Patrice Sarath's Blog, page 20

ConDFW

From left, JK Cheney, Patrice Sarath, and Tex Thompson at ConDFW.

Had a great time at ConDFW, one of the best Texas regional cons. I highly recommend these small cons. They are less intimidating that the big WorldCons, but no less immersive in the genre world.

I got in late, after putting in a full day at the day job, and settled in at the bar Friday night. Saturday I had a good number of panels, and made a point to hear several readings from a variety of writers, including Stina Leicht (Of Blood and Honey), Adrian Simmons (editor, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly), J.K. Cheney (The Golden City), short story writer and redhead Rhonda Eudaly Simpson, and Candace Havens, among others.

There is a whole new crop of talented Texas writers (see Tex Thompson, who is a newly-minted Solaris author) who are newly agented and/or have books coming out this year and next. Aspiring writers, take note: publishers are still signing deals. It’s all still going on. And as the industry is in flux, it may be more important than ever to have an agent to navigate the dangerous shoals.

I was able to take part in some really fun panels. The Cover Art panel was thoughtful and lively, with Brad Foster and Alain Viesca being candid about the life of an artist and how technology has changed the process, but not the creativity. Interestingly, digital modeling having taken over from clay modeling has enhanced Alain’s work, because by making things easier, he is freer to create. Now, digital tools cannot replace an artist’s education, and there is a clear difference between experienced artists learning new cool shiny digital tools to create, and newbies thinking that software can replace practice with traditional media. It can’t.

Giant monsters roved the land of our imagination in the Size Matters panel, ably moderated by Micheller Muenzler, the purveyor of yummy cookies and creepy horror. I continue to maintain that however frightening a small monster can be, or a bacteria or a virus, if you see a T. Rex bearing down on you between the trees, you will sit up and take notice, before you run for your life.

The YA vs. NA panel on Sunday morning was also fun and lively, for an 11 am panel. I dragged Stina Leicht onto the panel at the last minute, and panelists were informative and thoughtful. Thanks to Amy Sisson, librarian and writer, for wonderful insights into the question of who is reading NA, and if relegating it to the soft-core sexytimes is missing the point of the target audience. Self-discovery, yes, autonomy, yes, but perhaps not so much with bondage and S&M. (50 Shades, notwithstanding). Ultimately, NA is schizophrenic designation, and writers are better off letting marketers handle where books are shelved.

Thanks to the organizers for an excellent convention.

 

The post ConDFW appeared first on Author Patrice Sarath.

ConDFW schedule – Patrice Sarath

Here’s my ConDFW schedule.

I plan to read from the upcoming Bandit Girls. It is going to be so much fun to take the new novel out for a spin. Can’t wait!

SATURDAY:

ART/COSTUME (Red Oak)

Saturday, 12pm: The Art of Making Cover Art

Panelists: Patrice Sarath (M), Alain Viesca, Brad W. Foster, Melia Dawn Newman, Teddy Harvia

One of the most important uses of art and illustration is for cover art.  Covers are not just used for comics, and books, they are used for movie posters, video game boxes (and video game entrance screens!), DVDs, the list goes on.  We look to our experienced panelists for guides in how to make cover art that pops.

PROGRAMMING 3 (Trinity VII)

Saturday, 1pm: Size Matters!  Monsters in Fiction

Panelists: Angeline Hawkes (M), Michelle Muenzler, Rhonda Eudaly, Patrice Sarath, Michael Ashleigh Finn

From “Pacific Rim” to Godzilla, monster movies have made a comeback.  However, apocalyptic monsters are not always seen to be unfriendly to humans – perfect examples of this are “How to Train Your Dragon” or the Pern series by Anne McCaffery.  Our panelists explore the evolution of monsters from predatory beasts to boon companions.  Note: Giant mechs may or may not be involved.

