Game Of Thrones: January 2012

Romney Win in Florida Supports Impact of TV Debates

So why, in terms of media theory, did Romney do so well in Florida, as well as Gingrich did over Romney in South Carolina?

If you listen to Chris Matthews on MSNBC, you'd think the answer was that Romney and his pac outspent Gingrich by a large margin, with a torrent of negative ads against Romney. This was the same reason Matthews (and other commentators) gave for Romney's evisceration of Gingrich in Iowa.

Except ... Rick Santorum beat Romney in Iowa (or came in just a few votes behind Romney, when Matthews offered his assessment), and Santorum spent next to nothing on ads in Iowa compared to Romney. And Romney outspent Gingrich not only in Florida but in South Carolina.

Which means the ad expenditure theory in primary wins and losses just doesn't add up.

What does add up is this: Gingrich pummeled Romney in the two debates prior to the South Carolina primary, and seemed weak and even befuddled in his two debates with Romney prior to Florida. In terms of a simple experiment, you can get much better evidence than that.

What this means for the future is ... well, it depends upon which Gingrich we see in upcoming debates. The pre-South Carolina Gingrich in debates could and may well get the nomination, whatever Romney spends. The pre-Florida Gingrich in TV debates doesn't stand a chance.

Biff! Pow! Sketch!

More doodles of Batman characters. Surprise, surprise. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about the latest Chades Challenge (Angry Harpies). I'll be posting the feathery monstrosities this Friday!

26 days...

Dystopian February Theme Month at Presenting Lenore

In February 2010, I kicked off my very first theme month dedicated solely to dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction. Back then, dystopian was an emerging trend, buoyed by the popularity of THE HUNGER GAMES and CATCHING FIRE.

Now, two short years later, we are in the midst of a dystopian explosion, with new upcoming titles being announced every week it seems. But with so many new dystopians available, how do you choose which to read?

That's where Dystopian February at my personal blog, Presenting Lenore, can help. Starting tomorrow and continuing all through the month, I will be posting reviews, previews, author interviews, and in-depth discussions of books that may or may not be on your radar. I also have so many book giveaways planned, I can hardly keep track of them. (Spoiler alert: I'll be giving away, among others, League books such as A MILLION SUNS, STARTERS & THE OTHER LIFE)

By now, I've read over 100 books in the genre (see index of all my dystopian reviews) and I'm still super excited about it. Based on the types of books I've come across in my reading, I've created five categories of dystopians/post-apocalyptics:

World-building books - These are the books that (usually) take a real world issue or concern and barrel down the slippery slope to explore a future world through the distorted lens of that issue. They can be very deep and philosophical. For example: FEED by MT Anderson (media addiction)

Action books - These are the page-turners that get your adrenaline pumping and make you bite your fingernails until the tips of your fingers are raw. They are often stories of surviving despite terrible odds. For example: ASHES by Ilsa J. Bick

Twisty books - Surprising, original, fun - these are the books that are unpredictable and make the genre feel fresh again. For example: VARIANT by Robison Wells

Romance books - The world may be ending, but that doesn't stop the chemistry between these books' characters from melting off your pants. For example: SHATTER ME by Tahereh Mafi

Amazing writing - These are the books that get under your skin with their perceptive insights into character, their lyrical prose, and their masterfully created atmospheres. For example: WITHER by Lauren DeStefano

And of course, there are the books that seem to have it all and could fit into any category (HUNGER GAMES, anyone?) -- but for my purposes, I'm giving each book I review a merit badge in one of the above categories (see the merit badges here - they are ADORBS!) so if you know you prefer world-building books over all else, you'll know which titles to look out for.

Hope you enjoy Dystopian February! What do you think my categories? Am I missing any in your opinion?

Pub Trivia

My local watering-hole, The Albatross, has a weekly Pub Trivia night. Being the types who jump at any chance to win free beer, Chris Chua and I made an appearance last night. Berkeley barflies aren't your usual beer-guzzlers, and trivia night in particular attracts the local intellects (like the one below, sketched on my iPhone).

Chris and I didn't stand much chance against the Berkeley grad students, but we did manage to score major points whenever the subject matter delved into nerd territory, like HP Lovecraft.

Alas, we didn't win any free beer (we placed 7th out of 30 teams). But we won something even better: knowledge. Okay, yeah, the beer would have been nice.

27 days...

The Super Bowl, The Hunger Games, and me.

On Friday, my wife and I walked from our house near downtownIndianapolis to the Super Bowl village. The game was more than a week away, butthe whole area was already crowded. It appeared that every pavilion and tentwithin 500 miles was either already set up or currently being assembled in thestreets and parking lots of downtown Indianapolis.

There are giant Super Bowl sculptures, at least threestages, dozens of outdoor bars, a zip line down the middle of Capitol Avenue,and half a dozen buildings wrapped in enormous Microsoft Kinect ads. Here’s ashot of Monument Circle:

As I walked around this temporary amusement park, I got moreand more depressed. Why? For every scene like this:

There’s also one like this:

Now, I know that only a minority of the people holding signsare actuallyhomeless or hungry. And giving money to panhandlers only exacerbates theproblem. But the dichotomy between the glittering temporary bars and stages forSuper Bowl XLVI and the panhandlers points up a real problem in our society—onethat calls The Hunger Games to mymind.

