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21
Feb
2013

Steven Brust, on blacklisting Orson Scott Card, has somewhat changed my mind

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steven brustI’ve made no secret of the fact that Steven Brust is my favorite fantasy author. (In fact, I’ll be making another post shortly regarding his novel Agyar, which I actually only recently read for the first time! Wow.) He’s made a couple of blog posts recently about the kerfuffle regarding the raving homophobe Orson Scott Card’s stint writing some Superman for DC comics, and whether the calls for boycott and forcing DC to refuse to have him is ethical or effective, especially for those of us who identify as liberal or politically left.

Allow me to break in for a moment with some dreaded metablog stuff: This here lil blog of mine, I’ve set up and desire to keep in the style of John Scalzi’s (one of my favorite SF writers). That is, keep it reasonably politics-free and avoid controversial issues too much. I get all controversally elsewhere, and I want to keep this blog focused primarily and nice ol’ writing and craft-related issues. But, well, when you have something like my favorite writer talking about one of my most disliked writers, regarding an issue that I find personally important–well, I guess I have to take a moment to risk controversy.

So, Brust’s latest post, “Free Speech, Blacklisting, and Tactics,” provokes thoughts and challenges many ingrained liberal reactions to go beyond protesting a perceived injustice to boycotting and preventing someone from work and expression of their opinions. In very brief, he essentially says that limiting the free speech of someone whose purpose is to actively harm the rights and liberties of another group, is right and just. However, what possibly outweighs that lesser evil, is the greater evil that the tactics of boycott and censorship and limiting people’s speech and right to free enterprise, is far too easily turned on to and used against the usual minority that fights for rights and liberties of the oppressed. In other words: because we leftists and liberals are the usual victims of fascist oppression, we should not use the same tools of oppression that those in power use on us, regardless of the rightness of the intent.

It’s a very compelling argument, and, naturally, better presented and explained in Brust’s own words. That said, while, I may no longer support efforts to keep Card from getting work or speaking his bigoted opinions, you can be sure as shootin’ that none of my money will ever be going to him and his works. (Seeing the upcoming “Ender’s Game” film, a book I loved before I realized what a d-bag Card was, is problematic. Maybe I’ll see it when it hits the second-run theater where it’s less likely much of my money will end up in his pocket. Even .001 cent is too much.)

mccarthyI want to copy here a follow-up quote that Brust posted on his blog later:

This brief excerpt is from The Mayor of MacDougal Street, the memoirs of Dave Van Ronk (one of my heroes) page 75:

“Years later, I was talking with him [Oscar Brandt] and expressed my disgust that that he, or maybe someone else, had put on a show with Burl Ives, who had outraged us all by naming a string of names in front of HUAC. Oscar just quietly said, ‘Dave, we on the left do not blacklist.’ Put me right in my place.”

 

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21
Feb
2013

What I’ve been doing while not blogging; and good novel news

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Ugh, I hate having to get meta on the blog. Which usually only happens because I haven’t been on for a great long time. So, why? Some good, some bad–none of it a good excuse.

First of all, there’s my day job. I won’t get into it because I hate talking about my day job (here, at least. It’s a good job, but I hate the fact that I have a day job that’s not writing or the business of writing). Anyway, it’s been killing me lately with this big-ass project that I’m in charge of. Even though it’s not too many more actual hours at work, it’s been more brain-killing lately.

Then there’s the pencil-and-dice role-playing games. Now this is a good one! In the last few months I have been planning and prepping and running several games: A new regular Eclipse Phase campaign, a short-run Spycraft (converted to Savage Worlds rules) campaign, and the return of my 1st edition AD&D campaign. Oh, and a couple of convention games of EP I ran at Visioncon. Writing and prepping RPG games is a lot of hard work, but it’s so very much a labor of love! I adore game mastering RPGs! Given the choice between being a player and GMing, well, I like playing now and then, especially under certain GMs, but I pick GMing over playing by default any ol’ day. I love the world-building, creating plot and stories and characters, and then the facilitation of crating a shared experience where players get to play with these elements and create their own story with the tools I provide. Love it love it love it!

Writing, you say? Have I been doing any of it? Well, not much, I’m afraid. Once the day job project is essentially over in early April, and the Spycraft game is done, I should have more time and brain-power to spare to doing writing. I got well into my next novel before time and energy got away from me, and I need to get chugging on that. Especially since there’s been more call for a sequel to Singularity Deferred.

