Looks like the Bard might have written more than his already prolific canon of plays. A Shakespeare scholar from the University of Nottingham is fairly certain of the confirmation a new play was written by Shakespeare. According this article from the AP via Yahoo! News:

After years of literary investigation, a professor at the University of Nottingham said Tuesday he’s certain “Double Falsehood, or the Distressed Lovers” was born out of “Cardenio,” a play Shakespeare scholars believe existed…”There is definitely Shakespearean DNA,” said English literature professor Brean Hammond, who has worked since 2002 to determine if “Double Falsehood” has Shakespearean roots.

As the article mentions, there is not enough proof with 100% certainty that “Double Falsehood” is based off of this mysterious “Cardenio” play.

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Science fiction author Philip K. Dick died 28 years ago. If you haven’t read any of his books and/or short stories, you are probably still familiar with his work. His writings have been adapted into such films as Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Screamers and more. I’ve seen the movies Total Recall and Minority Report, but as usual, I enjoyed Dick’s writing a lot more than the Hollywood adaptation.

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This tip was sent to me from Simon Owens from Bloggasm. Thanks Simon!

The feud between Amazon and Macmillan has seemed to settle down, at least for now. Macmillan titles are again being sold on the online retailer. But the ripple effect still lingers and its anyone’s guess how the ripples created by this feud will play out in the long run.

A lot of attention has been given to Amazon and Macmillan. But what about the authors? Each party claims it has the best interest of the authors in mind, although after seeing the way Amazon and Macmillan acted, that’s a little hard to believe. I think the biggest and most direct hit on authors came from Amazon’s decision to suddenly pull all Macmillan titles from their site. Not cool.

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So far I’ve been silent about the recent feud between Amazon and the publisher Macmillan because there have been so many articles, blog posts, forum comments and other coverage, that I didn’t want to contribute to all the ‘noise.’ However, there is a slightly new development in this story that I do feel it’s worth writing about.

Today the Author’s Guild released a statement that pretty much supports Macmillan in the feud. There’s really nothing surprising about that since the Guild usually supports the large publishers and higher ebook prices. The Author’s Guild believes that if Macmillan succeeds in having more control over ebook prices, it will be good for the industry as a whole:

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American literary great J.D. Salinger died today, he was 91. According to Harold Ober, Salinger’s representative, the writer died of natural causes. Here’s a brief excerpt from the New York Times J.D. Salinger, Literary Recluse, Dies at 91:

He bragged in college about his literary talent and ambitions, and wrote swaggering letters to Whit Burnett, the editor of Story magazine. But success, once it arrived, paled quickly for him. He told the editors of Saturday Review that he was

It’s hard to ignore an author like James Patterson. His books, an estimated 14 million copies sold, are everywhere from airport bookstores, in the supermarket and featured on prominent shelves in bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders. I’ll confess that the only Patterson book I’ve read is Sail (aff link). The novel was okay. At best it was entertaining. But I’m unlikely to be buying another Patterson novel in the future.

However, being a mega-selling superstar author, James Patterson is someone all struggling novelists should pay attention to and learn a thing or two.

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I was shocked and saddened when I saw a story on a ‘Google Alert’ email that mystery writer Robert B. Parker died suddenly Monday January 18 of an apparent heart attack. Parker died at his writing desk, doing what he loved best, writing a new Spenser novel.

I began reading Parker’s novels in high school, and for a time, appeared to be addicted to them. The plots seemed simple enough, yet had an undercurrent of complex twists and turns. In fact, all those novels I read (which seemed to be a perfect escape from the angst of high school) inspired me to write my own mystery stories.

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Sometimes I just want to throw my hands up in the air and give up. I’m talking about those publishers and authors who are paranoid about their books being pirated if they’re released as ebooks. This ‘strategy’ is not very business smart. Why? Because when a publisher/author refuses to release a book in ebook format for fear of pirating, it gets pirated anyway. I’ve pointed this out in one of my most commented-on posts J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the definition of irony.

Now we can add Stephen King into the mix (yes, that Stephen King, the one who wrote an exclusive ebook for the new Kindle he helped promote). His newest novel ‘Under the Dome’ was released in ebook format several weeks after the print release of the book. Publishers didn’t want the lower ebook price to eat away at the higher hard cover price. Within days of the print release, pirated ebooks of ‘Under the Dome’ were circulating around the internet. In turn, this ate away at print and ebook sales.

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For many people, it may seem wrong that one can get rich by giving stuff away for free. This is exactly what one science fiction writer and digital evangelist is doing – and he’s the traditional publishing industry’s worst nightmare. I’m referring to Cory Doctorow,  a fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the co-editor of the blog BoingBoing and a science fiction author who sells and gives away his novels for free.

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Stephen King’s latest magnum opus, Under the Dome: A Novel (aff link), has recently been released. If you haven’t yet made it down to your local bookstore, you might want to take a look. The novel is a brick, weighing in at a whopping 1,074 pages. I plan on reading King’s latest work eventually, but I’ll probably wait until the ebook edition is released later on this year (I only have so much shelf space and I don’t want Stephen King hogging it all).

The premise of the novel is interesting: A clear dome falls over a town and they must somehow survive the consequences of being cut off from the rest of the world. There is a great book review in the NYT – and the review is also where I got the inspiration for this post.

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