The two panels I enjoys the most were, amusingly, ones other friends gave a pass because they didn’t think it would pan out well. The first was a panel on “Writing the Other,” moderated by Caren Gussoff and featuring Diana Copland, J.A. Pitts and Lorelei Shannon. Given the subject matter of Kensei, this was very relevant to my interests. At least one friend had given this a pass because the same panel last year was very unhelpful for writers interested in the topic. But this year it was very well handled, due in no small part to the awesome panelists. I really felt like I came away from this having learned a lot and I was happy I attended.

The other panel that stood out was one of my few non-writing-oriented panels. It was supposed to be a glimpse into the next edition of D&D, which at least one friend was interested in but passed on because he figured it would just devolve into edition wars. The panel was changed last minute to a discussion about the future of gaming. One of the panelists (I think it was Monte Cook?) hadn’t been able to attend, so I’m guessing he was the one with the inside scoop about the new D&D and they couldn’t do it with out him. Instead there was a mostly new roster of panelists up front: Jonathan Tweet, Wolfgang Baur, Erik Mona, Stan!, and Ryan Fucking Macklin from the Internet. (As an aside, Macklin was the only one without a paper sign with his name. Instead he just had his oversized flask that sayz “Ryan Fucking Mackling from the Internet.”) Topics included indie RPGs, games that people were excited about, projects individual panelists were working on. It was a very fun conversation. I had a few items I jotted down to look into later. The first was 13th Age, a project Jonathan Tweet is involved with. Tweet described it as a streamlined d20 with story-driving elements built into the system. I think it might have been Stan! who mentioned working on a project with Harper Collins for their “Warriors” series. It’s basically a simple (and free) RPG for young girls, which I think can only be a good thing. (There’s no direct link to the game, so you have to navigate through the site some to find it.) When some people asked about SF games, both Ashen Stars (GUMSHOE system) and Bulldogs  (FATE system) were mentioned.

Really, more awesome than I have time for. But I really liked what I heard. I get so down about the tabletop RPG market that it’s nice to see that people are doing cool stuff.

I was delighted to see the table my friend Glynis had set up for the web series she’s involved with. It’s called Causality. I’ve heard her talking about it for a while and didn’t know what to expect. I’ve been to several H.P. Lovecraft Film Festivals, and quality can vary significantly on small self-funded project. I’m please to report that it has some very good production quality. I’m interested to see what their first episode looks like.

Several other authors I respect and admire had news of new books this weekend. Mary Robinette Kowal’s Glamour in Glass (sequel to Shades of Milk and Honey), A.M. Dellamonica’s Blue Magic (sequel to Indigo Springs), Stina Leicht’s And Blue Skies from Pain (sequel to Of Blood and Honey), and Matt Youngmark’s Thrusts of Justice (not a sequel, just awesome).

That evening I attended an open book party organized by Bob Boyd. It was a chance for a lot of small local publishers to show of their goods and mingle with writers. Angel Leigh McCoy was on hand to promote her Wily Writer anthologies as well as some Timid Pirate books. Tod McCoy (no relation) represented his company Hydra House publishing with both Danika Dinsmore’s The Ruins of Noe and K.C. Ball’s Snapshots from a Black Hole & Other Oddities. He was also totally rocking a brony shirt. For all the networking opportunities, I mostly hung out with Minerva Zimmerman (no relation) and compared notes about the books we have coming out from Timid Pirate.

After that I spent a bit of time hanging out with some writer friends and learned that there’s a supernatural historical horror game called Colonial Gothic. I’m super delighted that this exists, especially since one of the settings I wanted to develop into an RPG many, many years ago was basically “X-Files in the 1790s.”

On the topic of K.C. Ball, I made it to one of her readings finally. After a few years of failing to make it, I finally got to see her in action as she read a couple pieces from her collection of short stories. They were wonderful stories and clear demonstrations of her mastery of the craft. Following on her heels was an awesome reading by Keffy R.M. Kehrli, which was an excellent way to end the night before starting the drive back home.

All in all, a wonderful (if exhausting) day of fun.

We got up at o-dark-thirty to catch our flight out on Wednesday. The con doesn’t start until Thursday, but every year there’s an informal potluck dinner hosted by some con regulars. It provides a chance to see old friends and have some casual socializing before the con begins. Wednesday night was also when I started to come down with the bug that is still plaguing me today. This features prominently in my narrative as I go.

On Thursday afternoon we went out and hit Zingerman’s, another yearly tradition, to have some yummy food. Usually we also use this time to do some shopping in downtown Ann Arbor, but we had no time for that this year. I was feeling poorly and we had someone to pick up at the airport. But still, Zingerman’s was wonderful as always.

The hotel was, as always, the hotel. I’m not particularly fond of the location. It’s gotten better over the years, but it’s still pretty meh. I’ll refrain from whining about the place or belaboring problems experienced this year.

And now, the games.