Speaking of my first novel, I got some good news there. I entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel competition, and mine has advanced to the second-round judging. If it doesn’t move on from there, I at least get an Amazon review out of it and can claim “third prize” (along with 399 other sf/fantasy novels). So that’s neat. (It doesn’t help the competition any; but, if you would be so kind, maybe buy and/or review the novel on Amazon?) :)

Okay, that’s as much of an update as I’m going to do now. I have the gumption I’m going to post, I think, two more posts after this on something not meta. Thanks for reading. :)

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03
Nov
2012

An Omnibus of OMNI!

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Just learned today something I should have known for a very long time but for some reason has completely escaped my radar. Every edition of OMNI Magazine is available for free on the Internet Archive! How has that missed me completely? Thank you Io9 and Patrick. (When you click on the Internet Archive link, you need to scroll down and click “more” to get to the full magazine archive.)

I started reading OMNI when I was about twelve, around 1983. I remember taking the long road trip from Colorado to Missouri to visit family, and the parents allowing us kids to get a magazine. The cover of this OMNI magazine in the rack was compelling and promised SF fiction and science news, so I convinced her to get this somewhat pricey glossy mag for me. I was hooked! I begged for copies every month after until finally I was gifted a subscription. It was probably the longest subscription to a magazine I ever had (mainly because until I was old enough to have a job, it was paid for by someone else) and I think I was getting them right up until about 1989.

I don’t really recall OMNI being on shelves much after that. But those formative six years entrenched OMNI as being an integral part of who I am. Yeah, weird, huh? But it’s from OMNI that I learned about William Gibson’s fiction and started me on cyberpunk, made me familiar with the name Ellen Datlow and made a teenager a fan of an editor, of all things. (Wow, I was and am such a nerd!) …and I’m still a huge fan. The magazine was a slick, stylish, almost exploitative companion to the SF genre and exploding science culture. I believe it was a forward-thinking contribution, years ahead of its time, to the cool-making of geekness. Back then, in the 80s, it was still a social stigma to be geeky or nerdy, to be too into computers and genre fiction, and know more about the space program than what was mentioned in weekly readers regarding the shuttles. If you read SF and liked Carl Sagan, you were pariah as a kid.

But little did we know that in 15 or 20 years, geek would be chic, and OMNI helped lay the groundwork for that! Loving looking through these very familiar past issues that I’d read and reread so many times as a young nerd.

 

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03
Nov
2012

NaNoWriMo 2012

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Time to play NaNoWriMo once again! I give it a go every other year or so. In the past I’ve not participated because, oh, I was busy writing my thesis or editing the novel I’d finished… things like that. I have a friend who recently lamented that he couldn’t play NaNoWriMo this year because he was busy with a freelance writing project. I found it tres amusing that he should feel bad about not participating in an arbitrary get-people-to-write gimmick because he was already writing productively–for pay.

Well, I have writing I’m working on, but it’s always good (great, actually) to have set goals, to write every day, to give yourself rewards and social punishment for being productive or being lazy about writing. So, I like NaNoWriMo and what it does for me (at least for the first couple of weeks before I realize that trying to write for two hours lat at night, after a day of work, doing cooking and cleaning and laundry, makes being productive writer on a forced writing march, very emotionally draining and leads to poor output). But in the meantime, here I go….

Though, I must say, preparing for NaNoWriMo this year (what? You don’t prepare?) gave me a massive epiphany! I have a handful of story ideas percolating in my noodle at a time, sometimes for days before I start writing them down, sometimes years. My first novel, the seeds of that one I’d been playing around with for four or more years before I finally started it. Well, among others, I’ve had the bits-n-pieces of three different novels working around for a very long time. Except one of them, the young adult novel I started thinking about a couple years ago and started writing a couple of months ago — that one’s the newest. Well, I decided I’d take one of the other ones and work on that fro NaNoWriMo, and as I started to outline the events and thumbnail the setting, something amazing came to me! These three particular, separate novels, are part of one giant epic that spans centuries! And the ways and reasons why the three settings are different, but similar, give me some really fun effects of time and social evolution to play with. But, there’s a distinct connecting line through them. Each novel can be read separately (and in the case of the young adult one, which sits as the middle book, it really must be distinctly separate because I want to keep that young adult while the other two are certainly for more mature readers), but the experience is much richer for having read the one(s) preceding it. Anyway, it’s been real fun working on the nuts and bolts of this more expanded universe that just opened up for me.

