Which basically means that the turkey who’s been hanging around lately showed up today with a lot of chicks. I could not get a picture, but rest assured, everyone is adorable. And speaking of birds, the little tweeter who made her nest in the potted plant on the porch is still resting easy, although she’s made such improvements on her home, it’s hardly possible to see her.
According to Irene Gallo’s blog, Robert Jordan and Tor are sponsoring a Wheel of Time Calendar Competition for charity. Artists are invited to create a painting or drawing based on anything from his popular Wheel of Time series. Deadline is August 15th.
Via Bookseller Chick (who also compiled some other cool links checking out), this brief essay by Lee Child on “writing the sidekick”:
Sidekicks are great. So great, you start to see the reason. Sidekicks are like the loft apartment you design for yourself in your head. You can let it all hang out. You can let it be exactly what you want. No resale issues. And that�s the point. In a suspense series, the lead character has to carry a lot of weight. The lead character is the unique selling point. Career and success are on the line. That�s a lot of weight. So design raises its ugly head. PC timidity creeps in. Blandness beckons. So you put a big rock in the middle of the floor, but that�s not enough, so then you add in a sidekick. It�s a cry for understanding: this is who I really wanted to write about, but I thought I better not.
Lessons for a writer? Simple: you make the lead character and the sidekick the same guy. You write about the sidekick. That�s what I did. My guy Jack Reacher is rough, tough, snarling, dirty, unacceptable in every way. I wrote him with a sense of doom. It was like a Zen proposition: if I try to make him popular, he won�t be popular. It was like, well, I like him, so up yours, pal. So, of course, he was popular.
PBW is also rockin’, with posts that range from branding to good writing links (mine included, which is too cool), giving quotes, and so on. Go check it out.
And for you LOST fans, lookee here.