Some ten things things

via Elizabeth Bear: ten things I am mostly ignorant about Japanese history. Microbiology. Truck and tractor pulls. Sub-Saharan African political geography. Modern visual art. Parenthood. Contemporary Mainstream Literature. Belgian cookery. The War of the Roses. What has been going on with Macs in the last ten years since I jumped ship. ten things I, like Clive Barker, don’t really know much about–but do know enough to get myself into trouble with: The Korean language. Wacky new cutting-edge physics. Raver culture. Central Asian political geography. Modernist poetry. Keeping a pet. The New Weird. The flashy side of Indian cooking. (I never …

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Elizabeth Bear’s 10 Things Learned From Writing Popular Fiction

There are some excellent points in ten things I have learned from writing popular fiction. A few favorites are: 2. It helps if you honestly like to blow stuff up. Or at least write about blowing stuff up. 3. All books are broken. Some are less broken than others. Some are broken in ways that a particular set of readers do not mind in the least. If you can find out the group of people who do not mind the ways in which your books are broken, you have identified your target audience. Unfortunately, this fact does not excuse you …

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OPERATION_NUKOREA

Young Hae Chang’s OPERATION_NUKOREA is enough to make me actually worry about North Korea a little; moreover, it’s enough to make me worry about the fact that so few people I know here seem worried about North Korea. Via the now-defunct but still cool Magnificent Melting Object, which was once run by someone I bet I would’ve gotten along with.

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