 

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16
Sep
2012

The Tea Party returns for another round, and I rejoice!

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image from http://maytherockbewithyou.com/mtrbwy/2012/07/jeff-martin-stuart-chatwood-of-the-tea-party/

No, not that Tea Party. Allow me to be political for a couple sentences as, on this subject, it almost begs for a comment: My mostest favoritest rock band of all time is Canadian trio The Tea Party. They’ve been around since the early 90s. They are so utterly not affiliated in any way with the “political” party, the Tea Party, that when they broke up for a bit, they were thinking of selling, or even giving their Web domain, to Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, or George Soros or Arianna Huffington, with the goal of their critiquing the lies and misinformation put out by the political movement (principally about Canadian healthcare which, like most Canadians, the band The Tea Party love). That aside….

So, not only did The Tea Party come back together last year, but they’ve been doing a reunion tour and recorded their Sydney, Australia concert for a double-size album. They pre-released the album through Pledge Music (with proceeds going to help the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto which does cancer research). I got myself a copy of the album… and I have not listened to an album with as much joy, excitement, air-drum-playing, as I have this one, since I first listened to their second album, Edges of Twilight, in 1995. Allow me to reminisce a bit.

It was the summer of 1994 when I was working at a brand new Hastings entertainment store while getting my BAs. The store hadn’t opened yet, we hired staff were in the process of constructing the displays and stocking the place, and the music department manager was playing CDs for us while we worked. And one of those days, this amazing sound came on the system. It was a melange of Led Zepplin, the Doors, some middle eastern flavor. Hard rock with a splash of mysticism. One could, fairly I’ll admit, make the criticism that they were trying too hard to be a reinvention of Led Zepplin. Even so, the raw, amazing musical talent of this group was certainly not a gimmick. The album was Splendor Solis, and I fell in love with a band like I hadn’t since I discovered Pink Floyd in high school. I believe the very day that Hastings store opened, before I put my employee apron and name tag on, I bought that CD, and if one can wear a CD out, I about did.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait too long for more. Not long after graduating undergrad, we moved to a different town, my wife and I, and settled in to life, and I heard The Tea Party was releasing a second album. Excited, giddy, doesn’t come close to the feeling I had as I waited for release day. When I got the album and brought it home, I made sure everything was right: the stereo settings, the lighting, the drink in hand, and I hit “play.” The experience of listening to that new album for the first time was nearly a religious experience. It did not in any way let down. Every song was as good as from their previous album, with new instant classics that rivaled anything on Splendor Solis, such as “Sister Awake,” “The Bazaar,” and “Inanna.” If asked, at that time, which album was better, I’d be hard pressed to answer.

Then came their third, and nearly equally amazing, album, Transmission. It was an even harder, more techno album, moving a bit away from the blues and middle eastern influences of their first two albums. While not every song is among my favorite, like the previous two albums, it’s still filled with mind-blowing works like “Temptation,” “Transmission,” and the heartbreaking “Release.” You would never see me in a more than 5 minute car trip without that album.

With their next album, Triptych, things started slowing down a bit in my They Can Do No Wrong passion for them. While still a great album with beautiful and technically amazing songs like “Heaven Coming Down” and “Samsara” and “Halcyon Days,” I wasn’t in as much love with each track like I was for everything prior. Then again with the album, Interzone Mantras. There are again songs that alone would make them better than 90% of the bands out there, like “Lullaby” and “Requiem.” But it almost started sounding like they were trying to hard to be mainstream at that point. (In point of fact, come to find out, they indeed were being pressed by their label to indeed become more mainstream.)

This discomfort with what they were starting to sound like extended into their final studio album, Seven Circles. While still a fine album, I have a hard time recalling off the top of my head any particular tracks I love. “Wishing You Would Stay” comes to mind because of how beautiful it is, and also because it’s their only song with a female guest vocalist. And evidently, the label pressure (and, *sigh*, drug issues, of course) came to a head in regards to interpersonal differences among the band’s three members, and singer/guitarist Jeff Martin left for a solo career, breaking the band. (And actually, his first solo Exile and the Kingdom, is really good. It felt like an attempt to return to Tea Party’s pure rock and blues roots. Sadly, his next band, The Armada, album, felt closer to Interzone Mantras.

image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Martin _(Canadian_musician)

And during this time I’d been waiting anxiously for the remaining members, Stuart and the other Jeff, to do something with The Art Decay. Where Jeff Martin is an undeniable guitar god, the reincarnation of the still living Jimmy Page, Stuart Chatwood is a musical genius. His skill and versatility at nearly every instrument he touches (primarily keyboards, bass, middle eastern percussion) is… well, “impressive” is a lame adjective. Alas, they never got anything together. But Stuart went on to do all the music for the Prince of Persia video games at least.