Are the fashionable spectacles of the Super Bowl Village reallythat different from the glitz and glamor of the Capitol District? And while wedon’t have any place labeled District 12, you could easily form one among thepopulation of Indianapolis. Consider this:

167,000residents of Indianapolis live below the federal poverty line

63,000 ofthem are children

34,000residents will go hungry at some point this year.

3,000 willbe homeless at some point this year.

About 50 homelesspeople in Indianapolis will die of exposure this winter.

And considerthese stats:

Lucas Oil Stadium cost $750,000,000, of which $650,000,000 was public tax money.

The SuperBowl will cost at least $29,000,000 ($25,000,000 from private donors and $4,000,000 from the Capitol Improvement Board, which is publicly funded.)

No, we don’tkill 23 kids per year for our entertainment. Football only kills about four people each year, making it a relatively safe sport (gymnastics, cheerleading, anddownhill skiing are far more dangerous.) But as I walked through the Super BowlVillage on Friday, I had the feeling that I was bearing witness to aninevitable slide—America becoming Panem.

What do youthink? Please convince me I’m wrong in the comments. I’m getting depressed allover again.

Assista ao trailer da segunda temporada de "Game of Thrones"

A HBO americana divulgou o primeiro trailer completo da segunda temporada de "Game of Thrones". O vídeo, com pouco mais de 1 minuto de duração, traz muitas cenas inéditas e novos personagens. Assista:

Person of Interest 1.11 and 1.12: Realignment and Revelation

Catching up with Person of Interest 1.11 and 1.12, and good thing I didn't wait any longer - episode 1.11 had a quick little conversation which, if I heard it right, changes the very premise, pulls the rug out from the under the foundation, of the very series. Which is the kinda thing I really like in a television series.

The set-up in 1.11 was pretty good, even without the revelation. Reese needs at last one episode to convalesce from being shot pretty badly back in December in 1.10. Finch puts him up in a nice apartment, but, as he tells Reese, the machine waits for no man, and there's a life to be saved, of someone who lives in the building. Lots of good twists and turns in this story, good to see Dexter's David Zayas on hand. But the biggest twist, which is nice, seems to be that Reese in a wheelchair takes over Finch's work, and Finch, who can still move, even with the limp, is out in the field, i.e, mostly in the building.

A nice temporary twist and reversal, but not the biggest twist or reveal at all. That comes when Reese realizes that Finch is still figuring out all kinds of deep background things, even though Finch has had no access to the machine. Reese confronts Finch and says you're the machine, aren't you. Finch neither confirms or denies.

A fascinating revelation, if true. But, if true, what are those little boxes we see around everyone at the beginning and throughout each episode. If you think about it, we never see them on a screen Finch is looking at. So they are, what, on the government's machine? But ... is there really a government machine? Or does it all come from Finch, who sends info to the government through some secret back door to make them think there's a machine?

Reese certainly wants to find to find out more, and at the end of 1.12 - the next episode - we see that he has Fuchs trailing Finch. He's entering some potentially dangerous, more relevatory territory, with his slain partner's son now on hand and wanting to know what his father and Finch really did.

But Reese and Finch at least now have Carter in the fold, and that's a good realignment of what Reese and Finch do. As we've seen in these last two episodes - and many before, including, especially, 1.10 - Reese is not indestructible. He gets hurt, and even when not briefly out of commission, bad guys can on occasion get the better of him. With the CIA still out to kill him, having Carter on his side may be necessary for his survival.

Good story ahead ...

See also Person of Interest of Interest ... Person of Interest 1.2: Reese and Finch ... Person of Interest 1.5: Potentials ... Person of Interest 1.7: Meets Flashpoint and The Usual Suspects ... Person of Interest 1.8: Widmore and Ben, At It Again ... Person of Interest 1.9: Evolution of a Series ... Person of Interest 1.10: Carter Returns the Favor

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Fringe 4.10: Deceit and Future Vision

One of the things I'm really enjoying about this 4th season of Fringe is how every episode in some significant way moves along the central story. Tonight in 4.10 we get a tender, sad story about a girl who can see bad things slightly or a little more into the future. She thinks her visions are unalterable. But Olivia and Peter et al stop a courthouse from blowing up as per her vision, just in time. They're unable to stop, however, her own death via a stroke, but -

An Eternal Bald Observer told Olivia, at the end of the episode before last, that he saw her death, which will be unavoidable in all time lines. What does the future-seeing girl see about Olivia? Not clear, but -

At very least, she has been looked into by Massive Dynamics aka Nina Sharp, whom we last saw at the end of last week's episode, knocking Olivia out, and planning to do something to her unconscious body, which will leave her with a headache. My guess is install some kind of tracking device.

