The Haul of Books: Volume Six
Well, as per usual, I have more books to mention. I’m still working through the various books handed over to me from my friend. So here goes: This batch includes: Knight Life and Sir Apropos of Nothing by Peter David, Fools by Pat Cadigan, The Baker’s Boy and A Man Betrayed by J. V. Jones, Nobody’s Son by Sean Stewart, Shockball by S. L. Viehl, The Seer King by Chris Bunch, The Varayan Memoir by Rick Shelley, and The Warrior King by Chris Bunch.And this one is The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht. That’s it for this volume. What books did you get recently?
Bringing the Ball To You: The Audience
Some formal complaints have been made and some things I fiddled with turned out to basically be as useless as I thought they would be (I’m looking at you Adsense). The honest truth is, I’m finding ads to be wholly insufficient. I’d love to have more relevant ones (such as the occasional ad from publishers). I find Google’s policies on ads and the like to be rather ridiculous considering that their ad model is literally one of the worst I have ever seen. They need a targeted ad system, one which allows users to have full control over what shows up on their sites. But as far as I know, they don’t. So, complaints have been made and things that will not be happening include Adsense and the paid post thingies. This is why I have readers: you can tell me when I cross the line. I have crossed that line, and now am backtracking. In fact, I want to use this space to ask for any other comments from readers. What don’t you like about WISB? What do you like? Seriously, I want honest opinions. If you despise something, tell me. If you like something else, tell me. I want to understand why you come to WISB and what might make you leave it. Your opinion matters and changes will be made if there are things that really need to go to preserve whatever it is you find most appealing in this website. So let me know!
Random Freelance Woes
It’s been an interesting night, what with my friend ceasing her employment at my current freelance job due to some logical reasons that I generally agree with, my worrying about how to pay for graduate school because I don’t have rich parents to offload thousands of dollars onto me, and my considering the various ways in which I can earn money without having to work at Taco Bell, which results in my spending time searching for freelance jobs that don’t have to do with business or finance and other such things. With that in mind, I’ll see where it goes. I’m fiddling with a site called Blogvertise and some other sites. The interesting thing I’ve always found rather humorous about the whole hubbub regarding these sorts of places is that there seems to be a lot of assumption that one has to essentially turn into an advertising Muppet. “Here’s the website, it’s nifty cool, yippee pandering advertising nonsense.” I don’t understand that. I don’t intend to take things that have subjects completely uninteresting to my readers, nor do I intend to address Blogvertise subjects any different that I would anything else. If I get offered a slot for something I find repugnant, I’m going to say that. Why not? Technically speaking almost any kind of publicity is good publicity; it’s simply a matter of opinion, I suppose. So, this is the development around these parts. Don’t worry. Regular content will be, well, as always. I don’t even think this thing will go anywhere, as I suspect the majority of the stuff will be completely unrelated. And you’ll all know when something has been paid for by the evil man. And you’ll know when I’m being honest, because something you’d expect me to hate will be, well, hated. And of course, if a lot of you have a visceral reaction to all this, I’ll drop it like a diseased hat. But I promise you that WISB will always be WISB. Period. It’ll never cease it’s WISBiness, even if I have the occasional post that I happened to earn $5.00 on (and I do mean occasional; WISB is a personal venture, but I’d like to try some new things, just for the hell of it, and I see no reason why I can’t earn a little bit of money off this place if all I’m doing is being WISBy). And that is that.
Rejection: Interstellar Realty
Another rejection! Aha! I’d dance right now, but I’m too tired from all the school work I’m doing. Things are getting rough, what with finals next week, and all my essays being due in less than nine days (and my trip to England). But I’ll babble about the personal stuff elsewhere. For now, “Interstellar Realty” is off to some other place!
To My Readers: Appreciations and Questions
Have I said that I appreciate all my readers lately? Probably not. But I do. I appreciate you folks quite a bit, because without you, WISB would just be another one of those blogs that nobody ever reads. There are well over one hundred of you reading, which doesn’t sound like much, but is a lot to me. I don’t know who all of you are (some of you comment; most of you don’t), but regardless, each and every one of you is important. With that in mind (call it *sskissery if you will), I’d like to put a shout out to all of you reading to come in and leave a comment (or email me–I really appreciate emails from readers) based on the following: What are some topics you’d be interested in me discussing? By this, I don’t necessarily mean specific subjects, such as what’s going on with the whole RaceFail09 thing or random things about science fiction, but more specifically to things you’d be interested in hearing my opinion about. Think of this as a sort of semi-Q&A thing. You ask me a question, I respond in a blog post. The reality is, that while I do blog about a lot of SF/F/Writing related subjects, I undoubtedly miss subjects you’d be interested in me discussing. Not too long ago I wrote about how to write reviews, which was prompted by an email from a reader, and I’d like to turn that into a tradition, if possible. I’d like to interact with as many of you as possible in a more direct way, where applicable. The one thing I really enjoy about blogging is interacting with you guys. So, if you have a question about writing, science fiction, fantasy, or, heck, even something unrelated to any of those, feel free to fire it my way! You can leave it as a comment, send it via email, or both.
Realms of Fantasy: Alive Again
This just came to me in my email: Realms of Fantasy is not dead. It was just resting. The announcement reached my email a few minutes ago: Realms of Fantasy has been bought by Tir Na Nog Press and will continue to provide the fantasy and literary community with fabulous stories and artwork under the editorial direction of Shawna McCarthy. More information can be found at SF Scope. Good news indeed!