READING (Trinity VIII)

Saturday, 3pm: Patrice Sarath, Candace Havens, Rhonda Eudaly

SUNDAY:

PROGRAMMING 3 (Trinity VII)

Sunday, 11am: Young Adult vs New Adult

Panelists: Patrice Sarath (M), Cassandra Rose Clarke, Amy Sisson, Shanna Swendson, Rie Sheridan Rose

Where does the genre of Young Adult end and New Adult begin?  Is it High School?  College?  What is this “New Adult” genre in the first place?  (Technically, New Adult is fiction which takes place in college age.)  Our panelists talk about these hot genres where Urban Fiction and Paranormal Romance love to live – The world of Fifty Shades of Grey, True Blood and its ilk.  What is appropriate for “young adult” anyways?

 

 

The post ConDFW schedule – Patrice Sarath appeared first on Author Patrice Sarath.

Farewell, Downton Abbey

My love for Downton Abbey has turned to ashes. It wasn’t even the rape of Anna, although as the astute J. Kathleen Cheney pointed out, to use the sublime Kiri Te Kanawa to sing the most beautiful aria in the world, O mio babbino caro, while crosscutting to the rape did a severe disservice to the music and the star.

No, it was the following episode, when it was clear the writers were simply placing words in the characters’ mouths that made no sense. Thus when Mrs. Hughes tells Edna that she will have men hold her down and a doctor examine her to prove she’s telling lies about her pregnancy, she could have simply been shouting at her, “Breakfast! Snoozebar! Gloves! Envelopes! Raygun! And then we’ll snozzle your sl;kdjg and danger! Falling apart now!” Because at that point Mrs. Hughes was clearly an android and her programming had failed.

The producers have hidden behind the old excuse, “well, that’s how people thought and acted back then” to cover for the most melodramatic plot points, but then they cheerfully make characters act in a completely anachronistic fashion when it suits their purpose. A housekeeper of Mrs. Hughes’s age in that era would have died before saying any of the words she said. For that matter, the very fact that Branson (I’m with the Dowager on this one) would have confessed that he slept with the maid and now she’s extorting him is so unlikely that it would have made better sense if he had just given the “Breakfast! Snoozebar!” speech above.

If that made no sense to you, welcome to my world.

The classism also finally really got to me. Edna is of such low moral character that she has a book about contraceptives. Gasp! Horrors! The card sharp bounder who cheats all the upstanding men at poker — who is he really? How did he gain access to the club? All those low-class sort of folk, we better watch out for, because they’ll knife you right in the back.

The show jumped the shark pretty much in the second season. There was so little rhyme or reason to most anything that has happened since the first season. It’s too bad — it was a wonderful start.

When I deleted the episode from my Tivo, my only thought was, well, that frees up some time.

Good-bye, Downton Abbey. I don’t think I’m going to miss you.

 

The post Farewell, Downton Abbey appeared first on Author Patrice Sarath.

February events — ConDFW XIII and Pflugerville Library

February 21-23, 2014

It’s official; I will be at ConDFW XIII this year, February 21-23. For more information on the convention, check out their web page. This is an excellent regional convention, and the guests of honor include Kevin J. Anderson and artist Alain Viesca. I’m looking forward to it. For many years I’ve been unable to make it to this convention, but this year the stars aligned. I’ll be coming in very late on Friday night though, so if you’re going to be there, save me a seat at the bar.

 

February 8, 2014

I’ll also be at the Pflugerville Community Library’s Romance Readers Social, February 8, along with Texas authors Diane Kelly, April Kihlstrom, Molly McAdams, Sasha Summers, and Kathy Clark. This is one of my favorite events of the year and I enjoy meeting Pflugerville library fans. I hope you can join me there.

 

 

The post February events — ConDFW XIII and Pflugerville Library appeared first on Author Patrice Sarath.

New year, new beginning

The house has been de-Christmased at last, although it’s still a cluttered disaster. I have been reading everyone’s Facebook comments and had to laugh — we are all feeling a deep need to declutter and re-organize. Picking January 1 as the start of the new year may be artificial, but it still triggers a primordial desire to start anew, even if we are in the dead of winter.

Well, except Austin’s winter is a bit different from more northerly climes. It’s 70 and sunny and gorgeous.

In addition to the usual decluttering that I long to do this time of year, I have Plans. The bathroom needs work, and the house needs a new coat of paint both inside and out. I have designs on my son’s bedroom. Yes, he’s only been gone a semester and will be back this summer, but that room needs a thorough redesign. Pull up the carpet, slap on a new coat of paint, redo the floors in a nice laminate like the one for the office, and replace the bed with a daybed and put in the bookcase — I can see it already.

