Abbey Annex II

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-07-03/viz-to-publish-one-piece-no.24-53-in-january-june-2010

Also: Rosario + Vampire II manga, more Yun Kouga, Rinko Ueda, Tsutomu Nihei, others

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2009/7/3/july-half-blood-prince-film-craft-along

With the release of the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince less than two weeks away, our Crafty Witches have a Craft Along Project to get you in the mood for the release of the sixth Potter film.  The July Craft Along asks you to get your crafting supplies of choice at the ready, and create some original T-Shirts to celebrate the film's release. A number of tutorials and instruction videos ...

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2009/7/3/take-a-quidditch-ride-by-the-seat-of-your-movie-seat

Here is a bit of a fun story. A few weeks ago we reported that several theaters in the US and Canada would be hosting special showings of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in theaters that have the high tech D-Box motion enhanced theater seating. The Star.com has an article tonight about one of these theaters that has installed the special seats that move with the sound and action onscreen...

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2009/7/3/dan-radcliffe-talks-friction-in-half-blood-prince-film-in-new-interview

The interviews keep coming it seems, for there is a new piece online featuring actor Dan Radcliffe (Harry Potter) from Mexican magazine CinePremiere.  Thanks to HarryPotterLA we have a scans and a translation of the full interview which can be found right here.  In this article, Mr. Radclife speaks on a number of topics related to the Harry Potter series and his plans for after the final film i...

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2009/7/3/scoring-the-prince

For weeks now we've been reporting on previews and clips of the upcoming soundtrack to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Tonight, Fandango.com has a press preview video online of a behind the scenes look at the rehearsal and recording of the score to HBP composed by Nicholas Hooper. At this link,  (scroll down to press kit 3:27) you can see the musicians at work, and hear some of the love...

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2009/7/3/emma-watson-on-harry-potter-author-jk-rowling

Recently actress Emma Watson was interviewed for the Hero Complex blog where she made new remarks about our favorite author, J.K. Rowling, In the piece Emma speaks of her admiration for the Harry Potter author, and says "We talk, we e-mail each other now,” she said, nodding toward her
laptop and that morning’s missive from the woman who is arguably the
world’s most famous living young-adult aut...

Lately, the turtles have been getting pretty meta,

( both in and out of comics )

http://matociquala.livejournal.com/1649701.html

This morning, I went climbing with a friend of the mighty Kij's (just bouldering, as we were pressed for time) at Seattle's Stone Gardens climbing gym. The bounmdering was good--no idea how many problems we attemped, but I found most of the v0s and v1s doable, and I even tried a v2 or two. Sadly, I do not have a lot of courage for bouldering, but I am doing better than I was, and it was really, really good to get out and climb. I'm going to try to go out at least one afternoon next week, because my students will like me much better if I get some exercise around the pedagogy.

Which just happened to be in my computer, I don't know why. But here you go. No particular comment except...

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/011405.html

Although really, my first reaction to the news that F&SF will be running a writing workshop was to think to myself, okay, that's another step down the road to being a literary magazine oriented primarily to aspiring writers. Which is arguably a direction in which the "big three" science fiction magazines have been going for a while. Twenty and thirty years ago, I knew lots of people who read the SF magazines without aspiring to write for them. These days, in my own sphere of social awareness, I know only a few such people, most of whom are readers of Analog. (A magazine which, more than the others, still appears to be published to an identifiable group of actual human beings who simply read it because they like it.)

John raises the question of whether F&SF will be paying the lucky workshoppers whose stories are selected, largely because Gordon Van Gelder's editorial doesn't actually say anything about this. My own guess would be that Gordon intends to do so, but John's not wrong to note that this is nothing but a guess. Gordon's bigger mistake, I think, was to so firmly play up the "you might get published in F&SF" angle. Yes, workshop instructors sometimes do wind up ushering particularly good student stories into professional print--Greg van Eekhout made his first sale to me, for Starlight 3, after I read the story as one of his Viable Paradise instructors; and a decade earlier, Ted Chiang's award-winning "Tower of Babylon" famously started out as his Clarion submission story. But these are unusual events; neither Clarion nor Viable Paradise promise that your workshop stories will be considered for professional publication, nor do they even (as Gordon is definitely doing) imply that they might be. My guess is that if the F&SF workshop goes forward as planned, Gordon and instructor Gardner Dozois will find it harder than they expect to run an effective workshop when a significant number of the students are having their brains scrambled by the notion that they're locked in a competition with their fellow students over those semi-promised thrice-yearly chances to be published in F&SF oh my god lights flashing bells ringing hosts of angels from on high I could pass out from the excitement and also throw up. (Yes, I have met aspiring SF writers.) I could be wrong about this, but I fear I'm not.

And while we're agreeing with John Scalzi, let's also note that yes, honestly, the attitudes of the "big three" toward electronic submission really have, over the last decade, gone from "practical response to unsolved problems of electronic mail and text" to "old man yelling at clouds." I mean, sure, it's their business and they can do as they like--refuse to read email, or for that matter demand that aspiring writers wear plaid pants. But as John points out, here in 2009, in most of the business world, electronic document transmittal has been routine for well over a decade; file formats, version control, and electronic workflow are basically boring issues with multiple solutions--about as challenging as setting up a household budget spreadsheet, and about as cutting-edge. I mean, dudes, just get a GMail account, if it's that hard. Get three.