Slot 1: All the Myths are True: The Weird West IV (GM: Dawn Vogel)

We opened up the con Thursday night with my wife’s ongoing game, in which she mashes up Norse mythology with the Deadlands RPG with a diceless system. And it’s all set in the mining town of Deadwood. I play a doctor and gambler loosely inspired by Doc Holliday (more specifically, Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday) named James Beauregard III. This was my second year playing, and I started the game dead. The second year is when people get their mojo from their Norse patron, and as a chosen of Hel I became a Harrowed. For those not familiar with Deadlands, a Harrowed is someone who comes back from the dead powered by an evil spirit. It turned out to be a remarkably intense roleplaying experience as my character had to second guess all of what he found interesting in life as well as work harder to maintain the trust of the other PCs. This proved extra awkward as the plot revolved evil forces that seemed to be the same ones that granted James his new “life.”

Slot 2: The Nano-Victorian Future: Moon Over Beacon Street (GM: Matt Andrews)

I’d played in this game a couple years prior and returned again as Lord Philip Margrave, Count of Cambridge, secretly known as the gentleman thief “Bishop.” It’s a pretty brilliant setting with a lot of really interesting story hooks to play up the different aspects of the genre. More on it can be found here. This year we had a problem with nanotech vampires. I think my main regret with this game is that, as a Friday morning slot, we tend to be more goofy. I’d really to play a more serious take on this game sometime.

Slot 3: Dragon Cities (GM: Me)

I’ve played in James Arnoldi’s fae noir game Dreaming City for several years, and recently began mulling around the idea of what a non-Eurocentric take on the idea might look like. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more and more fascinated by what the world looks like when you strip away western expectations. So this was my attempt, taking the Chinese and Japanese myths about Penglai and Horai, mashing them together and advancing the timeline to modern day. The vaguely sketched out history is that this had once been the paradise of Chinese myth. When Japanese deities invaded the island, the peace was broken and it became a cold dark place. More than anything it was a backdrop to have various icons of Asian myth and pop culture, primarily Japanese and Chinese, all dwelling together in one city.

The plot I cooked up involved the players getting caught up in the schemes between the Japanse and Chinese gods of death (Izanami and Lord Yan). The main targets in this conflict were four Japanese school girls who were secretly Izanami’s Magical Death Princesses (gothic lolita magical girls). I had no idea how this would go, but I didn’t expect the players to be grilling the magical girls, taking away their transformation wands and getting on Izanami’s case for employing child soldiers. Once you take away the belief that “this is cool and important,” magical girls get very sort of weird and creepy.

I’ve started a wiki for this game in the hopes of running it in the future.

Slot 4: Ill Met in Amber: Epilogue (GM: Kit Kindred)

I think I first attended Ambercon in 2000. I signed up for the first installation of the game as Sir Reginald Bayle, Baronet. (A thinly veiled knockoff of the Scarlet Pimpernel.) It was originally billed as “swashbuckler noir,” with everyone playing the non-royals in the city. My attendence over the years, as well as my feelings toward the game, have varied a lot over the years. And twelve years later Kit put the game to bed. Or, at least, the name. He’s running another game in this slot next year called “Lean Times in Amber” which is a successor to this game. But this definitely had a feeling of closure.

Over the years, my character in this game suffered over the years from “beautiful internal landscape.” He had a lot of secrets and backstory, with every reason not to share it with anyone. I’ve gotten better over the years, but there’s still a lot of his personality that hasn’t come out. The game ended with a secret wake for King Eric with a surprise appearance from Oberon. It was interesting, settling into the role of this character as they face a time when everyone will have to give more of themselves in the times to come. I was surprised by how much self loathing the character had for himself, and his anger that people would rest so much hope on him. It was a startling experience in terms of character exploration.

Slot 5: Land of Ten-Thousand Dragons: The Scarlet Throne (GM: Me)

I’m not really sure what to say about this slot.

This was my second year running my diceless Exalted: Dragon-Blooded game. I had a good time last year and wanted to push it for a second year. Because most of the players are not familiar with Exalted at all, it’s easier to control information and sculpt them into the Dragon-Blooded mindset.

Saturday morning is the longest slot of the con, and a very intimidating one for me. I usually start flailing as a GM after a few hours and use the lunch break in the middle to figure out how I’m going to spend the rest of the time.

Not only was I living on DayQuil through the whole con, but I started out Saturday morning taking NyQuil instead by mistake. I took DayQuil as soon as I thought I could do it without screwing myself up too much. But still my sense of time felt very slippery, and my awareness of what everone was doing also seemed unclear. I don’t think I did great at pacing things and releasing data to the players to fuel choices. In hindsight, I probably made the whole plot a little too complicated. I had too many factions at the edges jockeying for attention. But still, towards the end it looked like the players were locking onto the thinly veiled obvious villain very well. It wouldn’t resolve the whole plot, but it was at least a partial victory.

I tossed in a tangential threat without thinking about it and then the whole thing imploded, everyone turned against one another both in and out of character, and then we hit the end of the slot. We could have tried to play through dinner, but some people were just *done* and wanted to go eat. So I kicked off the civil war in the realm and ended it there.

I’ve never had that happen in a game that wasn’t a throne war. And perhaps some people came into this thinking it was a throne war. The plot I was aiming for was, “Someone’s trying to trigger a civil war, and we don’t want one.” instead of “Let’s have a civil war.” Several years ago I had a game that had a huge schism between new and returning players, but it was nothing compared to this.

After the con I emailed people to get feedback about how I could have handled it differently. The general concensus was that there was little I could have done. At best I could have adjusted the pacing some or reined people in. The diplomatic comments said that it was just a matter of confusion between new players and returning players. The less diplomatic pointed fingers. I’ve gamed with almost all of these people in the past, they’ve gamed together before, and they’re all fine players. But somehow it all combusted.

