Do five links make a post?

[megwrites]

Because Friday is for nothing if not walking around the internet picking up shiny things.

John Scalzi talks about his short fiction rates and author Catherynne M. Valente replies by discussing her short fiction rates. Definitely a good couple of posts about rates, the market, and making a living in this business.

Justine Musk talks about writing like a bad girl in Part One and Part Two of her "Why You Need To Write Like a Bad Girl".

My favorite line of the two posts: "Because bad girls get to go everywhere." That my friends, is one excellent statement.

raecarson has an interesting discussion going about YA and what it is. I, of course, have strong feelings on the matter. But mostly, I just want YA to continue being a genre that under-18 readers can turn to for awesome books that are for them. Like I said in comments there. If there's ever a time in your life when you need really awesome books - it's when you're a kid.

And just for fun, The worst SF movies of the decade (also by John Scalzi). I pretty much agree with all his choices, though I'm wondering why none of the made-for-TV movies that SciFi (sorry, SyFy) puts out are on that list. Any "bad movie" compilation that does not include Mansquito is incomplete if you ask me.

Comments

[handyhunter.livejournal.com]

It's interesting to me that some YA authors have said they don't write specifically for a YA audience and yet that's where most of their books end up*. I think theirs are also the books I tend to re-read, or whose books "grow up" with me -- like I find different things in them as my life experience changes.

*I don't think this is a bad thing, necessarily, unless 1) they're bashing the YA genre or 2) being in YA is limiting their readerships because adults won't read kids' books. *eye-roll*

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

I wonder how much of that is due to the massive changes that YA as a genre has undergone over the past decade. In 1990 or 1995, an epic fantasy with a teenage protagonist would have made it over to the adult section, and teens would have found it there (Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, for example), but by now such a book is just as likely to get published as YA.

[handyhunter.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm sure some (most?) of it is the marketing -- YA is a hot genre so any book that remotely qualifies is shelved there. I see some books in YA that I think might have otherwise gone into SF/F (or urban fantasy, which to me is a sub-genre of SF/F, not its own thing, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) or the general fiction section. This isn't always a bad thing, or I'd have less books to read.