Writers' Rooms Part Deux

Hello Blog Fans—

Ready for the next installment of the League Writers’ Rooms? It follows after these messages from our sponsors.



A little Whedon stuff off the top of my head. I’m having a contest on The Biting Edge. Prize is a copy of MBR—just released in trade. All you have to do is pop over and make a comment—hopefully about Dollhouse, but really, can be about anything. MBR is dedicated to Joss Whedon from a group I belong to called The Buffybuds. Contest ends on Tuesday at midnight.


On March 23rd, another Whedon Alum, Nathan Fillion of Firefly/Serenity/Dr. Horrible fame begins his new show on ABC, Castle. We’ll be discussing that on The Biting Edge, too, I’m sure.

Some interesting (at least to me) factoids about bookselling and numbers. For 2008, the top ten books in terms of numbers sold were:

1 Breaking Dawn Meyer, Stephenie 3,310,000
2 Twilight Meyer, Stephenie 3,175,000
3 A New Earth Tolle, Eckhart 3,146,000
4 The Last Lecture Pausch, Randy 2,705,000
5 New Moon Meyer, Stephenie 2,667,000
6 Eclipse Meyer, Stephenie 2,563,000
7 The Shack Young, William 2,551,000
8 The Tales of Beedle the Bard Rowling, JK 1,822,000
9 Brisingr Paolini, Christopher 1,312,000
10 Eat, Pray, Love Gilbert, Elizabeth 1,274,000

For the top fifty list, go here.

For Tolkien fans, an early unpub’d work is coming out. From the AP:

"The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun," a thorough reworking in verse of old Norse epics that predates Tolkien's writing of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, will be published in May by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

According to Houghton, the book will include an introduction by Tolkien and notes by his son, Christopher Tolkien.

J.R.R. Tolkien, whose fantasy novels have sold millions of copies, died in 1973. "The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun" was written in the 1920s and '30s, when the author was teaching at Oxford University.

Cool.

Okay, here’s something REALLY cool: You can help name the new NASA node. Voting will be open from February 19th to March 20th, 2009. NASA will announce the winning name in April 2009.
Choices are:
Earthrise
Legacy
Serenity
Venture

While I’m partial to Legacy for personal reasons, Serenity seems up and away the favorite—You’ll see what I mean when you vote.

Next Wednesday I’ll have more book news and a couple of writing contests for you to check out on The Biting Edge.

Back now to our scheduled feature. Writers’ rooms.

Today’s victims—er—guests are: Cherie Priest, Richelle Mead and Nicole Peeler.

We’ll start with Cherie first. She says: It's not ordinarily this tidy, but I just moved -- and the desk area hasn't yet had time to restore itself to chaos.



I say: baloney. Nobody with a desk this neat EVER lets it descend into chaos. And look at those pictures on the wall! Did you hang them with a level? Even the days marked off on the calendar are tidy. I want to revisit this in say—six months—and see if I’m right. I’ll bet it will be just as neat!


Richelle Mead. She says: You sure you want this monstrosity? Was I supposed to say anything about it? I'm so scattered lately.



I say: Richelle, baby, with three series going, a deadline every three months, and a blog that you journal in everyday, you’re entitled to be a little scattered. Personally, I like it. Especially the exercise thingy in the left corner which I assume you use to hold your calendar (I think that’s what that is). I was trying to figure out what those red things are on the floor. Care to share?

Nicole Peeler. She says: Nicole works in a corner of her apartment, near the fire so she can burn things when she's frustrated. Her desk always (has) drafts of novels/conference papers/journal articles that usually need to have been finished five minutes ago. She also keeps cards from her friends, and a very special motto given to her by her high school English teacher close at hand.



I say: My first question back to Nicole upon receiving this was: Do you REALLY sit on that ball? She replied: Yup! :-) I swear, once you go ball you'll never . .. okay, that puttered out. But seriously, it's awesome. I hate sitting at my desk chair in my work office now…. That said, I have totally fallen off of it a few times. Which may explain a lot depending on whether she fell backwards and hit her head on the floor, or frontwards and hit her head on the desk. Well, come to think of it, it doesn’t really matter which way she fell, does it? Next question: I couldn't read the motto. Do I want to?

So that's it for this week. Tune in next Saturday for another installment of Writers' Rooms. Same bat time (more or less). Same bat channel.