BOOK BITS: Writing Links - Godfather Films, English language weirdness, 'The Black Count'

News: Books bloggers are harming literature, warns Booker prize head judge, by Alison Flood - "Peter Stothard, chair of this year's Booker prize judges, says the mass of online opinion about books could kill off literary criticism." The Guardian News: Judge: Paramount Won't Lose Right to Make More 'Godfather' Films, by Eriq Gardner - "A federal judge in New York on Thursday dismissed attempts by the estate of The Godfather author Mario Puzo to cancel a decades-old contract that gave Paramount film rights to his most famous book about a mafia family."  The Hollywood Reporter How To: 5 Characters Every Writer Needs to Master, by Ken Myers - "As a writer you know you have the creative ability to write however you want. You are the artist. To challenge your writing and to keep your readers interested, there are five characters all writers should consider including in their stories." Wordplay How To: (Most) Characters Can’t Read Minds, by Beth Hill - "You may be writing paranormals and so, yes, you might have a mind-reading character or two in your fiction. But if you’re not and if you don’t, then it’s likely your characters are no better at reading the minds and emotions of other characters than any of us are at reading the 3-dimensional people in our lives." The Editor's Blog Feature: More on the Weirdness of the English Language, by Smoky Zeidel - "Vernaculata, Goddess of the Vernacular of the Peasantry, is at it again, keeping me awake at night pondering the weirdness of the English language. And it is weird; weird enough to make the savviest of editors (that would be me) tear her hair out at times, trying to figure out what is—and what isn’t—a word." Smoky TalksFeature: Your Secret Story, by Theodora Goss - "A secret story is a story you tell about yourself, as you’re going through your daily life. We probably all had secret stories when we were children. I know I did. I was in disguise as an ordinary student, but I had actually come from fairyland, or the future, or somewhere else, and I was just observing the people around me."Feature: Writers Be-Wary: Distribution and Control of Creative Material - "authors will wish to retain control over their contributions and may find aggregators’ “Terms of Use” unaccommodating. It is a fair question, What does an author give up in exchange for granting a license for the privilege of having her content aggregated with others and accessible to the searching public?" Legal Corner for AuthorsReview: The real-life Count of Monte Cristo, Tom Reiss' review of "The Black Count" by John T. Slania - "he Count of Monte Cristo is a classic tale of betrayal and revenge, penned by the renowned 19th-century author Alexandre Dumas. But it turns out the novel is not merely fiction; key plot developments were based on the true-life experiences of the author’s father." BookPage"Book Bits" is compiled by Malcolm R. Campbell, author of contemporary fantasy, including the heroine's journey novel "Sarabande" and the Kindle short story "Moonlight and Ghosts"

A haunting short story for your Kindle