Welcome to Biting-Edge, a blog shared by authors and vampire experts, Mario Acevedo and Jeanne Stein. We’ll cover urban fantasy, vampires, pop culture, and all things Joss Whedon. Unlike other fantasy blogs, we don’t insist on body cavity searches (unless you ask politely). Snarkiness is most welcome...though we won't promise not to bite back!

Thursday, May 23, 2013
  Memorial Day, Other Men of Steel, Daleks

Today's Google Doodle in honor of Memorial Day




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New Superman trailer. Coming June 14

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Something for you Dr. Who fans

From across the pond:   

There are quite a few things you might expect to find at the bottom of a pond. Garbage. Discarded firearms. Dead bodies weighted down with cement. But even if I kept that list going for another two hundred entries, I’m pretty sure I still wouldn’t have reached the “Dalek” entry. But a Dalek is exactly what volunteers cleaning up a British pond stumbledupon a few months ago. Don’t worry, though…now that it’s back on dry land, I’m sure the dead bodies will be forthcoming.

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I am going to do something now that I don't think I've done before. I'm going to give a personal reply to a blog written by one of my former critique members. I want to note that this is MY opinion and not necessarily that of Mario or any of the other members of a group that's one of the most successful in Rocky  Mountain Fiction Writers' history.

This person left our group recently and in a blog post wrote that a critique group was the worst place to go for advice about your writing. That while well-intentioned, and I'm quoting here, " if you don't weed out the BS, your writing will suffer."

Huh????  He also comments "know your craft..." That's about the only thing I agree with in his comment  and the one thing, ironically, he failed to grasp.  You have to know your craft which is more than just knowing rules. You have to read your genre to understand it. You have to know what readers are looking for. That's not to say write for the market, which coincidentally he tried to do over and over again. But you have to know and understand what constitutes a good book. Specifically, well plotted out, interesting and sympathetic characters, and a voice readers can relate to.

We in our group write commercial fiction. We read everything. We are professional, multi-published, award-winning authors who take our craft seriously. We are both traditionally and independently published. We have no ax to grind, and our comments were always well intentioned and honest. That he found nothing of value in those comments reflects more on him than the group. And I think our successes speak for themselves.

So, I suppose this is in defense of critique groups. Like so many other things in life, you get out of them what you put in.

End of rant.

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