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As usual I have many favourite things on the internet this week, but one at the very top of the list is Anne of Cleves Gables, a Hark! a Vagrant retelling of the story of Anne of Cleves and Henry VIII as if she was Anne of Green Gables. It works surprisingly well and is both adorable and charming but honestly I had you at ‘Hark! a vagrant, right?’
There’s a new Verity! episode up. Erika, Deb, Kat and I look back on Series 7a in preparation for Series 7b which starts THIS WEEKEND!
The gorgeous Narrelle Harris has interviewed me – about a bunch of my work though she has particular interest in The Shattered City.
Bella Pagan of Tor.uk talks about the role of the commissioning editor in the new world of publishing social media.
The big news today is the purchase of GoodReads by Amazon. The official spin is here: Amazon press release; GoodReads press release. But the Publishers Weekly article does a better job of addressing some of the concerns of readers. Even if it doesn’t quite reach the emotional intensity expressed over Twitter…
Another big publishing news story this week is the current conflict between publisher Simon & Schuster, and book chain Barnes and Noble, which led to B&N refusing to take the next couple of months worth of titles. To see how authors have been personally affected by this move, see Stephanie Burgis‘ post about how it has hurt her new release. I read and loved Kat, Incorrigible, which is a magical regency adventure romp for middle grade readers, so can thoroughly recommend this series.
Random Alex interviews Thoraiya Dyer about her first collection, Asymmetry (part of the Twelve Planets series)
One Small Step (featuring my first short story sale this year) got a great review over at Publisher’s Weekly. They said some lovely things about editor Tehani!
i09 has a great collection of portraits by Vicky Trochez of the Parks and Recreation characters as members of the Justice League – which is wonderful except that no way is Leslie Knope Robin. Superman, Black Canary, SURE. But let’s not pretend she’s anyone’s sidekick, even with Ron Swanson as Batman.
All my other links for the week involve the whole ‘hey did nobody notice that women hardly ever write for Doctor Who’ discussion which has swept across the internet since this article in the Guardian. Short answer: yeah, many of us have been noticing this for a long time. Still, it’s nice to see the topic being taken seriously, by many male commentators as well as female – funnily enough women can talk about these issues until they are blue in the face, but it’s often only when men recognise there is a problem that the issue gains traction. Sigh.
In any case, while a lot of the most positive discussion was on Twitter yesterday (which is hard to link to) I recommend you check out posts on i09 and the Mary Sue, in the short-and-sweet podcast The Two Minute Time Lord, and this post by Deborah Stanish. For the sake of balance there’s also this post by Jonathan Morris, which does point out some of the unfortunate failings of the original Guardian article (such as the writer’s inability to recommend many women writers working in television for the show to call upon) but also is disappointing in its focus on the ‘meritocracy’ argument and the idea that writing is entirely an equal playing field. When you’re talking about a) science fiction, b) science fiction in the UK and b) television, that’s kind of laughable. Worth reading the comments in the Jonathan Morris article, though, especially the one that discusses the lack of female DIRECTORS in Doctor Who as well.
A blog post by Stella Duffy apparently sparked the Guardian article off in the first place – and after seeing this linked in various places I also want to draw people’s attention to Where Have All the Female Directors Gone?
Una McCormack’s extended answers to the interview she gave to the author of the original Guardian essay are posted here, and make for powerful reading in addressing the inequality of women writers in television.
To cheer you up after all that I wanted to share the awesome new Doctor Who vid doing the rounds which explains what happened to Strax the Sontaran between A Good Man Goes To War and The Snowmen but the BBC has taken it off iTunes. Mean!
instead, this week’s vid is brought to you by my three-year-old daughter who thinks the MuppetStudio channel is the best thing ever. It’s hard to argue with that.