the canard that character is somehow in opposition to plot.  Suffice to say, that idea is BS.  That said, what is...

Christmas is quickly upon us

We got our tree up, so here are some festive fictures to put you in a seasonal mood.

Trolls, I gots them.

Internet trolls are fascinating creatures. They live in the nooks and crannies of the internet, eager to pounce on any unwary passer-by. I find the psychology fascinating, as trolls almost always advocate a political point of view, and do it exceedingly badly. So badly that one is often left wondering if they secretly pull for the opposing side of the argument. Though, it's really the argument that they are all about.

I had a brush with one of these cuddly internet denizens on twitter...