Murderer Wins Book Deal

An author named Alaric Hunt recently won a contest for mystery/suspense novels, and also a book deal with a ten thousand dollar advance. But no one knew, at the time, he was a convicted murderer serving a life sentence for a fire he started that killed a woman. He supposedly described settings in his book from episodes of Law and Order, and crime novels he’d been reading. Sarah Weinman talks about it in NY Mag.

She had initially assumed that Hunt wouldn’t get the money from his book sales because of “Son of Sam” laws, which prohibit criminals from profiting from their crimes. But South Carolina repealed its version of the law, so Hunt can profit from his sales. Weinman added, “[S]ince he wrote a novel that is so markedly different from the crimes that landed him in prison — that in many ways is closer to the unpublished science fiction and fantasy he wrote for years before — instead of a memoir directly referencing Joyce Austin’s death, that adds yet more nuance to the debate.”

You can read more here. The article goes on to discuss how the mother of Hunt’s murder victim responded to all this. After all, her daughter is dead thanks to him, and he’s in prison watching Law and Order so he can write books. Weinman thinks it’s an ethical debate but offers no solid comments. I think it’s a moral issue.

Large Penis Issues

It’s interesting how so many people don’t ever think about how many issues men who are overly endowed might experience. In many cases, a lot of these issues can be compared to woman with extra-large breasts. And this next article, although pithy in tone, it talks about some of the problems men with large penises encounter, especially guys like Kellan Lutz.

 11. You have to look in the mirror a thousand times before you go for a jog so this doesn’t happen

You can read more here.

Phil Simon on Blogs

This is clearly more oriented to those who blog, or are thinking about blogging. Phil Simon is a professional who does many things and blogging is only one of them. In spite of so much advice we often see about daily blogging, he doesn’t seem to think bloggers should post something every single say, and for some very specific reasons. Here’s just one:

More blog posts equals greater potential overlap. As of now, there are nearly 700 posts on my site . Does each express a unique idea? Of course not. That goes tenfold for daily bloggers. Case in point: I used to read Seth’s blog pretty religiously until I started to find it a bit redundant. I suspect that I’m hardly alone here. After a while, you just can’t shake that feeling that you’ve seen that movie before.

I actually agree with him. Although I do blog daily…sometimes twice a day…it’s hard to keep from repeating things I’ve posted about earlier. But I also usually zoom in on certain topics, stick with them, and follow them with updates. More often than not I can return to previous posts I’ve written and link to a prediction I made that came true on one specific topic. And right now since there is no shortage of information regarding anything LGBTI, I often find that I could post three times a day if I had the time.

But I don’t think everyone should feel obligated to post on his or her blog daily. The only thing I think is important when blogging is to be consistent with posting, and that doesn’t have to be daily. In other words, if you are posting weekly, don’t skip that weekly post and think you can get away with it. Your readers will grow bored and won’t come back. There’s nothing more annoying to me than putting a blog on my sidebar and going back two months later and finding the same post. Why bother?

And, most important, you have to like blogging, and not expect anything from it. If it’s too much of an effort and you have to drag yourself to write a post you probably shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. And no one can fault you for that. Blogging takes time, and it takes even more time to develop a voice and a readership.

Best Male Blogs

Speaking of blogging, here’s a link to a web site that’s focused on male blogs and all things related to male celebs and gay actors. It’s NSFW, so you’ve been warned. But it’s an interesting site to navigate just for pure entertainment. From what I can see many are amateur blogs on google blogger.

You can read more here. It reminds me almost of the former Best Gay Blogs. A lot of the blogs are rated, too, and in this case I often find these ratings are accurate.

Photo listed in public domain.