For those interested, I have a wiki that includes my clumsy attempt to adapt Exalted: Dragon-Blooded to a simpler diceless format.

Slot 6: The Ashworth Academy: Squashmores (GM: Me)

This was my second year of running this game. I started it as a serial, but it’s running more like a campaign. Inspiration for this game included The Prisoner, Morning Glories, and Lost. I messed with time and had crazy hallucinations bombard the characters. I also unveiled the big secrets behind the game, laying the groundwork for the rest of the series. I don’t know if I blew anyone’s minds, but I was pretty pleased with the results. There was also some great serendipity in terms of how some of the plot came together. There were several moments of, “I don’t know why this is happening but it’s the right thing to happen” and then it worked out. Very gratifying from a storytelling point of view.
Slot 7: Devils and Details in the Dreaming City (GM: James Arnoldi)

As mentioned earlier, this is James’s fae noir setting that he runs every year. I play Diego del Fuego, holistic detective. He’s a frankly silly character, a parody of a Seattle urbanite: Vegetarian, pacifist, very sensitive to respecting different cultural beliefs. As part of his holistic detecting, he can also not follow obvious clues. Normally I prepare with some gonzo divination methods to guide him on this strange path outside of the main story arc, but I was off my game this year. (Cf. cold medicine.) Casting runes with a can of alphabet soup was the best I could manage.

The other frustration I had is that it’s hard to be involved with epic fight scenes if you’re a pacifist. Admitedly, part of the reason for me playing a pacifist was to stand as a contrast to the several players who play badder-than-bad-asses. But really, when the gods are about to have a throw down there isn’t much room for pacifism. I bought a couple powers for him, Tibetan Buddhist empowerments that manifested as spell-like effects (protection and healing). But it was hard to find an involvement that felt more significant than just doing support in the background but didn’t overshadow others. Because in this scenario, any significant help for one person would result in harm against another. I could put myself between them, but couldn’t otherwise influence things. Which ultimately, I guess, is a deeper truth to ponder.
Slot 8: Rebma Confidential: In the Cold of the Tide (GM: Me)

I wrapped up the con with my game of underwater noir and Cthulhu jokes. This year I cribbed ruthlessly from Raymond Chandler’s The High Window, with attempts to create counterfeit Chaosian memorabilia and an ancient Triton coin forged from pit gold. I felt less prepared this year and my plot hooks, especially for newer players, felt pretty weak. But people seemed to have a good time and excited for more, so I guess ultimately that’s a victory.

First off, I have donated a story to Fighting for Gwen. Every other week they will be providing a short story to help raise legal funds for Gwen, who is a high functioning autistic eight-year-old who has been discriminated against by a school district in California. Some really top notch writers are pitching in to help, so I really encourage you to subscribe to help raise money. Or just donate if you’re feeling donatey. The story I submitted is “One Giant Leap for Panda-kind.” It’s the first Snowflake story I ever wrote and its original title was “Snowflake War Journal.” The folks at Timid Pirate loved it but didn’t have a home for it yet. So I sat on it without a good plan for it. I figure this is a good home for it. I don’t know when my story will see the light of day, so you’re probably better off signing up for six months.

Second, I got to see some early concept art for Kensei. I don’t have any to share yet, but it looks pretty sharp. I hope to have more stuff to show soon.

Third, I’ve been slowly getting started with my first e-zine, Mad Scientist Journal. I’ve gotten some excellent submissions and aim to start publishing a story a week starting in April. Very exciting! It’s also been interesting to see it n the editor end of things. A startling number of submissions do not follow the submission guidelines. This has not been a clear indicator of whether the story has been publishable. Some have been extraordinarily out of line with the submission guidelines, but I did also have an excellent story from a SFWA author who submitted a story that fit with the zine but did not follow the formatting requests. She’s also someone I know personally. I’d give her a hard time, but submissions have been so slim that I’m just happy to get a story that solid.

At one point before the con, they emailed people to see who wanted to be on panels. As part of my half-assed attempts to build my marketing “platform,” I tossed my hat in the ring. I made the note that I was a novice writer, but would like to help out. So this recap will do just a broad overview of the convention and then cover the panels I sat on.

So, to say that this convention is small does not really do it justice. Foolscap and Rustycon are both very small, but they have enough going on for more than one track of panels. This convention had a single track of panels. If you didn’t want to attend the panel, you could either visit the half dozen vendors in the dealer room or hang out in the hospitality suite. Since I had no money or room for more books, I mostly avoided the dealer room. The hospitality suite had a pretty awesome spread and even had beer and wine available for those over twenty-one. On Saturday night, the people who run Foolscap hosted the hospitality suite and brought in hand made chocolates, which were entirely awesome. There was apparently a writing workshop on Friday night, which I utterly failed to realize until the last minute.

Saturday night, news was released that Mark Bourne had passed away that day. I did not know him, but he was apparently tied very closely to the regular members of Potlatch. From my perspective, it was a quiet but noticeable ripple through the convention. It was never explicitly said, but I got the impression that some of the people that did not show up for panels missed them because of Mr. Bourne’s passing. My well-wishes go out to those who mourn his passing.

