This has been quite the turbulent week! I’m sure many of us have been watching the US elections closely and that’s been dominating everyone’s week. We’re here today to give you a little bit of info on what you might’ve missed this week while votes were counted.
Bookish News
Rachel Caine Passes
Bestselling author Roxanne Longstreet Conrad, known as her pen name Rachel Caine, died this week on November 1st after a battle with soft tissue sarcoma. Conrad was the author of the popular YA Morganville Vampire novels and The Great Library series. Our thoughts go out to her family at this time.
Her family also noted in an email:
“In lieu of flowers, please send donations to Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of American Emergency Medical Fund, or the Dallas-based Mary Crowley Cancer Research Center.”
Mary Crowley Cancer Research Center
NaNoWriMo Begins!
It’s that time of year again! National Novel Writing Month started this week. For the uninformed, NaNoWriMo is a month-long event dedicated to helping you write your book! The goal is to write 50,000 words in the month of November, not worrying about the quality, just trying to get that first draft done. Many great books have been written during NaNoWriMo, including The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (check out our review here), Cinder by Marissa Meyer, and Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, to name a few.
The community around NaNoWriMo is super supportive, and can help give you budge you need to start that novel you’ve been waiting on. The NaNoWriMo website also has a ton of great resources to check out for planning and writing, as well as a way to track your word count for the month. If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo this year, let us know what you’re working on!
BookShop in the UK
Following up a story from last week, the popular online book marketplace website Bookshop.org just opened up a website for UK stores! The website will allow independent UK bookstores to easily create an online storefront and sell books online. In fact, the opening in the UK was so strong that by Tuesday, “150 bookstores across the U.K. had signed up to be Bookshop affiliates.” (Publisher’s Weekly) Hopefully this trend of supporting independent book shops continues to grow so we can keep them around for many years to come.
Not Quite Bookish News
Adaptation News
In adaptation news this week we have HBO renewing His Dark Materials for a 3rd season! The second season of the show begins airing later this month on November 16th. I haven’t yet seen the first season myself, but I’ve heard good things so I hope to get caught up soon!
We also got notice that the Wheel of Time series adaptation from Amazon has halted production until 2021 out of safety concerns.
That’s it for our Bookish News this week! Now we can get back to anxiously awaiting the results of the 2020 election. Tell us what you thought of this week’s bookish news. Let us know if you think there’s something we should add to next week’s post either here or message us on Twitter! Make sure to stay safe, and happy reading!