Oh, and the sequel to Bandit Girls is firming up nicely. *rubs hands gleefully.

I know that I write better when I don’t have a lot of chaos all around me so the decluttering is a vital part of the process. I do think there’s something fitting in that I’m starting the second book in this series in January. I started a new day job just this week too, so it’s already been an auspicious beginning. Heck, I might as well do another blog redesign. New series, new look.

So what are your plans for 2014?

The post New year, new beginning appeared first on Author Patrice Sarath.

Busy December

A winter in Connecticut.

This has been a busy month. I was fortunate to spend a week at my mother’s home in Connecticut. After a harrowing drive in a blizzard from the airport to her house, a drive that should have taken 90 minutes but instead took 4.5 hours, I made it safely to my childhood home. Thought process during the white-knuckled experience: “Well, we’re only going around 5 miles per hour in icy, snowy conditions, plus it’s dark, so when I wreck — not if — I won’t get killed.” I didn’t wreck, but what an interesting feeling, that of the tires losing all traction.

The next few days of snow and warming temperatures made up for it. I got to visit with my mom and my brothers and sisters and their children. Mom and I took plenty of walks around the lake and I made it into my favorite woods for a wet, slushy, frozen hike. I was content to write at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and completing my rewrite of Bandit Girls. I’m almost done with adding some really good stuff based on feedback from an agent conversation at World Fantasy and a couple of other agent reactions. My goal is to do what Elmore Leonard says is his secret to success: to leave out the parts that readers don’t want to read.

I’m transitioning to another job. After 18 years with a company that went from Internet startup to a department within in a giant international data provider, it was time to go. I’ll miss the old company and my colleagues, but I’m looking forward to the new challenge. A change is as good as a rest. as they say. I’ve had almost the whole month of December to recuperate and re-energize.

On another note, and one that has made it even more difficult to update this blog:

Sadly, tragedy has struck among my circle of friends. A friend and her son were killed by a drunk driver two days after Christmas, leaving her family in unimaginable grief. My heart goes out to the family. I can’t even begin to fathom their sorrow. Kiss your loved ones, hold them tight; wish for better things; in the darkness sense the bright; joy once more to ring.

The post Busy December appeared first on Author Patrice Sarath.

What I wanted to know about Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc, in Notre Dame Cathedral.

Here’s what I wanted to know about Joan of Arc. My most successful work is always born out of the question, How come?

With A Prayer for Captain La Hire, I wanted to know why none of the champions who fought by Joan’s side, who followed her into battle, who used her as a weapon in the war for France’s identity and soul, none of them tried to ransom her when she was captured by the Burgundians and turned over to the English.

The answer was the Church; Joan made it clear she answered to the Church in Heaven, not the Church here on Earth. And the Church hierarchy didn’t like that.

So the King still so precariously perched on his throne dared not try to ransom her, and none of the other knights could do so either. Maybe, as my Captain La Hire says, they thought that because she was the Maid she would win.

But I couldn’t get over what that had to have done to the men who were her staunchest allies, including the men who later testified at her third trial, after her death.

This story was wildly successful. It was published in Black Gate Magazine in 2002, and later in Year’s Best Fantasy 3. It remains my favorite story to this day.

Click on the title below to read the full story.

A Prayer for Captain La Hire

 

The gates of Vaucouleurs stayed opened those days, a welcome sign of peace. La Hire touched his tired horse with his heel, and the horse jogged forward amidst the swirl of carts and livestock. Market day, he saw, and turned his horse away from the square to the courtyard. …

The post What I wanted to know about Joan of Arc appeared first on Author Patrice Sarath.

A writer’s Thanksgiving

Jane liked pie too, I am certain of it.

The worst thing writers can do is get caught up in the comparison trap with regards to our lives and our careers. I catch myself doing it too much, slotting myself into place between this writer and that writer, and seeing — always — where I come up short.

So today, on this writer’s Thanksgiving, I’m going to accept my current frustrations, count my writerly blessings and set some aspirations.

