My life in haiku, quick observations sketches and dialogue. I fancy myself a writer, and this is how I see the world.
(Source: jessicafiguera)
‘Doctor Who’ fans hijack Boulder road sign — ‘Warning Daleks Ahead’
“Doctor Who” is coming back to the airwaves this fall, but some fans of the show couldn’t wait that long to get their fix. Some of them hijacked a road sign in Boulder, Colorado and changed it to read something that Whovians fear (and love). It says “Warning Daleks Ahead.”
What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
—CARL SAGAN (via Advice to Writers)
(Source: kadrey)
Check out more infographics that compare 2011 YA book covers, from jacket colour to ethnicity of models over katehart.net.
So fascinating. (Witness, for instance, the fact that almost 99% of models featured on the cover of YA novels are caucasian, for instance.)
I suppose the cover of TFiOS features clouds, but only in a fairly abstract way. I really wanted the cover to move away from the conventional wisdom about what sells: white girls’ faces (or headless bodies), water, moons, spooky typeface, hands holding apples, etc.
But I’m really fortunate to work with a publisher who A. cares what I think when it comes to book covers, and B. will take the time/spend the money to make sure that all parties are happy. Most authors don’t have much say in their covers (and, indeed, I didn’t always have much say in mine—there are some, in fact, that I actively dislike).
In semi-related news, I am so, so, so excited to be able to reveal the new cover of Katherines in a couple weeks, which was designed by a nerdfighter.
how to be a writer
- start to write something
- pause and read over what you have so far
- cringe
- backspace everything
- exit out of your computer
- cry on the floor
(Source: interrobang-ler)
