Maurice Broaddus's Blog, page 29

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Homeless Have Stories to Share

Indianapolis, Indiana – February 28, 2013

Telling Our Stories

April 5 – April 30, 2013

Opening Friday, April 5th, 7 – 10 p.m.

 

Fletcher Place Arts and Books is pleased to present Telling Our Stories, an exhibition of work from residents of A New Way of Life.  Please join us on Friday, April 5th from 6 – 10 p.m. for the exhibit’s opening and to meet the artists.

A New Way of Life, a transitional housing ministry located in the Fountain Square area, partnered with the LYN House and Cities of Refuge Ministries to go through the Viewfinder  Project.  The resulting photographs provide glimpses into their stories and perspective.

“It will give a chance for our guys to let the community know where they’ve been and where they’re trying to go,” Floyd Wimbush, founder and director, said.  “It brings life to our mission statement.”

The exhibit is a collection of photographs taken in Fountain Square and downtown Indianapolis.  They explore the beauty and ugliness in their lives and reflect the choices they have made and point to their future.

Cities of Refuge Ministries, a sister transitional housing non-profit, will also be providing catering for the event.

For additional information, e-mail Maurice Broaddus at mauricebroaddus@gmail.com.

 

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A New Way of Life Ministries is a faith-based, non-profit organization, assisting men and women in the homeless community transition towards independent living.  Learn more at http://www.anewway-life.org/

Fletcher Place Arts and Books is a place where artists could display their work, books could be available for all to share and read, space could exist for people to begin engaging the creative process.  Learn more at http://fpartsandbooks.com/

The LYN House  provide a safe place for the community’s residents, to gather for fellowship, and to help meet the educational needs of the community through tutoring and mentoring, and to serve as a hub for service projects and mission teams who want to come and redevelop the neighborhood.  Learn more at http://www.lynhouse.org/

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/

The Viewfinder Project uses photography to help people of all ages “see life differently” challenging them to use creative thinking in becoming community change makers.   Learn more at http://theviewfinderproject.com/

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Mo*Con has a New Home

Indianapolis, Indiana – February 28, 2013 – The eighth annual Mo*Con, a gathering of speculative fiction writers, will be held at the Broad Ripple United Methodist Church in Indianapolis, IN the weekend of May 3-4, 2013.

“The convention has grown each year and I love that we’ve carved out a safe place for writers to come and discuss controversial issues of faith, art, and social justice,” said founder Maurice Broaddus, author of the urban fantasy series, The Knights of Breton Court.  “We have another stellar lineup of science fiction, fantasy, and horror authors for folks to come and get to know.”

This year’s theme is “The Mind and Spirit of the Artist,” revolving around a discussion on Saturday the 4th about the struggles many writers have with mental health issues and what that means for their craft, their lives, and their community.  The event is expected to draw over 100 writers, artists, editors, and publishers and many networking sessions.  A half dozen workshops will be offered ranging from topics like privacy issues for writers to post-apocalyptic fiction to hands on demonstrations.

Featured writer guests of honor include Jim C. Hines (author of Libriomancer), Saladin Ahmed (author of Throne of the Crescent Moon), and Gary Braunbeck (author of Far Dark Fields).  The featured publisher is Stephen Zimmer of Seventh Star Press.

This is the first year the event will be held at Broad Ripple United Methodist Church.  The convention has expanded to include a First Friday event featuring the art of Steve Gilberts and Kristin Fuller.  There will also be a spoken word performance from prominent poets:  DDE the Slammer, Devon Ginn, Pope Adrian, Bless, Theon Lee Jones, Dizz, Reheema McNeil, ParaLectra, and Mr. Kinetik, hosted by Ill Holiday.  These events will be open to the public.  The spoken word event will be a fundraiser event for the local non-profit group, Second Story.

A welcome dinner Friday night as well as a catered lunch and dinner Saturday are a part of the event.  Early bird registration is $50 and covers all sessions and meals.

Second Story is a community-based and volunteer-driven 501(c)(3) organization that helps young people in Indianapolis form positive attitudes about writing and improve their skills as writers .  All donations are tax deductible.  Learn more at http://www.secondstoryindy.org/

Mo*Con is co-sponsored by the IHW, a speculative fiction writers group.  Learn more at http://www.indianahorror.org/

For additional information, e-mail Maurice Broaddus at mauricebroaddus@gmail.com.

