Tag Archives: workshops

Kansas! Day Two

I woke up bright and early with the aim of getting lots of stuff done today. I hung out in the lobby, working on my workshop notes, waiting for someone to go to breakfast with. I ended up waiting for quite a while. But finally there were signs of life and we went to check out the local cafeteria. They were a couple people from the novel workshop, since they actually met in the morning while us short story folks didn’t have to be anywhere till after lunch.
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Kansas! Day One

I am in scenic Lawrence, Kansas, for the Science Fiction Writers Workshop put on by the Center for the Study of Science Fiction. This is primarily a workshop for short stories. James Gunn leads the workshop. There is a concurrent workshop being run for SF novelists run by Kij Johnson. Because I’m not well versed in SF lore, I had not heard of either of these people. But as their Wikipedia articles illustrate, they’re kind of a big deal.

Because a few friends have been curious about the experience, I’m blogging about it. Today mostly consisted of just getting here.

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I feel like I just swam through eel infested waters.

First, some pimping!

This month, Wily Writers has been providing flash fiction weekly instead of short fiction every other week. The great thing about Wily Writers is that (a) it’s free and (b) they provide MP3 readings of all their stories. This week’s story is, “Grand-Monster” by Sasha Janel McBrayer.

(And, you know, I have a story there too if you want to look for that. *ahem*)

In other news, I spent Saturday night at a reading at Third Place Books for Apex Publishing’s Close Encounters of the Urban Kind. Jennifer Brozek, the editor of the anthology, coordinated the five authors that read and did signings. I meant to post information about the reading earlier, but have been too busy with deadlines to poke at this blog. Especially since most of my update is, “Still working on it.” And I also haven’t read the anthology.

BUT! That said, the readings I heard were marvelous. I felt definitely out of my league among some of these people, and I play D&D with a couple of them. Really top notch stuff. The authors present were:

  • Eric Scott de Bie, who I had the honor of hearing read at Norwescon earlier this year. I learned this weekend that he also comes from central California, and actually had to endure it through his teenage years. He’s also one of the people writing the novels for the Forgotten Realms these days.
  • Nathan Crowder. Yeah, that guy.
  • Rosemary Jones, who also has been writing for the Forgotten Realms these days.
  • Alma Alexander. She was on a couple panels I attended at Norwescon, and her reading was magnificent. Ms. Brozek introduced the story by saying that she picked it for the anthology because it made her cry. She did not exaggerate. I got choked up from hearing just a portion of it.
  • Shannon Page. I hadn’t heard of her before this night. But then, prior to this last winter I’d never heard of Jay Lake, who co-authors several stories with her. I guess I’m not hip to the cool new faces of SF/F. Or even some of the old ones. But I digress. Her reading was also good and holds a lot of promise.

(I feel I should add: Nate, Rosemary and Eric all had good readings as well. But I already knew they were going to be good. Alma Alexander and Shannon Page were unknown variables.)

Anyway, a quick update on the honeydew. New stuff is italicized, unless I screw up the HTML again.

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Things. Stuff.

Currently reading The Fall of Hyperion, the award-winning sequel to the award-winning Hyperion. I’ve come across at least a couple “As You Know Bob” moments in the text.

Continuing to chug away at deadlines. Got a couple items off my plate, so I’m feeling pretty good about that. This week will be mostly dedicated to clubbing my stuff before I send it to Mr. Gunn for the workshop.

Now, have some honeydew.

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State of the Honeydew

At the Wayward trying to write this morning, but having trouble focusing. Figure I’ll review my to-do list and see what needs my attention.

Part of what I’ve been doing is just hitting some low hanging fruit just to get things off my plate. So, taking stories that are damn near done and getting them done done.

I’ll italicize the items I’ve updated.

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Boxes, a quote, and a melon.

I’m waiting for the Malware scanner to finish on the girlfriend’s PC before I run off to work on my writing. So I have some random thoughts to offer, and a comment on writing progress.

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Lines That Do Death

So, in reviewing my schedule, we determined the easiest spot for me to free up more time would be if I got up at my normal weekday time on the weekend. So I got up at, dear gods, 4:30 this morning to work on my writing. It’s been a slow morning. I’m glad I didn’t go out gaming last night.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to work on next. So this is me talking out loud as I dig through all the stuff I want to submit to and determine the deadlines I’m looking at, while sitting on the couch with a fat and sassy orange cat.

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NorWesCon 2010 After Action Report

So, I had my first real exposure to Norwescon. I’d had limited visits in the past. Several years ago I attended on Thursday only and sat in on, like, one or two panels. (I remember one with Mike Pondsmith, whose words encouraged me to pursue game design. Hm.) Another time I dropped in to have drinks with friends who were attending. And one year I lucked into having a table in the dealer room.

But this was my first year buying a full membership, staying in the hotel and attending a crap ton of panels. So, here is my general commentary on the experience.

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Mapping out the road ahead.

I got my short story, which I decided to title “Thus Have I Heard,” sent off to Crossed Genres a couple days ago. My class is basically over. I just need to cull the critiques I got for my story from the boards so that I can refer to them later. I have Norwescon this weekend.

So now, I look to… the future!
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