Links

Signal Boosting

Sexism:

Slut Shaming and Concern Trolling in Geek Culture – “The discomfort came from a constant stream of microaggressions. A constant flow of women leaning in and stage whispering in mock-concern about how short my skirt was. A constant flow of men grilling me about whether I had watched the series, and trying to trip me up on trivia.”

Rape Survivor Sues over “False” Accusation – One more example of our society’s eagerness to see women as liars, making up false accusations of rape. The police refused to believe D.M. had been raped, despite physical evidence, and instead ended up charging her with filing a false claim. Her rapist was arrested three years later.

Kickstarting/Fundraising:

Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for Science Fiction Authors – I’ve wanted to attend this for a while, and haven’t gotten to it. Sadly, Launch Pad has lost their NASA and NSF funding, so they’re looking to raise the money to continue the program.

A Knight in the Silk Purse: Tales of the Emerald Serpent 2 – Volume two of a shared-world anthology that includes folks like Julie Czerneda, Howard Tayler, Lynn Flewelling, Martha Wells, and many more.

Clarion Write-a-thon: The Clarion SF/F writing workshop is looking for authors to join their write-a-thon.

Miscellaneous Awesomeness:

N. K. Jemisin’s Continuum Guest of Honor Speech – As next year’s GoH, I have one year to prepare a speech that lives up to the one Jemisin gave this year. I…don’t think that’s going to be enough time.

Delia’s Shadow ARC Contest – Author Jaime Lee Moyer is giving away ARCs of her book Delia’s Shadow [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy]. I gave a blurb for this one: “Moyer creates a hauntingly real San Francisco, full of characters you can’t wait to get to know better. Except for the killer, of course. He’s just disturbing as heck. Delia’s Shadow is an engaging debut novel, one that cost me a good night’s sleep.”

Thursday Links: Autism and Other

April is Autism Awareness month–or perhaps Autism Acceptance Month is the better approach. As it happens, I’m working on a short story with an autistic protagonist. I also have an autistic son, as some of you know. Between the additional posts & discussion, research for the story, and my own ongoing personal efforts to expand my understanding, I’ve been doing a lot of autism-related reading lately.

Other links:

Let There Be Links

Returning to a Review; Not a Spoiler Warning: After reading my review of The Dragon Slayer’s Handbook, author Merrie Haskell blogged about why she chose to write a heroine with a clubfoot, and why Tilda does not get magically healed at the end of the book.

The World SF Travel Fund: This project was started in 2011 with the goal of helping one or two international persons to get to a major SF/F event. As of this morning, they’ve met their $3000 goal, which funds the project for the next two years. But there’s 10 days left, and wouldn’t it be awesome to see it hit at least $4500 and provide them with a bonus year? The rewards are great, too. Donate $10, and you’ll get the e-books of the Apex Book of World SF, volumes 1 and 2.

Con or Bust Auction Begins Saturday, February 9: “Con or Bust helps people of color/non-white people attend SFF conventions.” You can read more about the founding and history of the project on their About us page. Items up for auction includes books, critiques, Green Tea Yoda Oreo cookies, and much more.

Weregeek, a web comic, talked about the Hawkeye Initiative yesterday and suggested that someone should do something similar for fantasy RPG art. Hm…

What do you think of John Scalzi’s new tattoo? Okay, so maybe I Photoshopped it. For background and better picture of Gamma Rabbit, see John’s post here. I’m impressed and amazed at how effectively he’s taken a rather irksome annoyance and transformed it into a fundraiser which has drawn international attention and brought in more than $50,000 in pledges for causes such as RAINN, NAACP, Emily’s List, and Human Rights Campaign. Think we can convince him to get the tattoo for real if the pledges hit $100K?

Some friends of mine are Kickstarting Glitter & Madness: The Speculative Nightclub Anthology, a collection to be filled with “Roller Derby, nightclubs, glam aliens, (literal) party monsters, drugs, sex, glitter, debauchery” and more. If they meet their fundraising goal, you’ll get stories from Amal El-Mohtar, Diana Rowland, Sofia Samatar, Tim Pratt, and many more. Including a 16,000 word InCryptid novella from Seanan McGuire!

Finally, Darth Maul would like you to know that he is awesome. (I’ve had this stuck in my head ever since we watched the whole LEGO Star Wars “Empire Strikes Out” show over the weekend.)

Friday Stuff

1. I’ll be at the Westland Public Library tomorrow as part of their Local Authors Fair. At 11:00, I’m giving a presentation on “Publishing with the Big Wigs.” Details here.

2. Raechel Henderson has been reviving Eggplant Literary Productions. Raechel was one of the first editors to buy my stuff, so I’m excited to see this. She’s doing a kickstarter for Spellbound, a children’s fantasy magazine. A pledge of $5 earns an electronic sampler that includes my story “Like Father, Like Daughter,” a sequel to my Writers of the Future tale “Blade of the Bunny.”

3. Whedon and the Avengers Cast discuss the need for more women on the team. Thank you calico-reaction for the link. I particularly appreciate Johansson’s comments here.