 

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Maurice Broaddus has written hundreds of short stories, essays, novellas, and articles.  His dark fiction has been published in numerous magazines, anthologies, and web sites, including Cemetery Dance, Apex Magazine, Black Static, and Weird Tales Magazine.  He is the co-editor of the Dark Faith anthology series (Apex Books) and the author of the urban fantasy trilogy, Knights of Breton Court (Angry Robot Books).  He has been a teaching artist for over five years, teaching creative writing to elementary, middle, and high school students, as well as adults.  Visit his site at www.MauriceBroaddus.com.

Jim C. Hines began writing in the early 90s, while working on a degree in psychology from Michigan State University. His first professional sale was the award-winning “Blade of the Bunny,” which took first place in the 1998 Writers of the Future competition and was published in Writers of the Future XV. After completing the goblin trilogy, Jim went on to write the princess series, four books often described as a blend of Grimm’s Fairy Tales with Charlie’s Angels. In 2010, he signed a contract with DAW Books for the Magic ex Libris series, which follows the adventure of a magic-wielding librarian from northern Michigan and a certain fire-spider…

Saladin Ahmed was born in Detroit and raised in a working-class, Arab American enclave in Dearborn, MI.  He holds a BA in American Culture from the University of Michigan, an MFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College, and an MA in English from Rutgers. His poetry has received several fellowships, and he has taught writing at universities and colleges for over ten years.  His short stories have been nominated for the Nebula and Campbell awards, and have appeared in Year’s Best Fantasy and numerous other magazines, anthologies, and podcasts, as well as being translated into five foreign languages. He is represented by Jennifer Jackson of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. THRONE OF THE CRESCENT MOON is his first novel.

Gary A. Braunbeck is a prolific author who writes mysteries, thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mainstream literature. He is the author of 19 books; his fiction has been translated into Japanese, French, Italian, Russian and German. Nearly 200 of his short stories have appeared in various publications. He was born in Newark, Ohio; this city that serves as the model for the fictitious Cedar Hill in many of his stories. The Cedar Hill stories are collected in Graveyard People and Home Before Dark.  His fiction has received several awards, including the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction in 2003 for “Duty” and in 2005 for “We Now Pause for Station Identification”; his collection Destinations Unknown won a Stoker in 2006. His novella “Kiss of the Mudman” received the International Horror Guild Award for Long Fiction in 2005.  Gary is an adjunct professor at Seton Hill University, Pennsylvania, where he teaches in an innovative Master’s degree program in Writing Popular Fiction.

Seventh Star Press is a small press publisher located in Lexington, KY.  SSP specializes in speculative fiction (fantasy, science fiction, and horror).  The company  was established in October of 2008.  Stephen Zimmer is an award-winning author and filmmaker, whose literary works include the epic urban fantasy series The Rising Dawn Saga, as well as the epic medieval fantasy Fires in Eden Series. The Exodus Gate, Book One of the Rising Dawn Saga, was Stephen’s debut novel. His novel, Crown of Vengeance, received a 2010 Pluto Award for Best Novel in Small Press.

Story Sale!

My story “Voice of the Martyrs” was accepted for Bryan Thomas Schmidt’s anthology, Beyond the Sun.  Here’s the Table of Contents:

Introduction by Bryan Thomas Schmidt
Acknowledgements by Bryan Thomas Schmidt
“Flipping The Switch” by Jamie Todd Rubin
“Migration” by Nancy Kress
“Parker’s Paradise” by Jean Johnson
“Respite” by Autumn Rachel Dryden
“The Bricks of Eta Cassiopeiae” by Brad R. Torgersen
“Inner Sphere Blues” by Simon C. Larter
“Rumspringa” by Jason Sanford
“The Far Side Of The Wilderness” by Alex Shvartsman
“Elsewhere, Within, Elsewhen” by Cat Rambo
“Dust Angels” by Jennifer Brozek
“Voice Of The Martyrs” by Maurice Broaddus
“One Way Ticket” by Jaleta Clegg
“The Gambrels Of The Sky” by Erin Hoffman
“The Dybbyk of Mazel Tov IV” by Robert Silverberg
“Chasing Satellites” by Anthony R. Cardno
“A Soaring Pillar Of Brightness” by Nancy Fulda
“The Hanging Judge” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
“Observation Post” by Mike Resnick
Backers List

Adjusting to the Next Level

aka, Insecure Writer is Insecure

Writers are an insecure lot.*  So when I was at Killercon, I showed up at my reading a few minutes early, figuring I’d catch the end of the previous slot’s reader.  Well, no one was reading.  I slipped into the nearest row.  People were sitting there waiting.  I asked the woman I sat down next to what everyone was waiting on.

