November Sighting

OK, who stole the past year?

His name is Greenshank...though he knows that's not his true name.  He is a reticent man, and took something over a year and a half to tell me his story - a story entwined in mystery and murder, war and redemption and political manipulation.  It does him well to be reticent, as he has a very hard time determining who is friend and who is enemy and who is . . . something other.

Of course I know that his story began in Dust and Light, released last year.  But for a long while, I thought it was going in one particular direction, and then it took off on a path I didn't expect. Certainly Greenshank didn't.  And I hope my readers will enjoy its twisty unraveling.

That's why the book is releasing in December and not August as I had hoped, so I trust it won't get buried in holiday bustle.

A greenshank is a water bird, as it happens.  Many of Greenshank's fellows are also named after water birds, as much of Ash and Silver's action takes place on the cold, wet northwestern coast of the kingdom of Navronne.  Just off the coast lies an island fortress that might call to mind a fascinating place in our own world.  Fortress Evanide is a place of mists and storms and rampaging tides, and, in Greenshank's experience, a strict and mysterious military order that calls itself the Equites Cinere' or Knight of the Ashes.

For this week, 11/23/15 through 11/30/15, you can register to win a copy of Ash and Silver at Goodreads. I'll be hanging around Goodreads from now through New Year's, answering questions.

You can also head for my website to Read Chapter 1 or check out my coming Appearances or sign up for my newsletter.

Or friend me on Facebook.

I'll be back soon with more news! Read more of this post!

Launching Dust and Light!

August is going to be a busy month.

Any month where you give birth is busy - though I hope to get more sleep than in those human baby days! I'll be all sort of places online in August and do a little traveling, too. A book's legs are established in its first month out.  And an author's career teeters on those legs.  So I'm off to the races.

I'm going to kick things off this Friday.  Yes, the book isn't quite  out yet.  August 5th is the official date.  But I had an opportunity to share an evening of talk and reading with E.C. Ambrose.  Back when E.C. Ambrose was writing as Elaine Isaak, a very cruel dark-fantasy writer, I shared a  couple of panels with her at conventions.  We had fun comparing our wicked ways with our heroes.  The word?  She makes me look like a pansy!  And so does her alter ego, EC.

Anyway she is in town launching her own new book, and she couldn't make it in August.  So we'll have our little soiree on Friday evening, July 25th at 7:00pm at Old Firehouse Books in Fort Collins.

Next up will be Bubonicon, August 1-3 in Albuquerque.  The book won't officially be out then, either, but my good friends at the Broadway Book Mall are in charge of the bookstore at the con and have gotten early release permission from my publisher.  So if you want it early, come visit us in Albuquerque.

Then it's off to California and a Sunday, August 10th, 2pm event at the flagship sff bookstore Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego.

Saturday, August 23, at 2pm, I'll be back in Denver for my Colorado launch at the wonderful, friendly Broadway Book Mall.  And I'll be reading, and parlaying with Laurey Patten, longtime writing partner, who has just released her excellent sword-and-sorcery adventure The Talent Sinistral.

And then there are the online appearances.  Here's where you'll be able to find me online in August:

Thursday August 7:

John Scalzi's Big Idea;

Magical Words: Guest Author on Dust and Light;

Thursday August 14:

Reddit Fantasy AMA (Ask Me Anything) Real Time starting at 7pm Central;

Magical Words: Guest Author on Characters;

Thursday August 21:

Magical Words: Guest Author on Blowing Up the Dam;

Thursday August 21:

Magical Words: Guest Author on The Writing Life;

Join me so I'm not sitting lonely at my keyboard. You can ask me anything at any of these stops (not just the Ask Me Anything).  And Stay Tuned for a few more stops!

What about autumn, you might say...

In September I'll be thrashing and burning, trying to finish off Ash and Silver. The forecast is cloudy. But I will also be appearing at the Colorado Gold Writers Conference and teaching some workshops on worldbuilding and NOT outlining. Later in the fall I'll be at MileHiCon in Denver and then at the World Fantasy Convention in Washington DC in early November.  More on those later. Read more of this post!

Coming to Reno?

WorldCon 2011! Renovation - Reno, Nevada. Have you got your boots strapped on, your wallet tucked away, and your backpack loaded with books to get autographed? WorldCon is less than a month away.

I'll be there this year, after missing Australia (2010) and LA (2009). Looks like I have a good, solid program, too.

Panels:

Thu 1pm: Making It as a Full-time writer with Bud Sparhawk, Christina York, and Dean Wesley Smith

Thu 4pm: Writing Non-human Characters with Robert Sawyer and Martha Wells

Sat 1pm: Religion in Fantasy with Tim Powers and L.E. Modesitt

Readings:

Wed Aug 17 5pm at the Sierra View Library across the street.

Fri Aug 19 11:30am (The Daemon Prism, yes...)

Kaffeeklatches: sign up for a small-group session to ask whatever you want

Thu 3pm (don't leave me lonely!)

