Attention, everyone!

>> The Swivet has moved to Blogger! <<

I’m in the process of moving over links and things from the WordPress site, but essentially, I’m no longer posting here.

After WordPress ate five six seven of my posts in a row this morning, I finally got fed up. Also, I’ve been continually annoyed by the fact that I wasn’t allowed to add Javascript or manipulate my own HTML. Granted, the Blogger site isn’t quite as pretty as the WordPress site, but it was a case of functionality versus aesthetics, and functionality won.

Eventually I’ll move all of my older posts from this WordPress site over to new Blogger one, but because Blogger doesn’t allow you to import posts from another blogging client, I’ll have to move them all by hand, one at a time.

In the meantime, bookmark the new site and my new RSS feed.

And, I’ve created a new LiveJournal feed for the Blogger version of The Swivet. (You’re welcome.)

Okay, kids. See ya on the dark side!

1500 inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) practicing for a performance of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. (Don’t forget to watch for the inmate in drag!) This is just bizarre!

From LOL Bots. Hilarious!

John Scalzi has also come out of the closet.

This video is hilarious. Just who IS the fastest Evil Overlord of the Universe?

Sweet!

Aqueduct Press has a fascinating interview with Nicola Griffith posted at their blog. Gwenda pointed y’all toward Part One a couple days ago. Part Two of the interview is now posted as well. Go! Read! Learn!

And then go out and buy Nicola’s new book Always, which is wonderful!

Ah, Craigslist. What would I do without your job ads for entertainment?

::: ducks her head to keep from being brained by flying books :::

No, seriously. Never. Not a one. I bought and started to read the first book aloud to my nephew once when he was but a wee toddler, but he preferred Captain Underpants and endless re-reading of The Stinky Cheese Man (“You can’t catch me; I’m the Stinky Cheese Man!”) so Harry Potter was brushed aside like so much garbage. For all I know it still sits gathering dust on my nephew’s bookshelf, next to the nine hundred volumes of Captain Underpants that he DID read. He’s eleven years old now, and really only cares about his electric guitar and skateboard. (“Harry who?”)

For a long time, My nephew wouldn’t even go see the Harry Potter movies with me; he scared easily when he was younger and – after viewing one of the films - declared them “unsafe and too scary for a little kid like me”. ‘Nuff said. (Eventually he did get over it.)

When I was a bookseller in San Francisco, I lived through the initial Harry Potter insanity. Not the Scholastic insanity. The original Bloomsbury British edition insanity. The ”Holy shit, tell me again why we’re importing 500 copies of this weird kids book again? The Hairy what?” and the frazzled parents hitting the information desk, pleading with us “Just one copy? Surely you must have JUST ONE COPY!?” and the kids with piggy banks dumping their accumulated coins in front of the cash register in triumph so they could pay for their own copy of the book.

Yeah, I lived that one, thank you very much.

But even then, I never read the books, even though I regularly read – and love – middle-reader and YA fantasy.

I have no idea why I’ve never read a Harry Potter book. But if it’s any consolation, I have listened to the Harry Potter books. Not all of them, just books One through Four. I actually listened to Book Two first, when Big A came over to help me paint my apartment about seven (yes SEVEN!) years ago. It was a blast! I was working for Big Ass Publishing Company at the time, and they regularly gave free copies of the new audio version to the employees, so I scrambled to listen to as many as I could. But somehow I am still two books behind the rest of the world.

This year I have resolved that I will actually READ the Harry Potter books. To aid me in my resolution, Kgaard has agreed to loan me his copies of the books, one at a time, until I have caught up with the rest of humanity. Will this make me a better person? I don’t know. But, hey! Maybe it’ll help me make conversation with hot nerdy chicks who have read the books!

For those of you who are jonesing for the late lamented Miss Snark (the blog, not the person; she and her dog are alive and well, thank you very much!), I suggest you explore the following:

• The Rejector: An anonymous literary agency assistant gives some helpful advice and makes some astute observations about the book biz.
• BookEnds, LLC: A blog maintained primarily by Jessica Faust at the agency of the same name. Good stuff here.
• Nathan Bransford: This self-titled blog is maintained by an agent at the San Francisco office of Curtis Brown. Ltd. Again, useful information about getting published and the book biz in general.
• Lyons Literary, LLC: Jonathan Lyons maintains this blog. More good info here.
• Lit Agent X: Rachel Vater (who just moved to Folio Literary Management) has been been maintaining this blog for quite some time. She slowed down a bit in posting when she first moved to Folio – hey, everyone needs time to settle in, right? But it looks like she’s back. Some really helpful stuff here.

You know, the person who has to ask a million questions about departmental procedures and just ends up bothering everyone all day for the first week of their job? That is me this week.

Annoying New Person™

::: sigh :::

Scholastic.

Now enough with talking about the leaked books already. (And really, if you have enough time on your hands to take a digital picture of every single friggin’ page of a six thousand page book and then post it to BitTorrent, well, clearly you aren’t masturbating enough.)