“We’re here to hear you read.”

That moment when you realize the room of people are there to see you.  That moment when you realize it’s not just your wife and best friends making up the audience (ftr, my wife was off riding roller coasters).  That moment when you sit down at the autograph table and people actually line up.  There’s no real comfortable way to talk about the adjustment without sounding like a world class douche canoe, so I’ll just jump in.

I know that’s what we as writers dream of happening and work towards happening, but let’s face it, life rarely lives up to the dream.  One of the reasons I eschew signings and readings is because I didn’t want to be “that writer” who sits at the table with a stack of books, lonely and desperate, eyes begging each passer-by to at least stop by and validate me with some casual interest in the product of my intense labor.

Okay, the reality is that no one escapes being “that writer,” it’s part of the deal.  There’s no point in playing things “safe” as you’ve already done the bulk of the risky stuff:  pouring yourself onto the page.  But we live in the shadow of our dreams:  of fans lining around the corner to see you, of producing work that people respond to.  The reality is that after going through the motions endless hyping of themselves, calling themselves the next “Stephen King”, they are confronted with no one at their table signing almost always sparse to empty book signings, especially for the first few years.  But we go out, talking to that one fan who shows up (or in my case, I end up fixing them dinner in a fit or inappropriate gratefulness).

Adjusting to rising popularity tends to screw with that image.  It’s hard enough saying (admitting) that I have fans without bursting into laughter at the ridiculousness of the idea.  I’m glad I have friends like Brian Keene and Wrath James White who continue to challenge me and push me out of my  comfort zone (even if their idea of “pushing” looks a lot like being smacked upside the head or being thrown onstage naked).

In the meantime, the hardest book deal to get after your first is your second.  So I’ll keep working away, dreaming of that breakout novel.

 

 

 

 

*I sooooo wanted to say a superstitious lot

2013 Appearance Schedule

Here is a tentative list of where you can find me this year:

Marcon – March 29 – 31

Columbus, OH

Mo*Con – May 3 – 5

Indianapolis, IN

Readercon – July 11 – 14

Burlington, MS

Gencon – Aug 15 – 18

Indianapolis, IN

Worldcon – Aug 29 – Sept 2

San Antonio, TX

Christian Community Development Association – Sept 11 – 14

New Orleans, LA

Context – Sept 28 – 30

Columbus, OH

Upcoming Workshops and Classes

The next workshops that I’ll be leading is through the Indiana Writers Center.  This will be on World Building, but I have another one coming up March 23rd called “Adventures in Spec Fic” that will talk about the real life of being a profession spec fic writer so be on the lookout for that one, too.  Here are the details:

 

World Building

Instructor:   Maurice Broaddus

Saturday, February 16

1- 4   p.m. .

Members $39, Nonmembers $57, Student, Teacher, Senior Members $33

Setting is an important part of any story. More particular to the speculative fiction writer is the world-building aspect of setting. Our job is to out-imagine our readers. The writer needs to make sure that their world operates within a consistent system. We will develop a basic checklist of items to think through as you build the universe for your characters to play in. 

Register on-line  or   download a registration form.

Click here   to see the Faculty Bio for Maurice Broaddus     

WCI Classroom 

 

2) I’ve been named Writer in Residence at Snack’s Crossing Elementary School.  Sponsored by Second Story, I’ll be doing an eight week intensive with some of their students from February through March.  That’s right, I’m shaping young minds!  This is a double treat for me since working with their students inspired the Middle Grade detective novel that I just sent to my agent.

3) I’ll be picking up the ViewFinder Project on Saturdays in February down at A New Way of Life.  I know, I know, you think “what does Maurice know about teaching photography?”  Well, the answer is not much, which is why I’m partnered with the LYN House (any excuse for me to post that pic of me working with some of the kids of LYN House) to do the instruction.  This is gearing up for our fundraiser/art gallery event, Telling Our Stories (and I do know something about telling stories).  More on this later.

Quick Marketing Tip – Captive Audience

Not too long ago, Angry Robot came out with an omnibus edition of my Knights of Breton Court trilogy.  (And this thing is beast!  I can stop muggers with this brick of a book.  In fact, I’m thinking about writing them off my taxes somehow as a security expense).  They shipped my batch of complimentary copies and after using them like Legos for a while (if you’ve never played in a book fort…You. Haven’t.  Lived!), I realized I had a quandary.