Sat 10am (don't know how I got two, but it should be fun!)

Autographing:

Fri 1pm (or any time you catch me, espcially if we can have a cuppa or a drink!)

My first SF convention was WorldCon in Chicago in the year 2000. I had never imagined so many people getting together to talk about books, movies, games, writing, science, costumes...anything and everything science fiction and fantasy related. There can be as many as 30 events going on at one hour. But as my agent told me at the time, science fiction conventions - especially WorldCon and the World Fantasy Convention are family reunions for the professional fantasy and science fiction worlds. Writers, agents, editors, critics, anthologists, and LOTS of readers attend. It is a great place to network and hang out with your favorite writers.

WorldCon is huge - well, I thought so until ComicCon soared into 100K+ territory. But I haven't ventured that one yet.

Come and join me in Reno!

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Upcoming events

I am emerging from deadline pressure cooker to remind all Colorado folks that the last stop on my Colorado Soul Mirror launch is coming up.

Saturday, Feb 12th, 2pm
Barnes and Noble
2999 Pearl Street
Boulder
[Chocolate will be served!]

Then I go into writers' conference mode with

Fri-Sat March 11-12
Northern Colorado Writers Conference
Fort Collins Hilton
Fort Collins
[I'll be doing a workshop on Voice and one on Character Development.]



Later in the spring, I'll return to the Pikes Peak Writers Conference, consistently one of the best conferences around. More about that later.

And over Memorial Day weekend, I'll be Writer Guest of Honor at MisCon in Missoula Montana - check it out if you're in the territory!


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Norwescon Day 3

Friday was my busiest day, but Saturday was packed as well. And I’ve never been to a convention where so many people costumed. What an array! As Saturday was the Masquerade, I saw everything from goggled Steampunk outfits to a 6-foot-six (at least) angel – no kidding.

I did two writers’ workshop sessions. Did I mention how terrific these are? The Fairwood Writers organization does a tremendous job running this workshop, getting 3-4 pros to site down face to face to give thoughtful feedback to a beginning writer. The pros critiquing are both truthful and kind in all the cases I saw.

I’ll say one thing to those who want to participate in such a thing, especially if you are submitting work written during NaNoWriMo. Show respect for those who are giving hours of their time to review your work by reading it over and polishing it before submission. It is cool to write 50k words in a month, but submitting even 10k words of it in such a raw state is like raking your nails on a blackboard!

Saturday was autographing also. This is always a slightly depressing time. Why?




You come hoping to find a ton of readers, but maybe two or three actually come to get books autographed. This one was especially depressing because the guest of honor was R.A. Salvatore who has about eight thousand books out, many related to role-playing games, and the convention was heavily populated by young people of the gaming persuasion. His line was endless. The upside is that you get time to sit and talk to other authors who are not the guest of honor. I had a nice chat with Maggie Bonham and Alma Alexander. I did have a few readers who popped out of the Salvatore line to come tell me how much they enjoyed my books or to have me sign their program. And one reader sent me the COOLEST buttons he had made me from images of my bookcovers. They are awesome, and I can’t wait to wear them at my next con!

Saturday was also my worst panel of the con. There is always one that gets hijacked by people in the audience who just want to sit there making comments or giving life histories and this is exacerbated by a poor or unprepared moderator. Enough said.

At 10pm, I joined in a Broad Universe Rapidfire Reading. These are always fun. Six to ten people get together and read four to seven minutes each. There is always a delightful variety of stories and an appreciative audience. Broad Universe is an organization that supports women writers of speculative fiction. Hats off to the BU motherboard and a great volunteer contingent.
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Norwescon 1

First day of Norwescon.

It is chilly and rainy here in Seattle, but the trees are budding. The place is already greener than Colorado.

The hotel is nice, but crammed up here by the airport, so there's not much but junk food. Too bad for such an eating town as Seattle.

I've spent the day catching up with my friend Brenda. This evening I get to moderate a panel on violence, attend the opening ceremonies, and then go to a party honoring small publishers to cap off the evening.

Why would I end up on a panel about violence???? We'll talk about why we use it in our books, how we deal with it, and whether we impose personal limits on where we go. At least that's my plan!

My own reasons revolve around the need to challenge my characters enough to affect their behavior while in an "adventure" setting. But there are other reasons. The time periods I write about were pretty violent. Our own society is violent (I was just talking with a guy from Binghamton NY) and yet we live in a relatively peaceful era.

I'm going up now to try to finish off this scene with the nasty little attack. Hmmm...

More reports later. Read more of this post!

Peripheral Matters

It would be lovely to think that a full-time writer gets to spend full (work/creative) time writing. But just this week, the variety of other endeavors involved in a writing career struck me especially hard. So what's going on?



Preparing for the World Science Fiction Convention

First, logistics: I don't fly this time, but I've got two airport runs to make, one for a good friend traveling in from Vancouver on Tuesday to be my roommate, and the second for two more good friends flying in from Baltimore to attend the con. Then I've got to schedule a dinner with my agent, a critique group meeting on Wednesday night to arrange as our remote member will be in town for the con, a lunch with readers from my online group, and decide matters like "do I take the car and pay the exorbitant nightly parking at the hotel or have the ES (Exemplary Spouse) drop us off?"

