Weekend Professional Reading

The write-every-day thing has become very hard for me over the last few years. Rather than beat myself up over it (I'm not big on the beat-yourself-up thing), I try to adapt work efforts to whatever situation I'm dealing with. Weekends? I'm often running all day. Earlier this year, I did a tour of the NESCBWI member blogs on weekends, which gave me an opportunity to keep up on what other writers are doing and make some professional connections. I was squeezing some work of some kind into the weekend. Now I'm trying to flip that activity into hitting some of the blogs in my blog reader on Saturdays and Sundays. Or on Saturdays or Sundays. Today you get a round-up of some visits I made last night, while another family member was watching a movie about giant spiders up to no good.

It seems appropriate to start with How I Wrote Every Day for a Year, a guest post by Krissy Bradfield at Fiction Notes.

Love Ms. Yingling's comments regarding one of the zombie books she blogged about in a post last month. "Most boys who want to read about zombies don't really want to read about a boy pining for his brother and dealing with a clinically depressed zombie. They want blood and guts and body parts dropping off, which this lacks. (Think Kloepfer's Zombie Chasers.) This one is the sort of zombie book that could be considered for a Newbery Award." Does that not speak volumes?

Later she reviews Splendors and Glooms, which I'm going to try to get hold of because she says "This was an enthralling book-- like watching a really good Masterpiece Theater." Plus I liked Laura Amy Schlitz's A Drowned Maiden's Hair.

It turns out The Atlantic has  YA column, which I learned about through Tanita Davis

A review of Daughter of Smoke and Bone, a YA fantasy I actually liked

Is traditional publishing the new vanity publishing?  Found that at Cynsations.

Mitali Perkins has an interview regarding New Adult fiction. For what it's worth, I love the idea of a New Adult category, which I've heard mutterings about for a number of years. However, I thought the mutterings related to an age group of, say, late high school years to maybe early twenties. I agree with Mitali's interview subject. Fourteen to thirty-five is a "preposterous" age range. I believe he has other objections, but the twenty-one year span is enough for me.  For heaven's sake, I can remember seeing an article many years ago suggesting thirty-five was the beginning of middle age. That was ridiculous, too, but a little closer to the mark than "new adult."

French children's books. (I'm sorry. I can't remember how I found this.) These are books to read to children while they are petting their pet, Henri, Le Chat Noir.