I had accumulated about 50-100 copies or so of the individual editions of my trilogy.  Copies I’d purchased or received for book signings and such, suddenly were orphaned (because I wasn’t going to tow them around in addition to the omnibus).   Remaindered books are just a part of the writer’s life.  Eventually you reach the end of your shelf life and then  somewhere there is a garage full of books on your hands.  So here’s what I ended up doing with them:  donated them.

I have a friend who’s in prison who I’ve been corresponding with for over two decades now.  When my books first came out, I sent him copies of them.  He loved them and passed them around the cell block, which also proved to be a big hit.  That gave me the inspiration to donate the rest of my books to those who are incarcerated.  I chose the Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project.

One, I love their mission:  The Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project is an all-volunteer effort that strives to encourage self-education among prisoners in the United States. By providing free reading materials upon request, we hope to promote rehabilitation and reintegration rather than punishment, and to stimulate critical thinking behind bars.  Two, this can be seen as self-serving marketing: it’s not like a prisoner gets all three books, so if they like it, they’d have to order the omnibus to get the rest of the story!

In the thank you letter, they pointed this out:  “Many of the facilities we send mail to restrict the kinds of books their inmates can receive.  One of the more frequent mailing restrictions is “no hardcovers” followed closely by “no used books” – this second one is particularly troublesome as all of our books are donated to us.  It was a special help, then, to get such a large number of books which were not only paperback, not only new, but also in the urban fantasy genre, which is one for which we have been receiving more and more requests.”

Seriously, it’s something for my fellow spec fic writers to consider as an option for your remaindered or extra books.  RIP King Maker, King’s Justice, and King’s War. May you find good homes.

Rejecting Papa SMOFs

Diddy ex-affiliate Dawn Richard’s fantastic full-length debut, Goldenheart, follows in the unheralded tradition of black musicians drawing emotional power from Tolkien tropes.

 

Okay, this article is all kinds of awesome.  I’ve accidentally been following Dawn Richards career for quite awhile (as I watched the hypnotic train wreck that was the Making the Band series).  Long had friends of mine tried to interest me in the prog rock ways, with many of the groups I quickly dubbed Middle Earth Metal, but this is the first I’d seen, well, a black geek princess incorporating her love of fantasy into R&B.  I can’t imagine her journey/struggle to be able to pull this off.

I don’t really consider myself a fan of much.  Admittedly, certain people—Neil Gaiman, Spike Lee, Public Enemy—have reduced me to a 15 year old every time I’ve met them (think that scene in Community when Troy meets Levar Burton).  That’s about the only time I can even begin to understand the mentality that can have you waiting in line for three hours not to ride a roller coaster, but to get to a John Landis tired of autographing stuff.

I’ve never fit in comfortably in fandom circles.  Fandom is this strange, double edged sword.  It’s this seeking out of your tribe—I like this “stuff” and you like the same “stuff” and no one else is around to make fun of us—and finding a place of belonging.  The thing is, people are tribal by nature, and one odd reaction to being collectively squeezed out of the cool kids table is to run off and set up their own cool kids table.  Thus we get people running around as Supreme Masters of Fandom and other such nonsense.

Growing up black in fandom was a double isolation.  You have to be a closet nerd or face possible ostracizing from our own community or you end up running in circles where we’re the lone POC at the table.  There was a certain amount of social cluelessness, and it is tempting to write some offensive behavior off as fans not being the most socially adjusted folks to begin with.  On the one hand, some of the guys in one of my early D&D circles couldn’t understand why dressing in full regalia to go LARP-ing for/as vampires wouldn’t be a good idea in my neighborhood (seriously?  In ANY neighborhood outside the comfort of GenCon).

On the other hand, some of them didn’t know how to act with a black person at the table.  I mean, it was like they were aware of black “in theory”, but to actually have one in person, playing Magic: the Gathering, was mind-blowing.  The common instinct was to ignore race:  at the table, you were just another behind to kick.  Unfortunately, this left the door open for a couple to occasionally drop the n-bomb under the “I don’t mean you” or “you’re not like them,”as if owning my own d20 endows me with a new cultural identity that makes me “not one of them.”

Sorry, I get enough casual racism in the rest of my life.  I don’t have time for it when I’m participating in the things that I love.  And just like in the rest of my life, too often people don’t know how to be around “one of them” without our complete assimilation to becoming “one of us.” (I’d like to believe this was fairly isolated, but then I recall Balgoun’s story about racism in role-playing.)

