Miserable and Tired & a Link Salad

My alarm is set to go off at 6:00am. It is currently 4:23 as I begin to write this. I can't see the point in going back to bed for an hour and a half when I still won't be able to sleep.

My brain won't shut down and neither will the pain in my back.

I've gone and read a bunch of blogs, and will soon go back to reading some more. I can't concentrate enough to work on any of my writing or to read anything of length.

So far, I've found a number of interesting posts you should go look at. I've also finally opened an email I began sometime last week and finally sent home the other day, with all sorts of links. So I'll throw the still relevant of those up as well.

This one over at Query Tracker defining genres and how you should define your book is excellent, and there is more to come. It also has an excellent link over to a discussion on the 'Literary' genre at Nathan Bradsford - and we like Nathan's opinions on anything - including a discussion about concepts.

This one over at Straight from hel on book-royalty statements is one to keep for future reference but is interesting to see what actually takes place when an author goes through the process.

If none of you believed my spouting wonderful things about Alexandra Sokoloff's book The Harrowing, then you could always read another independent review of it over at Hellnotes. It's a good review, and nicely written. One day, I to will write reviews as good as this. And just for the hell of it - here's a video I found with an interview Alex did.

Quite a few of the regular agents I monitor went to the London Book Fair. This post over at Pubrants had some interesting stuff in it, with this little snippet catching my eye in particular:

In Asian territories, literary/commercial historical fiction doesn’t work at all. The editors won’t even look at it. However, UK and European editors say bring it on--they'd love to look.

I'm thinking AKL could work in a UK market, being about when the Brit's first arrived over here, so maybe I should add UK agents to my list.

A Fulton Prize winning short story which is a good read, by Sean Ferrell who has also just gained his first novel contract with HarperCollins no less. I've already added this guy to must read list of modern-authors-with-a-new-book-deal. I told you about that one - yes.

Not long back I discussed my process in creating wonderful works of art for people to read. Julie Weathers discusses her way of doing things which I thought a timely addition to the earlier discussion. I loved this bit:

Most often, we fall somewhere in the middle and a well-written book makes its own luck. Part of that "luck" process is a whole lot of hard work in the background. Writing, editing, revising, revising more, smoothing, beta reading, revising more and then smoothing one last time before we send it out into the cruel world.

And this bit should be made into a bumper sticker

“Unique for unique only makes a freak, not a fully functioning darling.”

To add some food for thought on the whole future of publishing debate - Check this post out over at Michael Hyatt's blog about Microsoft's current research projects. Print may very well become hugely expensive and only kept in museums - not libraries.

And here we get another angle on the bane of us all, rejection, from published author Alan Baxter.

Done! And it's now 5:16am - definitely not going back to bed for 45 minutes. It's going to be a long day.