Category Archives: Writing

Dinky Major Tomboy

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Sarah “Coletta L. Damage” Ingram is the owner and operator of a store called Startle. Among her many awesome options, she does “Dinky” designs of roller girls. I imagine this is intended for skaters who want a cute cartoon graphic of themselves.

But me? I’ll never play roller derby but I’m vain enough to want one for a character from Kensei.

Dinky Major Tomboy

I am blown away by the awesome. And she did this in under a week! For very little money!

Added bonus? YOU CAN BUY STUFF WITH MAJOR TOMBOY ON IT. Keychain? Necklace? Stickers? Available! The only downside is that she’s in the UK, so shipping to the States will probably be a little steep. But! Major Tomboy!

A Workshop on “Writing the Other”

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As part of Clarion West‘s on-going series of one-day workshops, I attended the one titled “Writing the Other” taught by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward. Their book with the same name is the first one mentioned any time the subject of writing the other comes up. The book, I have since learned, came out of the class they’ve been teaching for the last decade.

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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.

Norwescon 2012 After Action Report

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Over Easter weekend the SeaTac Doubletree enjoyed the presence of the 35th annual Norwescon, the largest science fiction and fantasy convention in the area. Due to a number of factors, I was only able to attend one day. Due to continued recovery from my ACUS con crud, I almost didn’t brave the drive down south and the need to be social for several hours. But I made the trek anyway and was glad that I had. I got to see some friends I don’t often see, plus sit in on some excellent panels. So here are some highlights.

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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.

Potlatch 2012 After Action Report

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This year I went to my first Potlatch, which is a very small SF convention that has moved up and down the Pacific coastline for twenty-one years. I gather it has some degree of unofficial connection to Clarion West, but I have no evidence of this beyond proceeds from the auction going to support a Clarion West attendee. I’d heard about this for a while and, as I’ve gotten to know more local writers, have considered attending. So I finally broke down and went this year. It was February 24-26 at the Best Western Executive Inn, which is right next to the Seattle Center. Lacking a coffee shop, it earned my disdain. But it was near some neat little restaurants in that fringe area north of downtown and east of Belltown, including the Five Point Cafe.

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.

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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.

 

RustyCon 2012: After Action Report

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This weekend represented the first convention I attended in which I got to appear as a panelist. RustyCon is one of the smaller conventions in the Seattle area that caters to the general fan community. The impression I got is that they consider themselves a bit more of a family friendly convention compared to Norwescon. According to their site they have membership of about 500-600. It didn’t seem that crowded to me, but then there were parts of the convention we just never went to.
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NaNoWriMo 2011 Aftermath (with special guest star Mark Teppo)

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I hit 50K on the very last night of National Novel Writing Month. I’d started November off on vacation and then got sick. So a very slow start and then very slow progress due to raw exhaustion. I didn’t see the doctor until the day before Thanksgiving and got antibiotics. So over the course of the last week of November I wrote over 25,000 words. After that I feel like someone’s been beating me in my sleep.

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.

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