Ryan Field's Blog, page 474

RIP, Nora Ephron...

According to moviefone, Nora Ephron has passed away.

Ephron began her career as a reporter for the New York Post, and later went on to pen essays for Esquire and New York magazines. She would get her first taste at screenwriting in the mid-1970s, when she ended up rewriting William Goldman's script for "All the President's Men" (Ephron's husband at the time was Carl Bernstein, whose Nixon Watergate scoop was the film's inspiration). The screenplay never ended up being used, but, as Ephron lat...

Trying to Expose "Malicious" Amazon Reviews

There is an excellent comment thread going on over at Amazon right now. I stumbled across it by accident and I couldn't stop reading the comments.

All I can say is, WOW!

The thread begins this way, with someone asking an interesting question:

A few authors have brought an issue to my attention that, despite having nothing to do with me, caught my interest.

Many indie books, once they start selling at a steady pace and garner enough reviews, become targets for sabotage reviews. That is, reviewers...

Sometimes Spam is a Good Thing: Twenty-Five Years in Jail

While going through comments that needed to be pubbed this evening I came across something interesting.

I'd been spammed by someone, and it was one of those times when I was glad he or she did spam me.

It's a comment that was left on this post I wrote earlier this week. The link on the thread says: "25 Years in Jail."

That link will lead you here, to a web page that is selling audio books. This particular audio book is titled, "Long Walk to Freedom." It was written by Nelson Mandela. It's an aut...

July 13th Loveyoudivine.com Release: Something For St. Jude

For upcoming release, "Something for Saint Jude," I wanted to post something ahead of time in case I forget. It seems that something new comes up all the time and I often wind up posting more about other things than I do my own fiction.

"Something for Saint Jude" is a short story...8,000 words..., it's set in both Wyoming and on a cruise ship (one of those gay cruise ships), and it's about two people from the same small town who wind up falling in love on vacation. It's being published by Love...

June 2013 Trial Date Set for DOJ vs Apple and E-book Publishers

Here's the latest on the E-book pricing debacle:

NEW YORK — The Justice Department’s price-fixing lawsuit against e-book publishers and Apple will go to trial in June 2013, setting up a long legal struggle sure to reverberate across the nascent digital publishing market.

Apple has maintained that it did no wrong and argued to a federal judge last Friday that it wants a speedy trial to defend itself. The Silicon Valley giant is joined by McMillan and Penguin Group in fighting Justice’s suit. Har...

The Adele Biography Syndrome in Publishing

I'm a huge fan of Adele, so when I read somewhere recently there was a new bio out about the relatively short life she's lived so far, I was curious. I have eclectic taste in music, as I've posted before, and my favorite genre is rap music. But I do like that fact that Adele is bringing music with a melody back into style. She seems to be able to reach all generations and that's something that doesn't happen very often. There's another young singer just coming up that I think will be very big...

How Tony and I Spent June as Pride Month...

First weekend: we put on lipstick, earrings, and high heels. Then skirts and camisoles. After that, we both grabbed a picnic basket, a rainbow flag, and skipped over to our local m/m romance learning center for a lecture on what is and what isn't considered "Gay Literature," given by a fascinating woman who swears she knows it all when it comes to "Gay Literature." Oh, by golly gosh, it was an exciting weekend to be sure. On Sunday afternoon, we wound up braiding K.Z. Snow's hair and painted...

A Different Kind of Hetero...

I'm not talking about heterosexuals like the one in the photo above in this post.

I'm talking about heteronyms.

And heteronyms are not to be mistaken with homonyms. Homonyms are those little mistakes we all make once in a while that seem to drive SOME people up the wall. I did it once and you would have thought I'd robbed a bank or something. But any idiot (and I include myself here) knows the difference between vile and vial (that was my mistake that an editor missed), vein and vane, or toad a...

Some Advice from Marie Lambda Author/Agent

I've mentioned before that I often become frustrated with several lit agent blogs because they don't seem to be discussing...or embracing...a lot of the changes happening in publishing. I rarely see anything mentioned at all about the many authors and small presses who have been working in digital publishing.

I see doom and gloom. I see sarcastic blog posts about books like Fifty Shades of Grey. Or I see absolutely nothing at all.

But I recently found one blog that's written by an author who...

Remember Horn & Hardart?

A friend sent me an e-mail today that had those reminisce things listed and one of the items on the list was about Horn & Hardart. I hadn't seen anything like that in years. And I'm from a generation who missed the heyday.

But I still remember going Horn & Hardart in NY when I was a kid in the late 1970's.

Horn & Hardart was a food services company of the USA noted for operating the first food service automats in Philadelphia and New York City.

Philadelphia's Joseph Horn (1861–1941) and German-...