Yup, another rejection. I suspect they will be pouring in now, since most of the pieces I have have been out for quite a bit. In any case, the more rejections the merrier, right? Right? I’m at 40 recorded ones here on WISB, and I’ve got at least five more under my belt that haven’t been mentioned. So, yeah! It’s off somewhere else now!
I have yet another Story Wordle! Check it out: What about all of you out there? Any Story Wordles for you?
I just keep finding nifty stuff to let you all know about. Hope you find some of these interesting: I give you Zombie Kids. I love this image. For those of you writing superhero fiction/comics, you might want to check out this detailed questionnaire. Might be a good place to start with developing a superhero or supervillian who is three dimensional. Remember that post not too long ago about current events and reader preferences? Well, I was right about a few things, like how escapist fiction gets a rise in not-so-good times. Natania Barron has an interesting article on the other in fantasy literature. It’s short, but interesting nonetheless. Futurismic highlights some of the insanely Orwellian things happening in the U.K. right now. You’ll be surprised the things they’re doing. You think we have it bad? They’re closer to Fascism than we’ve ever been. I may be ranting about this in the near future. Here’s an interesting cyberpunk reading list. Might be worth checking out if you’re into that genre or are curious about it. (Thanks to SF Signal) Book Giveaways Today’s Adventure has a copy of Bloody Jack by L. A. Meyer to give away.
I suspect that this question was meant partially in jest, but I see fit to answer it. For the record, I know that this question is directed at GRRM’s fantasy series, and not his other writings, which I have had the privilege to read. So I will direct my answer to the intent of the question. There are a lot of reasons why I have yet to read George R. R. Martin’s fantasy series. Some of them, or perhaps all them, the questioner will probably not like (or already knows about): I have too many books on my review list. I have too many books in my reading list for college courses. I don’t like being pressured into reading books because it ruins the reading experience for me. The work is over-hyped by the people who like it, which also ruins the reading experience for me. Perhaps the first one isn’t a great excuse. After all, I should probably attempt to work in books that aren’t sent to me for review in order to keep things fresh. And, if we’re to knock that off, then we can drop the second one as well, since it would no longer be relevant. That leaves the last two. My biggest problem with reading books recommended to me is that too often it feels like I’m being bludgeoned to death with the entire prospect. This isn’t always so, but a lot of folks with a professed love for a particular writer or series have a tendency to really drive home their desire to get you to read the same work that they’ve fallen head over heels for. This is not directed necessarily at the questioner, but more at the GRRM fanbase in general. I have been told by multiple GRRM fans that I have to read A Game of Thrones. It’s repeated over and over to me by these folks, even when I’ve asked some of them to stop and let it rest (some of them have been kind enough to stop). This creates a lot of problems for me as a reader. I want my reading experience to be enjoyable, and right now I cannot escape the reality that reading A Game of Thrones will be fraught with conflicting messages: the side of me that wants to remain unbiased, and the part of me that believes that A Game of Thrones is the best fantasy novel ever written, even though I haven’t read it. I need to clear my head of all this in order to properly read a game of thrones without bias. The same thing has happened to a lot of other books. I can’t help it, but the more pressure placed on me to read something, the less likely I’m going to read it. Think of it like going to a movie that has received an overwhelming amount of hype and realizing it doesn’t live up. I don’t want that to happen to A Game of Thrones. I want that book to be great when I read it, not because others say so, but because I can actually see it. What about you? Any of you out there have similar issues? Have any of you folded to pressure and had a bad experience (or a good one)? Anywho. If you have a question you’d like me to answer, feel free to send it to arconna[at]yahoo[dot]com, or leave it as a comment, or send it as a twitter message with @shaunduke at the front of the message. Thanks!
Well, there goes another one for this piece. I’m going to laugh if I get rejected from every single paying market for this piece. I really will. I’ll record it for you all if it happens. Not because I’m being stupid or moping over it, but because it’s legitimately funny to me. Anywho, it’s off to some other place!
Is it just me or does it seem like YA fiction is incapable of winning in the lit world? On the one hand there are literature enthusiasts and academics who decry that YA is an unimportant, insignificant, and juvenile form of literature, while on the other there are parents, teachers, religious fanatics, and irresponsible anti-realistic-lit Nazis who throw fits every two seconds if a YA novel so much as talks about a subject that teens are already talking about anyway. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of a support group for YA fiction. I mean, the readers are there, obviously, and they are voracious readers with an unquenchable thirst for YA, but these folks also seem to not have much of a say when it comes to defending YA from the critics. Sure, they can cry and throw a fit all they want, but when it comes down to it, they aren’t really doing much in the way of defending YA from what I see as unfair criticism. Much like science fiction, YA is a serious genre. I don’t understand how we can laugh it off as frivolity one moment, and then have a rectal fit in another when a work decides to talk about sex or drugs. Perhaps this is all a way for us to ignore what YA fiction is really offering. YA is, after all, mean for teenagers, and teenagers really do go through a lot of sh*t. They experience sexual awakening, growth, rejection, confusion, drugs, etc. It all sort of hits them at once. Let’s face it, teenagers know a lot more about sex and drugs today than most of us did when we were that age. Even I can admit that and I’m not so far removed from the new generation of teenagers as others (being only 25 and all). It seems silly to get upset over the content of a book that probably wouldn’t even surprise a teenager anyway. Obviously there’s a lot of YA that is nothing short of fluff–literature that has little to offer in the way of serious discussion about growing up, about life and reality. We can’t keep teenagers in bubble anymore, no matter how hard we try. I’ve always considered high school to be a transitional period into the real world for most kids. There they begin to face some of the harsh realities that make up the world as it really is. But critics and academics are largely avoiding this discussion, it seems. They all want to pass off YA as fluff, even the stuff that happens to be more than fluff–more, shall we say, literary (whatever that means these days). So, perhaps we need a support group for YA, a community of folks willing to give YA the attention it deserves–not necessarily in the sense of trying to sell books or make people see that it is good stuff, but in the sense that we try to point out its importance to teenage readers and literature as a whole. Or is there one already out there? Where’s our YAL(ns)A (Young Adult Literature not-so-Anonymous)? What do you all think about YA? Do you dislike it? Why? Do you hold the same views as those that pass off YA as fluff? Do you love YA? Leave a comment and tell me what you think about all this.