Despite the slow decline of my unholy love for The Tea Party over the last couple albums, when I heard they broke up, I was devastated. My hopes and dreams for hearing That One Next Great Album, or ever seeing them in concert, were dashed. Well, I thought, maybe I could catch Jeff Martin at least… should I ever find myself in Ireland or Australia.

Then, a few years later, the news that would make my heart swell with great, but cautious, joy: Their reunion for a Canadian music festival. The fact that they got back in the same room was pretty amazing–could it last? And, O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! When they declared they were going on a reunion tour, I think I literally jumped for joy! When they later said they’d be working on a new album, well, I think I’m still recovering from palpitations and vapors.

Back to the present, I got the recording of their Sydney reunion concert. I didn’t take as much care setting the mood to listen to it as I had for Edges of Twilight, because I was excited, but still thinking, “Eh, it’s a concert album. I’ve heard it all before.” Boy, was I wrong! They do not simply play copies of their studio performances for their live shows. They freakin’ bring it! Bring. It! “Temptation” becomes even more brain-smyooshingly hard and edgy, they break “Save Me” down and jam in the middle of it like Led Zepplin would’ve, Jeff Martin’s familiarity and banter with the crowd, and letting them sing key passages (like the ending chorus phrases in “The Bazaar”) is intoxicating and exciting!

Well, it’s just an amazing album, and I listened to it the first time in shock and wonder, and a youthful excitement I’d not felt in some time. Over the last several years, I’ve come to love some bands, like Arcade Fire and Silversun Pickups and The Decemberists, and I really enjoy their music. But nothing has ever quite grabbed ahold of me and never let me go like The Tea Party. And no matter how much I greatly enjoy listening to Neon Bible or Picaresque, no experience has ever matched listening to Edges of Twilight that first time, nor Live in Australia this weekend. The Tea Party is back, and life is good!

(PS: The band is hugely active in The White Ribbon Campaign, “the largest effort in the world of men working to end violence against women. In over fifty-five countries, campaigns are led by both men and women, even though the focus is on educating men and boys. In some countries it is a general public education effort focused on ending violence against women.” Yay!)

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26
Aug
2012

Distracted by my no distractions editor

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omm writer

At GenCon last week, at one of the writing panels, I sat behind someone who was taking notes on their really sweet Apple Macpro Air Jordan Tigerbond, or whatever they’re called. I don’t think I can even afford to know its proper name. And I couldn’t help but notice that the text editor he was using was extremely cool. No bars or ribbons or icons or buttons anywhere–just a nice, pleasing full-screen image and the text situated in the center third of the screen without borders. Really nice. I was afraid it was going to be some Apple proprietary software.

When the panel ended, I risked being rude and asked him what it was he was using. Happily, he told me it was Omm Writer, a free (for the older version) or super-cheap, pay-what-you-will (for the latest version) distraction-free editor. But what’s even cooler, it’s available for PC in addition to Mac! … except I use Linux. Except I do have a PC with Windows that I only use to convert documents into files Amazon will accept for their e-book store. (Stupid Kindle issues with Tables of Contents.)

focuswriter and a busy background theme

So, using the best frakkin’ Web site ever created, Alternative To, I followed some links and reviews until I came upon FocusWriter. It’s also a for-donations application that actually works on Mac, Windows, and Linux! And indeed, as people on LifeHacker and the NaNoWriMo boards have said, it’s an amazing no-distraction editor! You can set timers/goals, such as how much time you want to write or by word count; basic rich text formatting; typewriter keypress sounds (little things make a difference). And what I really like, is you can download themes, quick and easy, and modify them. Then, you can switch among them based on whichever story you’re working on. My current young adult fantasy novel, I use “Leathers,” for my Eclipse Phase fanfic, I use “Bladerunner – Cockpit,” for a horror story I’m working on, I switch to “Midnight Dreary,” and for the contemporary lit novel I’m playing around with, I use a somber “Winter Afternoon.” They really help one’s mindset for that story.

So, I spent about an hour on that instead of writing. And now I’m spending time writing this. :-/

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25
Aug
2012

Do a little to help working authors?

