Maurice Broaddus's Blog, page 24

Mo*Con IX: May 2nd – 4th, 2014 (Save the Date)

Brought to you by IHW, Evoke:  Arts + Media, and Second Story, Mo*Con is a convention focused on conversations revolving around genre literature and social justice. If you enjoy writing, conversations, and food, you’ll find plenty to enjoy at Mo*Con (basically, imagine a room party held in a con suite).  Here’s who will be there:

Guests of Honor: 

Wesley Chu was born in Taiwan and emigrated to Chicago, Illinois when he was just a pup. It was there he became a Kung Fu master and gymnast.  Wesley is an avid gamer and a contributing writer for the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. A former stunt man and a member of the Screen Actors Guild, he can also be seen in film and television playing roles such as “Banzai Chef” in Fred Claus and putting out Oscar worthy performances as a bank teller in Chicago Blackhawks commercials.  Besides working as an Associate Vice President at a bank, he spends his time writing and hanging out with his wife Paula Kim and their Airedale Terrier, Eva.  You can learn more about her at www.wesleychu.com or connect with him on Twitter (@wes_chu) or FaceBook (www.facebook.com/wesleychuauthor)

Lucy A. Snyder is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the novels Spellbent, Shotgun Sorceress, Switchblade Goddess, and thecollections Orchid Carousals, Sparks and Shadows, Chimeric Machines, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger. She will have two new books out in 2014: Shooting Yourself in the Head For Fun and Profit: A Writer’s Guide will be released by Post Mortem Press, and her story collection Soft Apocalypses will be released by Raw Dog Screaming Press. Her writing has been translated into French, Russian, and Japanese editions and has appeared in publications such as What Fates Impose, Once Upon A Curse, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, Hellbound Hearts, Dark Faith, Chiaroscuro, GUD, and Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 5. You can learn more about her atwww.lucysnyder.com.

Scott Lynch is an American fantasy author, best known for his Gentleman Bastard series of novels.  His first novel, The Lies of Locke Lamora, came out in 2006.   His second novel, Red Seas Under Red Skies, came out in the summer of 2007. The Lies of Locke Lamora was a World Fantasy Award finalist in 2007. In both 2007 and 2008 Lynch was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.  Lynch received the Sydney J. Bounds Best Newcomer Award from the British Fantasy Society in 2008.  His third novel, The Republic of Thieves, was just released.  He’s also a volunteer firefighter with the New Richmond, WI fire department.

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Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. When coupled with a tendency to read the dictionary for fun as a child, this led her inevitably to penury, intransigence, and the writing of speculative fiction. She is the Hugo, Sturgeon, and Campbell Award winning author of 25 novels and almost a hundred short stories. Her dog lives in Massachusetts; her partner, writer Scott Lynch, lives in Wisconsin. She spends a lot of time on planes.

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Publisher Guest of Honor:

Dave Mattingly founded BlackWyrm Publishing in 2003. The company has produced 100 novels, mostly in the speculative fiction genres. Never wanting to turn away a good book, other genres have crept in since then, including mystery, romance, historical, Christian, business, and others. As an early adopter of technology, BlackWyrm makes sure that all of the printed books are available in the various popular ebook formats.  Besides his credentials at BlackWyrm, Dave is the vice president of the Christian Gamers Guild, and organizes church services at Origins, GenCon, FandomFest, and other conventions. As a former atheist that converted to Christianity late in life, he merges his geek life with his Godly life. He regularly speaks at Toastmasters, and has earned two DTMs, the highest achievement possible in that organization.  Professionally trained as a computer programmer, database administrator, and scrum master, Dave has worked for a vast array of industries such as space travel, video games, graphic design, bio-terrorism, and fraud prevention.

Editor Guest of Honor:

John Joseph Adams (www.johnjosephadams.com)—called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble—is the bestselling editor of many anthologies, such as Oz Reimagined, The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Epic: Legends of Fantasy, Other Worlds Than These, Armored, Under the Moons of Mars, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, The Living Dead, Federations, The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and The Way of the Wizard. He is a six-time finalist for the Hugo Award and a five-time nominee for the World Fantasy Award. He is also the editor and publisher of the magazines Lightspeed and Nightmare, and is the co-host of Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.