Instead of a guest of honor, each year the convention picks a “Book of Honor.” Half of the panels are built around that book. In past years they have had books like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, and even Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light. I’m very sad I missed those books. This year it was A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. I’d barely registered that there was a book of honor, had never read it before and didn’t think about trying to read it until a friend guilted me into it.

As it was, I barely got a third of the book read before the convention hit. I was pretty luke warm towards it, not having much of a love for Cold War era post nuclear apocalypse fiction. This book was probably cutting edge at the time, but it had fifty years of books and film to compete with in my brain. More than anything I flashed back to Deus Irae by Roger Zelazny and Philip K. Dick, which I enjoyed more. However, hearing spoilers as they deconstructed the book on one panel left me interested in finishing it. Some strange and amazing stuff apparently takes place over the rest of the book.

Going with the themes of the book, the panels had themes like “Walter Miller reading,” “Collapse fiction,” “Post-apocalyptic survival skills.” In light of this, I’m extra sad I missed Lord of Light in 2010. I mostly focused on writer oriented panels and entered panic mode as soon as I saw who my fellow panelists were.

“Blocking writer’s block”

This panel was moderated by Jack Skillingstead, who filled in for the missing moderator, and featered me, Eileen Gunn and Vylar Kaftan. This first panel I was still in a state of high panic and felt like I had little to contribute. It was also hard to follow the stories from Eileen about her old friend Bill Gibson calling her up to tell her the secret of writing a couple of times. (I think one of the secrets was that writing was about getting over the revulsion you have for your own writing.) She also had a great story about a friend who threatened ominous things if she didn’t produce 10,000 words a day when she first started writing.

“E-publishing panel”

I’d signed up for this because my writing has appeared primarily in electronic magazines and I’m in the process of starting up my own e-zine. And then I crapped myself a little. Jack William Bell moderated the panel, which featured writer and publisher Tod McCoy, David D. Levine, and VONDA FREAKING MCINTYRE. Yeah, I was a little intimidated by her since she’s been publishing fiction since BEFORE I WAS BORN. And she was one of the first authors I’d ever read.

Overall, I really had little to contribute. Most people wanted to talk about ebooks, self-publishing and the latest hornet nests kicked over by Amazon. I tried to insert things when I had relevant things to say, but I had few relevant things to say. And it attracted most of the convention. I think until I start publishing ebooks I need to just avoid this panels lest I look like a bigger dork than I am.

“Short story, novella, or novel?”

This was a harder topic to fill and people were a little faded from the weekend. It was moderated by one of my local writing heroes, Keffy R.M. Kehrli. It also included Jack Skillingstead and Amy Thomson. I think between having been on a couple panels at this point and having a much easier topic than e-publishing left me the most comfortable on this. We were worried we wouldn’t fill an hour with this, but the time went by pretty quickly. And I got to mention my short story about a clock radio with existential angst.

Overall I had a good time and made some friends that I had met at some other writing events but hadn’t really connected with until now. There had been rumors milling around that there might not be a Potlatch 22 because no one wanted to organize it next year. But I know at least one brave soul who is trying to get things going. I salute him and know that I don’t dare because I’m already volunteering for too many things. =/ If it comes together, though, I will try and attend.

• “Snowflake’s Chance in Hell,” the tale of a sentient panda versus evil tstchotchkes appeared in Cobalt City Dark Carnival.
• “A Necessity of the Present,” my tale of high fantasy noir was republished in Future Imperfict: Best of Wily Writers, Volume 2.
• “Kiss of Death,” the incredible story of two necromancers in love came out in Arcane. 
• I’ve handed off the first draft of my book, Kensei, to the folks at Timid Pirate Publishing. This is a young adult piece set in the superhero shared universe created by Nathan Crowder. It’s part of the series of YA books that they are producing called “Cobalt City Rookies.”
• I’ve opened up to submissions for my experimental e-zine, Mad Scientist  Journal. Here’s to hoping I get enough people to get it off the ground.

• Don’t drive vehicles when you don’t have the driving skill.
• Don’t go back in time and kill the main antagonist when they were a baby. Breaks the universe.
• Don’t kill everything in sight. It’s not GTA.

And, in reference to a completely different game:

• Don’t let Jeremy make up your backstory for you.

I feel like I’ve traumatized the last batch of kids. And I’m kind of proud of that.

I sat as a  panelist in four of the panels over the weekend. They varied pretty widely in quality. I think there were a few things I struggled with the most as a new panelist. The first was that I am not used to giving a bio for myself in front of people, so I fumbled it every time. I was also not as assertive as I needed to be, so stronger personalities dominating things more. And I found that I’m not used to having those sorts of dialogues, so I wouldn’t think of the best responses right away and I didn’t try to steer conversations where I wanted them to be. For the most part I tried to request panels where I figured I had some sort of input on the topic, but I found that my input was not always relevant to the discussion on hand as I’ll illustrate below.

The panels were often very small. Most of the panels I attended as a listener often turned into round-table discussions just because there were so few people that came to the panel. For the most part that seemed to work out, but the facilities were often much bigger than they needed to be for the crowd that showed up in the events.

