Hump Day Links

I have a few books on the go at the moment, so here’s a Hump Day link-up to various articles, blogs and reviews which I’m subscribed to via RSS feed:

Jessica Faust gives a good overview of the agency business through the BookEnds LLC blog – check out one of her most recent posts on how agents decide on which books to represent: http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/2009/01/agents-taste.html . The blog is updated daily and gives a really interesting snapshot of what agents want, what they do and how authors should approach them for representation.

Interesting article over at the Guardian about Tolkien’s version of the tales of Sigurd the Volsung – he put the tales into narrative verse, before he wrote LOTR. This reworking will be available this May through HarperCollins which will be publishing the text as The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/07/tolkien-norse-legend .
For everyone who enjoyed Peter V Brett’s debut this year, there is even more good news – a deluxe edition has been planned – check it out here - http://www.sffworld.com/news/597.html .

My good friend Dave-Brendon interviews Kate Elliott over at his blog - http://davebrendon.wordpress.com/2009/01/11/an-interview-with-kate-elliot-alis-a-rasmussen/.

Voracious reader and review, Graeme’s got his newest review up on Jennifer Rardin’s newest offering from Orbit - http://www.graemesfantasybookreview.com/2009/01/one-more-bite-jennifer-rardin-orbit.html . He also has a review up of Mystery of Grace by one of my all time favourite authors, Charles de Lint : http://www.graemesfantasybookreview.com/2009/01/mystery-of-grace-charles-de-lint-tor.html

Faith Hunter (amongst a bevy of other brilliant writers such as CE Murphy and David B Coe) writes bits and pieces for a brilliant site called Magical Words. The site is worth checking out for good articles on writing, the industry, creating characters etc. Check the link out to an article Faith wrote about some writing techniques - http://magicalwords.net/faith-hunter/twenty-one-fatal-techniques/ .

Personally, I love the Hellblazer graphic novels, I also love Mike Carey (his new novel is out very soon, yay!) so when I spotted an article about how Hellblazer inspired fantasy author, Daniel Abraham to write his most recent novel, Unclean Spirits (albeit under a pseudonym) I had to share it: http://scifiwire.com/2009/01/hellblazer-inspired-hanovers-unclean-spirits.php .

If you like Neal Stephenson, here’s an interview with him done by the AV Club - http://scifiwire.com/2009/01/hellblazer-inspired-hanovers-unclean-spirits.php .
The crazy galls, Ana and Thea, over at The Book Smugglers are having a manga appreciation week – check it out! http://thebooksmugglers.com/2009/01/manga-appreciation-week-an-introduction.html

Thomas Emson, author (of Maneater), friend of the blog and one of my first big interviews, let slip some news about his upcoming works – more gritty urban fantasy with a twist, anyone? Check out the new site for The Vampire Trinity - http://www.thevampiretrinity.com/ . I’ve heard that there are some Library Binding copies available on Amazon for the first book Skarlet...

Chris Voss, one of the contributors to Unbound has gone and diversified himself: he’s started a movie review blog! Pop on over to Celluloid Moon - http://www.celluloidmoon.blogspot.com/ - to see what shenanigans he gets up to.

As an aspiring writer and someone who gets too easily distracted by teh intranets, txt messages and real life, when I try to write, I was quite chuffed to see that clever monkey (named Charlie) has come up with an idea to create a space where writers can retreat to for a day, without any outside interference, to write. Naturally, there is a charge, but imagine the output you can have in one day without having to worry about anything else, except writing. Check it out: http://urbanwritersretreat.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/2009-writing-retreat-dates/ for the dates and then the official site at: http://urbanwritersretreat.web.officelive.com/book.aspx .

I must apologise for the unsightly external linkages – for some reason my html is messing around and it’s not picking up the embedded links.