Louise Marley's Blog
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May.07.2008
This picture shows legendary writer-in-hiding Salman Rushdie consoling the twenty-eight-year-old author Roberto Saviano at a party in New York. Saviano is the author of the 2006 hit GOMORRAH (Gomorra in Italian), which exposes a nearly unrecognizable--to most of us--underside of Italian culture...
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Apr.29.2008
I did one of those dumb things that can cause so much trouble. I left my debit card in the ATM machine at my bank, and didn't realize it until I took out my wallet at the grocery store. I spent half an hour on the phone with the bank getting it temporarily deactivated, and then I got a phone call....
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Apr.28.2008
Warning: snark factor of seven
I despair of trying to teach good writing skills to my students. If this example, from a reprint of Philippa Gregory's THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL, is now acceptable to both editors, copyeditors, and readers, I've gone wrong somewhere:
"The lances were down like...
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Apr.07.2008
Adventures in SciFi Publishing is a whiz-bang podcast, full of substantial up-to-date information about speculative fiction, with author interviews and impressively well-informed commentary. The latest edition, in particular, appeals to me because it takes on the issues of Borders' possible...
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Apr.06.2008
Toby Bishop had a very busy weekend in Boise at the Children's Literature Festival created and run by the incredible young independent booksellers of Rediscovered Books. They've only been in business for eighteen months, but yesterday Bruce and Laura Delaney saw their roomy, bright bookstore...
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Mar.31.2008
This is so, so cool. I love it when a book comes along and tells me something I already believe.
John Medina is a molecular biologist who's just published BRAIN RULES, a book about how our brains work and how we can keep 'em working. The good news? Some parts of the adult brain are just as...
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Mar.28.2008
Another new convention has been organized by that most dedicated and energetic of communities, science fiction fandom. This one will be in Spokane, Washington, August 1st to 3rd, 2008.
I somehow never understood about science fiction conventions until I attended Clarion West in 1993. When I...
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Mar.20.2008
When Borders Books & Music ran into financial difficulties a little more than a year ago, what did they decide to do? This is a multiple choice question:
1) Track book preferences of different U.S. markets (as in, Florida loves romance, but Seattle loves science fiction)
2) Require their...
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Mar.18.2008
Last weekend, kenyonsf and I were guests at the very first of what I hope--and lots of people in the South hope--will be many OmegaCon Science Fiction Conventions. There were problems, birth pains, if you will, but the enthusiasm of the 3500 fans who attended was a reminder of why this genre is a...
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Mar.12.2008
It appears that rainy Seattle, my beloved home town, carries more than its weight with the publishing world. Not only do we have Nancy Pearl, the intrepid librarian icon who wrote BOOK LUST and MORE BOOK LUST, to entice readers to new and diverse books, but we have Amazon, Costco, and Starbucks,...
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Mar.02.2008
There was an old Sesame Street recording I listened to approximately a thousand times when Zack was little, and on it Oscar the Grouch announces "Look out! I'm gonna SING!" Well, science fiction fans everywhere, to quote Oscar, look out! I'm gonna sing--again.
My wonderful folk trio,...
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Mar.01.2008
Two weeks ago I took what felt like a huge step, swearing off the internet for a time. I thought I was being a rebel, declaring my independence in order to cosset my poor, overworked muse. But now it seems (not surprisingly) I was just part of a trend. (Couldn't I be cutting-edge just once?) When...
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Feb.26.2008
Titles can be tricky. Sometimes authors make mistakes, as I did with THE MAQUISARDE, which most people can't pronounce. Sometimes the title itself is so great that it carries the book farther than it might have--THE DA VINCI CODE, perhaps? But here's an oddity, taken from the New York Times:
The...
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About Louise
Louise Marley is a former concert and opera singer who now writes fulltime. She is a two-time Endeavour Award winner, has had several ALA Best Books of the Year honors, and two Nebula nominations. Her bibliography includes science fiction, fantasy, and young...
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