Harry Connolly's Blog, page 202

Randomness for 3/4

1) Admiral Akbar leading the votes to become new sports mascot at Ole Miss. Shockingly, this particular "rebel" has students threatening to transfer if he shows up at games. Because that's what important about college: the sports mascot.

2) Major retailers caught selling used lingerie. Oh, Victoria's Secret, you're so sexy!

3) Another way to lower health care costs. Quote: "Only about half of patients who are prescribed a medication for a chronic condition are still taking the drug...

As a followup to my previous post

That comment I made about sending a book to a reader who has a grandmom with a blog? Totally not a joke. So I'll have a contest. Post a link to your grandmother's[1:] blog and I'll mail you a copy of Child of Fire, anywhere in the world. I'll look at all the blogs, and whoever posts the most interesting one will win (Yes, I have Sekrit Reezinz for this).

Additionally, I'd ask that you review the book yourself online–positively or negatively, it doesn't matter, as long as it's an honest...

Wha? "Sponsored Reviews?"

Even though it's been five months since Child of Fire came out, I'm still contacting reviewers, hoping to get a little more exposure. I've slowed down quite a bit, but I still mail off the odd book now and then.

So, as I was looking over N.K. Jemison's new book on Big River dot com to see if it's a hardcover (and thus too spendy to buy at my local shop) I saw a review posted there by sacramentobookreview.com.

Interesting! So I pop over to their site and poke around. No they haven't...

Randomness for 3/3

1) I wish someone could explain to me the causes of the great Balloons Monkey War. Added later: Ah! It was unprovoked Monkey aggression.

2) Five links about selling books.

3) The Venn Diagram of Monsters.

4) Now that Harriet the Spy is being updated as Harriet the blogger, Jezebel.com offers other classics of children's lit that could be updated for modern times.

5) What Science TV is like. via nihilistic_kid

6) Math A Capella (the internet triples its total nerdiness with one video)

7) If...

Foreign rights

The announcement just went up on Publisher's Marketplace, so I guess I can announce it here: My agency has sold French language rights for Child of Fire and Game of Cages to Bibliothèque Interdite! Whoo-hoo! That makes two foreign language sales (so far) Russian and French.

Profitez des bons moments!

Ten writing rules not published in the Guardian

A couple of days ago, I linked to the Ten Rules for Writers in the Books section of the Guardian. They're fun to read, completely contradictory, and simultaneously wonderful and irrelevant. (Wanna make a sour face over them? Head over to the Globe and Mail.)

But why should those writers have all the fun (just because they're all incredibly successful)? I can write a contradictory list of rules for writers, and so can you. So, I'm going to whip up ten useful and useless "rules" that work f...

Dear book

Stop being a pain in the ass.

Thanks.

Well, we didn't go to watch the tsunami come in

Mainly because there was nothing happening. So instead, I published my son's website.

He made it with his buddy, and it's all their own (with one or two extremely minor assists from me). Check it out… if you dare!

Incoming Tsunami

The Chilean tsunami is expected to reach Seattle around 4:30 this afternoon. It's also expected to be about 6-feet high according to one source, but the BBC is saying it could be either nothing or 10 meters.

Of course, Seattle is on Puget Sound, not the Pacific Ocean. We have a huge peninsula between us and the sea, and while we get waves, their tiny little lapping waves, not the relatively strong crests you can see in a place like Ocean Shores.

So how crazy would it be to go relatively c...

Child of Fire Reviews Part 11

I finally collected seven more. Behind the cut!

1) Kevinh01 enjoyed it and is ready for the next one. "He's created some great characters in a story filled with plenty of detail and solid action. I didn't finish it in a day, but it was really hard to put down."

2) David Hines liked it, and he thought there was too much exposition, rather than too little: "… it's really pretty damn awesome, and its characters are so engaging and its pace so relentless that I tore through it in an afternoon,"

3...