On SF Signal, Helen Lowe interviews Australian writer Marianne de Pierres. I stumbled across Marianne's work in a collection of her short work, Glitter Rose, and was blown away.

Here's what Marianne says about her heroes:

The heroic aspect of my characters is generally that they are imbued with an intrinsic kindness or generosity of spirit. The anti-hero side is that they are always extremely flawed and make lots of bad decisions. Complexity of character means internal conflicts, doubts, mistakes and missed opportunities – stereotypical heroes don’t harbour those kinds of problems.

For this last year, I've been linking to Laura Anne Gilman's excellent series on Book View Cafe, Practical Meerkat's Useful Info for Writers. These were not "how to write" blogs, but invaluable perspectives on publishing -- and how it's changing! -- careers, professional relationships, care of the writerly ego... in other words, what we all need to know to survive and perhaps flourish. Now she's complied them into an ebook, available from Book View Cafe in the usual multi-formats, for only $2.99.

Practical Meerkat’s 52 Bits of Useful Info for Young (and Old) Writers
(Writing Advice)

The skinny: Writing is a craft. Publishing is a business. Today's world requires you to understand both.

*Knowing When Not to Complain (and how to do it)
*Bar Schmoozing with the Big Dogs (even if you don't drink)
*Dealing with a Difficult Editor/Agent... and much, much more!

Laura Anne Gilman has been an editor since 1990, including 7 years heading the Roc SF imprint for Penguin. As a writer, she has twenty-five novels and forty+ stories to her name. A freelancer since 2003, she hasn’t starved yet. She figures all this gives her the ability to talk a bit about the industry.

Filmmaker Eric Solstein presents a tribute to Science Fiction's Grand Masters, including Jack Williamson, Frederik Pohl, Isaac Asimov, James Gunn, William Tenn, Clifford D. Simak, Joe Haldeman, Philip Jos@eacute; Farmer, Norman Spinrad, Damon Knight (for whom the Grand Master Award is now named), Julie Schwartz, Gene Wolfe, Hal Clement, Poul Anderson, Samuel R. Delany, Barry Malzberg and Brian Aldiss.

http://www.youtube.com/v/lHNSm4Mu2-s&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x2b405b&color2=0x6b8ab6