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Showing posts from October, 2010

A Dead Genre?

I'm a subscriber to  David Farland's "Daily Kick in the Pants," and email newsletter that goes out...well, daily...and offers a wealth of practical advice to writers. I've gotten some priceless tidbits of wisdom and motivation from his offerings. Well, today the "Daily Kick" dished up a line that felt more like a kick in the teeth. (No fault of Mr. Farland's...he calls things like he sees them, and he's just being frank without any malice toward me or any other reader.) David Farland said something in just  few little lines that sunk a sword into my gut. He wrote that his agent believes Tolkienesque fantasy to be dead and unsellable. What? I can't help but wonder at the plausibility of this statement, given the number of teens who every day who discover Middle Earth for the first time, and how if you hang around at least the younger readers of fantasy, how there is still a deep, tremulous excitement over worlds populated with elves, dw