Yes, it's true that Tor still requires printed manuscripts from people submitting unsolicited material. And if it were entirely up to me I'd change that. I already do the overwhelming majority of my work on screen and online. Certainly if I were currently in charge of a short fiction venue with a wide-open submission policy, I wouldn't just be allowing electronic submissions, I'd be requiring them.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-07-03/aika-zero-cute-manga-posted-for-free-online

Rion Senju's manga shares heroine with anime; 90-second promo streamed

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2009/7/3/reminder-emma-waston-guest-on-jonathan-ross-hbo-half-blood-prince-first-look-tonight

A quick reminder today of two television events related to Harry Potter taking place this evening.  First, as we reported previously, actress Emma Watson is set to be a guest on the Friday Night with Jonathan Ross program this evening on UK television station BBC at 10:35pm local time.Secondly, HBO is slated to air their First Look at Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince tonight at 9:45pm EST...

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2009/7/3/dan-radcliffe-talks-to-esquire-about-potter-life-and-more-in-new-interview

The August issue of Esquire Magazine features an eight page photo spread and interview with actor Dan Radcliffe.  In this interview, the young Harry Potter actor speaks at great length about a number of subjects related to the Potter films, his life in the limelight, and his future.  This most candid interview begins with Mr. Radcliffe talking of a recent injury sustained fighting a "giant snak...

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2009/7/3/full-profile-of-rupert-grint-in-july-issue-of-fhm

As TLC reported last night, actor Rupert Grint is set to grace the cover of FHM Magazine for their July issue.  Scans from this feature are now online and available to be viewed via this link.  Reliving his life both when he began portraying the character of Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films and now as he readies himself to film the final installments of the series, Mr. Grint offers a frank...

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2009/7/3/a-totally-awesome-preview

As so many Harry Potter fans have noticed and as reported here on Leaky, in the past few weeks a new fan parody, formerly called "HP, the Musical," appeared online to very swift excitement and acclaim. Shortly after getting more than 200K views on their first video, the creators took down most of the show so that they could tweak the files and be sure it was seen as an obvious parody.




While...

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2009/7/3/tom-felton-talks-draco-and-acting-in-half-blood-prince

Actor Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) is the subject of a new interview from Mexican magazine Selecciones.  A translation of the full article is now online thanks to HarryPotterLA, along with scans from the magazine.  In this interview, Mr. Felton discusses his role in the upcoming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince film, relating his enjoyment of Draco's rise in the story.  Quoteage:"It's the fi...

Four from Invincible Iron Man #15.

http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/2009/07/03/why-does-it-matter/

http://justinelarbalestier.com/?p=5236

Seems the authors v critics/reviewers thing just won’t go away. Today I was asked why I think it’s so important that authors not respond to critics. Basically what the question boiled down to was: Why does it matter?

A close friend also demanded that I explain why I am so keen on silencing authors.

I’ll take the second one first cause it’s so laughable. The very idea that I’m trying to silence anyone. I am an author. I am full of opinions. I share them here every single day. There’s nothing I don’t have an opinion on. Seriously. Ask me about anything at all and I will have a large loud opinion.¹

I am not saying that authors shouldn’t have a response to bad reviews. I’m saying they shouldn’t share that response with the intramanets. By all means bitch to your friends. I sure do. Scream your anger and woe and hurt feelings. Print the review out and burn it.² Do whatever it takes.

But do not go after the reviewer.

Because you will look like a thin-skinned, self-obsessed doxhead.

Because most of the time reviews are not about you. All you did was write the book. The reviewer is engaging with the book you wrote, and their relationship with it. They are bringing to bear their entire reading history as they do that. They will see and feel things you did not intend them to see. But you are not your book. If you can’t make that separation you are in for a world of pain.

Because if the reviewer is going after you specifically that’s their problem. Ad hominem attacks disguised as reviews are not hard for readers to spot. The problem is they’re very difficult for most writers to identify because so many of us cannot make that separation between ourselves and our books. Many of us authors feel that any criticism of our books is an attack on us. Rarely is that so.

Because it may well hurt your sales. I can think of several writers whose books I will never ever buy because of the way they attack anyone who disagrees with them. Because of their constant insistence that everything is about them. A blogger uses cover copy from their book jacket to discuss class and how it affects who does and does not get published and down they descend like an avenging angel in order to talk about the injustice done to them. When the blogger was, in fact, opening up a discussion about class and the politics of publishing. That author has revealed that they are a total doxhead.

Because you’re a published author. You have heaps of power. You have a right of response. In your books or on your blog or in an article or essay. I think it’s always wisest to address the criticisms generally rather than respond to a specific review. I’ve had a few people be upset about certain events in books 2 & 3 of my Magic or Madness trilogy. I have responded to their complaints and explained why I wrote them the way I did. I did this because they came to me and asked for an explanation. By all means talk about your motivations, explain the bits people have problems with. But there’s a big difference between doing that and attacking someone specific for giving you a bad review.

See? I’m not saying authors should be silent. I’m saying we shouldn’t behave like lunatics. If you scream at every reviewer (on blogs, goodreads, amazon, the NYT, wherever) who doesn’t worship you, exhort your fans to tear out their entrails, you not only look like a thin-skinned crazy person, you’re wasting your own time and energy. Write another book already.

It matters that you not behave like a lunatic because there’s no percentage in it.

Here’s my newsflash to you:

No matter what a genius you and your fans think you are not all readers are going to agree. There is not a book in existence that isn’t hated by someone. Me, I loathe Moby Dick. I have ex-friends who hate Pride and Prejudice. That is how the world is.

Get over yourself already.

I am now done and dusted with this topic.

1. Corks are an abomination! Jack Nicholson is a tosser! Don’t Ask Don’t Tell must be abolished! Radio National is the best radio in the world! Mangosteens are the best fruit! Ugg boots are hideous! I have to stop this! I could be here all year!
2. Though not very environmentally sound that.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=21873

 I figure it's something interesting to discuss among fans. and for legal purposes, superman vs venom.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-07-03/2009-spja-industry-award-winners-announced

Death Note, Gurren Lagann, Naruto, Bleach, CLAMP, Lucky Star, TokiKake, more