This week, Olivia is indeed suffering from headaches, and goes to Nina for advice about the girl who can see the future. She provides none, but shows up to Olivia's place to make her some soup (Nina is the closest person to a mother for Olivia in this reality), and order some medicine for Olivia's headaches. Likely the last thing that Olivia needs.

Broyles is doing the best he can to look out for Olivia, and so is Peter. but unfortunately Olivia doesn't (yet) feel comfortable enough to be completely truthful with him. He sees her looking at photos of the EBOs - earlier, she was looking at them with Broyles - and he tries to explain to her what the EBOs do. Of special interest to Olivia, or course, is can they see the future, like the young doomed heroine in this episode. Peter explains that they experience all times simultaneously, rather than time travel or see the future and past. (Great nonverbal acting by Joshua Jackson in this scene, by the way, where his body language and facial expressions convey as much as his words.) But when Peter asks Olivia if one of the Observers has "reached out" to her, she says no.

Peter no doubt sees through that. It's heart warming to see these two working together. Olivia's best chance at survival will be Peter. Her and Peter's ability to stop the girl's visions from coming true is no comfort to her about being able to do anything to stop what the EBO saw from coming true - since he didn't really see it, he experienced it ...

Hey, check out my essay The Return of 1950s Science Fiction in Fringe in this new anthology

See also Fringe Returns for Season 4: Almost with Peter ... Fringe 4.2: Better and Worse Selves ... Fringe 4.3: Sanity and Son ... Fringe 4.4: Peter's Back, Ectoplasm, and McLuhan ... Fringe 4.5: Double Return ... Fringe 4.6: Time Slips ... Fringe 4.7: The Invisible Man ... Fringe 4.8: The Ramifications of Transformed Alternate Realities ... Fringe 4.9: Elizabeth

See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21: Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ... Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened ... Death Not Death in Fringe

See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6 ... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ... New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22: Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Bloggers + BEA

Did you hear the awesome news this week about BEA and book bloggers? If you're a book blogger or a book lover or a bookseller, something very cool is afoot in the book world. (I win for most uses of book in a sentence. Also my copy editor would be banging her head on her desk and scribbling "repetitive" all over this post.)

First of all, in case you aren't a total nerd for all things book like me, BEA stands for Book Expo America, and it's sort of like heaven for readers. Technically it's for booksellers, who are readers of course, but in recent years, intrepid writers and bloggers have been turning out for the event in NYC. Basically it's a conference to showcase books by publishers as well as other book related services. It's also an excellent way to get your hands on advanced copies of upcoming books and even rub elbows with authors.

So what does this have to do with book bloggers? Well, the organizers of BEA just announced that they've officially purchased the Book Bloggers Convention. BBC used to be hosted at the end of BEA in a co-location but the events were separate. This year BBC will be held in conjunction with BEA at the beginning of the week, because BEA wants to get bloggers even more involved with the conference. Why? Because book bloggers are integral in getting the word out about books!

You can read all about the merger here on the BEA blog, and I don't know about you guys but I'm definitely looking into going this year.

Rango

I borrowed Rango from my buddy Ken, and if there's anything I've learned from Arrested Development, it's to always leave a note.

This is a great film, by the way! Hats off to Gore Verbinksi for an animated film that pays homage to classic westerns yet still manages to break the mold! I hope they take home the animated film Oscar (how was Los Lobos not even nominated for their fantastic original song?).

Now if they'd only gotten Nico Marlet to design those animals...

31 days...

Good for Gingrich Talking about the Moon

Newt Gingrich has received considerable ridicule and flack for his statement that we would have a permanent base on the Moon by the end of his second term as President, and when the Moon attained 13,000 permanent settlers, it could become another U.S. state.

I say, good for Gingrich for thinking so big. We need more of that. One of the reasons our efforts in space have stagnated is because no one after JFK had the requisite vision to see us get off this planet in a sustained way.

The fact is that we are citizens of the cosmos, not just this Earth. We'll never truly understand who we are, what we're doing here, from a vantage point stuck down here on this planet. Carl Sagan got this. Isaac Asimov understood this. Unfortunately, not enough politicians and Presidents.

Although I expect to vote for Barack Obama in this election, as I did in 2008, I was never happy with his weak position on space. Obama has been no better on space than his predecessors after JFK, and in some ways worse.

Conversely, I'm not likely to vote for Gingrich (though, if I were a Republican, I would over Romney). I get that he's presumtuous about the second term. I get that he's grandiose. But sometimes, as in the grandeur of space, that could be a good thing.

A Shout Out to a Few Bloggers

While I was busy writing and trying to get published, I didn’t read book blogs. I read blogs about writing, mostly written by agents. It is only recently that I’ve come to discover the great variety of book blogs.

I have so much admiration for all the book bloggers. I’m going to do a shout-out to a few that you’ve probably never heard of (that’s the point), and two that you should definitely know about if you don’t. Some of the following are small, but display an infectious love of reading.

http://Brokeandbookish.blogspot.com American college students who love YA.

http://onceuponaquote.blogspot.com A French college student studying English.

http://www.overflowinglibrary.com/ A British blogger.

http://www.publishingcrawl.com An international group of authors and publishing professionals.

http://presentinglenore.blogspot.com - our own Lenore did my first blog interview.

http://www.kamigarcia.com/blog/ - One of my favs, by rockstar bestselling author Kami Garcia (Beautiful Creatures), lots of YA dystopian book recs. And currently, she has a great post up now with writing links that is a don’t-miss for the writers out there.

