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The Library of Congress is up to its old tricks again. Chronicling America has a number of scanned newspapers from 1880 to 1922 from various American states. The site, which is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program, allows users to search based on topics and zoom in to read papers from the more than 100 years ago.
A co-worker recently sent me a link to Life's list of 30 Dumb Inventions. I'd say there are probably more than 30, but this list is pretty good. I will admit, though, that I'm a big fan of the flying platform. I could use one of these as a substitute for city driving!
I plan to attend the 2009 edition of the Baltimore Book Festival ... as a customer, though, not as a vendor. But I still feel as if I should be more a part of the action. So, for the rest of September, I decided to give away a few copies of my workplace humor novel, "The Developers," in conjunction with raising money for Southwest Baltimore Charter School.
As a knockoff of my literary agent list, I have decided to supply you with the short list of publishers I have contacted for my latest book venture. After querying agencies for a few months, I started contacting more mid-range publishers with the hopes of avoiding agencies altogether. This is not to say that bypassing an agent is beneficial to everyone; I think it's worthwhile in my case for a few reasons:
There are numerous ways to get people's attention in an email, although, let's face it, people would rather watch YouTube videos than read emails. But if you work at the New Zealand firm ProCare, you may want to avoid anything other than basic black text. Two years ago, the company fired Vicki Walker for sending an email that highlighted a specific date and time in red, as well as an important message in all caps.
There are a lot of things the World Wide Web can do for you, but healing you is not one of them.
Our family just returned from Walt Disney World. While there are more comprehensive blogs and posts regarding WDW, I thought it might be worthwhile to include some of our experiences here. I'll try to keep them succinct, although I may go off on tangents, so be prepared!
For the most part, I'll pretty much pick up and read any book, although I can usually tell how interested I'll be in it within the first 20 pages. I found a copy of "Neuromancer" by William Gibson at (no joke) the dump, and even though I wasn't mesmerized by the jacket text, I thought I'd give it a shot.
Just in case you have forgotten, Sept. 19 is a special day. Yes, it's that day each year when you are allowed to talk like a pirate, and be thanked for doing so.
Authors who are either self-published or with small publishers have an extremely difficult time getting the word out about their novels. Most large publishing houses have money devoted to advertising, and well-known authors usually have their own publicists to handle marketing.