I have a confession to make: I am utterly addicted to paranormal romance. Every once in a while, I get sucked into a yet another new paranormal romance / urban fantasy / hot-chicks-in-leather-on-cover book series and get seriously addicted. My female friends and I have a term for these kinds of books: “crack fiction“.

A quick definition of crack fiction:

• Generally involves vampires, werewolves, demons, ghosts, djins, spirits, and/or characters with super-human powers; sometimes (as with Faith Hunter’s extraordinary novels Bloodring and Seraphs) they involve angels, seraphs and other interesting guest stars from the Old Testament.
• Characters are always – and absurdly – smokin’-hot (this is very important: there can be no unattractive people in these novels).
• Covers almost always have some variation of a hot chick wearing leather, carrying a gun or a crossbow or a sword or all of the above (hopefully centered around a gratuitous ass-shot); tattoos are also involved in a major way (see cover of Patricia Briggs’ Blood Bound and Jenna Black’s forthcoming The Devil Inside – both entirely crackalicious novels, by the way – for examples)
• Those hot chicks in leather are usually (but not always) the protagonist, and – make no mistake – they will kick your ass to hell and back, and they’ll do it cheerfully, while spouting snarky witticisms; afterward, they won’t have so much as even smudged their fuck-me-red Mac lipstick (although they sometimes do break the heels on their four-inch Manolo stilettos).
• Rare exceptions: covers that feature hot dudes, usually bare-chested, wearing leather or wings or both, with flowing hair (usually red or black), sometimes carrying a sword or a crossbow or a gun; not so much with the tattoos for some reason
• Sex. Lots and lots and lots of sex. Girl/boy sex, boy/boy sex, girl/girl sex, girl/werewolf sex, werewolf/vampire sex, vampire/private detective sex, private detective/lawyer sex, lawyer/plumber sex, etc…

As someone who has always been a genre reader but rarely a romance reader (I don’t count the five Danielle Steele novels I read when I was fifteen and in the hospital for three weeks with blood poisoning, because that’s all they had in the gift shop and my father didn’t know any better and I was on serious painkillers and just thought the covers were pretty and, really, who are YOU to judge!?) this new addiction of mine is somewhat surprising to me. I blame many people for this:

• Book Stud, who turned me onto Rachel Caine’s Weather Warden series long ago and started me on this long road to literary depravity (waves fists at the sky ::: damn you all to hell, you drug-dealing fiend! ::: ) (and really, if you haven’t read these books yet, what the HELL are you waiting for???)
• Big A (mother of Baby Crumpet), who also writes crack fiction (and I just finished reading one of her unpublished manuscripts called Animal Attraction which is totally AWESOME and worthy of the title “crack fiction”, if you are an agent looking for a new author, I suggest you email me now so I can tell you all about how much you need to publish this book and then we can go drink heavily and gossip, and afterward we’ll get a pedicure)
• Village Chick, whose entire apartment is an endless source of crack fiction goodness, in teetering stacks and piles on every available surface (which is going to be a problem soon, since she is expecting, and will eventually need to somehow squeeze a crib in between all these books, unless she can figure out a safe way to balance a bassinet on a pile of mass-market paperbacks) and . . .
• Nightgarden / Melicitlu (yes, you may be under the impression that these are two separate human beings but you would be wrong; I have evidence that they are in fact part of advance force of brain-sharing, super-intelligent and snarky aliens who have begun a surreptitious invasion of the Bronx), who continuously feed me a steady stream of books that are each more depraved than the last. (Um, hello, J.R. Ward? Ya big pervs.)

But mostly?

I blame Joss Whedon.

So, if y’all will excuse me, I have some rockin’ good crack fic to read.

Dear La Gringa -

After having just liberally applied a menthol-based lotion to your extremely dry hands, do not then – under any circumstances – rub the heels of your palms into your eyeballs. It will hurt. A lot.

xoxox,

La Gringa

Ranger Up is a line of t-shirts produced by ex-military dudes for current military dudes and the chicks that dig them (because it is very clear from reading the “About” page that these guys don’t believe that chicks belong in the military).

Some things that Ranger Up stands for, according to their website:

AMERICA. Nothing like her anywhere, anytime, in the history of the world.

Soldiers, Marines, Sailors, Airmen, Coastguardsmen, Firemen, and Police Officers. Basically, the crazy SOBs that put their lives on the line every day for less pay than they deserve so that we Americans can sit in front of our plasma televisions and watch crappy reality TV shows, drive nice cars, eat great food, and generally not have to worry about anything of substance.

Dogs. Never trust anyone that doesn’t like dogs. They’re loyal. They’d die for you, and all they want in return is some dried food, some petting, and the occasional piece of bacon.

Reversing the growing oppression of the proletariat in today’s society. We, uhhh, think this is a good idea. (This one nearly made La Gringa snarf hot tea all over her keyboard.)

Hot chicks. Honestly, aren’t they the reason we do anything? (Well, okay. I’d have to agree with this one.)