In which I count on others to do my job for me...

My brain is soup.

I've come across many wonderful blog entries this week, so I'm just going to give you a round up.  A Link-A-Palooza, if you will.

Hope you find something you didn't see before.  Enjoy!


Melanie Benjamin is a frequent and wonderful contributor to The Huffington Post, and she has written two wonderful and thought-provoking entries recently that you should definitely make note of.

First, a discussion of book tours, and why new authors might want to avoid them.

Second, a humor look at the deals we as writers make with the universe if only...

Kate Messner wrote a poem on the occasion of the ALA Award announcements last week.  It was meant to comfort friends who did not get the awards they hoped for, but it spoke to me as an unpublished writer who keeps on trying.  THIS is why I write.

Then Lisa Schroeder reminded me that no matter where you are in the publishing spectrum, there is always someone doing better, and it's best to say "Oh Well."

The incomparable Victoria Strauss weighs in on the infamous First One Publishing contest, and helpfully rounds up all the other blog memes out that did their own weighing in when this cluster $@%& hit the Interwebz.  Please--don't enter.

And finally, I've been in contact with a charming gentleman by the name of Johnny Dale this week.  If you haven't heard of him, he is the author of The Darling Budds, which is a serialized novel posted on his very ownest website (which is gorgeous, by the way).  He's amassing it into an e-book that he's "straight-up giving away."  It's a boarding school, lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-bitchy book that actually breaks through those stereotypes to explore something real.  Check it out.

Anyone else have some goodies to share?

- Liz