Second, prepare for my program items. Some are fun - like choosing what to read at my reading - Breath and Bone or teaser bits from Unholy Alliance. This can take time, and usually involves tough decision making. Some are easy, like preparing for the Torture panel and the Joining the Convention Community panel - that's just making a few notes. But the "SF as modern mythology" panel which I am to moderate is a bit more obtuse. What does that topic mean? Who are the other panelists? Do I know enough about this topic to ask intelligent questions to keep the discussion on track. I've been peeking at Joseph Campbell sites and exchanging emails to the panelists to get their take on where the discussion should go.


Preparing workshops for two upcoming writers' conferences

If there weren't handouts due to volunteers by Sept 1, I wouldn't even be thinking about workshops right now. But one of my workshops for the Colorado Gold conference is brand new. "What is This Thing Called Voice?" It's a topic I've got several pages of notes on, but I need to choose a focus [hearing voice vs. writing voice] and formulate a coherent script before I can pass on a handout. This can take two or three days to do. And then I'll need to do some run-throughs before the conference. In October I'm doing the Surrey Writers Conference, and I've got one workshop that I need to expand from a two hour to a three-hour class, mostly choosing some good exercises, and one workshop that I need to review as I haven't done it for about four years. That's at least a day and a half prep, plus run-throughs as the con gets closer.


WD (Wretchedly Delayed) Postcard/Bookmark Development

Aarrgh. Here it is WorldCon and I've still not done new postcards/bookmarks for the Lighthouse books. Part of this is my dallying because using tools like Corel or Publisher or whatever is something I do rarely enough that I have to relearn them each time. And my version of Corel is very old and it is the one thing that just won't run right on Vista. C _ _ P! Part of the problem is that I have to DECIDE things like postcard vs. bookmark, and then figure out what is needed - CYMK , 300dpi bookcover, trimmed to the right size, and then the back - which quotes? same blurb as on the F&S cards, new one for the "series" card, which fonts...etc. I can't afford to just dump all this in the lap of a professional. Wish I could. Now it is very late and I don't think I'll be able to get them done in time for the con. Phooey. But I needed to do them anyway.


Travel arrangements

The only thing I have to book is my trip to World Fantasy in Calgary for early November. I've been trying to watch fares. See if there is any wiggle room. No doubt it will be more expensive than if I'd booked it three months ago. I'm going to be in Vancouver the previous weekend. It would make sense to stay over a couple of days with my friend in Vcr and travel straight to Calgary, but I think the fact that the writers conference is booking the Vancouver trip and I'm booking the Calgary trip is going to make the whole thing too complicated. I'll just fly home and turn around and leave again two days later.


Critique prep

Can't forget to read my partners' work. They give me such useful feedback, this has to be a priority. And, as many, many writers will tell you, doing critique is at lest as valuable as receiving it. It just takes more time.


Blogging
Well, here I am. The days seem to race past, and I really do like to THINK before I write. Don't want to waste either my time or yours, dear reader.



These tasks don't even cover email, reading blogs/posts/whatever, or even just reading. I'm reading two manuscripts for blurbs right now. Just finished one. Now to write the blurb...it was good. Then to finish the other one.

Such is a writers' life. Each thing fun in itself, but the scheduling, ow...
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Faculty Fun

Just got invited to speak at the Surrey International Writers Conference in Vancouver BC. Well, ok, it's actually in Surrey which is very close to Vancouver. I love western Canada, and I really enjoyed this conference when I spoke there in 2006. It is very well run. Lots of aspiring writers, eager to listen. Lots of authors (much more famous than I am) to listen to.

I had been writing as a hobby for about eight years when a friend and I decided that we needed to learn more about the business of writing. I had written about half of Song of the Beast by this time and felt as if I was learning the craft. But I had never met a published writer when I walked into my first writers conference in 1998 (Pikes Peak WC, where I am going to speak in April), and I felt as if I had found...... my home. I had always been extremely shy and introverted, and had never been able to walk up to a perfect stranger and start a conversation. But there I could walk up to anyone and say, "What do you write?" WCs are more expensive than science fiction conventions. They are usually multi-genre, and focus on the craft of writing and the business of publishing.

I am not getting much writing done this week, as I am in Texas visiting my mom. Today it was about 65 and gloriously sunny. The air smelled like spring. It reminded me why lots of people live here. (Come down in July and it reminds you why some of us don't any more.) Tomorrow, we're driving into East Texas, where it is even prettier - green hills and oak and pine woodlands. The redbuds and dogwoods likely aren't blooming quite yet, but it should be pretty anyway.

I'm flying home on Super Tuesday. Is it significant that Super Tuesday is also Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras? For those who are in a Super Tuesday primary state - go vote!

I'll be back to work on Wednesday.

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