Enjoy the read!

AbomiNATEable

A belated birthday card for my pal, Nate, best artist South of the North Pole!

32 days...

Any Bad Results from Obama's Health Plan?

I just saw a pro Newt Gingrich anti Romney ad airing in Florida that, unsurprisingly, attacked Romney-care in Massachusetts as being the basis for the "disastrous" Obama-care.

I put "disastrous" in quotes because every time I hear something like this, I wonder, what, exactly is the disaster that has occurred because of Obama's health plan?

I'm not talking about some courts that have said the mandate part of the law may be unconstitutional. I disagree with everyone being obliged to get health are, whether or not they want it, too. But that's hardly a "disaster" - it's just a part of the law that I and many disagree with.

To say the law has been a disaster would indicate, I would think, that one of more patients or people needing medical care died or got or remained very ill due to some application of the health law. Or maybe that a doctor went bankrupt or had to give up her or his practice as a result of the law. Or a hospital had to close. Or a business of any sort had to shut down because it could not meet some provision of the law. Or, even, an insurance company went bankrupt (I can't see being too upset about that, but I'll list it as a criterion of disaster just to show how reasonable I am).

So ... any takers? Can anyone cite a single instance of a bad result obtaining from Obama-care? Not a disagreement in policy, not a concern that something bad will result from the law, but an actual, real-life, non-hypothetical, bad result?

If not, then, the incessant Republican repetition that Obama's health care plan is "disastrous" is just a piece of classic propaganda - tell a lie often enough, and maybe you'll get some people to believe it.

Why I read reviews

Iknow many experienced writers tell debut authors: “don’t read reviews of yourbooks” or “don’t read the bad reviews” or “stay away from goodreads, shelfari,etc...” or even “don’t read good reviews”. And many writers seem to take thisadvice to heart – stop interacting on goodreads altogether once their ARCs areout in the world for readers to dissect.

Backin October 2010, when I sold THE OTHER LIFE and reviews were still far off, Ithought: “Huh, why should I not read reviews? I can take criticism.”

Fastforward a few months, when ARCs were finally sent out, I suddenly wasn’t allthat sure about my thick skin. I checked goodreads religiously and then I gotmy first not-so-stellar review (a two star rating) and I sat in front of my laptopparalyzed. I was too scared to read it and was driving myself insane with thepossibilities. But then I told my husband (with the warning that he shouldn’tread it either and that I didn’t want to know what was written!).

Yeah...Husband didn’t listen and in the evening while we were making dinner, hedescribed the review to me and I didn’t die. I could deal with it. My husbandshrugged at the end of his recount and said “that wasn’t so bad”. And he wasright. The next day I read the review and it was well-written and I wasgrateful that the reviewer had taken the time to write something about my book,though they didn’t like it.

I still cringe every time I see a low-rating, Istill hesitate before I read a negative review but I do it anyway because, whileit hurts a little to find out that not everyone loves your book, it helps megrow as a writer. Every time someone criticizes some part of my writing, Ichallenge myself to do better next time. And I love a good challenge.

Of courseI know that no matter how hard I try, I’ll never make everyone happy and that’snot what I’m striving for (though maybe a little part of me does). But I wantto know what readers think, want to know why people hate some books while theylove others with such a fervor that they fight for them.

I often find myselfbrowsing reviews of books I’ve read, and one day I found a negative review fora book almost everyone loved (myself included). And there were dozens, maybehundreds of comments defending that book. I was stunned (and I felt a bit sorryfor the poor reviewer who’d done nothing but write their opinion and got bashedfor it). People were willing to defend a book – not because it was written bytheir relative, or agent sister, or friend. No, because they loved it so much.I think it’s wonderful that books are still capable of evoking such strongemotions in us – hate, love, despair, blind rage. Isn’t that what we want aswriters?

Movies have pictures, soundtracks and big actors to get a strongreaction from their audience, we have only our words.

Bravisimo!

Congrats to Enrico Casarosa and all my fellow La Luna crew for our Academy Award nomination! Working on this little gem was some of the most fun I've had at Pixar yet!

33 days...

She turned me into a Newt! (I got better)

To be clear, I do not think that Newt Gingrichstands a hope in hell of being nominated as the Republican candidate forpresident. There is simply way too much stacked against him: he has proved tobe an inept campaign manager, he can’t come close to matching Romney’s money,the Republican establishment loathes him, and (perhaps most important of all)South Carolina played too perfectly to Newt’s strengths in a way that is highlyunlikely to be repeated as the primary battle drags on.

