Author: Kate Lechler

On this day in 1926, J. Gordon Whitehead punched Harry Houdini so hard that it killed him. (Okay, the actual story is more complicated, but still bizarre: check it out here.)

Writing, Editing, and Publishing:

This Guardian article about catfishing in the book-blogging world is both fascinating and frightening. Kathleen Hale writes about her experience as an author in a flame war with a book blogger; both the blogger and Hale exhibited some bad behavior, and Hale reflects on what she learned from this experience.

Cory Doctorow‘s short story,

On this day in 2001,  NASA’s spacecraft Galileo came within spitting distance of Jupiter’s moon, Io.  (Well, if you can spit 112 miles.) 

Writing, Editing, and Publishing:

If you’ve been thinking about picking up China Mieville but don’t know where to start, worry no longer: Jared Shurin has several recommendations. Only downside is, he gives the short stories short shrift, which is too bad: they’re where I started with Mieville, and never stopped.

Zilpha Keatley Snyder passed away this week. She wrote award-winning children’s books,

On this day in 1943, R.L. Stine, the author of the Goosebumps series, was born.

Writing, Editing, and Publishing:

Roger Sutton of The Horn Book wrote an open-letter to self-published authors this week, explaining why his publication does not review self-published children’s books. It will be interesting to see, in the next few years, if self-published children’s books follow the trend Sutton has noticed with self-published books for adults; nonetheless, as an editor, I really appreciated this statement: “An editor isn’t there to “fix mistakes.” His or her most important job is to understand what contribution your story makes–or doesn’t–to the big world of books and readers.”

On this date in history . . . well, a lot of cool stuff happened. Alexander the Great conquered Darius of Persia in 331 BC; Thomas Edison opened his electric lamp factory in 1880; a brand-new Model T was selling for $825 in 1908; NASA replaced NACA in 1958, providing the “Space” in the acronym; and my favorite Disney park, Epcot, opened in 1982.

Writing, Editing, and Publishing:

In publishing news, Angry Robot sold to Etan Ilfeld, the American owner of Watkins Bookshop in London and the editor of Mind Body Spirit magazine.