Gratitude

About 18 months ago, I went to a writer's workshop at our local sci-fi con (MarsCon... which is awesome and if you are local, you should totally go!)

At that time, I'd just gotten notified that On the Fly was going to be picked up for publication, so I had three stories accepted; Golden Moment, Shadows of Kenfig, and On the Fly. Not many. Certainly not enough that I considered myself a professional writer.

(I have since been informed - rather tartly -  that I became a "professional" the moment someone paid me to write. So, there's that.)

Anyway, I attended two writer's workshops that weekend, one for hooking your reader with a good opening paragraph or two, and the other for scene setting. Allen Wold, his daughter Darcy, and Danny Birt were among the panel members who were offering their advice.

I wrote two paragraphs. (I cannot find the original draft with my notes on it from the seminar, but rest assured, it was pretty rough.)

"Do you know, Jamison," Duncan Farnsworth, Earl Leveret said as he stripped off his gloves and deposited them in his hat, "what the absolute worst thing is about being dead?" The sun was skimming the horizon. Another few minutes and he might have had some unpleasantness. Jamison closed the heavy door behind his master and Duncan shuddered with relief. 

"I fear you are about to tell me, sir," his butler replied, entirely uninterested.

"It is simply this; being deceased has done nothing to improve the quality of my social engagements." 

"Perhaps, sir," Jamison said, ushering his lord into the parlor and folding the rain-damp coat over one arm, "you should lay down and play dead with slightly more conviction."

Those starting paragraphs went on to become the beginning of my soon-to-be-published short-story, Synchronous Rotations. (Which will be out July 3rd, from Torquere press.)

Synch is the 3rd of my London Steam saga (started with Shadow of Kenfig and continuing in The Blister Effect) but it stands alone better than Blister Effect did. I've also learned to Make Sure that the fact that it's a continuation story is in the marketing materials. Blister Effect did not do as well as I'd hoped, probably because the only review for it, the reader was fairly confused.

In a reimagined 1890's London, where steam-driven airships rule the skies and monsters roam the streets, Duncan Farnsworth is discovering that being a vampire is not exactly good for his chances of finding love, continuing the family line, or getting a bite to eat. Maneuvering his way around a sarcastic butler, his spinster sister, a run-in with an amorous werewolf, and finally confronted by a dead soldier and a French airship captain, Duncan finally finds exactly what he is thirsting for.

Continuing in the story-line begun in the Shifting Steam anthology, and continued in The Blister Effect, Synchronous Rotations takes a look at another player in that infamous card game, Duncan Farnsworth. If you like your steampunk with a little supernatural on top, Synchronous Rotations should wind you right up.

I sent both Allen and Danny quick emails today letting them know that I had been very well benefited by the seminars.

[sic]... congratulations. News like that assures me that it's worth while to continue with my workshop. I'll be doing it again next year, as I do it at other places as well. But you're on your way to not needing it any more. More stories, more stories! -- Allen Wold

Marscon 2013

This weekend upcoming is the annual Marscon science fiction/fantasy convention.

If you've never been to a sci-fi convention, I can't really recommend them highly enough. If you're a sci-fi geek, of course, and if the idea of being stuck in an elevator with a Klingon doesn't bother you. Sci-fi geeks run the gamut of weirdos. (Altho, to be perfectly honest, I only know a few geeks who are actually Sheldon levels of intolerable assholes.) But a sci-fi con is a great excuse to let your geek flag fly...

I usually go for the music - as you all know, I'm a huge fan of filking and supernatural folk music. There will be several performers there - Jonah Knight, Mikey Mason, Poison Dwarf, the Blithering Humdingers... and the writing workshops. This year, my editor Kristina Wright, and my fellow writer and best friend Elizabeth Brooks will be sitting erotica panels... so that should be fun!

The husband brought home print-outs of the schedule yesterday. Three copies.

He gave one copy to me, one to the kiddo, and kept one. Over the week, we're going to look at the schedule (there's almost 30 damn pages!!) and figure out what we want to do, what we can do, and what we will do. Having to juggle the kiddo back and forth, since she really can't go to a writing panel for writing about alien sex... (No, really! There's a panel for that!! And yes, I'm planning to go.)

Marscon has the huge benefit of 1) assuming that geeks are also old 2) and that they've actually managed to carry on conversations and relationships long enough that 3) they've had babies. 4) those babies are likely also geeks

There's a HUGE amount of family friendly programming and stuff specifically aimed at the younger geeks in the crowd.

The husband is taking Friday off so that we can leave as soon as the kiddo gets home from school (driving up to the peninsula can be horridly time-consuming) and the kid's got Monday off for MLK-day. So I might not get a lot of work done.

That being said, this whole sitting down in front of my computer for several hours with the stated agenda of Getting Shit Done seems to be remarkably more productive than I might have imagined.

Captive of My Desires, Johanna Lindsey cover
Artist: Alan Ayers

Yesterday I wrote almost 2,000 words.

It's been quite a while since I've been that productive. I wasn't tracking my word count very carefully last year, but I don't think I've had a day like that in a while. I wrote 1,200 words on my steampunk-vampire story, took a break, then came back upstairs and wrote about 600 words on Full Frontal Neighbor.

While making dinner, I thought about how to move the story along, and I head-worked a pretty good conversation between my main character and her best friend... much like me and my best friend, they're both in the novel business, but Claire, the best friend, is an editor and publisher. Mallory, the main character, is an artist. She's the one who paints the cover art...

And I was so determined not to forget the line that after dinner, I went back upstairs and wrote another 400 words or so, just so I could get to that conversation.

Here, enjoy a small snippet...

“Well, I have three covers. How’s your time? Can you do three in a month?”

