Last Friday I began looking at my process of keeping up-to-date with Genre news, focusing on my daily schedule. When it comes to keeping on top of genre news each week, there are a few websites I stop at and a bit of housekeeping to do.
The Websites:
Mania.com actually used to be Cinescape - the websites connected to the genre magazine of the same name. The focus is largely on SF, but they do give some space to comics, horror, fantasy and manga. The site itself breaks news down into different categories - lets users add scoops they've found elsewhere and (thankfully) allows you to search past articles. I probably could spend a lot more than just a weekly visit there - but as I try to balance my obsessiveness with my regular life, I just visit the site at lunch of Fridays.
Author Sites
One of my favourite things about Web 2.0 is that many authors not only have websites, but also have conversations with fans on those sites. I follow a number of Author sites (my favourite two are NeilGaiaman.com and StephenKing.com), which allow me to keep up with news about upcoming books or even short stories appearing in other books, but following these sites also point me to other authors and films I really dig (It was a mention by both Stephen King and Peter David in the same week that first sent me over to Robert B. Parker).
The Process:
Throughout the week I take notes on upcoming stories or movies I'm interested in (usually on whatever I'm using for a bookmark at the moment), and at the end of the week I've got to put it all together (pictured left). Basically it breaks down as follows:
Books:
Any upcoming book I've noted down gets checked out at fantastic fiction, as they usually have the relsease date noted - then I'll email the titles and dates to myself.
Comics:
As there is so much going on in the world of Comics - I do my best to follow bloggers and word of mouth (at one of my book clubs last week, the titles Unwritten and Chew were mentioned so I'll follow them up this weekend). Basically I start by seeing if my library has a copy (why pay if you can get it for free) and if not I'll look for online reviews. Any comics that I can find through friends or at the library get requested, the rest get emailed to myself.
Movies:
I use an online movie rental service called zip.ca - it's similar to Netflix in the States. You create a queue of movies you'd like to see and as they become available you are mailed them. Zip allows you to put movies on hold as soon as they get into the theatre. This allows me to keep a list of all the movies I'd like to see on someone elses site and ensures I don't miss out on as many as I did before we started using zip.
Whew - that's a lot of compiling I do each week - it never seems that big until you start explaining it. Next Friday we'll look at my monthly regime.
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