Crossing Genre: My first panel I shared the table up front with Shoshana Glick. We had a third panelist, but they didn’t show up. Shoshana had been involved in the Genre Evolution Project at the University of Michigan. She had a lot of knowledge of theory involving what genre means, the tropes that are involved, and how many things that get filed as one genre often don’t fit the classic structure of the genre. Me? I tend to cross genres when I write, partly influenced by having published most of my early stuff through Crossed Genres magazine. I felt very out of my league as Shoshana blazed a trail of commentary on genre right off the bat. So, my debut as a panelist was pretty heavily fumbled by me. But I think Shoshana really injected a lot of insight into the topic.

How to Make the Most Out of Gaming: I shared the table with Dustin Gross of Dragondyne Publishing, which publishes a d20-based “omni-genre” roleplaying game. I figured this would make a good fit for me since I wrote for some roleplaying games, blogged about roleplaying game ideas and have experimented with a lot of things over the years (with many failures on my part). I came to this thinking about GM/player communication, player contributions, making a wiki, etc.

Not counting my wife, we had one person in the audience for most of it who was very vocal, mostly played D&D and hadn’t been happy with a game since Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. His biggest concerns were game balance and how D&D always gets broken. I had really very little to contribute to this conversation. This was really a place for Dustin to shine, so I tried to seed in some questions to establish some ideas about what makes a game fun. I also tried to interject indie game design ideas into this, since one thing that came up was how everyone has a different idea of what makes a good game. But that one got lost in the initial response pretty fast and I’m not entirely certain that they understood what I meant.

The Rise of Indie Publishing: This was my favorite panel of the weekend. There had been some trouble in keeping a writing track clear in the programming. So earlier in the day there had been a two hour panel about Workshops and Writing Groups that ran against Writing Battle Scenes in the first half and Agents: Are They More Necessary Than Ever in the second half. Similarly, the panel on indie publishing ran opposite a panel on Self-Publishing. K.C. Ball was with me on the Indie Publishing panel. Tod McCoy, who recently published K.C.’s short story collection Snapshots from a Black Hole & Other Oddities through Hydra House, was on the self-publishing panel with Jax Hix of Literary Underground.

Since it seemed weird to have those two panels at the same time, K.C. and Tod coordinated to combine the two panels. This turned out to be the best  attended panel of the ones I was on. The downside was that there was a lot more emphasis on self-publishing than indie publishers so I had less to say on the topic. But some great discussions were had and I learned a lot.

The Return of the Radio Shows: I requested to be on this believing that I’d be closer to writing for Cobalt City Adventures Unlimited, but work on Kensei overshadowed that. So I felt like I was going to be completely at a loss for this. But the other panelist was the same panelist missing from the Crossing Genre panel. This could have been very awkward for me, but no one else showed up for the panel either. A big empty room with just my wife. After fifteen minutes we gave up. I could have been extra responsible and went to one of the volunteers and seen what we could have done. But I’d heard from others that there had been other panels that day with no one attending. Since this was the last thing we planned on doing, we just bailed. If there’d been some sort of last minute room change, I didn’t hear about it. If I’m actually the person who was absent from where I needed to be: Sorry?

Beyond these panels and the excellent people that showed up, I had some really excellent experiences with other attendees at the convention. I ran into the lovely and talented Danika Dinsmore a couple times and may get to review an advance copy of The Ruins of Noe (FAIRIES!!!).

Also, one panel led by Ted Butler turned into a cozy roundtable discussion with me, my wife, Melina Gunnett, and Anna Sheehan. All of us were authors in varying stages of writing YA books. The panel started out as “Morality in Youth-Based Fantasy,” but turned into a general discussion of what is appropriate to include in YA fantasy in terms of moral lessons, violence, language, etc. And then we got into general talks of the writing industry, agents, publishers and other career oriented talk. It was really wonderful and I’m happy to have met them.

Overall it was a good time, even if the small size of the con sometimes defeated the intentions of the panels. But I look forward to attending this convention again next year!

For this year’s NaNoWriMo, I relied entirely on the crude outline I created in the one-day workshop I did with Mark Teppo through Clarion West‘s one-day workshop in early October. For a lot of reasons, mostly involving the build-up to November (including World Fantasy Con and AmberCon Northwest back to back), I didn’t get a blog post about my experience with his workshop. Since the novel came out of the work I did in his workshop, and it’s a great chance to see how that worked for me, I figured it was best to combine those two posts.

As I’ve continued writing over the last several years, I’ve increasingly found writing to be a very spiritual experience for me. I don’t mean spiritual in the sense of “developing a closer connection to an otherworldly being” but more in the sense of self exploration and understanding. In theory all moments in life are opportunities to learn something about yourself, but I feel it most acutely through writing (and being a writer as well, which is a little different). My best guess is that writing comes from and touches a deeper part of my psyche than, say making photocopies or feeding the cats. NaNoWriMo drills all of that down into a very intense month of beating my head against a creative work without room to give up or back out.

The one-day workshop I did with Mark Teppo was called “Jump Start Your Novel.” It was a day long exercise in taking whatever elements you have in mind for a novel and finding ways to expand it into a coherent and well crafted book. Some people came to the workshop with just vague ideas about what they wanted their books to be about. Others came after having written a good chunk of a novel and found it unworkable.

