My weekend lurking at SCBWI was absolutely fantastic. My friends are brilliant and hilarious, and I met a ton of new people and had so many great conversations. I even got a good few hours of work done in the hotel bar. Just a wonderful experience overall.

The biggest thing that happens for me at SCBWI, always, is that I leave so inspired to become part of the industry. This time was no different. I want to go home and finish revising and send out queries, like, this week. (I’m not even halfway done revising. It won’t be this week.) Being around that much creative energy, that many people who love the same things I do, is incredibly inspiring. I can’t speak for the conference, because I have still never attended, but the energy in the air is worth the trip for me.

A few notes on venues for anyone going to New York:

The Wheeltapper Pub, on East 44th between Lexington and 3rd, is a great little bar. The service there both nights was great, and it’s not terribly expensive. Comparable to Boston prices, at least. I love me a good Irish pub, and I highly recommend this one.

But I cannot recommend the Grant Hyatt hotel at all, especially if your plans involve sitting in the bar/restaurant for any length of time (which were, basically, my plans entirely). With the exception of one exemplary waitress, every single staff member interaction in the hotel was unpleasant. The building is okay (although let’s not talk about the giant head statues in the lobby) but the service at the place is dreadful. I’m not particularly hard to please, but I was unimpressed.

However, I wasn’t in New York for housekeepers and waiters to be nice to me, I was there for friends and fun and fabulosity, and I got those in abundance. A great, great weekend—now I just hope I get home sometime this weekend.

Anyway. I’m heading to the SCBWI winter conference in New York City. Not actually attending the conference, but a bunch of my friends will be there and since NY is basically right next door to me I really have no excuse not to go.

So! If you’re there say hey! I’ll be practicing my skulking.

That’s it. Currently doing lots of the fiction writing so less of the blog writing, but I figured I’d stop by and water the place.

click photo for source

Wait, this story is better in person because you can see that I have blue hair. Here. See?

Blue Hair

So anyway, the lady ringing me up launched into a “blue hair” story, as people sometimes do, which always catches me off-guard since I see my hair every day and it is not really of note to me. Her story appeared to be that back in “her country” (which she never named, but I suspect was in Eastern Europe) she bought black hair dye because her husband wanted her to have black hair, and she dyed it but it turned out horribly and all her hair ended up the same color mine is now and her husband hated it.

So yes, basically it was story about that one time she looked just like me and it was one of the most horrible things that ever happened to her. Lolzers.

If you don’t know, Goodreads is basically an online platform where readers can keep track of books they read and want to read, and rate them, and write reviews, and communicate with other readers and (in some instances) authors. I don’t really hang out there much, but I’ve been poking my nose in a bit over the past few months because SHIT is going DOWN and I love a good train wreck.

It’s pretty much insanity. I’m not going to link to any of the incidents because I don’t want to give any of them more traction, but take my word for it when I say shit is cray cray. Authors have been calling Goodreads reviewers cows and bitches in emails and on Twitter; authors and their friends have been going on massive negative rants on Twitter and blogs about Goodreads and reviewers in general or specific; authors and their agents and their friends have publicly stated they’re going to try to skew review rankings. The list of stupidity pretty much goes on and on.

Dear authors: we remember this shit. Really. I will read any book, regardless of author actions, if it is amazing enough, but if I see you being an asshole I will remember it and I will read your book last and I will get it from a bargain bin because I don’t like giving money to assholes. Especially if you’re an asshole to other bibliophiles. It’s just not cool, guys.

In the name of promoting peace and decreasing stupidity throughout the internet, I offer a few guidelines for the world of online book reviewing. Not all of these are directed at authors.

1. Authors should not comment on reviews of their own books. The only possible exception is to thank the reviewer. But no trying to explain something the reviewer missed, or telling them they’re wrong or missed the point. And no getting your friends to do it for you. You’re not going to convince anyone to change their mind, and you look bad. Just don’t.

2. Authors should not ask their friends to help skew review rankings, either on Goodreads or Amazon or wherever. It’s totally understandable to want to “sink” bad reviews, so that the good reviews are near the top to help sell your book, but ethics aside you don’t want to deal with the public backlash if you’re found out. And seriously, have the sense to not talk about it on Twitter, and be careful with emails. Once you hit “send,” it’s no longer yours.

3. A reviewer not finishing a book does not make that review invalid. I hate when I see people say this. Hate. Basically, the sentiment is “your review is invalid because you didn’t finish the book so you don’t know everything that happened—you can’t judge the entire thing.” Well, no. Not finishing the book is kind of a judgment in itself. If a person dislikes a book enough that they stop reading, what happens at the end does not matter because the rest of the book wasn’t strong enough to carry the reader to the end. I want to stop seeing this argument.

