Just another writer
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Names in fiction
There was an article on NPR recently that cited a study showing that scientists with anglo names are more likely to be cited in news stories. My sense is that I tend to go with Slavic or Italian names for most of my characters, but I decided to dig a bit deeper and see what…
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Writerly resolutions: March status
The novel is finished and I’ve started the querying process with the first round of ten queries, including my first rejection from a query. I guess my depression is catching up with me a bit here. While going througjh old queries, I found myself wondering whether what I thought were personalized queries saying close but…
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2024 Tournament of Books: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store vs Blackouts/The Bee Sting
And the final match-up of the Tournament of Books. I used to think that the judgments and reviews were done in real time, judges in later rounds furiously working their way through the books to be sure they were able and hoping that the book they’d left at the bottom of the stack of potential…
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2024 Tournament of Books: The Guest vs The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
So many of the match-ups in this year’s tournament have felt like we were looking at two books dropped in from different universes, in many cases with radically different ideas of what a novel could be. This match-up, on the other hand, is between two books that fit comfortably into high-school me would consider to be…
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2024 Tournament of Books: The Bee Sting vs Blackouts
My picks for who would win the quarterfinals were both knocked out before they got there but, one of the weird and wild parts of the Tournament of Books is the Zombie Round: The most popular books that were previously eliminated get a chance to come back from the dead before the finals and as…
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2014 Tournament of Books: The Guest vs The Librarianist/The Bee Sting vs The Shamshine Blind
The right side of the brackets is where I completely deviated from reality so there’s an alternate universe matchup and an actual universe matchup. In the alternative universe It would be between The Bee Sting and The Shamshine Blind. And while I liked the alternate universe of The Shamshine Blind, I found the family travails of The Bee Sting…
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2024 Tournament of Books: Blackouts/Dayswork vs Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
Semifinal time! I start with my Alternate Reality Where the matchup is between Dayswork and Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. We have an experimental novel against an exemplar of a straightforward narrative, and to be honest, putting these two up against each other, I found I was just in the mood for a straight narrative. Actual reality…
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2024 Tournament of Books: Monstrilio vs The Librarianist/The Bee Sting
In this last round of quarterfinals, I was only half-wrong in predicting the match-up, but half-wrong still is enough to generate An alternate universe In my alternate universe, the match-up would be between Monstrilio and The Bee Sting. Both look at complicated family dynamics with plenty of dysfunction to go around, and while I admired the magical…
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2024 Tournament of Books: The Guest vs Brainwyrms/The Shamshine Blind vs Chain-Gang All-Stars
In the upper right corner of the grid, I completely disagreed with the judges of the first round, so we get a pair of completely non-overlapping competitions here. The alternate history In the universe where the judges made the correct decision, the match-up would be between Chain-Gang All-Stars and The Shamshine Blind. I’m faced with a choice…