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Steven Brust, Emma Bull, and a fan

A while back I blogged about my favorite fantasy artist’s health scare. He’s recently had heart surgery, as a good friend and collaborator of his, Emma Bull, also went through a procedure. Naturally, because they’re very hard working, talented writers in America who make their living with the sweat of their brow as artists–they get paid crap and health insurance is likely non-existent for them. (Our country’s insurance-care system is, besides horrific just on its own merit, absolutely cruel to anyone who strives to follow their artistic passions or actually be an entrepreneur certain political groups give lots of lip service supporting… but I digress….) Cory Doctorow, an amazing writer and activist, a favorite author of mine, and someone who has said will never again let his family live in the U.S. because of our insurance-care system, explains the issue in his Boing Boing article.

Another excellent author, Scott Lynch, is raising donations to help them with their medical bills. Here: http://www.scottlynch.us/ironsands.html, then clicking the “Donate” button on the left.

I’m sorry about the political ranting there, I try to avoid anything political on this site–but this issue, as I’ve discussed before, is greatly important to me: the near inability or anyone in America whose passion is artistic and creative in nature, to be able to devote themselves to their craft, is, in my mind, cruel and completely anti-civilized. Any advanced society should allow their creative citizens as much access to life and health as a wage-slave has, equally. All citizens of an enlightened society should have equal access to life and health.

But, I digress once again.

Forget the politics: If you care at all for helping hard-working writers afford their medical care, please consider donating! Thank you.

Side note: Another most excellent, favorite scifi author of mine, John Scalzi, noticed Brust’s humorous ode to Scalzi’s highly popular blog, “Whatever.” Then, Scalzi featured others setting Brust’s words to music! (I prefer the ukulele.)

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25
Aug
2012

Before They Open the Door

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At GenCon last week, during the Tracy and Laura Hickman Killer Breakfast, I signed up for a drawing. Low and surprise, I won! What’d I win? Their collection of stories, Eventide and their daughter Tasha’s brand new CD: Before They Open the Door.

As for the book, I was immediately excited! I’d recalled hearing Tracy Hickman talk about the book on podcasts a year or so ago, and it sounded really interesting! (Though, if I recall, I thought he and Laura were doing some kind of special subscription method for people to buy the book directly from them back then in a clever, hearken back to the original days of fiction publishing by sponsorship, method. But I forget.) Plus, while I hadn’t read much of the Hickman works lately, I lovelovelove the first two Dragonlance trilogies (the second, Twins, trilogy, was the first fantasy novel(s) to make me outright cry).

As for the CD, well, that was an unknown. Never heard of her before, and the song she sang before the Killer Breakfast to promote their Pick-a-Path live musical that weekend, was cute and nice but, well, she sang flat and off key a lot.

But, never look a gift CD in the mouth, as my mother has never said!

I finally got a chance to listen to it this week, and the verdict: It’s cute. Sadly, she still sings somewhat flat and off key, but not nearly as bad as live. She’s a fine guitar player and a decent lyricist… over all, she’s exactly what you’d expect from a talented young local music performer who will do great in her community but will likely never get a Big Break.

As for the songs: They’re mostly gaming/nerdy-themed songs with a humorous bent (in other words, filk music), but there are a few with a sweet or even melancholy sentiment. As a CD, I’m not sure I’m going to listen to it all that much. But if she were performing live at another con, surrounded by people having a good time and singing the chorus with her, I wouldn’t turn that down for a second!

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25
Aug
2012

Happy Stone anniversary to me!

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My wife is just the coolest.

First, she knows I love craft beers and microbrews (okay, not hard to know that). But she also seems to have recalled that my favorite type is the IPA. And she’s also noted to herself that one of my favorite breweries is Stone. So, what did she do? She researched some beers and discovered that Stone puts out an anniversary IPA each year with different flavor profiles. They release it on a limited run that can be difficult to get. She ordered half a case for me and it arrived yesterday!

The Stone 16th Anniversary IPA this year has a hoppy, lemony, citrusy flavor that I must say, is very complex and interesting. I’ll admit, at first it caught me a bit off-guard. While it’s not “more lemon than lemon” as they advertise, in fact, I’d say I got more peach from it than lemon, it is very sour (but in a good way, not a “bad beer” way.) I’ll also admit, I wasn’t sure at first if I liked it.

