Copyright craziness and other writing-related links (#SFWApro)

Paramount’s search-and-destroy copyright-infringement web-bots have even targeted posts that refer to someone as “clueless” as infringing the copyright for Clueless.

•Malibu Media, a porn producer, has a fondness for aggressive copyright litigation.

•The Batmobile is a copyright protected design. But Happy Birthday isn’t.

•Brian K. Lowe discusses whether writing isn’t better treated as a hobby than a job. I’ve made the same argument.

•Advice on the query letter for your novel (hat tip to Rebekkah Niles).

•Does your synopsis work? Ask someone who hasn’t read the book.

•To help flesh out your story locale, use local slang for roads, landmarks, etc. For example back in Fort Walton Beach there was the “Taj Mahal” (four-story administrative county offices) and the “mullet wrapper” (the local paper). The area as a whole has been known as the Emerald Coast, the Redneck Riviera and the Miracle Strip.

•Having multiple non-white/straight/Christian/male characters doesn’t mean you’re going overboard with diversity.

•Jim Hines on why the newest Libriomancer book will be the last (both financial and creative reasons).

•John Scalzi on the complexities of figuring out how much writers as a group are earning. And on the career merits of not being a jerk.

•A good list of bad tropes for fantasy women. Isabel Kunkel adds some other annoying tropes, such as forgetting oral sex exists (as one of my friends used to joke, it’s the original oral contraceptive).

•Barnes & Noble may be looking at smaller stores. As someone who knew them in the pre-superstore days, it’s amusing to think of that as a radical strategy.

•Foz Meadows wonders at what point “fiction” using other writer’s materials” (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Sherlock, for example) becomes mere and inferior “fanfiction” in the eyes of the world.

There was going to be more but for some reason I’m running out of steam (maybe my seasonal allergies have caught up with me again?). So for now, adieu …

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