the league of reluctant adults

First of all, congratulations to Leaguer Jeanne Stein for the release of the Anna Strong #7 book, Crossroads . I've known Jeanne for years a long time, and I've seen her persevere in the frustrating and tortuous path to get published. She came close to giving up, and even when she strapped herself back to the yoke, it still took a while before anything positive happened. Jeanne exemplified the supreme toughness it takes to make it was a writer. If you're a young American male, the standard for toughness is a Navy SEAL. But if you think it's tough to be a SEAL, then try being a published writer, specifically a novelist. It's hard to compare success rates, since the weeding-out process for SEALs and writers starts early. So I'm guessing for SEALs, maybe 10% of the wannabes actually get to wear the coveted Trident insignia. 10%! That's gravy compared to being a novelist. Literary agents get hundreds of queries a week. Maybe they respond...

Items you may or may not know yet: Jackie Kessler Enters The Buffyverse The February edition of "MySpace Dark Horse Presents” will introduce a new writer to the comic book field, dark fantasy/supernatural romance author Jackie Kessler, who will pen a short "Tales of the Vampires" episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8" titled "Carpe Noctem." Kessler, whose novels include "Hell's Bells,""Black and White," and several Young Adult titles under the name Jackie Morse Kessler, is joined on the comic by artist Paul Lee. * * * * Winners of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association's 2010 Book Awards, which were selected from more than 200 nominated titles by Northwest authors and published in 2009, are: The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt & the Fire that Saved America by Timothy Egan (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) The Collector: David Douglas and the Natural History of the NorthwestJack Nisbet (Sasquatch Books) Boneshaker ...

As if anyone forgot, today marks the release of debut author and fellow Leaguer Diana Rowland's urban fantasy novel MARK OF THE DEMON . If you don't have a copy, get to your local bookstore. You don't want to miss it! Congrats, Diana!!!