The first part of the class focused on us writing out answers to questions about our book. These questions asked about the protagonist, the theme of the book, as well as how the book would end. The second half of the class focused on how to translate these answers into an outline. Mark offered a lot of templates for plot structure for us to hang ideas on. He covered what he called the “Hardy Boys” chapter structure, the heroic journey, the three act structure and a variation on the Celtic Cross tarot spread.

Throughout all of these exercises, we had the opportunity to draw one tarot card per question to help us generate ideas. At first only a couple people did it, but as we got deeper and deeper into the exercise more and more people went looking for inspiration. In some parts I just flailed as I stared at the “white bull” of my lap top screen.

But, in the end, I had an outline for 25 chapters in pretty broad strokes with a lot more solid about my novel idea than I’d ever had besides some broad concepts. I felt pretty empowered.

What I should have done at this point was to flesh out narrative arcs for each of my chapters, apply the same questions I had written up to all of my primary characters and maybe written a little backstory for each of the characters.

But I had this faint hope that I could finish my novella before November hit and was pushing to do that. And I didn’t. But in the weeks between the workshop and November, I didn’t do any further work on my pre-NaNo prep. So late Halloween night I realized I didn’t even have names for most of the characters in the book, nor anything more solid about the broad strokes I’d fleshed out. And I didn’t even remember what half my broad strokes were supposed to mean.

I stuck with the outline for maybe two or three chapters, getting the feel for the writing before veering off course. The consistent problem I have with outlines is that the map is not the territory. When I actually get in and start putting words down, I start to get a feel for the flow of the plot and the structure of the story. I guess some people don’t have that problem. I haven’t grown past that. Anyway, since this outline was so loosely sketched out, I realized fast just how little thought I’d put into it the story. I went away from planned territory in a way I haven’t done in several years. The entire narrative arc was coming out of the ether as I went. I still used many ideas generated by the workshop, but the plot only bore the most superficial resemblance to my outline.

There’s an important lesson to be learned here: Workshops of various stripes are excellent for improving your skills. But the benefit comes from doing the work that needs to be done, not just half-assing it. If you have a chance to take Mark Teppo’s workshop in some form, I encourage you to do so. He’s a great guy, an excellent teacher and I really learned a lot through his workshop. My failure to follow through on the awesome I got from him is all my own damn fault.

The convention is run at the McMenamin’s Edgefield, a beautiful resort just east of Portland, OR. Not only does the Edgefield have an on-site brewery, distillery and winery, but it also has a spa and salt-water soaking pool. The convention has no dealer room and almost never has panels. Instead from Thursday through Sunday the weekend is all about gaming.

The community of 120 some odd people is very open and welcoming. New people often speak of how friendly and helpful people are, and many of the people I’ve gotten to know over the last twelve years feel like family.

Coming right on the heels of World Fantasy Con, I was operating at a deficit in terms of energy. I was pretty wiped out most of Monday and Tuesday, on top of having some NaNoWriMo obligations, after WFC and only had Wednesday to work on my games for ACNW. Riding in the car on Thursday down to the convention, I worked on my NaNo novel for the most part and helped Dawn brainstorm about hers.

After arriving I spent a half hour in the soaking pool before my hour massage. In hindsight I will probably not get in the pool before my massage again. While relaxing, it left me overly warm and so it took me a while to cool off. Until then I was incredibly sweaty. Not sexy.

The convention proper opens with a meet and greet. The convention provides a light buffet meal where we all mingle and have a few drinks. This is the first chance many of us get to see the friends we’d made in years past and there’s a lot of catching up that occurs. It’s also where any relevant announcements are made.

Slot One – All That Glitters: From Chaos With Love (GM: Me)

Thursday night I ran my first game of the weekend. This is the sequel to a game I ran the year before. The premise is that it revolves around the mid-level movers and shakers of the Shadows that trade with Amber. My previous iteration had not been what I had hoped for. Instead of exploration and mystery solving it devolved into, essentially, a dungeon crawl. This year went much better and there were some very fun roleplaying moments. I’m looking forward to running this again next year.

Slot Two – Writer’s Brunch (Organizer: Kath Nyborg)

I don’t normally like to take slots off from gaming, but the last couple years I’ve been joining in on the formal “taking time off from the con to write” event. Last year it was in the bar and I really enjoyed the atmosphere while I plugged away at the writing. This year we were in one of the meeting rooms of the hotel, and it lost a lot of its charm for me. It probably doesn’t help that I was freaking exhausted and fading out towards the end. I bagged out early to take a nap before lunch.

Slot Three – Sandman: Broken Hearts (GM: Jen Edwards)

A sequel to last year’s game, this is a variation on Neil Gaiman’s Sandman using the game mechanics from Nobilis 3e.  It diverges from canon at the point where Morpheus transfers power to Daniel. In this universe, the emerald shattered and the bits of Dream’s soul scattered out to embed themselves with various people and entities throughout the universe. Last year the PCs only represented agents of Dream but this year we expanded it to include an agent of Desire. I’m hoping in future games we might see more Endless have emPowered agents available as PCs. I truly loved playing this game. It brought in all the things I liked about Sandman and Nobilis together very well and I look forward to playing it again next year.