Being a fan means that you’re passionate and passion’s great.  In fact, fans of mine are great (though, let’s be straight: as egotistical as I may be, it’s a little weird being thought of as the object of fan attention).  I understand that every group has that faction of it that makes them look bad, the radical/hardcore branch of them (not that I’m equating LARPers/Filkers/Furries to Tea Partiers).  But the Grand Wizards or Supreme Masters or whatever they’re calling themselves amount to gatekeepers of exclusion.  The Nerdier Than Thou crew who set themselves as the standard bearers able to vet your bona fides.  They are the kind of fan who view The Big Bang Theory as a mainstreaming of their culture and identity, a threat even, as opposed to a loving tribute and recognition of their mainstream impact.  They come across as inbred (incestuous as fandom communities tend to be), gray hairs who end up wringing their hands wondering why their conventions are shrinking.

So don’t be surprised when or wonder why all the black nerds all sit together at the convention cafeteria, listening to Dawn Richards and being proud of one of our own.

Cities of Refuge Ministries Now Live

Okay, since my friends keep pulling the “Tommy ain’t got no job”* routine on me, I figure I ought to explain what I’ve been up to the last few months.

So about a year ago, a friend of mine approached me to do a transitional housing ministry. At the time I was doing full time freelance writing, but my wife had indicated that she would like to see a more predictable and steady income stream. I figured this would be a good stop gap measure: doing part time ministry work (even though I swore I was “out of the game”) while doing full time writing.

God love wives: mine laughed at us from the beginning. She thought it was cute the way we thought this was going to be a part time endeavor, when the truth was that this was a ministry that cut close to both me and my partner’s hearts: ministry to the poor, racial reconciliation, working with the arts. We were going to be doing full time hours for part time money because we loved the work. I hate it when she’s THAT right.

The second thing I learned is that apparently, despite all my “being Mauricenary” talk when it comes to writing, I have a reputation around the city for doing ministry work for nothing. Every time I bumped into a pastor buddy of mine and told them what I was up to, they’d get this real solemn look in their eye and they speak to me in real serious tone: “Maurice, please tell me that you’re getting paid for this.”

Anyway, at the beginning of the summer, we had a home that had been remodeled with one guy living there. By the end of the summer, we had half a dozen guys living there. The model is family, as we have a bunch of guys from various backgrounds (re-entry, recovery, homelessness), who had been used to being lone wolves, suddenly forging a community. The entire endeavor is about building relationships.

By September, we realized that we’d been so busy DOING the ministry, we hadn’t done anything in terms of the little things, like naming it. Thus Cities of Refuge Ministry was born. The overall vision is to keep buying and rehabbing houses, using some for transitional housing and others to provide home ownership opportunities for some of our neighbors. We will concentrate in one neighborhood, to help revitalize it. We use the rehabbing projects to employ our neighbors, but we are setting up other microbusinesses to help employ them also.

Anyway, I say all this to explain what I’ve been up to (I’m the Executive Director of Cities of Refuge Ministries) and to say that our web site is finally up and running.  You can also follow us on Twitter.

 

 

 

*And now, a Martin flashback …

Bring Me to New York

Author and teacher extraordinaire, Kevin Lucia, is doing a series of fundraiser events in order to raise money to have me come out to speak to some of his students at Seton Catholic Central High School. I thought I’d let you all know to see if we could help out (I know, not TOO self-serving):

1) There’s the IndieGoGo. From the site…

For the past four years, Seton Catholic Central High School in Binghamton, New York has been fortunate enough to enjoy visits from a variety of acclaimed poets and writers who’ve donated their time and effort to work with our student writers: Daniel G.Keohane, Andrei Guruianu, Bryan Davis, Norman Prentiss, Claudia Gabel, Rio Youers, and Phil Tomasso. For the past two years, we’ve also had the extreme pleasure of hosting creative writing workshops taught by Tom Monteleone and F. Paul Wilson, as a well as an illustration workshop with Danny Evarts.

This year, acclaimed horror and urban fantasy author Maurice Broaddus was slated to visit Seton Catholic Central High, but our usual grant sources dissolved due to budget cuts shortly after Maurice agreed. The purpose of this group is to “quarterback” fund-raising efforts among the Seton Catholic Central High School community and the horror community, as well as Maurice Broaddus’ readers. Among these efforts is a Barnes & Noble Book Fair – running in-store January 25th – January 27th, and online through February 1st. Other fund-raising efforts – book auctions, and a Kickstarter page – will be listed here, also.

2) There’s a Barnes & Noble event. If anyone wants to purchase anything online at BN.com from January 25th through February 1st, if they use the following promo code: 11008356, that will count toward their totals. More details can be found on Kevin’s site.

I fully expect my friends to pitch in. Any excuse to ship me out of their hair …