Authors Electric

Why have Stephen King, his son Joe Hill, and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez joined the ranks of those who've bounced from Twitter to the new platform Bluesky? In June 2023 users numbered 180K. As of September the number had risen to 1 million. Here, four Bluebies (Bluesky newbies) tell of their learning to fly the Blue sky. The four roundtable knights are: Debbie Bennett Wendy H Jones Reb MacRath Z: a legendary author sworn to secrecy. Bios and links below.  Were you an active member of The Other Place? What led you to move on? DB: Yes, I was a Twitterer. Or is it Tweep? Not that I've ever used it much. Back in the days when posts were limited to about five words (I'm joking--it was a few more than that), I could never quite see the point. Far from being a lesson in brevity, it just seemed to stifle any creativity for me. But I've never tried to 'create' on these platforms--simply to observe, watch and listen. I did follow the occasional Pitchfest and the thingies that...

Say we all contain two sides--the Impractical and the Practical--and they're seldom evenly balanced.    And they're never more out of whack than they are with writers. From the get-go the pressure's on to give the P's the upper hand: good grades lead to better schools which pave the way to better homes, cars, marriages, credit scores, job advancement, etc. And the debates grow shorter and shorter between such staid P's and wild writerly I's like sexual adventure, wanderlust, wild living, bucking the Establishment, etc. From Byron to Pushkin to Hemingway to Mailer and on and on and on, wild and crazy role models call to us like Sirens. Self-destructive lifestyles still make for boffo Post Mortem book sales and movie tie-ins. But the publishing industry's changed now. And more than ever IQ and PQ are on everybody's minds. Wild men and women are far less in demand. The powers that be demand higher IQs: media savvy, Facebook presence, fanatical convention at...

            The trouble with most academics is that they're all subtext in bed:  they'd rather read between the lines than ride between the sheets.  But we in EbookLandia are lucky to have nobler woes on our minds: 1)      The word as art is dying fast.  All books will be written by experts one day, published by experts at making them read as if they'd been expertly written. 2)      Nothing brings out the ax murderer in an agent's heart more quickly than an original talent.             We come here for the freedom to practice our art without having to bow to the Combine.  But survival here too can be bloody as hell.  And those most likely to succeed are those who somehow learn to mine Transatlantic Gold.  The gold is so rich that a handful of nuggets can help gild our odds on both sides of The Pond....