Over halfway through the year, and here’s some of the happenings for July.
Online I taught workshops on Story Fundamentals, Flash Fiction, Writing Steampunk & Weird Western, Moving from Idea to Draft, and Editing 101. I’ll announce September and October classes next week. I also got a chance to teach at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference mid-month, which was terrific.
I wrote short stories “Say Yes,” “A House Alone,” and “Another Selkie Story,” all of which were posted for Patreon supporters. (You can see a pictorial version of my July Patreon here.) As always, I’ve got a crop that I’m working on: highlights include a story about a woman who buys a magical talking mask only to find she doesn’t agree with what it’s saying. I also worked on urban fantasy Brazen, about a magic-wielding post apocalyptic hellion.
Videogames I’ve been playing are Stardew Valley and Dream Daddy. Curse whoever introduced me to them. In RPG news, my Star Wars RPG game managed a session. You’ll be glad to know my prophet/conwoman continues to talk her way out of things successfully but the rest of the party didn’t want to take her suggestion of throwing a mysterious crate out a fifth-floor window in order to discover the contents.
I continue using Habitica, which I blogged about here. I have a follow-up post in the works.
SFWA work included working with the Galaktika settlement, answering a bunch of e-mails, a multiplicity of video calls, and nudging a couple of projects along.
Books I read included the following. I’ve bolded the ones I particularly enjoyed:
Karen Abott, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War R.S. Belcher, The Brotherhood of the Wheel
Mike Caro, Caro’s Book of Poker Tells
Ramsey Campbell, Demons by Daylight Tori Curtis, Eelgrass
Laurell K. Hamilton, Crimson Blood Elizabeth Hand, Winterlong
Georgette Heyer, The Grand Sophy
Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future Michael M. Jones (editor), Scheherezade’s Facade
Damon Knight, The Futurians Tanith Lee, Red as Blood
Gabriel Squalia, Viscera
Glynn Stewart, Starship’s Mage
R J Theodore, Flotsam
Kentaro Toyama – Geek Heresy
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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Retreat, Day T-7
Willow, sleeping in her net.It feels like I have been here a shorter time than I have, but it’s been great and I have gotten so much work done. I’m filling in gaps on Hearts of Tabat right now and happy with its progress. I wrote a bunch of stories and one poem. I walked on the beach and among the redwoods, and I got to spend time petting a bunny, and watching deer. I saw a grey fox and a barn owl swooping along late at night and covey after covey of quail, including a mama with six bitty little perfect quail running as fast as they could to keep up with her. Tonight I’ll lie out under the stars and watch the Perseid meteor shower from probably the best vantage point I’ll have in my life.
I spend literally less than a day at home, then get a haircut in the morning and head off to Sasquan in Spokane with my bestie, the fabulous Caren Gussoff. I’ve posted my convention schedule here, and if you’re wondering what sort of SFWA events I’ll be attending, here’s a video about that:
I’m working on a blog post about how to create videos like that — it’s much easier than you think. But you should make time for the SFWA auction, because there are some frickin’ amazing and very much one of a kind things for sale, including authors doing your voicemail message, supplying creative profanity, critiquing stories, and Tuckerizing (including one award winning novelist’s very first Tuckerization ever.) And lots of signed books, including ones from Worldcon toastmaster David Gerrold, George R.R. Martin, and Guest of Honor Vonda McIntyre.
I’ll also be spending a good bit of time at the Wordfire Press booth — please stop by and say hi (and buy a book if you like — I’ll have copies of both my new novel and story collection Near + Far!). If you’re coming to the con and are a vegan or vegetarian, here’s a handy list of food options.
In various news, Rappacini’s Crow will be reprinted in the BCS Best of Anthology and Abyss & Apex has accepted a novella that Bud Sparhawk and I wrote together, “Haunted.”
Here’s a piece from what I’ve been working on lately, near the beginning of Hearts of Tabat:
“Why do you always pick this teahouse when you are troubled?” Leonoa asked.
