Yes, there will be many different opinions about the DGA deal and whether we should take it or not. But that is not what is being reported. You would think that Jim Brooks, Steve Gaghan, Eric Roth, John Logan, Robin Swicord, Susannah Grant, Aaron Sorkin, Callie Khouri, Tony Gilroy, Ron Harwood, Diablo Cody and a coterie of other highly-paid, award-clutching scribes are circling the Guild offices in black Priuses, waiting for the right moment to pounce and pressure us into taking the DGA deal verbatim.

Those are top screenwriters, no doubt, but I would find it strangely ironic if they were plotting subversion while picketing, working tirelessly on various Guild boards, and openly expressing their support for the strike.

So here is where my mind started to go: Could this reporting have anything to do with a well organized and very expensive PR campaign to convince WGA members that we should shut up and be grateful for what we got? But then I thought, "Come on, these are The Trades and other very reputable newspapers -- top media sources that we rely upon not just for local news, but for well-researched and independent reporting on international events. Whether it is Burbank or Baghdad, they speak with integrity, they check their sources, they get things right or they don't print it.

Seriously, what would this town be like if we couldn't trust our newspapers, our well-meaning agents and producer friends?

So, you have my apologies for questioning this undisputable fact that is so well reported. This powerful group of influential screenwriters not only exists, we should be very, very afraid of them.

As part of a new feature, I'll be checking in on various writers and asking what's currently on their minds. Think of it as a literary ambush, Amazon-style. Today, it's David B. Coe, author of the recently published The Sorcerer's Plague, the first of his Southlands series, and a former winner of the Crawford Award. He's a very interesting and to my mind underrated fantasy author. If you haven't read his work, starting with this new Southlands series would be a good place to start. Coe has been tackling what I'd call a sea change in his fiction: a switch from multiple third-person characters to a single, first-person narrator. Sometimes this occurs in a single series, like the bestselling Michael Connelly's Bosch detective novels changing from third to first person, sometimes, as with Coe, to tell a radically different story.

"For the past few weeks I've been working on a number of new projects in addition to the Blood of the Southlands series that I'm currently writing. The interesting thing is that I think I'm going to be writing all these new projects (two new multibook series and a short story--none of them related to one another) in first person. Sounds like a small thing, I know. But epic fantasy, which is what I usually write, tends to be written in third person and from the points of view of many characters. This new work I'm doing will have only one point of view character, who will be telling his or her own story. Because of this, these stories tend to have more intimate voices, to be more character driven, and, in some ways, more coherent. The other thing about these projects is that, while all are fantasy, all of them also involve crime mysteries of some sort. They draw upon the tradition of first person narrative originated by the old mystery masters (Spillane, Hammet, etc.) and brought over to SF/Fantasy by people like Philip K. Dick. Anyway, this all represents an artistic departure for me, and I'm having fun with it."

sn

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America has announced the long list for the prestigious Nebula Awards, from which the finalists will be chosen by SFWA members. It's quite a hodge podge of types and authors, plenty for everyone to choose from. I'm not sure who my money would be on--newcomers like Tobias Buckell, Hal Duncan, and Jay Lake, "famous outsiders" like Michael Chabon or J.K Rowling, established SF writers like Nalo Hopkinson and Peter Watts, or what I'd call "distinguished Old Masters," like Joe Haldeman and Jack McDevitt. Should be interesting--stay tuned! Before they parse it down, here's the list of novels for Amazon readers wishing to seek out some great SF. For the entire long list, visit the SFWA website.

Ragamuffin, by Tobias Buckell

The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon

Species Imperative #3: Regeneration, by Julie E. Czerneda

Vellum: The Book of All Hours, by Hal Duncan

The Accidental Time Machine, by Joe Haldeman

The New Moon's Arms, by Nalo Hopkinson

Mainspring, by Jay Lake

Odyssey, by Jack McDevitt

The Outback Stars, by Sandra McDonald

Strange Robby, by Selina Rosen

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling

Rollback, by Robert J. Sawyer

Blindsight, by Peter Watts

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may tread me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

This is not the first time you have seen Hillary Clinton seemingly at her wits' end, but she has always risen, always risen, don't forget she has always risen, much to the dismay of her adversaries and the delight of her friends.

Hillary Clinton will not give up on you and all she asks of you is that you do not give up on her.

There is a world of difference between being a woman and being an old female. If you're born a girl, grow up, and live long enough, you can become an old female. But to become a woman is a serious matter. A woman takes responsibility for the time she takes up and the space she occupies. Hillary Clinton is a woman. She has been there and done that and has still risen. She is in this race for the long haul. She intends to make a difference in our country. Hillary Clinton intends to help our country to be what it can become.

She declares she wants to see more smiles in the family, more courtesies between men and women, more honesty in the marketplace. She is the prayer of every woman and man who longs for fair play, healthy families, good schools, and a balanced economy.

She means to rise.

Don't give up on Hillary. In fact, if you help her to rise, you will rise with her and help her make this country the wonderful, wonderful place where every man and every woman can live freely without sanctimonious piety and without crippling fear.

Rise, Hillary.

Rise.

Today he had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading.

"It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore," he said. "Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore."

• Christine Falls by Benjamin Black (Henry Holt and Company)
• Priest by Ken Bruen (St. Martin's Minotaur)
• The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)
• Soul Patch by Reed Farrel Coleman (Bleak House Books)
• Down River by John Hart (St. Martin's Minotaur)

• Missing Witness by Gordon Campbell (HarperCollins - William Morrow)
• In the Woods by Tana French (Penguin Group - Viking)
• Snitch Jacket by Christopher Goffard (The Rookery Press)
• Head Games by Craig McDonald (Bleak House Books)
• Pyres by Derek Nikitas (St. Martin's Minotaur)

• Queenpin by Megan Abbott (Simon & Schuster)
• Blood of Paradise by David Corbett (Random House - Mortalis)
• Cruel Poetry by Vicki Hendricks (Serpent's Tail)
• Robbie's Wife by Russell Hill (Hard Case Crime)
• Who is Conrad Hirst? by Kevin Wignall (Simon & Schuster)

• The Triumph of the Thriller: How Cops, Crooks and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction by Patrick Anderson (Random House)
• A Counter-History of Crime Fiction: Supernatural, Gothic, Sensational by Maurizio Ascari (Palgrave Macmillan)
• Deviance in Contemporary Crime Fiction by Christiana Gregoriou (Palgrave Macmillan)
• Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley (The Penguin Press)
• Chester Gould: A Daughter's Biography of the Creator of Dick Tracy by Jean Gould O'Connell (McFarland & Company)