Links for your weekend reading 18/03/2016

This week’s link collection was a little more extensive than I realised, but now that I’m over the heart attack of looking at the folder, a lot of them are on similar themes. It’s been a bit of a week.

TV and film – still talking about *that* The 100 spoiler and LGBT representation

Variety had a good piece on the ongoing discussion of why so many people were upset about the death of another lesbian character. It goes into the history sets the debate into context for anyone unfamiliar with it, as well as explaining why this death had been the last straw for so many.

Related to that, Autostraddle compiled a list of all the lesbian and bisexual women who have died on screen. At last count, it was 142. For contrast, they also compiled a list of all the lesbian and bisexual women who got some form of happy ending. It’s…ah…a much, much smaller number.

Labels and the M/M community debate

Alexis Hall wrote an interesting and balanced post on the current debate raging in the M/M community around the Gay For You and bisexual erasure. It’s worth a look because it delves into both sides, both arguments, and demonstrates why it’s a debate that has no real solution.

And El of Just Love Romance wrote a beautiful piece on why labels are so important for some people.

Writing

Katherine Locke, a freelance editor, wrote a great piece on common problems she sees with manuscripts she edits, and suggestions on why they’re happening (so that you can fix them before they hit an editor or agent).

Things to consume

Sarah Maclean tweeted 100 romance recommendations and she storified them for our perusal. All the subgenres, all the combinations, and the ones she recommended that I’ve read are amazing so I’m sure the rest are, too. My wishlist grew so much while she was doing this.

There’s a new West Wing podcast starting, going through the series episode by episode, and one of the contributors is Will Bailey. Yup, Joshua Malina will be one of the voices. All the actors in the show were intelligent and politically savvy, so I’m anticipating this with great glee.

Andrea Philips is compiling a spreadsheet of conventions. She’s looking for contributors to help out, because that’s a huge task, and I’m frankly delighted. If you’re interested in going to SFF cons, for any reason, it can be hard to find out what is running, where, and when, in order to plan your schedule. This should help so much.

And finally…

This week I’m sharing a short story by Laurie Penny. Your Orisons May Be Recorded is about angels, demons, and a call centre where prayers are answered. I’m going to thinking about it for a long time.

Links for your weekend reading 04/03/2016

A weekly round-up of links that I’ve collected over the week, curated for your catch-up convenience.

Publishing News

First up, this is probably old news for many, if you’re not jacked into the latest publishing news then this may still be relevant to you: Samhain Publishing is closing its doors.

This is a huge blow. As a reader, I always knew that if I picked up a book from Samhain, it would be well edited and beautifully presented. Some of my favourite authors are published with them, and they were one of the first houses to publish gay romance as a genre. As a writer, this is a blow because they’d been at the top of my publishing bucket house, for all the same reasons that I enjoyed reading their books.

Nook is pulling out of ebook distribution in the UK. According to the article, they’re pairing with Sainsbury’s to ensure that users can still access their content, but people will have to take action by the end of May to make that happen.

These two pieces of news are a strong hint that there’s a big shake-up coming in ebooks this year, and on the face of it, that doesn’t look good for anyone.

And it looks like mass market is also facing issues: Penguin Random House announced a round of layoffs today.

In slightly happier news, the submissions guidelines have been posted for POCs Destroy Horror. Submissions don’t open until April 1st. Queers Destroy Fantasy was where I sent my very first submission (and got my first very rejection), so I have a huge fondness for the Destroy anthologies.

Ghostbusters trailer!

You’ve probably seen it, but here’s the Ghostbusters trailer just in case.

And here’s a nice break-down on the awesome things that trailer is doing.

Essays

In Uncanny Magazine, Jim C Hines talks about why historical context cannot (and should not) be used to excuse bigotry in the works and authors we hold up as classics of the genre.

Over on The Booksmugglers, S.L. Huang, Sunil Patel, and Haralambi Markov discussed the process of shifting from writing short stories to novels and vice versa. I’m a natural novel writer trying to learn to write short stories, so Huang’s descriptions of how different the pacing issues are struck close to home for me.

On Lady Business, KJ (owlmoose) talks about why “Just do it yourself” doesn’t help in diversity discussions.

And finally…a story

Remember choose your own adventure stories? Try Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0 by Caroline M. Yoachim for a really interesting, and disturbing, take on the trope.