My prediction: Newt rides the momentum of SCfor everything it’s worth, fighting until his last dollar is gone. Perhaps hewins another, perhaps he comes close; in either case, he deals irreparable damageto Romney. I have to wonder if the worst damage hasn’t already been done: threestates down, and the presumptive Republican candidate has won (then lost—the recountin Iowa went to Santorum) in a squeaker, won respectably in New Hampshire, andgot his ass handed to him in South Carolina. This could potentially go on for along time, and every primary and caucus that passes without Romney locking inthe nomination bleeds him more. It’s not like four years ago in the protractedbattle between Obama and Hilary—there, we had two strong candidates withdevoted and indeed worshipful followings, and whatever resentment might havelingered, there was never any question that the loser would get behind thewinner.

That isn’t a certainty here. Quite theopposite, actually. The antipathy to Romney is powerful, powerful enough toelevate wingnuts like Bachman, Cain, and Perry, a religious bigot likeSantorum, and … well, honestly, I don’t know how to classify Newt. All of theabove?

Mind you, I’m not totally counting out Newt.Just mostly. “Not a hope in hell” normally means no chance whatsoever, buthaving followed this carnival for what feels like ten years now, I don’t wantto commit myself to the reasonable prediction. If I was a betting man, I’d saythe good money’s on Romney … but I’d be really, really tempted to put a dollardown on Newt’s long odds. The old chestnut, “That’s so crazy, it might justwork!” needs a re-jigging here. The Republican base is so crazy, they justmight nominate Newt. How’s that?

For what it’s worth, I think an Obama-Gingrichshowdown is precisely what the Republicans need. Would I be utterly gleeful tosee Newt get destroyed by Obama? Yes. Would I be over the moon to watch theFOX/Limbaugh industrial-complex stymied? YES. A thousand times, yes. But I alsowant conservatism in the U.S. to return to its senses, for all our sakes. Ithink it needs its Goldwater moment again, to be so thoroughly destroyed thatit has no choice but to reject the Palin/Bachman/Santorum wing of the party, todiscredit the FOX contingent, and to embrace its intelligent spokespeople.

Of course, I say this knowing that aGingrich-Obama showdown holds a 1% chance of Newt winning. At which point,Newfoundland doesn’t feel far enough away and I might start looking forEnglish-language universities in Sweden.

Celebrating Bloggers

Where would I be without blogs and bloggers? Maintaining a book blog and reading a ton of other book blogs and author blogs is what originally sparked my interest in YA lit – and in writing my own YA novel.

By keeping up with blogs, not only do I keep up with the zeitgeist, but I also learn what readers love and love to hate (insta-love, red-headed best friends, inaccurate college application timelines to name a few) as well as a ton about craft and how to improve my storytelling.

Let me give you one example of a blog event that directly impacted LEVEL 2. Frankie Diane Mallis (writer, blogger and member of The First Novels Club) puts on an event in January called the No-Kiss Blogfest, where participants are challenged to find or write an "almost kiss-- the rising, crushing, excruciating, longing, tension that comes when two characters get oh-so-close to kissing that you can just feel it, want it, NEED it....and then...they don't!"

Well, it just so happens that in January 2011, I was about to sit down to revise chapter 1 of LEVEL 2 when I stumbled upon Frankie’s post. My first draft of LEVEL 2 had my main character reliving one of her favorite memories with her boyfriend and it involved a kiss. But Frankie got me thinking … could the scene be even better with an almost kiss? So I tried it out. And guess what? It upped the excitement factor tenfold – and had a profound effect on the plot going forward too.

So thank you Frankie, and thank you book bloggers and writing bloggers who continually inspire me with your insights, passion and love of literature. I am proud to be a part of the conversation.

PS: For more tales of blogger love, check out YA Fusion.

Lenore's Blog

Sketches from The Big Game

I saw a couple of sporting events this weekend, but one is still too sad and close to my heart to discuss. So I'll focus on the more positive of the two: a minor league hockey game that I attended with my first animation teacher, Shawn Sullivan, and his lovely family. Yeah, he's a Raiders fan, but nobody's perfect.

Bert the Bunny was certainly happy to watch his first live hockey game.

Unfortunately Bert, like many of his fuzzy brethren, ended up on the wrong size of the ice.

There was also a lot of player-on-snowman violence. Hockey rinks are just not a place for cute critters of any ilk.

Shawn and I enjoyed the game the best way we knew how: by drawing it.

After all, shouting words is a great way to taunt the opponents' goalie, and a picture is worth a thousand words.

And, of course, no hockey game is complete without a good fight. This is why I could never be a hockey player. I'd be waaaay too tempted to use the knives on my feet.

Our team, the Stockton Thunder, won their game against the Vegas Wranglers. I guess those who play hockey in Vegas should stay in Vegas.

34 days...

And you thought "teabaggers" was bad ...

Oh, Rick Santorum ... as of this moment, you are the #1 reason Jon Stewart has the easiest job in show business. Seriously.

Apparently, Santorum has just launched a new fundraising group (or PAC, or SuperPAC, I'm uncertain of the distinctions these days), named "Conservatives Unite Moneybomb."

Got that? Yes. He has in fact started an organization whose acronym is C.U.M. Which meant that this morning I was treated to this headline in Google Reader:

(Which would not have been quite as bad if I hadn't been drinking a slightly gelatinous breakfast smoothie. Blerg.)