“I have a couple in the drawer, that I painted just for funsies. Maybe one of those would fit. Otherwise, I got time for two. I’m still knee deep in the moving-in process. Stupid movers lost half my stuff and I’m just now getting it back.”

“You said. Which reminds me, your ex was poking about. Asked the new girl where you were living. She didn’t know, so she didn’t tell him. That guy just does not take no for an answer.”

“Tell me about it,” I grumbled. “I had to move back east to get away from him.” That wasn’t entirely true, but I wasn’t above blaming David for just about everything. It was one of my less attractive traits, but at the moment, I wasn’t worried about it. Claire hated him almost as much as I did. Neighbor boy stretched magnificently, and I stood there, silent in the darkness, watching him in all his masculine glory. There was a delicate, not quite unpleasant, ache between my legs. At least David had been good for one thing.

“… and I’ve got one collection of short stories about shape-changers,” Claire said. I drew my attention back to the conversation.

“Werewolves?” Great. I hated painting werewolves. Readers all had their own ideas of what lycanthropes should be, and inevitably, anything I painted would be all wrong for two-thirds of them.

“No, just shape-changers. Some of them turn into cats, or foxes. I think one of the stories has a guy who turns into a weasel.”

“All men turn into weasels, eventually.”

--Full Frontal Neighbor

Guest Post: Jonah Knight

Is Lit Rock A Thing?

When Lynn told me that she had been listening to my music during the writing and editing of Blister Effect and that she wanted to credit me with a dedication, I was extremely flattered. And it got me thinking again about the two-way influence of music and literature. It’s not news that songwriters often find inspiration from fiction and that writers of fiction talk about the music they listen to when they write. Recently though, I’ve heard whispers of something new but not really. Something sure to shake the music and publishing industries to their knees: Lit Rock.

My unscientific research indicates that the desire for naming this new subgenre is coming from the Wizard Rock community. If you don’t know, Wizard Rock is a large and passionate group of hardcore Harry Potter fans that have been writing, recording, and performing music inspired by their favorite boy wizard. There are festivals, conventions, and large scale tours. It’s bigger than Hagrid’s appetite.

But alas! The Potter passion is dwindling with the end of the movie franchise and no immediate plans for more books. So what do these musicians do? What do the thousands of fans listen to next?

Enter Lit Rock.

Did you know that there are cool books that have nothing to do with Harry Potter? Well, some of the Wizard Rock people are making a transition from all-Harry all-the-time towards a more varied literature inspired setlist. But that’s not all that Lit Rock might become.

I was recently contracted by Mercury Retrograde Press to spend two years writing songs for their novels. I think that this partnership represents another step into the future of music and publishing. As the world of Fandom has exploded, dozens of hundreds of songs have been written based on books, and as trans-media projects come along with greater frequency and with bigger budgets, the collaborations have become higher profile.

I dare say however, that my contract with Mercury Retrograde is truly the first of its kind. I think that I am the first songwriter to essentially be put on staff by a publisher. We anticipate well over a dozen songs to be released between 2013-2014 that tie-in with the worlds of the books. I am very excited and, truthfully, a little nervous. If a small press and an independent musician can pull this off, look for more of this strange new world.

Jonah Knight performs Paranormal Modern Folk, often at Science Fiction conventions in the mid-Atlantic region. Thus far in 2012 he has performed at MarsCon, Farpoint, Madicon (Musical Guest of Honor), RavenCon, The Steampunk World's Fair, Balticon, and ConCarolinas. For the rest of the year, he is currently scheduled to appear at Confluence and Capclave, is waiting to hear back from a few more, and is scheduling house concerts. He is at work on his sixth album, Another Creepy Christmas, a collection of creepy holiday songs. 

Convention

I went to Marscon this weekend; it used to be a small, relax-a-con. No big guests, good con food, a few no-pressure panels, lots of gaming and socializing. (yes, astonishingly enough, geeks do socialize.)

There were over 900 people there this weekend. Which was cool. Lots of great costumes. I did not costume. I wore snarky or geeky t-shirts and had my face painted. I am the slack. It's traditional.

I brought in a bunch of promo materials for Shifting Steam (about 150 postcards with the cover art) and left them on the tables - along with dozens of other people who had books, cons, games, music, etc to advertise. And because I am cheap, at the end of the Con, I went 'round to gather up anything that was left so I could use them later.

There were less than a dozen.

So... if you happened to find your way here because of a postcard, hi! Nice to meet you. Please feel free to check out my Facebook fan page. I post interesting links, Very Dirty Words of the day, and snippets of my work in progress.

I went to 2 writing workshops, one that was great and the other that I had to leave early because my husband's sugars dropped alarmingly. I'm not sure I learned anything precisely new, but it was interesting to see the basics from a different perspective. I already know I write shoddy first drafts. As a matter of fact, I've been working hard to learn how to allow myself permission to write shoddy first drafts! I met a couple other writers and ended up talking editing with a friend's brother. (He's currently an artist, of the pen and paper variety and is trying his hand at writing... In the midst of that discussion, I pointed out that Hunger Games is, indeed, written entirely in the present tense. Which my friend had not even noticed, which indicates that present tense story telling can be done well.)

I also attended a really interesting panel on LGBT in sci-fi/fantasy/horror and got to talk a bit about my favorite stories, the Liaden novels, by Steve Miller and Sharon Lee. If you haven't read them, I highly recommend them!

Anyway, it was a fun con (mostly) and I got to talk to a lot of people, including the very talented Jonah Knight. Keep an eye on this space, he and I have done some talking about doing a collaborative contest, and I'll be giving away some copies of his music.

And... now back to the writing projects.... of which I have entirely too many!

Word Count for the first 15 days of the month: 4,123 / 4,175 so I'm just about on track