Wait, there’s more …

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Featured guests

Chesya Burke’s 2011 fiction collection, Let’s Play White, was featured in i09 and received praise from Samuel Delany and Nikki Giovanni. Her work has appeared in Dark Dreams I, II and III: Horror and Suspense by Black Writers published by Kensington Publishing Corp.; the Stoker-nominated, Dark Faith and many more. She also is recognized for her critical analysis of genre and race issues such as her articles, Race and The Walking Dead and Super Duper Sexual Spiritual Black Woman: The New and Improved Magical Negro published by Clarksworld Publication. Likewise, several of her articles appeared in the African American National Biography published by Harvard and Oxford University Press. Chesya is currently getting her MA in African American Studies at Georgia State University and is a juror for the 2013 Shirley Jackson awards.

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John Hornor Jacobs’ first novel, Southern Gods, was published by Night Shade Books and shortlisted for the Bram Stoker Award. His second novel, This Dark Earth, was published in July, 2012, by Gallery/Pocket Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. His young adult series, The Incarcerado Trilogy comprised of The Twelve Fingered Boy, The Shibboleth, and The Conformity, will be published by Carolrhoda Labs, an imprint of Lerner Publishing.  His first fantasy series, The Incorruptibles will be published in Spring 2014 by Gollancz in the UK.

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Geoffrey Girard writes thrillers, historicals, dark fantasy, young adult novels, and short speculative fiction for publications including WRITERS OF THE FUTURE and the Stoker-nominated DARK FAITH anthology. Born in Germany and shaped in New Jersey, Geoffrey graduated from Washington College with a literature degree and worked as an advertising copywriter before shifting to high school English teacher. Since, he’s earned an MA in Creative Writing from Miami University and is the Department Chair of English at a private boys’ school in Cincinnati. His TALES OF… series (TALES OF THE JERSEY DEVIL, TALES OF THE ATLANTIC PIRATES and TALES OF THE EASTERN INDIANS) features original stories based on American history and folklore. Simon and Schuster published two Girard novels in 2013: CAIN’S BLOOD, a techno thriller, and PROJECT CAIN, a spinoff novel for Young-Adult readers. For more information, visitwww.GeoffreyGirard.com.

Special Musical Guest:

Musical composer Wes Alexander and writer/editor Reinhardt Suarez are the two-man crew behind The Pork Chop Express, a traveling musical show that fuses story and song into a single experience. Compositions are often concepted and created remotely, as Alexander resides in Chicago, IL, and Suarez in Minneapolis, MN. The Pork Chop Express relishes opportunities to step outside its own bounds, with projects such as the album-novel The Green Ray of the Sun, and the Twitter-based story-event, Giant Avian Doomsday. Find them at www.theporkchopexpress.com

 

 

MORE SURPRISES TO COME.  REGISTRATION OPENS SOON…

I’m Done Arguing

I really admire writers like Nora Jemison and Chesya Burke.*  They continue to discuss issues of racism, sexism, discrimination of all kinds online.

I just can’t do it anymore.**

I used to talk more about race, political, and spiritual issues online a lot more.  I just don’t have it in me much these days.  It’s tough.  It’s exhausting.  It’s time consuming.  You make a well thought out point, hit the post button, then watch a good part of your day get away from you:  you have to educate new people to the discussion (because Google is broken for them and they can’t look up “feminism 101″ or “anti-racism 101″), you have to babysit your posts to guard against trolls, and you have to come up with new ways to express your point sometimes to well-intentioned allies.  Rinse and repeat.

All of that takes its toll:  emotionally (most times it’s not just 1s and 0s out there, but friends you thought you knew), mentally (your mind gets consumed with formulating rebuttals), and creatively (unless you’re great at compartmentalizing, a post gone wrong can cost you a day or more of writing).

I don’t see how they keep it up.  I know they both have lives, careers, and writing to do.  They have friends, they have interests, they have other things they could be doing.  But they’re there, rolling their Sisyphusean boulders up their hills over and over again.

I’m out though.  Sometimes just reading their posts makes me want to punch my screen.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m still happy to discuss issues of race with folks.  I’ve been heavily involved with my Cities of Refuge project, so I welcome you to come down to the community I work in.  You call talk to me all you want about the inequality of education, the salvation capitalism offers, the fair and equitable treatment of the police, your rights to stand your ground, the practical realities/necessities of profiling, the socialism of health care, and so on, all to your heart’s content.   While you’re talking, be sure to take a good look around, because that’s as close as I’m going to get to arguing with you.  Cause I’m tired and I’ve decided that what time and energy I got left I’m pouring into the community.

