Twelve hours made the old Amalgam day:
first three to warn the people of the Sun,
six more to work under Its fiery sway,
and three to feel the slavery was done.
Monthly Archives: December 2009
Americans tend not to “feel” that their continent rests on a foundation much older than the Civil War, or perhaps the Revolutionary War if you live on the East Coast.
But, not only are we surrounded by evidence of the cultures and civilizations that preceded European colonization, but even before them our land was the stomping ground of that quintessential beast from the Ice Age, the mammoth.
When most of us think of mammoths, we think of the vast Palearctic plain stretching from the last refuge of the Neanderthals in Europe to the frozen wastes of Siberia where mammoths still occasionally emerge from the permafrost.
But, Texas?
Well, on Saturday, Baylor University and the city of Waco opened for public viewing a 68,000 year old site where dozens of mammoths were killed by a landslide. Yes, Billy Bob, we live in an ancient land with traces of the dark bowels of the unlettered past lurking in the dust below our feet.
And, no… there are no indications that they made mammoths bigger in Texas. Yippy-ki-yi-nay.
OMG… have I been lax with the publishing updates! (I wanted to italicize the first person pronoun in that sentence, because that’s how I heard it in my head, but the italicized I just doesn’t read right for some reason… any thoughts?)
Firstly, agent Janet Reid promotes author Brad Parks, to whom she is connected by acquaintance and Twitter followee Sophia Littlefield, who is an acquaintance of Dave White, a writer for a blog where Brad was a guest writer. The point of this convoluted series of connections? “I’d never heard of Brad Parks before 10:30am today and now I both know who he is, and have bought his book.”
That’s how it works. Or, at least, how it can work. (And see how italics works so much better with more than one letter?)
Keeping with the theme of advice for authors, editor Alan Rinzler offers up 9 tips for successful author readings, but his best tip is probably this: well done author readings can boost a publishing career, which can then enable the author to charge readers to attend author readings.
As usual, Nathan Bransford’s recent publishing update is so chock full of goodies that I hesitate to attempt a summary, except to mention that he includes (in order to mitigate anxiety over e-books) a link to Amazon’s Best Book Covers of 2009.
And, I mention that because my next publishing find is this New York Times piece by Joe Queenan on how a book’s cover can affect one’s enjoyment of the book. See? There’s a free lesson on the power of selecting and arranging information to enable segues. You’re welcome.
To finish off my list of publishing-related stuff, here are links to two other bloggers’ lists of publishing related stuff: Amy at Kimberley Cameron & Associates posted a short, but informative, glossary of publishing speak; and John Fox put up alist of various Top Books of 2009 lists … making this a triple whammy of lists!
kumatage {koo-mah-TAHZH. Noun.} According to Bowditch’s Navigator (24th Edition, 1854), a kumatage is “a bright appearance in the horizon, under the sun or moon, arising from the reflected light of those bodies from the small rippling waves on the surface of the water.”
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– Endangered Words : A Collection of Rare Gems for Book Lovers by Simon Hertnon.
The pink-white heart of Allien di Cambrose,
preserved by pale Amalgam’s Nectine monks,
displayed on Summer solstice with a rose,
is said to have been made of swine-throat chunks.