Slot Four – A Drink and a Tale (Organizer: Ryan Craig)

This was a session of Baron Munchausen, with us taking on the role of various nobility of the Amber universe and telling tales. It had been several years since I’d gotten to play in it so I was really looking forward to this. We barely played, though. We started an hour late, people didn’t seem to get into the spirit of the game (though I tried to push things along on my end) and we only played one round. After that we just drank and socialized late into the night. I had a generally good time, made some new friends and patched things up with old friends. (Alcohol can be great at smoothing things over.) But I would have really loved to tell more tales. At the very least, I got the most chips from players for telling the best tale. Huzzah!

Slot Five – Pulp Chaos 6: Put Your Lips Together and Blow [Take Two] (GM: Me)

Saturday morning I ran another installment of my game of commoners in the Courts of Chaos. This was the one I was supposed to run the year before, but didn’t because of explosive gall bladder issues. I was pretty hungover from the night before and didn’t feel particularly on top of my GMing. This was the most self-referential of the games I’ve run in this series. In years past I’ve tried to mostly have the plot revolve around elements of the Merlin series. But in the first run of this one of the players had left a story item that stuck around for a few games even though he didn’t come back. Since he had returned to the game this year, I decided it was time for some payback from an NPC. Overall people said they had fun, though energy was pretty low.

We ended a little early and a couple of us, so hadn’t seen much of each other in the last year, spent some time catching up.

Slot Six – Grindhouse 5 (GMs: Me and Thaddeus Rice)

Our latest installment of Grindhouse, we again ran two games in one slot. (It was a double feature you see.) I opened it up with Wulfgar und Olga, a lampoon of Conan. Sort of. It was born out of our fake movie trailers from a few years before. We used In a Wicked Age, using what I’ve heard called “the Conan variation.” Characters and plot elements are randomly generated using a deck of playing cards. There’s a whole system of determining which characters come back with each story that is told. In the Conan variation every story has to have Conan as a constant figure through all the stories, much like the Conan tales. In our game we substituted our two pseudo-Scandanavian titans, Wulfgar and Olga.

Then in the second half, Thaddeus ran Arkham Prep, using a simplified version of Monsters and Other Childish Things. We were all pre-teens in a Lovecraftian themed New England private school. Each of us had a monster only we could see. Weird things were going on. I didn’t really know what to expect. With Lovecraft involved I thought it would be sort of a creepy horror/mystery with little kids. It felt much more whimsical than that.

With each game we had a “missing reel” time jump so that we could wrap the game up in time, often with random plot elements thrown in that didn’t make sense based off of the opening of the game. In between the games we collaboratively made up shlocky trailers. My favorite was the rip off of Twilight that I called Watching You Sleep. It started off with me just trying to do a version of Twilight that didn’t glorify or sweep under the rug Edward’s creepy and controlling behavior. With other’s input Edward was replaced with Count Orlock from Nosferatu. Seriously: rewatch the trailer for Twilight but replace Edward with a yellow-skinned creature with snaggly teeth, over-long fingers and batwing ears, speaking in a raspy voice. I’m just sad they don’t have the whole “this is the skin of a predator” line in the trailer so you can imagine Count Orlock’s bare, sunken-chested torso while he says that.

Slot Seven – Even Death May Die

This was my first stab at doing a diceless version of Scion: Hero. You can see the character creation I used over here. Overall I think that in trying to recreate the mechanics more accurately, I made it more complicated. But aside from that hurdle I had fun running it and others said they did as well. I had a pretty rockin’ set of players for this. I’m looking forward to running this again next year with a revised ruleset.

After this we had a roaming after party, which included our tongue-in-cheek awards (“The Obies”), soaking in the pool, drinking and talking late into the night.

I’ve found in the past that my enjoyment of the con often boils down to how much I run versus how much I play. Because despite how much I like to run, I also love playing and don’t often get to. I usually limit myself to only running for half of the con, and I allow myself to run four out of seven slots because in one of the slots I’m only running half the game. Even with that, with one game replaced by writing and one game not really getting off the ground, I really felt like I had a deficit of play time. I will have to keep that in mind when making choices for next year.

I arrived in San Diego Wednesday afternoon. I had some mixed experiences with the hotel, but had no other WFCs to compare it to. I think the coolest part of the hotel was that they had Fantasy Island style golf carts to shuttle guests around the campus as needed. It was invaluable at times when I had a bunch of crap to carry.

There had been some emails sent out to the convention attendees, mostly kinda spammy. But included was an invitation from Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore to an informal meet and greet with authors from the convention on Wednesday night. Feeling bold, I RSVP’ed and let them know I was an author interested in attending. They added me to the list. I wasn’t even sure I’d be included, especially once the program for the convention came out and I was on none of the panels or readings. But they did include me. They even obtained copies of Crossed Genres Year One, though I didn’t find them the night of the event. (Note to self: When you’re at a bookstore and you’re looking for copies of an anthology you’re in, it won’t be shelved under your last name.)

But there was also a pretty astounding list of authors that were going to be there. Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, David Brin, Stina Leicht, Tone Milazzo, Mary Robinette Kowal, J.A. Pitts, Brenda Cooper, Patrick Rothfuss, Connie Willis, John Hornor Jacobs, Kate Elliott… I felt ridiculously out of my league.