Besides going down (heh) as the most inopportune acronym since Canada's right wring briefly united under the moniker Conservative Reform Alliance Party, it also reflects so well on Santorum. Or at least it does from my perspective. His unrelenting and frequently unhinged attacks on gay marriage, gay rights, and the LGBT community generally echo the unreconstructed racism of people like George Wallace railing against civil rights even as the tide of history swamped them. That's what Santorum has to look forward to, but with a particularly cruel twist. Dan Savage's revenge--making "Santorum" synonymous with, and I quote, "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex," and making it the number one result when one Googles the name--has effectively made the former senator's very name a joke ... and which added a rather revolting double entendre during the Iowa Caucus, when pundits and commentators spoke of him "surging" in the polls.

The Conservatives Unite Moneybomb won't do nearly as much as Savage's savaging, but it has the added bonus of being self-inflicted. And the fact that America's most vocally anti-gay mainstream politician will go down as a footnote to history forever associated with bodily fluids and gay sex ... well, to quote Buffy Summers, as justice goes, it's not unpoetic.

Celebrating Bad Reviews

I come from a line of men who worked with their hands. Mygrandfather rebuilt boat motors; my dad builds and repairs furniture. For almost ten years, I made a living as acarpenter/handyman/remodeling company owner.

When you do this sort of work, you inevitably accumulatecoffee cans filled with random nuts, bolts, and screws. And this gives rise towhat I’m modestly calling Mullin’s Law: In any can of random nuts, 2% of themwill be wingnuts.

The rest of this post is not for the wingnuts outthere. If you’re an author who trolls threads on Goodreads, you’re a wingnut.If you’re a blogger who continues to review YA, despite professing a disdainfor the whole literature, you’re a wingnut. If you’re a blogger who reviews the author’s weight instead of her book,or uses hateful and misogynistic language in your reviews, not only are you awingnut, but your threads are stripped. Seek professional help retooling.

Now, to the rest of you, the 98% who are just plain nuts:bad reviews rock. One-star reviews rock. Two-star reviews rock. Authors,celebrate your bad reviews (you’re allowed 5-10 minutes of cringing self-pityfirst). Bloggers, don’t feel badly when you negatively review an author’s work.Unless that author has published ten or more books, you’re helping her withyour negative review.

Want evidence? Checkout this studyof New York Times book reviews conducted using Nielsen Bookscan data and reported in MarketingScience. The upshot is thatnegative reviews of works by authors who had previously published fewer thantwo books boosted their sales by 45%on average. Negative reviews of well-known authors (i.e. those who hadpublished 10 or more books previously) hurt their sales by 15%. So the adviceabout celebrating your one-star reviews doesn’t apply after you’ve publishedyour tenth book.

I first posted on this topic on my blog last July. If you're interested in a more thorough discussion of the benefits of bad reviews, click through. To sum up, the worst thing that can happen to an author isn't bad reviews; it's being ignored.

What do you think? Do the other authors out there help spread the word aboutnegative reviews of your work? Do those of you who blog feel hesitant to post a negative review? Why or why not? Let meknow in the comments, please.

The Renaissance of Television in Poliics?

Television has never been unimportant in politics - beginning with Nixon's "Checkers" speech in the 1952 campaign and progressing into JFK's victory over Nixon in the first televised Presidential debates in 1960.

But, more recently, lots of people including me have talking about how Barack Obama in 2008 and Republicans in 2010 won by mastering social media - or, what I call "new new media". Paul Saffo even coined a new term - "cybergenic" - to describe Obama in 2008, an evolution of JFK and Reagan being telegenic.

Has television come back? Newt Gingrich clearly smashed Romney in South Carolina because of two brilliant performances in television debates in the past week.   With two more debates coming up in Florida this week, the question of the impact of television debates could be crucially important.

David Gergen just said on CNN that he thought Gingrich's victory indeed shows that television is playing the decisive role in this year's primary - so far.

I'm not surprised.   Even though I've written extensively about the role of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in today's politics, I'd never discount the role of television.   Older media don't just disappear when new media arise. The written word is still important today, as is radio.

Television never really went away. The Internet is still crucially important. But for the right candidate, television can be even more important, precisely because of its old mass media magic - it's unique capacity to speak to millions of people at the same time.

Gingrich clearly is such a candidate.   His particular talent is looking great on television attacking television.

But Obama is powerful on television, too. That's part of his being cybergenic.

Stay tuned for an exciting election.

Lesson in Gingrich's Win for Obama

If I were Barack Obama, I'd be very unhappy about Newt Gingrich's win tonight in South Carolina. As it is, I'm a mostly supporter of Obama, and I'd much rather the see the President face the robotic Romney than Gingrich.

Gingrich not only is a highly effective debater, he has a capacity to surprisingly endorse positions that pull the rug out from under his opponents. In the debate the other night, what I most noticed was Gingrich's powerful condemnation of SOPA and PIPA - the now shelved Internet anti-piracy legislation that would have crippled the Internet.