But I thank God for the Noras and Chesyas of the world.  I don’t know how they keep doing it, but I’m glad they are.

 

 

 

* I’m taking a real chance here:  the Internet is forever and Chesya has already screen-captured that statement

**Btw, this is my favorite picture of me and Chesya.  I know it drives her absolutely insane.

IHW 2.0: Electric Boogaloo

Sometimes you have to blow stuff up in order to fix it.

Prior to our disbanding, IHW had gotten to a point where the group had forgotten what it was about.  Mission drift is a common problem for organizations.  A group can start off with a common set of goals and principles, but somewhere along the way, whether it is chasing greater numbers, pursuing money or marketing, or simply any other agenda, it loses sight of what it set off to do.  The group loses the dream of who they were and what they wanted to be.

Many of the IHW members, among them many of the founding members, found ourselves kind of stuck and resigned out of sheer frustration.  Sometimes groups or friends are meant to be together only for a season.  It reminded me of something I wrote a long time ago:  “Splits happen.  Sometimes they can’t be helped. Sometimes no one’s at fault. Sometimes the relationship’s time has passed. Sometimes the people you love simply can’t get along anymore.  Every time … it hurts.”

There’s mission drift and there’s a change in focus or a re-prioritization. Not all change is bad and sometimes communities need to accept that’s what they are now and strike a new vision.  We let some time pass to let the heat of the situation and feelings cool off a bit before we tried to figure out what the next steps were going to be.  The time apart allowed us to try to figure some things out.  Like if we needed to be a group, if so, what we wanted to be about, how we wanted to operate, and what we wanted the group’s image to be.

Here’s what we decided:  we would return to our roots.  Be an informal organization (not a chapter of any group and without “officers”).  We would go back to being relationship focused.  Meeting in each other’s homes and being friends that support each other.  Writing is a solitary enough pursuit and it’s good to have friends that understand that, spur each other along, and be there for one another.  We’re not a group to be used as a marketing tool or driven to grow our membership to be a promotional vehicle.  We’ll simply grow at the speed of relationships.

As for our name, we thought about going the way of the Garden State Horror Writers who rebranded themselves the Garden State Speculative Fiction Writers to reflect that they were writing more than just horror.  We also consider ourselves a sister organization to COFFEE! (Central Ohio Fabulous Fiction, Everybody! Excellent!), but CIFFEE doesn’t have the same ring.  So even though we’re a collection of speculative fiction writers, ISFW doesn’t do it for us.  Besides, we’re attached to the name IHW.

So we’re back.

(And obviously the community demands that we reclaim our name, thus the tagging of a nearby mall)

CITIES OF REFUGE BEGINS THEIR CAMPAIGN TO REVIVE A NEIGHBORHOOD

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

INDIANAPOLIS, IN:  October 15, 2013 – Cities of Refuge, a non-profit dedicated to assisting motivated homeless men to transition from a state of homelessness, has partnered with Volunteers of America to help rebuild a neighborhood.

They will be having an Open House November 9th from 1 – 4 p.m. at their property on 2801 Columbia Avenue to show the community what can happen when groups cooperate and a neighborhood pulls together.  (Before ==>)

“We spent a year getting to know our neighbors and listening to their concerns about the neighborhood,” Executive Director Maurice Broaddus said.  “After that time of building relationships, we knew we were on the right track.  We don’t give up on people and we don’t give up on our neighborhood.”

With a program they call “Project: Revive,” Cities of Refuge Ministries employed men re-entering from prison through the non-profit Volunteers of America to rehabilitate one of several homes they purchased.  Cities of Refuge’s mission is to restore people and through those people rebuild a community.  So they reclaim abandoned homes which have been blights in the King’s Park neighborhood.  They partnered with Volunteers of America to employ men recently released from prison in order to provide job training and an opportunity to live life another way.

Culminating months of hard work and partnering with several other non-profits, among them Outreach Inc, Stop the Violence Indianapolis, and Trusted Mentors, and shows what can happen when a community pulls together.

