Launching Magpie Carnival Monday

I don't know where Brad Carpenter got his images, but I love the birdie pics.

This isn't the usual blog carnival where people send in related posts for aggregation. No, these are links I've collected myself. I could call today's solitary pursuit the Ma5turbat*ry Carnival, but spell that one right, and you'll get more prevert search traffic than finds me through transparent dresses already. No thanks. So, I'm naming it the honorable Magpie Carnival, because I've collected these links like shiny objects, horded, and interwoven them until sharing the glories with you. Tip your waitress. We'll be here all week.

UPDATE: Must be the indulgent air of springtime. I'm not the only one making comparisons between writing and other things beginning with "w" and ending with "ing".

Magpie Carnival of things Bookish

Last month, I put a poll on MetaxuCafe about what avant-garde methods writers were considering to promote themselves, including online serialization. As you'll see if you check here, almost no one answered. Sure, occasionally, writers get too busy for comment, what with sighing into hankies and shooting up. But trolling online, discussion of same abounds.

Here are guidelines for online serialization from Brokentype, including a link to an online horror, Thirteen Bullets by Dave Wellington. As you'll notice, Wellington is also using the site of his freebie to promote his just released for-pay Manhattan zombie novel, Monster Island. If you let him know you ordered, he'll also send you a free chapbook of short fiction from the same world. This is a guy seriously trying to get read. Well-played, zombie master.

The thoughtful and forward-leaning in his comfy chair Grumpy Old Bookman will be releasing his latest novel free online as a pdf. Authorial rationale and story premise here. How and Why Lisa's Dad Got To Be Famous to appear starting Wednesday.

As a book distributor, Bookworld keeps getting bigger by successfully thinking small, capitalizing on growth in niche markets, showing that, especially now, there are many universes in which to to operate. Niches may not be pigeon holes, they may be career platforms.

Emily Davies, young scribe accused of thieving sections of her book proposal loses a big money contract. But how should she have known? After all, if plagiarism's good enough for Vladimir Putin....

Via Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind: Charles Taylor lists the signals that tell him, "Don't Read This Book!" My favorites: Any book with jacket copy that includes the words "searing," "rollicking" or "an indictment." Seven words: Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Also via Confessions: As if the opportunities for self-satisfaction I noted Friday which the Grauniad's given Jonathan Freedland weren't enough- and obviously someone thought they weren't- he's been given column inches in the Sunday section for another greasy and optional spew about the creative process behind his last stinker. Here, Freedland notably and oddly seems to be using it as an opportunity to look askance at those of religious conviction (no, not those- Christians) who might want to read his book, and to insinuate the popularity of some of these novels as an indicator of something (finger to nose) about "the state of our world."

I think the factual basis of The DaVinci Code is hokum, but I read it straight through and lent it out, because it was fun at the time. I haven't read Freedland's novel, and so shouldn't technically label it a stinker, however, I haven't read any real positive takes on it yet. If you accept Freedland's article premise, you might think the people driving hardcover sales are all sybaritic, pre-law student Wiccans with dead pets and otherworldly occupations. But I believe people buy books about boy wizards and old professors , collectors of souls, Labrador retrievers, Justice gone bad, and Hollywood's trash when they think they'll be good reads. So, what does that tell us about the state of out world exactly? Oh wait, I know. People still like to be vicariously engaged and entertained, no matter what the trends or storylines. Sorry, JF, if your book's not obliging them.