* From the guilty pleasures column on NPR: a review of Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels trilogy by Petra Mayer, an associate editor at NPR Books.
* Chris F. Holm talks about the “cold open” technique at the Criminal Minds group blog.
* Adina Senft, author of the Amish fiction trilogy that begins with The Wounded Heart, responds to Rachel Held Evans’s blog about Christian bookstores dictating to the CBA market to keep fiction “safe” for the readers.
* Kameron Hurley with a take on how exposition helps or hinders the reader and characters over-thinking their own environments.
* Free books! Laura Anne Gilman continues her summer book give-away.
* Free fiction! Martha Wells has posted chapter two of The Siren Depths, book 3 of the Raksura. You can read both chapter one and two here.