From now until September 4th, I will be crowdfunding The Love of Danger, the sequel to my book Kensei. I hope you’ll take a moment to check it out!
Kensei Sequel Now on Kickstarter!
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Category Archives: Writing
Final Norwescon 38 Schedule
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?
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.
Tentative Schedule for Norwescon 2015
I’ve been invited to Norwescon as a panelist for the first time, and I’m super excited! I’ve received my tentative schedule, which I’m providing below. Times and dates are subject to change. I’m also not including the two instances of the the writing workshop, where I’ll be participating as a pro. (Yay!)
The Quest for a Title
I’ve been struggling to try and come up with a title for my sequel to Kensei. The general theme of the sequel is about family expectations. Or, at least, that’s what I’m trying for. Who you want to be versus who your parents (or grandparents, or whatever) want you to be. A lot of family legacies come up for Jamie and other characters.
Mixed into this is that my villain is an Italian WW2 supervillain brought into the present. I worked with an Italian friend to develop the character, and tied the villain into the Italian Futurist movement, which later had connections to the Italian Fascist movement. Especially since there’s an element of breaking away from the past. So I thought I might also tie into that.
Some titles I cribbed from the Futurist Manifesto include:
- Sing the Love of Danger
- The Love of Danger
- The Cure for the World
- Demolish Museums
- Useless Admiration of the Past
- Our Insolent Challenge
From looking at quotes about ancestors and inheritance, I turned up, The Violence of Our Ancestors. And then I had also jotted down Heir Apparent and Heir Unapparent, both of which have been used many times.
Thoughts? Alternatives? I appreciate any help I can get, especially from friends that have been beta readers.
Catching Up
I’ve been bad about providing updates. Life has been a little crazy. Here are some newsly bits.
Kensei: Rereleased
Two years after being published in the ebook bundle titled Cobalt City Rookies, the rights have reverted back to me and I’ve been given permission to self-publish it. It marks an opportunity for me to do some new things with the book that I couldn’t do when Timid Pirate put it out. First among these is the opportunity to offer it as a stand alone book with a print edition.
Where can you get a copy? I’m glad you asked! It will be distributed a bit farther afield as time goes on, but here is where it is currently available. I will update this info as more options become available.
- Goodreads Giveaway: I’m giving away five signed print copies! Winners will be selected December 25th.
- Patreon: Patrons who support my Patreon page at $5 or higher get immediate access to the ebook, as well as every other digital book I’ve put out either as myself or as Mad Scientist Journal. Those who are backing me on December 31st at the $10 will receive a print copy as well.
- Amazon: Available on the Kindle or in print. Those who order the print version will also receive the Kindle version at no extra cost.
- Other eBook retailers: Smashwords, Txtr, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iBooks, Oyster, Scribd, Inktera
- Other Book Stores: Barnes & Noble. Within six to eight weeks (so, around January) this should be available through other book stores. It’s unlikely to be on the shelves, but you can special order it.
Kensei Universe?
Ever since a friend suggested on my Patreon page that I do a Kensei serial, my brain has been picking away at the idea. When it first came up, I pitched it to my wife, Dawn. Any writing I did on it would have to go through her for editing. Assuming a weekly short of about 5,000 words, could she handle that on top of the work she does for Mad Scientist Journal?
The short answer is “No.” But we compromised and said, “We’d do it for the right amount of money.” So I put it as the second milestone on Patreon. (The first is to cover the costs of Mad Scientist Journal.) Mostly the money is intended to compensate my lovely wife for helping with another one of my weird schemes.
Since then, I’ve been poking around ideas for what I would write. I have a lot of little seeds for sub-plots that I’ve jammed into my Kensei books. I don’t necessarily know how I’m going to resolve them all in the other two books I have planned. It may be easier to just turn them into plots for serials.
Checking in On the Whole “Figure Out My Life” Thing
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.
Finding Meaning
I’ve written and deleted a few different posts that border on this over the last several months. Generally they revolved around some frustration with something I had done or was doing (going to conventions, writing, whatever) that I wasn’t happy with. I ended up scrapping them because ultimately the disatisfaction I experienced arose from my own internal issues.
I didn’t want to muddy other things just because I have issues, and I couldn’t give an honest assessment without reflecting those. So I generally gave up. Because I hate the idea of filling my blog with my own existential whining. And I have a lot of things I don’t talk about.
I’ve lately felt motivated to do something about this and begun taking small steps. Since I know I’m hardly alone in this, I figured I’d share my experiences. I don’t know where I’m going with this. But hopefully my broken and scorched trail will help someone else.
