Friday, July 22, 2011

Link Roundup

Here is what caught my interest this week in the blogosphere:

 
  • This visually captivating blog post starts off  with a collage of the "darkness" of YA covers . Then it moves into more sobering ground; how ethnically diverse/dark is YA based on covers alone? Turns out, not very.

  • Awful Library Books. The few and the dedicated do us all a favor by sorting through library stock to weed out gems like these. For a YA angle, scroll to the post from 7/21/2011 with the heading 80s Teen Fiction. One sketched cover shows what I think is supposed to be a teenager but looks more like a 40-yr-old jazzercize clown...

  • Lit Agent Rachelle Gardner did a series this week about pitching your novel, inlcuding a verbal pitch, which I thought was interesting (I took NOTES, y'all). Sometimes we lack focus when talking about our projects, so imagine pitching your work to a room full of agents. SCARY. Here's more on crafting an elevator pitch (a pitch short enough for an elevator ride).

  • Somewhat related, the blog Love YA hosted a contest (now closed) for a twitter-length pitch to an agent. I didn't participate but I read through every single pitch in the comments. For a voyeuristic look at what everyone else is writing or to get an idea of what works and what doesn't in a 140 character summary, check it out.

  • This last one is not writing or reading related, but if you're a sucker for kitties (like me), then you have no choice but to click: The Itty Bitty Kitty Committee

2 comments:

  1. Rachelle's posts were very helpful this week. Thanks for the list of posts!

    ReplyDelete
  2. So, I had a laugh, learnt something and found a new blog to follow. Thank you :)

    PS The kittens were cute too!

    ReplyDelete

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