Adelina’s eyebrow raised and she smoothed a hand self-consciously over the garnet silk of her blouse. “I wasn’t aware that I did,” she said. And then, with mock severity, “That is the peril of associating with artists, Gilly. They are often dangerously observant.”
Gilly laughed nervously.
“But it makes sense. At one point,” Adelina said, “I became convinced that I was aberrant.”
Leonoa gave her a sidelong glance, but Adelina continued. “I thought I was different from all the other merchant children of my age, in that they all seemed very concerned with some sort of invisible game of unexplained points.”
Gilly frowned in noncomprehension.
“They all cared deeply about this game, and part of it was caring what other people thought ““ or more importantly, said ““ about each other. And I, honestly and completely, did not care what most people thought of me. My mother, the nurse who had raised me until the age of thirteen, my poetry tutor”¦ I did care about what they said, but no one else.”
“You were a prodigy,” Leonoa said wryly.
Adelina shrugged. “Perhaps not a prodigy. But I was one of those children who are capable of discerning the layers of adulthood mysteries that were truly not mysteries at all but simply things that adults were either too busy or bored or whatever to explain or which they thought were inappropriate for children for some reason or another.”
“Was there a moment of revelation?” Gilly asked. Her eyes were downcast, her voice a little lower. She’s flirting with me.
Adelina checked Leonoa’s expression and the wry flicker when the little woman realized she’d been caught amused and watching.
Not this one. Ah, Vyra Serena, send me someone eloquent, who loves words and will woo me with them, not innuendos and touched knees.
“I was given a child’s catechism of the Trade Gods,” she said, pulling her leg away from Gilly’s as she sat back.
Gilly looked nervous in the way one sometimes does when anticipating someone else is about to reveal some overly religious sentiment. Leonoa, who had heard this story before, maintained a polite, amused silence.
“The Trade Gods are an analysis of the way the world works,” Adelina said. “The ebb and flow of coin, of trade, of wants and necessities. Everything is there in the religion, because that is what it is. It is not that a God who is the personification of Coinage or Surplus or Fairspeaking, walking the street, the way the ignorant speak of such things.” She rolled her eyes. “Every religion is that ““ a way of understanding and teaching about the world.”
“But there is a natural order to things,” Gilly protested. “Surely someone came up with that.”
Adelina shook her head, one quick definite shake. “Not at all. As you said, a natural order, one that could not but happen to arise. It is the only thing that could given the circumstances.”
Gilly chewed her lip in perplexity, trying to summon a reply.
“It is not so,” Leonoa said. “There is no natural order, just happenstance. The reason that Humans are elevated over Beasts is that we are more numerous and they have not been able to successfully ally.”
Gilly’s eyes widened.
“Please,” said Adelina. “Before you get us all hauled in for Abolitionism, at least lower your voice when making such pronouncements.”
Leonoa pursed her lips but took a silent sip of tea.
Most of the last couple of months has been focused on one of several things: finishing the beta draft of Hearts of Tabat, finishing up the second edition of Creating an Online Presence for Writers, sorting through details for the release of Altered America: Steampunk Stories, or SFWA’s Nebulas Conference, which took place midmonth in Chicago, and which I blogged about last week.
So here’s some highlights of my summer schedulee.
Tomorrow I’ll post the list of classes for June and July, which includes a round of the Writing F&SF Stories workshop (Wednesday evenings) as well as the Advanced Workshop (Tuesday evenings). I’m not 100% sure, but I think that’s the last round of classes for 2016, aside from a workshop I am doing for Clarion West this fall and maybe a co-taught one every once in a while. I’ve got a lot of travel coming up in the latter half of the year and I’d like to be able to focus on writing and SFWA as well. Whether or not I decide to run for office again next year depends in part on how much I can manage to get done this year.
