Like many in the book business, I get most of my books for free or at cost. While I rarely have the patience or skill to bargain for any other object, when it comes to books the thought of paying retail is, to me, rather absurd. The major […]
Some titles are born great. Some titles achieve greatness, usually through the hard work of an editor, agent, or author (who probably ripped out chunks of her own hair in the process). And some titles will never come closer to greatness than possibly containing some of the same […]
Every April at the Gutter, the editors write about something outside their usual domains. This month, Romance Editor Chris Szego writes about animated movies. When I was a kid, cartoons were a real treat. I didn’t watch much TV, but Bugs Bunny and friends were mandatory viewing. […]
Trash. Hackery. Beach reads. Genre fiction gets a lot of derisive description in the public eye. Mysteries are ‘formulaic’. Fantasy is for the credulous. Science Fiction is all lasers and improbable rocketships. (I run a science fiction and fantasy bookstore, and once had a patron tell me […]
Romance readers go through a lot of books. We’re somewhat spoiled by Nora Roberts’s amazing ability to produce five or six new novels every year. She’s an outlier, of course, but Romance readers are voracious, and very vocal about delays. Publishers have learned to recognize and even harness […]
Previously, I wrote a column about Meredith Duran, who got her start in publishing when her first novel, the astonishingly good Duke of Shadows, won the Gather.com First Chapters Romance Writing Competition. I liked the interesting and collaborative nature of the online contest. Entrants posted their first chapters […]
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The Cultural Gutter 