Let's face it: One of the big reasons people flock to blogs by published writers is the hope that they'll offer up some inside secrets on, well, how to become published writers. Of course, the quality of the advice can vary widely from blog to blog. Last week, Barry Eisler, creator of the "John Rain" thriller series, gave readers a highly sensible tip: Kill your television. "Don't delude yourself into thinking, as you plop down on the Barcolounger and fire up the remote, that one day you're going to rent that isolated cabin and write that novel you've always been thinking about," he warns. "It won't happen. That one day is today. It's right now. It's every day to come, however many you have."

At the newly launched sci-fi/fantasy group blog Deep Genre, meanwhile, Katherine Kerr suggests that historical novels featuring real but not-quite-famous people are in, based on something her agents told her. Offered up as evidence: The Girl With the Pearl Earring and the rumor that "apparently there's a bestseller about Anne Boleyn's sister." One assumes she means Philippa Gregory's 2002 novel The Other Bolelyn Girl, since Karen Harper's recently published The Last Boleyn doesn't seem to be on any bestseller lists. At any rate, the point remains that two books, one of which is seven years old and not strictly speaking about a real person, and the other of which you don't even know the name, do not quite suggest a publishing trend—not to mention the sneaking suspicion that this type of historical novel has always been with us. More importantly, as fellow SF writer Kristine Smith observes, "In the 2-3 years it would take for me to research and write a novel that would fit that niche, the needs would change and they'd want something else."