If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail Maurice Broaddus at  maurice@coreindy.org

To learn more, please visit the Cities of Refuge web site at http://www.coreindy.org

 

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Cities of Refuge Ministries assists motivated homeless men and women in the greater Indianapolis community transition from a state of homelessness to a stable living arrangement through employment and home ownership.  Learn more at http://www.coreindy.org/

Volunteers of America of Indiana is a faith-based organization that provides life-changing services to enhance the physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual needs of individuals by providing counseling, rehabilitation, job placement, and residential services. We serve individuals transitioning from the correctional system, the elderly and those dealing with chronic addiction and mental illness.  Learn more at http://www.voain.org

Contact Person:  Maurice Broaddus

Company:  Cities of Refuge Ministries

E-mail:  maurice@coreindy.org

Web Site:  http://www.coreindy.org

Launch Party: DAY ONE by Nate Kenyon

I get periodic requests from folks for quest blogs celebrating the debut of their novels.  I thought it’d be cool to just go ahead and make a regular feature of it.  I’m calling it Launch Party, because if there’s one thing I love it’s an excuse to have a party.   So one thing the writers have to do is convince me/us why we should attend their party.  First up: long time pal-o-mine, Nate Kenyon.  I’ll let him take over …

Launch Party: Day One

Maurice was kind enough to invite me to guest blog on his site, and to be the first in line in a new series about launching the killer thriller (my words, not his).

Some might think writers are excited about every single one of their launches. Not so. Some books you’re just less confident about, or your publisher isn’t giving it a good push, or early reviews are bad. So on this, my launch week, what makes me so excited about my new novel DAY ONE?

Three things: first and foremost, I love the story. DAY ONE is about a journalist with a shady past trying to redeem himself as he goes after what he hopes is a breakthrough profile of a tech visionary. As John Hawke heads into New York, everything with a computer chip in it begins to malfunction. Soon, he’s trapped in a city under attack by an unknown, brilliant and vicious enemy that can be anywhere and everywhere at once.

The bridges and tunnels have been destroyed. Somehow, Hawke must find a way to escape the city and get back to his wife and young son. Their lives depend on it…and so does the rest of the human race.

DAY ONE is a very dark and wild thriller that moves like a bullet. It’s been described as “Cloverfield meets the Terminator,” which is pretty spot on. Red-blooded horror fans who want action are going to love this book.

The second thing that’s gotten me excited is the early feedback. Booklist gave it a starred review and called it “exciting and inventive.” Library Journal called it my “scariest to date.” There’s some great buzz around the novel, and a major producer just picked it up for film.

While researching the novel, I was blown away about what’s going on in the artificial intelligence space. Billions are being thrown at the problem of creating an AI that thinks, learns, acts more human–using quantum computing breakthroughs and neural mapping–even the idea of creating consciousness and what that means is in play. Google, NSA, IBM, and certainly many universities are after it–and Paul Allen just announced his founding of the Allen AI research Institute with a $500 million war chest.

The possibilities and benefits of this kind of system are obvious. But the dangers are very real too. If we create something that can improve itself and learn on its own, what does that mean? If it is self aware, how do we define it? Would it be protected from abuse–have some sort of legal rights? What if something like this “gets loose” from whatever system we put in place to control or contain it, and evolves in such a way that it leaves the capabilities of the human mind far behind–and what if it decides that human beings are expendable?

All this might seem like science fiction. But a lot of researchers say we may be less than 20 years away from such a thing, and we’ve already created an entire ecosystem for it to grow and thrive in the World Wide Web and networked devices. In James Barrat’s excellent OUR FINAL INVENTION, he makes the case that we are quite likely engineering our own extinction–that we are not focused enough on safeguarding such a system, and even if we were, we won’t be able to predict the ways an AI might “escape” its own programming safeguards as it evolves. As Barrat writes, an AI might not hate humans, or even bear us any ill will. But we don’t hate lab mice either, and look what we do to them.

I wrote DAY ONE imagining what might happen if such a system “woke up” and decided to eliminate us. It’s pure entertainment, of course, and I take liberties with the concepts, but there’s a surprising amount of truth in it as well. The problem is that most people won’t believe it. Artificial intelligence has been a rich playground for entertainment for many years (Forbidden Planet, the Terminator movies, The Matrix, and on and on), and that, I think, has lulled the general public to sleep. But there are very real developments in the field and the possibility of an actual breakthrough or catastrophe is looming.