I shared the shuttle from the airport with Nina Kiriki Hoffman who I had never heard of, but a bit of googling on my iPhone turned up her Wikipedia page. So, apparently she’s a big deal. She was also kind enough to look after me a bit at the author event, as did Mary Robinette Kowal. Which was a good thing. Even if my anxiety about the event wasn’t enough, the San Diego heat combined with low blood sugar and body heat in a crowded book store left me pretty miserable. Apparently San Diego doesn’t agree with my definition of “air conditioning.” In the end, I had a relatively good time with excellent conversation, but starting out the event drenched in sweat was not my ideal.

I spent much of the convention latched on to one friend or another. Once panels started I loosened up a bit, but it was nice to have a buddy along for those times when I felt like I was at loose ends. And I met a bunch of people that I then later latched onto as well. Overall the convention was mostly about meeting people, and not just in the raw networking sense of things. A large chunk of the 500 some odd members of the conventions were writers and other industry professionals. I met published authors, authors pitching their first novels, fans who were just starting to try their hand at writing, editors, slush readers, publicity directors and more. And everyone wanted to introduce you to someone else you might like.

There were panels, and some were good. But it was not nearly as awesome as just sitting around with some beers with people who love the same stuff you do. I have never had this experience in either the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Conference, which was filled with writers of all different genres. Nor at Norwescon, which is much more of a fan convention.

So, here are some random highlights of the weekend:

• Michael Underwood and Rich Howard  were among the authors I met who were pitching manuscripts. They both had jaw-dropping ideas behind their books, the sort of thing that I just kick myself for not thinking of myself. I won’t tell you what they are, since I don’t know how much they want known yet, but I encourage you to check them out and look for their books.
• I got to see Elizabeth Bear for the first time in many years. She had once been heavily involved in the Amber Diceless gaming community and I had met her and her now ex-husband at AmberCon. I’m still friends with her ex-husband (he officiated my wedding this last July) but between the divorce and her writing career she hasn’t been back in some time. I was surprised by how excited I was to see her again.
• I got to attend some really wonderful readings. In addition to Michael Underwood, I also got to see readings by Neil Gaiman, Liz Argall, Siobhan Carroll and Steven Boyett. Steven’s was perhaps the best of the readings I attended. I had met him going out to dinner with my friend Nathan and we ended up with Steven, Cliff Winnig (another AmberCon alumni) and Nayad Monroe (who I also just met that night). I had no idea who I was going to dinner with, but came out of it feeling like I’d met a ton of awesome people. The next day at Steven’s reading, he didn’t just read. He had memorized his pieces, rehearsed them and presented them. The piece that he presented from his latest novel, Mortality Bridge, was especially amazing because his introduction to the piece blended right into the selection from the story. You can see a video of him reading it here.
• I brought home a bunch of books. The book bag they gave us had a dozen books plus some magazines and various shwag. Ever time I met a new author I thought was neat, I ran out to find their book. The convention anticipated that and had an on-site post office there to help people ship books home. I spent over $40 on shipping three boxes of books and still had a big pile of stuff to stuff into carry on. I’m not looking forward to seeing my credit card bill.
• With the high volume of professional authors at the event, I had several mini-geek out moments. But nothing quite topped Sunday night. The crowd of the convention had thinned out and it seemed like many of the people remaining were pros of one sort of another. At one point I had the rare honor of having Mary Robinette Kowall and Tim Powers giving me advice and reassurance on writing. Then, into the middle of this, Steven Erikson joined us and shared a story about nearly dying in Mongolia. I’d seen both Powers and Erikson throughout the conversation, but while I loved their writing I didn’t feel fanboyish enough to try and engage them earlier. But finding myself actually conversing with them and Mary as a fellow (if less successful) writer was rare and magical.

I want to go back next year. I don’t know how I can swing it, but I really want to attend in Toronto when it goes out that way. Especially since I probably won’t be able to attend in Brighton in 2013. This event was amazing and powerful for me as a writer, much as AmberCon Northwest nourishes me as a roleplayer. If you’re a writer of speculative fiction of any sort, I really encourage you to try and attend this at some point.

Today I’m catching a plan to San Diego for World Fantasy Con, with guest of honor Neil Gaiman. I didn’t make it onto any panels, but looking at the list of authors that did I’m not insulted. There’s a metric butt ton of awesome writers there. It’s so outside of my league it’s ridiculous. But I did manage to squeeze my way in as an author for tonights informal meet-and-greet at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore. I’m only a lot intimidated by the notion of being on the same docket of authors as Mary Robinette Kowal, Emma Bull, David Brin and Will Shetterly. I have this small secret fear that they’ll realize I don’t belong.

I’m delighted to see that they listed one of the anthologies I’m in on their site, though. Specifically Crossed Genres Year One. I’ll be stoked if they actually have it on sale at the store. I’ll be even more stoked if they have the Timid Pirate anthologies I’m in.

Speaking of Timid Pirate, Cobalt City Dark Carnival is out soon-ish. I channel my inner angry panda for my story, “Snowflake’s Chance in Hell.” Not sure what the exact release date is, but I know it is pretty damn soon.

Arcane Magazine, which purchased my short story “Kiss of Death,” has changed format to being a yearly anthology. Their Web site now points to Cold Fusion Media. I recall hearing that the anthology would come out January-ish, so hopefully that’s when my story will be there since my new contract gives them a year to publish the story before rights revert to me. Getting information about this has been tough.