While I was away, part 1

Note to self: don't go away and have so many rss feeds. My mind has been blown by all the fascinating posts on other people's blogs that have happened during the week I've been either away or offline. What is manageable on a daily basis in that sweet solitary half hour inbetween the end of duties and sleep, is too rich a mix when concentrated. Omitting all the big news, for example the many tributes to that excellent eccentric writer Muriel Spark (I had completely forgotten how many of her books I read and enjoyed until I read the obits), I'm going to post on a few personal highlights of the past week. I'm not counting Dave Lull's emails in this, I'm saving those up ;-) Tribe on zines. Tribe has a rather dangerously attractive blog. It reminds me of being about 16, watching all the cool people at someone's house and wondering how I could ever be like them. Of course, I now realise they probably felt just as uncool as I did -- or that's what I tell myself anyway. Tribe's blog is nothing if not cool. On the left-hand vertical nav bar I notice he has this incredibly long list of zine links, and at the link I have provided at the start of this paragraph, you can go to all his postings on zines. On a quick look at some of the zines in Tribe's list, I think they would not qualify for Jenna Freedman's Barnard collection because they have things like production values. So there is obviously a granularity in the definition of a zine. Be that as it may, if I ever get a day with nothing else to do, I would have a wonderful time looking at all the zines in Tribe's list. There is quite a bit here and there about Sara Gran, pegged to the paperback publication of Come Closer, including this interview by David Thayer on his blog The Untrained Eye. I get a bit confused by multi-blogs: I've been following Collected Miscellany for a while, but have recently discovered that its author (the aforementioned David Thayer) has another blog (the Untrained Eye) on an aggregate called The Publisher's Marketplace. Convoluted enough for you? The interview was not for me but for the in-crowd. Here's an example: "Q: Dan Conaway blogged about Dope before anyone knew he was Dan Conaway and before anyone knew he was blogging about your novel. Was that weird for you or fun for you to know what Mad Max was on about before all was revealed?" No idea who Dan Conaway is and I assume that Mad Max is not the Mad Max I know and love. What is the point of an interview if it can only be appreciated by those who are "in"? Ho hum, just glad to read that Sara is happier than she was in her postings on her own blog about the publication process. Skint Writer, whom I discovered via Minx, has just started a blog which promises to provide food for thought. She (is she a she?) posts about the "you" of blogging: who exactly is one talking to in one's head when one posts on a blog? She sees it in terms of animals, whereas I'm in Petrona mode (think Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban). Some blogs are information-providers (Instapundit et al), and the "you" is clearly the reader. Others are more like diaries in which the "you" is the internal persona. Linking and thinking. Inconclusive musings aside, I love Skint's posting about not getting published -- as I read it I was thinking of the Grumpy Old Bookman's views on the publishing mafia, but clearly so were all the other people reading the posting (see comments) . Moral of the story, don't go away if you want to make an (in retrospect) obvious point on someone's blog ;-) Sarah Weinman (Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind) is one of several bloggers to note the new Mortalis mystery and thriller imprint of Random House -- mainly the publisher's backlist but Sarah notes some new titles. Another of Sarah's postings that caught my eye concerned the spring edition of Demolition Magazine which apparently contains seven (count 'em) stories by women. Must check those out. (I don't feel uncool for never having heard of Demolition Magazine as the spring issue is only its second.) To be continued......