Dirty LIttle Lies Week Day Five and Who Made Up This List?

Today’s winner of the Dirty Little Lies Giveaway is LIANE. Liane, please email me with your address so I can get you a signed copy of the book. Everyone else, leave our comments here to be entered into tomorrow’s giveaway!

Speaking of Dirty Little Lies, here’s a picture of Julie Leto and me at our signing this weekend. (Not pictured: Tim Dorsey, also at the signing.)

Also, I’m still tweaking the new layout, but what do you think? I’m kind of into the three-column look.

In other news, a lot of folks are talking about an “article” up at Associated Content, which as far as I can tell is an about.com-esque site run not unlike Wikipedia (in that anyone can publish an article), purporting to report on “The Top Ten Blogs About Writing and Publishing.” (In passing, isn’t Associated Content the blandest name you can think of?) It’s written by a man named Jack Oceano, who spends most of his time on AC reporting on the AFC and Hawaiian eateries. When I first saw the list, I was appalled. Sure, it’s got great sites up like Miss Snark, PubRants, and the journal of Anna Genoese, but then it veers off into la-la land.

Listing Agent 007, who hasn’t publishing anything in almost five months? How is that a top blog on ANY subject? And don’t get me started on the listing of one blog by a fee-charging (supposed) agent who tells blog visitors that NO agent who is any good signs new writers, that ALL agents worth their salt charge reading fees, and spends the majority of his time talking about which of his dates have performed what sexual favors on him. This is NOT a top blog on writing. This is not a blog I’d read, or that I would recommend to ANY writer. How about a little Writers Beware? What about Buzz, Balls, and Hype? I’d pick either of those blogs, as well as half a dozen others, over abandoned blogs like 007 (might as well pick Mad Max Perkins, if you’re doing it solely based on back issue content) or ego trippers masquerading as blogs.

And the descriptions of the blog also leave something to be desired. He started off okay, but then went off on some pretty bizarre tangents, and concentrated almost solely on weird factoids (e.g., Jason Pinter’s blog background is black) rather than on what type of info is to be found on the blogs. When I was a journalist, we participated in a little thing called fact-checking. And we definitely gave better reasons for our rankings than, “it’s got links to lots of great blogs” or defines a “bogger’s” [sic] helpfulness in terms other than saying that she liked the plague. (I know that she who has not typoed should cast the first stone, but my blog goes out unedited. I assume AC does not.)

Of course, there may be more to the story. Oceano states that one of the top reasons to write for Associated Content appears to be the ability the posters have to wreak revenge on people who have pissed them off. Maybe, in this case, the insistence upon only picking industry pros (or alleged industry pros) has less to do with an actual desire to be helpful and more to do with rewarding those who may help him and ignoring those who may have pissed him off. Which I guess means that I’ll never make Associated Content’s list of “top author blogs.” And yet, before one purports to be an expert on a subject, perhaps he should actually look into it.