Day 16 - The Role of Morals in Writing - Part I: Disturbing Trends IN YA Fiction

In a blog post on the QueryTracker.net blog, the May 2011 YA Contest Winners were announced. First and third place seem fine. Second, while well written, can only be classified as Erotica, ie, literary porn. Essentially, a teenage boy finds a mysterious, fully naked woman in his room. She is described in a sexual manner, as is the boy's sexual reactions to her. The F- word is used in the very first sentence. Now this might be suitable for an adult book. I wouldn't read it, but I don't hold it against others. What I find disturbing is that it is not just sensual, it is sexualized and is targeted for the Young Adult crowd, which is the 14-21 age range. So, essentially, they awarded a 2nd prize to porn targeted at 14 year old boys and girls. It doesn't help that at the end of the first page...

Day 14 - A Shout Out and Learning to Network

I have three goals with writing it seems. I only knew until late last night about two of them. The first is of course to write at least one sentence a day. Doing great! The second is to write a blog post a day. So far so good. The third I did not even realize I was doing until last night. It's that I always aim to do one extra thing a day that moves my writing career forward, be that improving at least one feature on my blog, networking, making concrete plans for steps I need to take, or researching an aspect of writing, marketing, or publishing. I think it's a good thing, and now that it is defined, I will ensure to the best of my ability it happens. Some days are more ax sharpening than others, but every day should have a little bit of time at the grindstone. Today, I decided to take...

Day 13 - Massive Overhaul, Blog Under Construction

Today has been a massive overhaul of my blog. I am, for the record, using the term "today" loosely. I started work on it at around 9:00 PM. It is now 3:50 AM. I stopped once about 15 minutes before midnight to write a few sentences on The Militia, ensuring I kept to the most critical task at hand, being the novel itself. I am not finished with the overhaul, but I think you will be able to see the direction this blog is headed. Slowly but surely, the ax is becoming razor sharp. A few items of note: There is now a photo of me. I am sorry to scare you like this, but what's done is done.  There are now (uncompleted) tabs at the top, with sub-tabs available in the future. There are a few placeholders for the moment, so don't be concerned if they don't make sense or don't actually have...