Incidentally, Barrat’s book came out the same day mine did, from the same press (Thomas Dunne/St. Martins). It’s an interesting pairing of a fictional imagining of an AI apocalypse for entertainment purposes, and a nonfiction account of the realities around the occurrence of such an event.

The last thing that has me so excited about DAY ONE? It’s a rich playground for scaring the hell out of people. And that’s what I love to do best.

 

Bio:

Nate Kenyon is the award-winning author of Day One (St. Martins, October 2013), about the day machines become sentient and take over New York. Day One received a starred Booklist review and raves from Library Journal and many others. Kenyon is a three-time Stoker Award Finalist. His other novels include Bloodstone, The Reach, The Bone Factory, and Sparrow Rock. He also writes Diablo III novels for Blizzard Entertainment and Simon and Schuster. He is a member of the Horror Writers Association and International Thriller Writers. He lives in the Boston area.

 

Where I’ll Be/Where I Am Internet Round Up

I will be doing a session on writing and marketing genre fiction along with Phil Dunlap and S.M. Harding at this year’s Indy Author Fair at Central Library is scheduled for Saturday, October 26th:

Writing and Marketing Genre Fiction – Knall Meeting Room

This session will be invaluable to those who hope to write speculative fiction (science fiction, horror, fantasy), Westerns, and/or mysteries. You’ll gain inside knowledge about how to break into these markets and tips for catching an editor’s eye. You’ll also learn how to write a query letter, synopsis and pitch, which will give your book its best shot at publication. Presented by the Indiana Writers Center and featuring Maurice Broaddus, Phil Dunlap and S.M. Harding. (2 LEUs)

 

Now here’s where you can catch up with me around the Internet:

-In case you missed it, The Guardian picked up one of my tweets for their article on “It’s time for science fiction to face up to discrimination” after this year’s WorldCon.  AND I WASN’T EVEN DRUNK TWEETING AT THE TIME!

-This almost counts as a blog post:  SF Signal invited me for one of their MIND MELD, this time on “Our Favorite Women Horror Writers.”

-Speaking of WorldCon and SF Signal, I was part of an SF Signal podcast (Episode 204): 2013 Live WorldCon Panel with the Authors, Editor and Publisher of BEYOND THE SUN.

-I was asked to give three good things to read, watch, and use.  Check out which author’s I name drop (okay, I’ll spoil one of them:  Geoffrey Girard’s Cain’s Blood/Project Cain.  Not coincidentally, there’s a well-dressed bald black man who makes an appearance in the books).

-On the Punchnel’s web site, I have a “lost” story from my Knights of Breton Court trilogy, “Ebony Paradox.”  Here I tell the tale of a couple of knights I mention in passing in King’s Justice and their failed Grail quest (which would have happened in Book Three:  King’s War).  You’ll never look at the fountains in Woodruff Place the same … *creepy cherubs*

Writing “Read Me Up”

Every time my mother comes for a visit, I get a story out of it. After her father’s funeral, I wrote “Family Business” (published in Weird Tales Magazine).  After she returned from a visit to the Maroons’ capital, I wrote “Steppin’ Razor” (due out in Asimov’s SF in February).  And after a brief visit to the States to reminisce, I wrote “Read Me Up” (What Fates Impose).

When we were growing up, me and my siblings didn’t pay much attention to my mother’s stories.  She told us endless duppy (ghost) stories.  There was a duppy for every occasion or hardship.  We took the oral tradition of our family for granted, after all, we grew up in the age of television, videogames, and the internet.

Now my mother’s stories are gold.  As a writer, I’ve been trying to collect those stories.  My mother loves this turn of events as it means I not only pay attention when she speaks, but I whip out a pen to take notes as she does it.  The stories are a way for me to connect with my family, to make sense of our rituals, and our history.

I am truly fascinated by the obeah practitioners in our family.  A couple of aunts, my grandfather, and all the stories associated with them.  That’s the other thing about my family:  there’s always a story and somewhere in the story is the truth.

That’s at the heart of “Read Me Up.”  Available in the What Fates Impose anthology.