In contrast, Obama was mostly silent about this and eventually came out with a mild backing off statement expressing reservations with the bills.

Obama cannot afford to be outflanked like this in the general election. My best advice would be that he be true to his progressive views, take a more libertarian position on respecting the First Amendment and the Constitution, support Occupy Wall Street, and energize his base which he has not especially done in the past few years.

Romney the robot - whom I called a Cylon back in 2008 (attention Battlestar Galactica fans) - would have been a push-over for Obama, or indeed any candidate with a real passion for his or her ideas and ideals.

Obama has that, and he'll need to call upon all of it to beat Gingrich. The Republican convention is still a long way off, and anything can happen in the rest of the primaries, but tonight could change everything.

Fringe 4.9: Elizabeth

A tender - yes, tender, even beautiful - Fringe 4.9 tonight, mainly because -

Alt-Elizabeth - our Peter's mother - visits Walter, to convince him to try to help Peter get back to the world and people he loves. She forgives Walter for kidnapping Peter - in which her transformed alternate reality, Peter died as he and Walter were crossing the lake. And she convinces Walter.

A little later, when Walter comes to see Peter, it's clear that Peter is starting to feel a real connection to Walter. It may be that the main help that Walter can give Peter to get back "home" is getting Peter in touch with the fact, or, at least, almost fact, that Peter is home already.

Otherwise, I'm really enjoying the smooth way the alternate sets of characters relate to each in this new transformed double set of realities. Sitting across a table from one another, out in the field shooting bad guys, mixing Peter in as a a wild card who knows things that neither set of characters does, Fringe is giving us a wild and wildly believable and satisfying tableaux. Not easy to do even in a novel, let alone television show. Fringe is setting standards in complex story telling that we may not see again for years.

And the villain set is pretty impressive too. Alt-Broyles is a damned good, dangerous double agent. He's even got me wondering if he's somehow brought our straight-laced Broyles into his web. Alt-Broyles and his boss Jones make a powerful combination. And the revelation at the end that Jones is taking his orders from our (transformed original universe) Nina promises a tough fight even against the assembled intelligences of both Walters, Olivias, Lees, and Peter.

Hey, check out my essay The Return of 1950s Science Fiction in Fringe in this new anthology

See also Fringe Returns for Season 4: Almost with Peter ... Fringe 4.2: Better and Worse Selves ... Fringe 4.3: Sanity and Son ... Fringe 4.4: Peter's Back, Ectoplasm, and McLuhan ... Fringe 4.5: Double Return ... Fringe 4.6: Time Slips ... Fringe 4.7: The Invisible Man ... Fringe 4.8: The Ramifications of Transformed Alternate Realities

See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21: Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ... Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened ... Death Not Death in Fringe

See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6 ... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ... New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22: Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

ChewROCKa

I suggest a new strategy, Artoo. Let the wookiee rock.

37 days...

Setting Dodd Straight on SOPA

Former Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), now the head of the MPAA and the main spokesperson for SOPA and PIPA (now shelved or withdrawn), just told Andrea Mitchell a bunch of nonsense on MSNBC. Here are some of his major points, with translations into truth to set the record straright:

Dodd: Most people misunderstood what the bills were about - which was, to stop the loss of American jobs due to Internet piracy.

Truth: Everyone understood that purpose of the bills. What we also understood were the provisions of the bill that would have held entire sites responsible for even one pirated item on their otherwise massive, non-pirated sites and could have crippled the Internet as we know it. Dodd said nothing whatsoever about that.

Dodd: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 has been effective against Internet pirates and has led to the shutdown of many sites. SOPA and PIPA were just trying to extend its provisions to international pirates operating here.

Truth: Right, the DMCA has been very effective. So why not just extend its provisions to cover international pirates? The DMCA has none of the provisions of SOPA and PIPA which could have crippled the Internet.

Dodd: The First Amendment does not protect criminals, people who libel and slander others, etc.

Truth: Right, but the First Amendment does protect from government regulation all modes of speech and press which are not engaged in criminal, slanderous, or libelous actions. If The New York Times, for example, inadvertently published something deemed libelous, it could be sued for libel under the current laws. Those same laws can be used against anything online - without the need for SOPA and PIPA - and the same applies to piracy (with extension of DMCA to cover international pirates). The problem with SOPA and PIPA is they went way too far, and would have have seriously violated the First Amendment.

In sum - Dodd, after being rebuked by the withdrawal of SOPA, is starting off on the wrong foot for where we go from here. A little truth would help.

