Welcome to yet another Holiday Monday’s Writing Links: Tuesday Edition, where I attempt to make this byline as long as possible. We’ll see what we can do about making the title longer next week. Either way, today’s Writing Links are here to inspire you and get you back writing so that you can have your book out by this time next year, enjoying the accolades of being the bestselling author of the first Hasidic Jew action detective series (or whatever subject you may be tackling).
The highlighted link today is for Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Ernest Cline, best known for writing the doomed Star Wars fanboy film Fanboys, ventures into novel writing with Ready Player One. Despite a recent release, Cline’s novel already comes highly recommended and rated by those who have had the pleasure to read it. Have I read it yet? No. Will I read it? Absolutely. I leave for Brazil at the end of the week and I’m sure somewhere in the dual twelve hour flights, miscellaneous time spent at customs insisting that the packets of white powder in my bag are in fact dietary supplements for stomach problems and the thirty-five to forty minute window on the beach that my skin complexion can tolerate the sun, I will find the time to read it. Until then, let’s bask in the glowing glow of the synopsis:
“Ready Player One takes place in the not-so-distant future–the world has turned into a very bleak place, but luckily there is OASIS, a virtual reality world that is a vast online utopia. People can plug into OASIS to play, go to school, earn money, and even meet other people (or at least they can meet their avatars), and for protagonist Wade Watts it certainly beats passing the time in his grim, poverty-stricken real life. Along with millions of other world-wide citizens, Wade dreams of finding three keys left behind by James Halliday, the now-deceased creator of OASIS and the richest man to have ever lived. The keys are rumored to be hidden inside OASIS, and whoever finds them will inherit Halliday’s fortune. But Halliday has not made it easy. And there are real dangers in this virtual world. Stuffed to the gills with action, puzzles, nerdy romance, and 80s nostalgia, this high energy cyber-quest will make geeks everywhere feel like they were separated at birth from author Ernest Cline.”
Links
– AV Club Reviews Ready Player One (avclub)
– io9 Interviews Ernest Cline While He Plays Joust (io9)
– The Perils And Pleasures Of Long Running Fantasy Series (avclub)
– Fact Vs Fiction: Writing Outside Your Life (writersunboxed)
– Then All Genres Are Flawed (writeanything)
– How A Single Bullet Can Get A Customer To Buy Your Book (writetodone)
– Podcast Interview With Nathan Bransford (aisf)
– George Lucas Changes Star Wars Yet Again (sfsignal)
– Grammar Rules: Capitalization (writingforward)
– Neil DeGrassi Tyson: If I Were President (haydenplanetarium)