More Upcoming Classes and Workshops

I have a few more classes coming up through the Writers Center of Indiana.  Here are the details:

Saturday, September 21, 1:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Cost: $48 non-members, $33 members, $28 student/teacher/senior members

INTRODUCTION TO SPECULATIVE FICTION

Here’s the thing:  you know speculative fiction when you see it, even if you’re unfamiliar with all of the insider jargon used to describe its many subgenres.  The big three are Horror, Fantasy (high, urban, historical), and Science Fiction (hard, cyberpunk, steampunk).  So if the story takes place in a far off land or an alternate version of an existing one; whether it is extrapolating science into futuristic technologies with its impact on society or conjuring new forms of magic, speculative fiction is the genre of possibility.

In this course you will learn about the special needs of these genres, such as world-building.  This is all with a view toward submission and publication, so we will explore the marketplace, discussing where and how to submit your work.

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Saturday, October 5, 1:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Cost: $48 non-members, $33 members, $28 student/teacher/senior members

ADVENTURES IN SPECULATIVE FICTION PUBLISHING

So you’ve gotten your spec fic novel finished, what do you do next?  In Adventures in Speculative Fiction, we examine the business of writing.  We have an eye toward submission and publication, so we will explore the marketplace, discussing where and how to submit your work, and developing your writer’s platform.  And we will share real world anecdotes of what it means to be a writer.

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Saturday, December 7, 1:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Cost: $48 non-members, $33 members, $28 student/teacher/senior members

CHARACTERIZATION THROUGH DIALOGUE

Characters are at the heart of stories and dialogue helps define characters and drive story.  In this workshop you’ll learn to develop characters, consider word choice, and define their voice through dialogue.  The workshop will present essential tips to improve dialogue and explore how to write dialogue that rings true, deepens character, creates tension, and more.

 

Leaving Some Professional Organizations Behind

“I resigned from Indiana Horror Writers today. It’s not something I wanted to do, necessarily, but felt I had to do. It’s been a long time coming.”

Three and a half months later, I (and several others) follow Bob Freeman out the door. I was one of the founding members of IHW and we’ve had our share of laughs and tears. This group was instrumental in hosting Mo*Con and has played a huge role in my life and writing career. So it’s with sadness that I had to tender my resignation, while still wondering how we got to this point.

I suspect the roots of the problem began in the inevitable growing pains as the founders of the group passed the reins over to the “next generation”, the sustainers. Even granting a learning curve on how social media is a loaded weapon, one gets tired of seeing the officers, the public face of the organization, seeming to forget that they represent the group at all times. I am reminded of John Scalzi’s tenure as SFWA president and how keenly aware he was that (disclaimers aside) his words carried the weight of the power of his office. He was always in the shadow of his authority and comported himself accordingly.

Speaking of SFWA, I’m mindful of what has recently transpired with them. When someone is being racist, misogynist, or otherwise marginalizing people, you can either leave them in place or leave that place. I can’t help but be struck by the image of writing groups/genre as a pool. Frankly, you get in the pool knowing that on occasion, someone’s going to pee in it. You know it even if you may not always be aware of every instance of it. Sometimes you encounter someone determined to do nothing but pee in the pool. It becomes a matter of how much pee you’re willing to tolerate before you leave.

Leaving that unfortunate analogy aside, it came down to, as Nora Jemison put it, picking a side. Yes, everyone has the right to their opinion, be as big of a raging a-hole as you want, but there are consequences to patterns of behavior, be it unexamined misogyny or racism. Marginalize and condescend to folks enough and they feel unwelcome, no longer feeling safe within a community, and that’s just not the kind of group I want to be in.

In the end, we started IHW so that we could forge relationships. We wanted a fellowship of kindred spirits to encourage one another, to push one another, and hold each other accountable. We got more than we expected. We were loud, we were messy, we were family. We have friendships which will last a lifetime. We started as a group, we leave as a group, still supporting one another.

I know something cool can grow from all of this and I look forward to it. I’ll just miss what was.

My WorldCon Schedule

I’ll be in the bar.

Also, I’ll be on hand for the debut of the Glitter and Mayhem anthology (Apex Books).

I’ll be participating in a special panel discussion and book signing at Viva Books San Antonio for the Saturday afternoon of WorldCon (August 31) from 12:30-2:30 pm.  Joined by Bryan Thomas Schmidt,  J.M. McDermott, and Django Wexler, here’s the overview:

Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror offer the unique opportunity to post unreal elements in the real world.  More than just adventures and entertainment, these books offer new insights into the human condition.  Three leading authors of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror will be here at Viva to talk about speculative fiction’s role in healing the world.

Other than that, see me in the bar.