Dois novos vídeos da produção da 2ª temporada de "Game of Thrones"

A segunda temporada de "Game of Thrones" ganhou dois novos vídeos revelando detalhes da produção. O primeiro mostra as paisagens da Croácia, país que serviu de locação para as cenas de Porto Real e Qarth, entre outros; e o segundo fala sobre a direção de arte da temporada, como o desenvolvimento dos sets e objetos de cena. Assista:

Últimas notícias de "Game of Thrones"

Estive afastado da internet por duas semanas, e durante esse período algumas notícias sobre "Game of Thrones" foram divulgadas. Para manter o blog sempre completo (e você sempre bem informado!), listei abaixo as principais notícias da série. Confira:

Anotem em suas agendas: a HBO confirmou a estréia da segunda temporada de "Game of Thrones" para o dia 1º de Abril (Dia da Mentira) nos EUA. A estréia no Brasil ainda não foi marcada.
Não tem pra ninguém: Peter Dinklage venceu o Globo de Ouro de Melhor Ator Coadjuvante em Série, Minissérie ou Telefilme por seu trabalho como Tyrion Lannister em "Game of Thrones", em cerimônia realizada no último domingo, dia 15. Vale lembrar que Peter venceu também o Emmy na mesma categoria. Infelizmente, "Game of Thrones" perdeu para "Homeland" na outra categoria na qual concorria, Melhor Série de TV.
Os efeitos visuais da primeira temporada de "Game of Thrones" foram criados por dois pequenos estúdios, Screen Scene e Blue Bolt (cujo ótimo trabalho pode ser conferido nesses vídeos). Mas agora, na segunda temporada, a série terá muito mais cenas com efeitos, e um estúdio maior teve de ser contratado. Segundo o site Westeros, este novo estúdio será o Pixomondo, empresa que trabalhou nos efeitos de filmes como "Hugo", "Super 8", "Velozes e Furiosos 5", "Percy Jackson", "2012", "A Hora do Pesadelo", "Ninja Assassino" e "Sucker Punch".
A HBO confirmou também a lista oficial de diretores dos episódios da segunda temporada de "Game of Thrones". Eles serão: Alan Taylor (episódios 1, 2, 8 e 10), Alik Sakharov (episódio 3), David Petrarca (episódios 4 e 5), David Nutter (episódios 6 e 7), e Neil Marshall (episódio 9).

Truth Virtual Launch Party, part 2

Yesterday was Truth's official foray out into the real world. Today there are still questions to be answered! Here's the second installment of Q&A for Truth!

TRUTH's Book Birthday!!!

Today is the official release day of TRUTH, the sequel to XVI. And, wow - can I just say how unbelievably great that feels? It is like a "birth" day in so many ways. From conception to actually seeing your book in print, and then... presenting it to the world. The parallels are obvious and true. If you've ever actually given birth, which I have - twice - you'll know what I mean. If not - trust me. It's not an easy process! But, the feelings you have when you see your "baby" wipe out all the problems that preceded it!

You can see my "baby" there on the left side. Beautiful, no?

And... in prep for my launch parties (both in-person and virtual) - I've been working on some video & am going to share the 1st segment right here - right now!

Readers gave me questions they'd like answers to - so, I answered them. Here's a vid with the 1st set of questions (more tomorrow!)

The appeal of Downton Abbey

We’re now three episodes into season two of Downton Abbey, and the show continues to enthrall and delight—a fact that has apparently flummoxed some commentators, not because they don’t like the series but because it seems odd that such a proper and mannered British period piece should find the audience(s) is has. What, it is asked, is the appeal?

The question seems to me at best ingenuous and at worst paternalistic, ignoring in the first case the fact that such stories have always had a broad appeal, and subtly suggesting in the second that if it doesn’t contain sensationalistic story and spectacle, contemporary audiences (especially non-English ones) won’t get it. Yes, the hidebound class system depicted in Downton is alien to contemporary social mores; and yes, the series proceeds at an appropriately stately pace, with little in the way of lascivious storylines (Mary’s near-affair with the Turkish diplomat being the exception, sort of), and much harrumphing among both upstairs and downstairs about tradition and custom and the difference in kind between the aristocracy and everyone else.

But to wonder why this all appeals to contemporary audiences doesn’t give enough credit to contemporary audiences, who know a good story well told when they see it. There was much the same sort of pondering during the Jane Austen renaissance in the mid-90s, starting with the Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice and continuing with the adaptations of Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, and Mansfield Park (which, had a production of Northanger Abbey been done, would have run the gamut of Austen’s corpus). Why, everyone asked at the time, is Jane Austen so popular again?

Theories advanced at the time tended to focus on nostalgia, a wistful desire for the certainties of a stately and stable class system; Generation X (remember them?), stuck in their dead-end jobs and aimless lifestyles, thought longingly of the calm certainty of Mr. Darcy or Emma Woodhouse’s lives. The appeal of Downton Abbey, it has been suggested, lies in both the revisitation of Austen-esque manners, but also the social ferment underlying the action as WWI starts to show the fault lines in the British class system and heralds the slow decline of the British Empire. In a recession-stricken time, it has been suggested, the discomfiture of the aristocracy and the new possibilities for social mobility resonate with audiences angry at the predations of Wall Street.

None of which I disagree with—certainly the waxing and waning of Austen and the periodic prominence of such series as Upstairs, Downstairs, The Jewel in the Crown, and Downton Abbey reflect shifts in the popular imagination—but it does seem a little overblown to me. The better considerations I have read do get around to the more important question, “why now?” as opposed to just “why?” but then the appeal of Downton Abbey seems self-evident after watching just one episode … it is extremely well written, well acted, and well produced, and makes one want to know what happens next.