4. No personal attacks, by reviewers or authors. File under: be nice on the internet. (Or, you know, everywhere.) Just don’t be that person.

Basically, it all boils down to this: authors, don’t shit on reviewers. Reviewers aren’t simply book-lovers (i.e., the target audience of an author), they’re hardcore book-lovers, they’re people who love books enough that they want to critique them and analyze them and talk about them with their friends. They’re the book-lovers other book-lovers look to for guidance. And they will remember.

But! Luckily! Season 2!

the cast of season 2

Aside: I almost missed the start of Season 2 because SyFy (I hate typing that every time) did a poor job of advertising it. I only saw an ad a few days before, and it didn’t even have an air date—just “January 2011.” I had to look it up, which just goes to show how excited I was for the show. (Thursdays at 10, icyww.)

Anyway.

Conor's Frog Prince from season 1

My favorite part of the first episode, honestly, was when last year’s winner, Conor, showed up as a guest judge and it turned out he had been hired by one of the permanent judges, Ve Neill; both are currently working on The Hunger Games. It’s honestly so rare for winners of these shows to actually go on to become something in their given industry (Christian Siriano being the notable exception) that it’s awesome to see that he won this goofy little reality tv show and is now employed doing what he loves.

But back to the show. I don’t know why this one is so cool versus all the other copycats like Work of Art or Project Accessory. I think it might be because there is so. much. art involved. They sculpt and paint and design costumes and create characters and it has to be pretty and functional and tell a story all at once. The judges have exacting standards. The characters, er, people (at least last season) are the right mix of likable and dramatic. It’s simply fun to watch (especially if, like me, you have a professional artist on hand to go “ooooh that’s a bad decision” and then watch things go bad).

I think it helps that the show is so new that the challenges haven’t become monotonous yet. Project Runway, much as I love it, can get pretty predictable. You know every season they’re going to do certain challenges; with Face Off, everything is still new and exciting.

So. On the one hand I’m being selfish and advocating for this show because I want lots of people to watch it so it doesn’t get canceled. On the other hand it is actually a remarkably entertaining show. So! The moral of this story is if you aren’t watching Face Off you should give it a try. Because I mean really, look at this shit:

re-imagining of the scarecrow from the wizard of oz, season 2

BLACKHAWKS, HAWK AND DOVE, MEN OF WAR, MISTER TERRIFIC, O.M.A.C. and STATIC SHOCK, all of which will conclude with their eighth issues in April.

The only two of those I’ve read were two of the only books with black lead characters. (Two of only three in the new 52, according to CSBG.) One of them, Mister Terrific, let’s be honest was pretty dreadful. I’m not surprised. Static Shock was weak but I was holding out hope.

But apparently rather than make their minority-lead books better, DC is just canceling them. Guys, the black lead is not the reason the books didn’t sell. They didn’t sell because they were bad. So don’t go pulling these out as examples the next time you get blasted for the lack of diversity in your comics, because all this shows is that a poorly-written book doesn’t sell, which is probably for the best.

I am kind of excited by this, though:

DIAL H – Writer: China Miéville. Artist: Mateus Santoluoco. The first ongoing series from acclaimed novelist China Miéville, this is a bold new take on a cult classic concept about the psychological effects on an everyman who accidentally gains powers to become a hero.

My word: CREATE

I want 2012 to be defined by creativity, both in my writing and in the rest of my life. I want to do more artsy things (I like to pretend I can draw sometimes) and I want to cook creatively and go on creative adventures and, well, you get the idea. I want to create.

Is there a word that sums up your goals for the year?

We all know I love me some Flash, and overall I loved this (even though it wasn’t my boy Wally), but man were the Carmine Infantino layouts hard to follow sometimes. Like, headache-inducingly difficult.

And it’s not like a few issues in you could figure out the method behind the madness. No, Infantino would use the exact same panel layouts (usually involving diagonals) and expect you to read them in different directions on different pages with no indication as to which. I’d be halfway through a page or panel and realize I was reading things out of order. It got kind of frustrating, but I’m glad I persevered because the story rollicked right along. It was fantastical at times, and I’m not sure all the law checked out, but hey. I can deal with some over-the-top 80s-era stories and some Perry-Mason-esque legal squibbles if the story is great. Which it was.

Also, there’s one panel where Barry has a really nice butt. It was pretty exciting.

Yes, here at Gracetopia we cover the most important parts of a book in our reviews.

(Click on any pic for a fancy slideshow-type-thing.)