Tuesday Quick Notes

Edge of Tomorrow made $29.1m domestically over the weekend, which is better than its early tracking of $25m, but since it didn't entirely blow away tracking (say, with $35m), the media is still burying it. We'll see how much it drops for week 2—we want to keep it in the twenty millions. The Fault in Our Stars had a huge Saturday drop, but still made $40m. People are watching to see if all the excited fans who saw it on Friday night will see it again this Friday night. And next Friday night. And every Friday night of the summer. Which is certainly a possibility. yendi pointed out that Edge is inspiring think pieces in a real-life newspaper, so that is nice.

In other day job news, the Japan Times, also a real-life newspaper and shit, gave a five-star review to The Battle Royale Slam Book—and it was actually a fairly lengthy review that quotes from the book. A nice surprise in these days of capsule after capsule. Newspapers have basically surrendered book-reviewing to blogs, which is why there is at least one shrieking meltdown on the part of either an author or a book blogger every week. Anyway, check out the book and be sure to vote for it for the Best Related Book Hugo next year. Now that the Hugos are utterly politicized, everything is permitted. Never too soon to beat the drums!

I'll be running another online writing class in in August, with LitReactor. So check that out if you want to learn why your stories are being rejected. That's what I'm good at.