But it paired great with the ribs and pulled pork I had for dinner, so I drank the whole bottle over the evening (they come in large 22-ounce bottle that I usually, when I have a beer that size, drink only half of in a night and wine-stopper the rest until the next day), and by the end of it came to really appreciate its complexity and punch.

One of the reasons I like Stone beers, is they’re generally bold, bitter, rich, and don’t go easy on you. They give you an experience. And this 16th Anniversary IPA is an experience. After you allow your palate to accept the lemony-peach, you can start appreciating the malty spices. The hoppy finish. By the last third of the bottle, the flavors no longer jump out separately but meld nicely into a tapestry that works together.

It’s not a beer for partying with or drinking thoughtlessly (none of the beers I like are like that, actually. Sam Adams Boston Lager is probably the closest I can come to to drinking a beer without “experiencing” it). It’s absolutely one worthy of an annual treat! Sadly, I only have 5 left. I better savor them.

But that my wife thought about this, put study into it, and did just for me–is just the coolest! I want everyone to know that that’s just how cool she is. :)

*PS: It should be obvious by the article but just to clear up any title confusion: No, it’s not our anniversary. She did this just ’cause.

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22
Aug
2012

GenCon-inspired motivation

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Last week I attended the largest gaming convention in America, GenCon. Four days of role-playing games, sci-fi cosplay (not me, personally), writers’ workshops, dealer room (and by “room,” I mean ginormous arena of more product in one place than a human mind can comprehend). It was amazing!

I’ve been known on my blogs to babble in incessant detail about the minutia of an experience. I’m going to try to avoid that here, else this post will go on for days. Four, to be precise. So, instead, I’m going to attempt an overview and then get into a few details now an again.

What brought me to GenCon this year, several years after my previous and first trip, was the decision to volunteer to game master some rounds of Posthuman Studio’s amazing RPG, ECLIPSE PHASE. To be honest, and perhaps to the surprise of the volunteer wrangler if he chances upon this, I’d not actually run an EP game before. Oh sure, I’ve been GMing RPGs since I was 10, some (oh… my… god!) 30 years now. (Pardon me while I take a stiff drink or five.) And I’d been reading EP materials for more than a year, trying to convince my regular gaming group to let me run some for them (to no avail). So, when I saw the call from Posthuman for GM volunteers, I jumped at the chance. I think I literally jumped.

What followed was weeks of intense EP studying and, finally, getting a couple groups of my friends to allow me to test the adventures I’d be running on them. Gladly, that went well. More importantly, the actual GenCon rounds I ran went fantastically well! (Fortunately, I’m the kind of GM who, if I run into some kind of road-block, I create workarounds and can wing it really well, with the primary goal of making sure everyone has fun. (Which, by the way, does not mean everyone gets to Monty Haul their way through the adventures… I did indeed end up killing a couple of characters in a most dramatic and worthy fashion, and just about Total Party Killed one group. They really enjoyed the tension-filled drama!)

Anyway, to wrap this part up, ECLIPSE PHASE is an incredible game, and Posthuman Studios is filled with great people! (I found it very amusing, and cool, that nearly everyone I saw working the Posthuman booth sported body mods: lots of facial piercings, hair coloring, tats. …and they were young–20s, certainly. A realization that helped lead me to a personal revelation which I’ll deal with soon. Anyway, great people, cool company (they actually put their $50 core rule book free online under Creative Commons! Can you believe that?!) I’m hoping to involve myself with them more.

So, that’s what took me to GenCon. But better yet, the wife and I decided we’d make it a family vacation with the daughter. We all searched and scoured the GenCon schedule for things to do, and successfully found a few things to do together; but, ultimately, all three of our schedules were pretty filled all four days.

Wife and I played an interesting board game that’s about to come out and was funded with Kickstarter, called “Oh My God There’s an Axe in My Head!” I’m looking forward to getting a copy. The three of us attended Tracy and Laura Hickman’s (you know, Tracy of Dragonlance fame) Killer Breakfast. Fun! But he wasn’t nearly as clever and quick as I expected him to be. Meh, that’s OK–it was a cool experience, and I love his writing. Daughter attended workshops on Doctor Who jewelry (read: Shrinkydink) making, makeup, anime stuff, and more stuff. She and wife make funny-cool felt doll ninjas and zombies, and played a “furry”-based RPG.

