Category Archives: Publishing

Final Norwescon 38 Schedule

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I have received my final schedule for Norwescon 38 (April 2-5, 2015). Because I know you care, I am offering it up to all of you! If you want to see the rest of the schedule for Norwescon, click here.

Worldwide Dead
Thu 3:00pm-4:00pm – Cascade 9
Nathan Crowder (M), Pat MacEwen, Jude-Marie Green, Arinn Dembo, Jeremy Zimmerman

The Power of Free
Thu 6:00pm-7:00pm – Cascade 10
Esther Jones (M), Diana Copland, Frances Pauli, Jeremy Zimmerman

Gamer Etiquette: Use Your Words
Thu 8:00pm-9:00pm – Cascade 9
Sar Surmick (M), Jeremy Zimmerman, Eric Cagle, Ogre Whiteside, Lola Watson

Reading: Jeremy Zimmerman
Fri 10:30am-11:00am – Cascade 1
Jeremy Zimmerman

Short Stories: At the Cutting Edge of SF
Fri 3:00pm-4:00pm – Cascade 5
Cat Rambo (M), Alex C. Renwick, Jeremy Zimmerman

Autograph Session 2
Sat 3:00pm-4:00pm – Grand 2
Jeff Sturgeon, Django Wexler, Randy Henderson, G. Willow Wilson, Kristi Charish, Frog Jones, Richard Hescox, Darragh Metzger, David J. Peterson, Esther Jones, Jeremy Zimmerman, John (J.A.) Pitts, Kevin Radthorne, Laura Anne Gilman, Michael G. Munz, Rhiannon Held, Leannan Sidhe, Steven Barnes, Tim McDaniel

Top 15 Best GM Habits
Sat 7:00pm-8:00pm – Cascade 10
David Nasset Sr. (M), Wolfgang Baur, Jeremy Zimmerman, Ogre Whiteside

The Next Generation: Gaming with Kids
Sun 11:00am-12:00pm – Cascade 10
Jeremy Zimmerman (M), Patrick McKinnion, Adrienne Carlson, Wednesday (Nessie) Phoenix, David Fooden

Where do we go from here?

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A few things have occurred in the last couple weeks. First, I did my final assignment for my Passion Search workshop. Second, SFWA announced that they would be accepting self-published authors under specific criteria. Third, I went on a three day silent residential meditation retreat.

And with this stew of events in my head, I feel like I’ve come to something resembling provisional life path to pursue.

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Checking in On the Whole “Figure Out My Life” Thing

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This post has ended up being longer than intended. There’s a lot of frustration. You’ve been warned.

I haven’t written much recently about my progress for a couple reasons. Part of it is that I’ve been pretty busy during Camp NaNoWriMo, working on a novel that I under outlined and had to improvise frantically with. So that was fun. I hit 50,001 words and stopped. I need to send it to my wife to see how awful she thinks it is. It’s gone into a lot of places I hadn’t intended or anticipated, and I don’t know how I feel about that.

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Marketing Like a Douche

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Shilling is a crappy part of being a writer. Or publisher even, since I technically qualify as that too. I really hate doing it, and when I do shill I try to do it in respectful, non-spammy ways.

I also make no money as a writer and even less as a publisher. So there are obviously some flaws to how I market.

Still, nothing turns me off more than strangers randomly trying to mass network with me. I wouldn’t even think I was worth shmoozing, but it does happen once in a blue moon. (A friend and I were approached after we were on a panel at a tiny convention by someone who wanted to press their business card on us. I had no idea what to do.) Even my tiny little zine, Mad Scientist Journal, gets a bit of spamming from people who don’t know me but want to team up or something.

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Books!

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With all the other stuff going on in my life, I’ve been pretty bad about blogging. Part of it has just been lack of time, part has also been not having anything to specifically announce. But today is the launch of my first book length piece, Kensei. It is being bundled with two other books (Wrecker of Engines by Rosemary Jones and Tatterdemalion by Nikki Burns) under the title Cobalt City Rookies. It is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the Timid Pirate site.

Also, my work on Mad Scientist Journal has resulted in two quarterly ebooks! Links to the myriad of places this is available can be found here: http://madscientistjournal.org/collections/

The biggest favor I can ask of you is not to buy the books, but to write reviews so that other people will pay attention to these books.  These books will suffer more from obscurity than anything else.

Snowflake, Kensei and Mad Scientists

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Just a few bits of newsly stuff, mostly stuff announced elsewhere but not here.

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.

Life in Fast Forward

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It’s been a while since I’ve done a news post instead of an after action report. The last few months have been a little nuts and so I’ve let some stuff pass without notice. So, in no particular order:

  • “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.
In less publishing and more gaming related news, it turns out I may be running another kids game. This time it’s because a friend has been vocally hoping a few times that I’d run another game so that his fourteen year old daughter can play. I finally figured out where I might have room to do it and have a few other kids that may be interested in playing, so now it’s just a matter of logistics.
Of the things I’ve tossed out, Star Wars seems like the strongest option mostly because it’s a better known intellectual property. Sadly, there’s not currently any Star Wars game in print. My favorite to date, Star Wars Saga Edition, is out of print. Used copies of the core rules are selling for $60+ on Amazon. I don’t need the rules, but it’s always helpful if players have copies of them. Granted, the kids in the previous game didn’t take the initiative to read game rules until they were much older.
I had also started the first group off on Star Wars. They’re all in their early 20s now. I asked them what advice they’d give to a new band of kids playing Star Wars with me. Here’s what I’ve gotten so far:
  • 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.