In answer to several people asking about the difference between the two multi-session workshops — I created the Advanced one for people who took the first F&SF one and wanted more. If you haven’t taken the first, you should do that rather than the Advanced Workshop, regardless of skill level, because it lays out my theories of storytelling in a coherent way while the second ranges wildly all over the place.
June 10 is the release of Altered America, which is a compilation of all my steampunk stories. Patreon supporters at the $5 level and above will get a free electronic copy ten days in advance. This has ten stories in it altogether, a number of which were published on Patreon. I hope to do a similar mini-collection of near-future SF by the end of the year, which will also go to Patreon supporters beforehand.
June also sees the release of a Storybundle of writing books organized by Kris Rusch that includes the 2nd edition of Creating an Online Presence, which is why I spent part of last month frantically getting that updated in time.
Bud Sparhawk and I wrote a novelette together, “Haunted,” that should appear in July’s Abyss and Apex. It’s space fantasy. I think. We had a lot of fun with it,but it’s definitely not a comedy.
July 5th will feature the release of both the class and book version of Moving from Idea to Draft. You’ll see several other classes appearing in the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, including classes from Rachel Swirsky, Juliette Wade, and a couple of other folks.
Summer conventions include the Locus Awards weekend, Westercon, GenCon, Worldcon, and Dragoncon. After that I am off to Beijing for the Chinese Nebulas and will spend several weeks in China. Following that, Griffcon in Indiana, the Surrey Writers Conference, Orycon, and maybe WFC. (I’m not sure about that last. It’s been a travel-heavy year, and WFC isn’t my favorite convention. It always feels very anxious and unwelcoming, no matter what city I experience it in.)
Writing wise, I am completing the currently half-drafted YA novel based on “Circus in the Bloodwarm Rain,” which is currently laboring under the working titleConflagration and starting to flesh out the outline for the next Tabat book, Exiles of Tabat, which is the third of the quartet.
As always, plenty of stories are flowing and currently floating around in forms ranging from inchoate to semi-final draft. Right now I’m completing the Wizards of West Seattle story and realizing the concept’s going to end up becoming an ongoing series that probably will go out once a month or so on Patreon. I’m also thinking about a RPG supplement based on the copious notes I’ve been accumulating.
In SFWA areas, I’m focusing on a new committee that I’ll be working with, the Membership Retention Committee, whose job will be to look at the new member experience for SFWA members as well as how to keep the organization useful for members. (If you’re interested in volunteering with that, feel free to drop me a line.) Other efforts include a) working with SFWA fundraising, b) a small musical endeavor that I just prodded someone about and which involves Tom Lehrer (yes, that Tom Lehrer), and c) helping out where I can with some of M.C.A. Hogarth’s amazing efforts, such as this mysterious thing here lurking under a tarp that I am not at liberty to discuss. *mouths the words “SFWA University” then is dragged away by the SFWA honey badgers while shouting something about a guidebook*
Three other important SFWA things:
I’ll be watching the results of our decision to admit game writers with keen interest. I can tell you that the initial set is criteria is being voted on right now and I expect to see it announced soon.
An effort is in the works that I think will prove a lovely tribute to longtime SFWA volunteer Bud Webster and which will, in the longtime SFWA tradition, provide a benefit for professional writers at every level of their careers.
And we’ll (finally) be announcing some of the partnerships we’ve been making — you saw reps from Amazon, Audible, BookBub, Draft2Digital, Kickstarter, Kobo and Patreon at the Nebulas and those relationships are going to extend beyond the weekend and give our members special resources and relationships at all of those companies — and others, including one that I am super-stoked to have facilitated.
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Over halfway through the year, and here’s some of the happenings for July.
Most of the last couple of months has been focused on one of several things: finishing the beta draft of Hearts of Tabat, finishing up the second edition of Creating an Online Presence for Writers, sorting through details for the release of Altered America: Steampunk Stories, or SFWA’s Nebulas Conference, which took place midmonth in Chicago, and which
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