Upping the Number of Plunkett Slots

I’ve been teaching online classes for a few years now. They have been awesome and one of the coolest things has been the number of talented writers I’ve had the privilege to work with. However, I’m scheduling a break from teaching during the latter half of 2014, and it’s for a few reasons.

The first and most important is that I can feel a little burnout creeping up around the edges. I’ll be talking in a class and think to myself, “I know I’ve said this before,” and it will be because I have said it before, repeatedly even — but not to that class. I can tell that if I don’t take a break, that feeling is going to drown me.

The second is to focus even more on the writing, because there’s at least two books I’d like to finish up this year, along with the usual roster of short stories. (I’m at ten completed so far this year, which is unusually productive but highly pleasing.)

The third is because I don’t want to get in a rut. I want to go think about some new things and then come back ready to talk about them to students.

So – if you want a class with me in 2014 — check out the list now. I’ll probably list a couple more conversation classes in June, but that’s it. But I’ll be back in 2015!

It’s the day after the last day of Chicon 7, and I have caught up a little on sleep. I had one of the best times I’ve ever had at a convention, and the book launch party went (IMO) swimmingly. Lots of people showed up, people really loved the jewelry and the stickers, and everyone seems to think the book design almost as cool as I do.

Some people who helped make it the most awesome of cons were: Al Bogdan, who’s provided some lovely party pics; the enigmatic Folly Blaine/Christy Johnson, who is always good con company; Randy Henderson, who pitched in when needed and also kept everyone from taking things too seriously; Stina Leicht, whose book And Blue Skies From Pain was also being promoted at the party and who was an excellent co-host as well as providing a vicarious experience of being on the ballot 😉 ; Vicki Saunders, who trekked and fiddled and above all, kept me from stressing (too much); Dallas Taylor, bartender extraordinaire and always, always, always Tod McCoy for being one of the prime instigators of all this madness.

Various highlights:

1. Watching the Hugo Awards from the bar with Folly Blaine, Gio Clairval, and Tod McCoy and supplying what John Scalzi was saying since we didn’t have any sound.
2. Lovely lunch with Kay Kenyon and all too brief Louise Marley time.
3. Several people thanking me for personalized rejections from Fantasy, and one young man saying that rejection was one of the reasons why he was still writing.
4. As always, meeting many people I knew from correspondence or social networking and getting a chance to put faces and voices to the icons and screen names. Two I was particularly excited to meet were Gio Clairval and Jay Caselberg.
5. Getting to squee like a fangirl upon meeting Sharon Shinn.
6. A stint at the SFWA table and getting to stroke Catherine Lundoff’s lovely book cover for Silver Moon, which is a kickass novel about menopausal women turning into werewolves, which I’m downloading onto my Kindle asap.
7. The Broud Universe Rapidfire Reading, which was jampacked with great stuff, including a closing filk song, which was about the nicest way to end a reading that I’ve seen or heard in a long time.
8. Getting to see Rachel Swirsky in full and beautiful glitter.
9. A lot more which is still full of happy, giddy blur, so if I’m overlooking you, it is because my memory is still aswirl. 😉