I am always frustrated by the lack of time to write.

Today, I will not squander the writing time I do have, and will try not squander it tomorrow either.

I am feeling under the weather and sorry for myself.

Today, I will remain positive and remind myself everyone gets sick and it’s not a moral failing.

I suffer from self-doubt and frustration at how my career is going.

Today I will just write, taking care to work hard on plot, characterization, dialog, and setting and try not to look at each word as a career killer 0r career-maker.

I’m sad because I wanted to cook Thanksgiving for my family, but instead — points up — sick.

Today I will write words and eat pie.

 

The post A writer’s Thanksgiving appeared first on Author Patrice Sarath.

Wales and Paris — some photos

If you would like to see a scattering of photos from my trip, head over to Facebook to my Gordath Wood page. I’ve put up a few over there. I didn’t post all of the photos I took of Notre Dame or of Conwy Castle, or the other wonderful and amazing sights, just a handful. I’ll post a few more off and on, mostly on Facebook, to take advantage of their bandwidth rather than mine. However, I couldn’t resist this one, snapped at the Louvre.

I was getting a little tired of all the Madonna and Child paintings and just concentrated on the portraits. Those have always been my favorites anyway. I am fascinated by that glimpse into the past of what people looked like, how they dressed, how they faced the painter. The glare at the bottom is from my camera phone, and I have to say, the camera phone does this painting more justice than I ever thought possible, certainly more than here. But even better was standing in front of this young woman and being able to see all of the details.

Paris

Paris was an overwhelming experience and not completely all positive. I’ve gone on at length about the negatives in real life, so I’ll just focus on the good stuff here; I will never forget our first morning, sitting with our coffee and croissants and watching the day bloom from our vantage point on the Pont Neuf overlooking the Seine.

Notre Dame, and seeing the statue of Saint Joan in her alcove. I don’t know if I can describe exactly how I felt. I approached the statue without knowing who it was of, but also knowing with growing certainty that it was “my” Joan.

The Louvre. I probably saw one-tenth of the entirety of the museum. Ambitious, I know! I did not go see the Mona Lisa. The crowds were too overwhelming. Instead I just followed various galleries, happening upon art that I’ve known all my life and seeing it all in real life with a shock of recognition.

Walking in the Jardin des Tuileries. It was cold and rainy then, perfect weather for a stroll in the gardens. My umbrella was sacrificed to the weather, and it didn’t make it back with me. I had to say good-bye to it, all broken-ribbed and inside out, in a garbage bin along with several other victims.

It was a great trip.

 

 

The post Wales and Paris — some photos appeared first on Author Patrice Sarath.

Conwy, Wales

Today we will have to paint the pictures with words, since I took plenty of photos but the camera she does not link with the iPad.

We visited Gwydir Castle first, the family castle of the Gwynne family, of which my husband is a long-lost relation. We couldn’t get in as they had closed for the season, so we took photos of the outside and then of the peacocks standing sentry on the gate. Then we went up to the church they built and then wandered up the Fairy Falls. The water crashed down like thunder, the mists drifted across the green valleys, and everything was wet and cold and gray.

After a stop at the Woolen Mill in Trefw we went to Conwy and walked the walls of the castle. The view was stunning over the river, and the castle itself is breathtaking. It is pretty structurally well preserved, and the walls are strong and reinforced. The towers are still accessible.

Cold cobblestones are hard to walk on. I think this is a point to remember.

Afternoon tea in a lovely little gift shop and then we went and strolled the High Street of Conwy, which has some very old Elizabethan era homes. The city was busy and lively,

Now we’re sitting in front of a fire at the Groes Inn, one of the oldest pubs in Wales. It’s raining, misting rather, and the sun has set and it’s about 5 pm. We’ve shopped, eaten, and toured.

Now to write in front of the fire.

What I will probably do is put up the photos on FB and direct you all there after I get back. There are a few already on my Gordath Wood page. Just go to the home page of the blog and hit the FB like button if you would like to see pictures of lovely Welsh castles and countryside. But that won’t be until the second week of November, probably.

The post Conwy, Wales appeared first on Author Patrice Sarath.