SFFWRTCHT is all about helping writer learn the business. One thing all successful authors must deal with is book reviews and that often means book bloggers. So here’s a perspective from the other side of that to help you understand book blogging, where the bloggers come from and perhaps how to deal with them when and if the time comes.
SFFWRTCHT: How’d you develop your love of reading?
My parents have never liked television. Our TV watching time was strictly regulated to two hours a week and absolutely NO TV in the summer. For fun my mom would take me to the library with this huge empty milk crate and I’d fill it with books. We’d read them together when I was falling asleep at night. I loved that tradition. That’s probably where my love of reading really starts. Then, when I was four I met my childhood best friend who also loved to read, which helped. When I moved from Delaware to Utah, I stopped reading. The move was hard on me and I think I was a bit depressed and lost my interest in books. The year after I moved I had a teacher who loved reading more than anyone I have ever met before, or since that time. I can’t remember exactly how she did it, but somehow she got my entire class reading, and loving it. She reignited the love of literature in me, and I’ve never stopped since.
SFFWRTCHT: Please tell us some of your favorite all time authors and books?
When I was a really little kid my all time favorite book was The Polar Express. My mom even got me a copy of it for Christmas one year and wrote a nice little thing inside and asked me to pass it on to my own daughter when she’s old enough to appreciate it. When I was a little older, my favorite book was James and the Giant Peach and the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. In high school I randomly foundThe Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. That is still one of my all time favorite books, probably because it’s what really got me started on fantasy. It was my first experience with a new world and I loved it. A year or two later, my brothers introduced me to George R. R. Martin, and I’ve never looked back.
Right now my favorite authors are: K.J. Parker, Steven Erikson, George R. R. Martin, C.S. Friedman and Terry Pratchett (though I haven’t read a ton by him yet).
SFFWRTCHT: When and how did you decide to become a book blogger?
I started my blog in May of 2010. I was in my last semester of college before I was going to graduate and it was a lazy semester for me. It was my first semester I didn’t have to really focus on textbooks so I went back to reading fantasy. It quickly became apparent to me that I love talking about the books I read, and no one in my life cares because no one in my life reads. I started my blog so I could have somewhere I could talk and be excited about what I read and pretend there was someone out there who enjoyed reading, and cared what I thought. I never expected Bookworm Blues to turn into anything serious that people actually read and enjoyed. Through my blog I’ve met a great community of people who love to read and talk about what they read. It’s more than I ever expected and exactly what I wanted.
SFFWRTCHT: Did you study literary theory or anything else to qualify yourself or learn how to critique literature?
Yes. I’ve taken more creative writing and literary theory classes than I care to admit. I have also been a writer my whole life, and I’ve had some short bits published, so I try to put everything I’ve learned in my classes into practice with my own writing. I think not only having studied literary theory, but also having put what I learned and what I like/don’t like into practice in my own writing has helped my reviewing quite a bit.
SFFWRTCHT: What’s the hardest part of being a book blogger?
I hate writing negative reviews. I always feel horrible when I do it. I know how hard it is to write a book and I know how vulnerable, for lack of a better word, authors can feel when their work gets published and read by strangers. I hate saying anything mean about someone’s creative effort. I always feel terrible doing it.
SFFWRTCHT: How did your blog get so popular? You get books sent from major publishers, etc. How long did it take to rise to that level?
I think a lot of the reason anyone even knows my blog exists is because I’m pretty active on Twitter and always open to a discussion with pretty much anyone. When I first started out, I commented on other review blogs all the time. That really helped me gain followers. Especially when several of the blogs I commented on frequently pointed some of their readers in my direction. I don’t consider myself popular, but I have a blast doing what I do so I don’t really mind.
I started getting books from Tor about three to four months after I started reviewing. I was blogging about a year when I started getting books from Pyr. It wasn’t until about three months ago I’ve actually had publishers contacting me, rather than me contacting them.
SFFWRTCHT: Which genres do you review? View full article »
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Heroes Of The Steppes: The Historicals of Harold Lamb
Guest Post by Howard Andrew Jones
Before Stormbringer keened in Elric’s hand, before the Gray Mouser prowled Lankhmar’s foggy streets—before even Conan trod jeweled thrones under his sandaled feet, Khlit the Cossack rode the steppe. He isn’t the earliest serial adventure character, but his adventures are among the earliest that can still be read for sheer pleasure.
He was created in 1917 by Harold Lamb, in a time when “costume pieces” provided the same kinds of thrills that fantasy and science fiction adventure stories deliver today, and he appeared in the pulp magazines.
The best remembered of these magazines today are probably those devoted to the adventures of single characters—like Doc Savage or The Shadow—or the early magazines of the fantastic wherein those we now recognize as giants were published—Weird Tales, and, later, Unknown, Planet Stories, and other science fiction magazines.
Shortly after World War I, though, there was very little to be found in the realm of the fantastic. For all their fame, the later science fiction magazines and Weird Tales were hardly representative of the content found in most pulps. The most popular of magazines tended to be devoted to westerns and detective tales. Aside from the occasional Verne reprint and a few innovators—like the fellow who’d written of a civil war soldier transported to Mars—adventure was found in more recognizable places.
And then came Lamb. View full article »