One of the things wife (I really need to get permission from her to use her name in public) did on her own was attend a Shadowrun improv show. She found it funny, and it really revitalized her Shadowrun interest! (I used to GM her and some college friends through many adventures back in the early 90s.) Now we’re browsing the ‘net-tubes for copies of Shadowrun 4th edition. Guess what I’ll be doing again, soon. *wink*

The vendors were legion! And, man, if only I’d had money, and lots of it. So much to buy! I had my eye on an interesting non-collectible card game that allowed you to create and play through a dungeon adventure solo or cooperative or multi-player. What I did end up getting was the new FADING SUNS book, which, sadly, after the controversial departure of their lead designer (wow, they’ve completely locked down their forum since I was there last, when stuff hit fans–yikes!), isn’t the revolutionary new version we fans had been expecting. By the looks of it, it’s a version 2.5, though the lady was trying really hard to say it was virtually 3rd edition. In any case, it does clean up and streamline the 2nd edition rules, which is well worth it in any case! Whatever questionable things the company has done/is doing, I still love that game! And I got the ECLIPSE PHASE supplement book, GATECRASHING. (Their books, by the way, are some of the best quality I’ve ever seen, period.) Daughter picked up a Doctor Who sonic screwdriver and a very nice pocket watch that, without any influence by me, happens to look very much like my own pocket watch that she didn’t know about. She’s my daughter. *smile*

I didn’t get to meet Wil Wheaton though I so wanted to. $25 to meet and get an autograph, which I don’t begrudge him at all! But that’s just too much for me. I did get to meet, speak with briefly, and get to sign my Nook, author Michael Stackpole. I’ve been a fan of his for years, but more so after I found out the work he did putting the “Dungeons & Dragons is evil!!1!” people in their place in the 80s. And even more more so after listening to his Stormwolf advice and hosting Dragon Page podcast.

Which leads me into the real meat of this post.

I attended a few writing seminars and panels (though not near as many as I wanted to!), including one of Stackpole’s. I heard from editors and publishers and authors about the business of writing, about networking with others in the industry, and other topics that deal with the writing career, as opposed to the act of writing. (Heck, as I’ve written before, I’ve been studying the art and craft of writing for year– *sigh* decades.) Oh, I also watched the taping of four episodes of Writing Excuses podcast. Sadly, I couldn’t get Brandon Sanderson’s autograph. *pout* Hearing from professionals about the profession was more than just informative, it was illuminating. It was motivating! Half the people on the panels were young, or started very young. And once again, for the tetragabazilionth time since I started grad school a few years ago, I felt the very sharp and painful pang of regret at all the lost time! I am starting a new career path, based on my passion now at middle age. Not only do I only have half the time in front of me to accomplish and enjoy my goals, but I’m trying to do it with a demanding full-time day job and a family while my peers and competition both are doing the same thing at the peak of their vigor and freedom.

Well, yes, this feeling of loss and desperation was sharp, as it always is–but what I also felt and was/am quite glad for it, is excitement and anticipation and hope. For example, working for someone else as a slush pile reader should be an intern-like job for a young person, but I’m excited about the chance of getting to do it, and gaining the skills and experience it will provide. Trying to network at my age and position will be difficult, but now I have a head (and some notebook pages) full of tips and suggestions of how to do it properly and effectively, and I’m excited about that as well.

And so this is what I came away from GenCon with: the renewed thrill and appreciation of my RPG hobby, renewed motivation and hope for my writing, and a renewed plan and energy for my editing/publishing goals. And, interestingly, one of the things that the helped these renewals, was the fact that in 4 days I barely looked at Facebook. The realization: I need to stop using Facebook.

Sadly, that’s not entirely feasible as Facebook is a great tool to me for learning news and info about books and authors and publishers, getting scifi/fantasy inspiration, networking with others in the industry, keeping up with gaming news and releases, and, of course, promoting my own works. So, leaving altogether would actually be a bad idea.

What I did do, though, is set up a new account and liked/subscribed/friended people and pages and groups and interests that focused entirely on writing, speculative fiction, publishing, and other manner of related subjects. (See, my original account was filled with socio-political-economic-philosophical matter that compelled me to not just visit every moment I had a break from work/family/work, but read and respond with negative-feeling emotion that, while was very important to me, sapped my mood and attitude and encouraged misanthropic crumudeonry. Those socio-political-economic-ideological beliefs I still feel very strongly about; but, I decided, it was time to make all that take a backseat to what I want to be most important to me, aside from my family. My writing and writing-related career.

So, here it begins… again. Wish me luck!

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