4. Bechdel: Not Actually a Test. An essay by Rawles Marie Lumumba that nicely articulates some strengths and limitations of the Bechdel Test.

Miscellaneous (with LEGO Game Boy)

The Fundraiser for Rape Crisis Centers raised more than $500 in the first 24 hours, which is wonderful! Our next goal is $750, at which point a book by Anton Strout gets added to the prizes. Thank you to everyone who’s donated and spread the word so far!

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I’ll be doing a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) tomorrow, April 13, starting at 7:00 p.m. CST. Having read some of the AMAs they’ve done with other authors, I expect this to be fun.

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ARCs of Libriomancer have been spotted in the wild! Cranking up the authorial anxiety in 3…2…1…

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A blog post by author Adrienne Kress: How to Write Female Characters (or as I like to call them, Characters).

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Finally, because I haven’t done anything LEGO in a while, have a LEGO Game Boy. That’s also a Transformer. With a LEGO Tetris cartridge. That transforms into a bird, Laserbeak-style. Oh, just click the pic and check it out! This was built by Baron von Brunk.

Hello there, Friday…

My son has been sick this week, so it’s all been a bit of a blur of schedule-juggling and trying to keep him quiet and resting (because when the medicine kicks in, he feels better, so he promptly runs around … which stirs up the asthma/congestion nastiness). On the upside, I’ve now watched approximately six trillion episodes of the Wild Kratts, and can tell you how an owl’s fringed feathers allow it to swoop down silently, or how the basilisk lizard’s toes are fringed to help it run across water.

Yeah, fringe is in these days.

So anyway, all I’ve got this morning are some links.

Patrick Stewart talks about growing up with an abusive father and the dangers of slashing support to domestic violence shelters and services.

“My mother had no escape route. There were no refuges she could run to; no helplines to call; no advocates to speak out for her. No one came to help, even though everyone knew what was happening behind our closed doors. The small houses in our road were close together, and every Monday morning I walked to school with a bowed head, praying that I wouldn’t run into a neighbour who had heard the weekend’s rows.”

China Mieville on racism and what is and isn’t “censorship.”

“Indeed, an astoundingly small proportion of arguments ‘for free speech’ & ‘against censorship’ or ‘banning’ are, in fact, about free speech, censorship or banning. It is depressing to have to point out, yet again, that there is a distinction between having the legal right to say something & having the moral right not to be held accountable for what you say.”

Finally, a collection of LEGO optical illusions, by Brixe63.

2 Links and a LEGO Starship

I chatted with my editor a week or two back, and I’m hoping to get the final draft of Libriomancer finished today … which means all you get in the blog are a pair of links and some LEGO niftiness.

Link the First: Today is the last day of Pat Rothfuss’ Worldbuilders fundraiser, which has raised more than a quarter of a million dollars this year. The list of signed books and other prizes is like Santa smashed open the pinata of fandom, and an endless waterfall of awesomeness began pouring out.

Link the Second: The Con or Bust auction, which helps fans of color/non-white fans attend SFF conventions, begins on February 11 at 12:01 EST. Details here.

Finally, I present to you the U. S. S. Reliant, in LEGO. (In the Mutara nebula, no less!) The only thing that could make this better would be a minifig of Ricardo Montalban holding a cute little plastic Ceti eel. This was built by Christer Nyberg, aka Myko. Click here or on the pic for the full photo set.

Link Roundup

We’re back! Got home late last night, and began working through the backlog of e-mail and comments. It looks like folks enjoyed my trio of guest bloggers. Of course, the problem with bringing three very smart people in to do those posts is that now they’ve gone and raised the bar, and I’m gonna have to add at least 50% more cleverness to my own posts.

But not today. Today is my catch-up day, including some of the links that went by last week…

I was supposed to have a guest post for Fantasy Matters, but I blew it. I’m still annoyed with myself about that one. I hate, hate, hate missing deadlines, and I love the FM folks. They invited me to be a guest back when they were an academic fantasy convention. That’s when I first got to meet Pat Rothfuss and Nnedi Okorafor and lots of other cool people.

Oh, and I’m also on Google+ now, talking about things like lightsaber-wielding dinosaurs. As one does.

I’ll probably do a Snow Queen’s Shadow discussion post this week. Any preference as to what day?

I think that’s all for now. Normal blogging service shall resume soon.

Hope everyone’s having a great weekend!

Friday Links

I’ve got several authors who’ve agreed to write First Book Friday pieces for me, but none of them are ready yet, so today you get random link sausage instead.

Links

A few links for your Saturday morning…

Cat Valente on e-book pricing.

C. E. Petit on the Google Books Settlement.

A Dreamwidth post which talks about the politics behind the DDoS attacks on LiveJournal (via Sherwood Smith).

Tobias Buckell on his first year of selling his e-published short fiction collection Tides from New Worlds. (Lots of data and graphs here.)

Why your Self-Publishing Service Probably Didn’t Cheat You, from Writer Beware.

And finally, Jim C. Hines’ Fundraiser for Rape Crisis Centers, which has raised more than $700 so far. If we pass $1000, I’ll pick one winner and give him/her a cameo in Libriomancer.

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