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Book Recommendations and Reviews We here at the good ship Book Riot are looking for a few new contributors. Sound cool? Here’s how to know if this might be a good fit: If you like to write about books almost as much as you love books, then we’re looking for you. Notebook As of July 2012, Google Notebook has shut down and all Notebook data should now be in Google Docs. As previously announced, in most cases we were able to automatically export the Notebook data, so please visit Google Docs. Also please update any bookmarks or links to Notebook so that they point to Docs instead.

Japanese Phrases and Common Sentences Japanese Phrases *1 This may be a kind of literary/writing expression… and it’s seldom used in conversation. But never is unnatural. *2 Arigato and Arigato gozaimasu. There’s no big difference between them, “Arigato gozaimasu” is more polite. *3 (Anata ga inakute) Samishi katta desu : Abbreviated Anata ga inakute. *4 Usually we just say “Excuse me/ Sumimasen”, and “Can you help me” is included in this “Sumimasen”. *5 ...san is a very normal way. Google Wave As we announced in August 2010, we are not continuing active development of Google Wave as a stand-alone product. Google Wave will be shut down in April 2012. This page details the implication of the turn down process for Google Wave. Stage 1: Google Wave is read-only -- January 31, 2012

Inbound Marketing for #Authors I've been applying for jobs recently and as most of my marketing knowledge comes from experience rather than an academic degree, I've had to do some research on industry jargon. One such topic is Inbound Marketing. It is what I do for clients, yet I didn't know the term. I found the above graphic to be quite useful in my interviews. When I first saw it, I automatically thought of authors. Learn Japanese Easy! - Lesson 2: Word Order & Simple Vocab Lesson 2: Word Order & Simple Vocab.....Word Order:In English, word order is Subject-Verb-Object,But in Japanese, it's Subject-Object-Verb.Take this for example...The dog will eat the cat - Inu wa neko o tabemasu...Inu (Subject)waNeko (Object)oTabemasu (Verb)..inu - dogneko - cattabemasu - will eat..wa is used to mark the subject. In every sentence, the particle wa should come directly after the subject.same goes with o. O is the object marker and should always come right after the object....Easy right?Let's try one a little bit different...The Sky is Blue - Sora wa aoi desu.Not much of an object, but to say something is, use the same structer.Sora (Subject)wa (Subject Marker)aoi (Adjective)desu (Verb)..*Because there's no object, the particle o is not needed...Sora - Skywa - Subj.

Why Puppies are sad, and always will be  Let me state from the outset that I have zero interest in awards. While they are an honor when fairly awarded—and it would be fun to have that merit badge in my collection—the reality is that in the big game, Hugos, Nebulae and other awards really mean nothing to the life of a working writer. Aside from having an editor decide to include your winning story in an awards anthology, the economic impact is pretty much zero. As Jerry Pournelle once commented, “Money will see you through times of no awards better than awards will see you through times of no money.” That said, it would have been easy for me to blissfully ignore the rabid puppy hijacking of the Hugo awards.

Some Sad Puppy Data Analysis Image from Flickr user Bill Lile. Click for link to original. The list of fairly big-name outlets covering the 2015 Hugos / Sad Puppies controversy has gotten pretty long1, but here’s how you know this is Officially a Big Deal: George R. R. Martin has been in a semi-polite back-and-forth blog argument with the Larry Correia for days. Robot Cowgirl Press Call for fiction submissions: Robot Cowgirl wants fresh, insightful, surprising short stories of Sword and Sorcery. Michael Moorcock and Fritz Leiber coined the term “Sword and Sorcery” in 1961 to describe the kind of fantasy adventure stories originally conceived by Robert E. Howard. Howard created sword-and-sorcery fiction in 1929 with the publication of the first Kull the Conqueror stories. Howard, of course, became most famous for his character Conan the Barbarian.

Swan Tower - The Absence of Women 02:00 pm - The Absence of Women The other day on Twitter, I commented about the absence of women from a book I was reading. Because Twitter is no place for long explanations or nuanced discussions, and also because I was about to go to karate and didn’t want to start a slapfight with fans of the book that might pick up steam while I was busy, I declined to name it there — but I promised I would make a follow-up post, so here it is. Before I actually name the book and start talking about it, though, two caveats: 1) If you are a fan of the novel in question, please don’t fly off the handle at the criticism here.