Cecilia Tan's Blog, page 37

Aha! Hello Goodreads!

Well, it took me far longer how to figure out how to post directly here on Goodreads than it probably should have. Most of the posts that appear here are fed from my regular blog, but it seemed like I should be able to do a Good-reads-only one!

Blame the cough medicine. I'm in bed today with a nasty cough and sore throat. Hence I'm playing around on the Internet instead of doing "real" work (or writing). I'm nested in the bottom bunk under corwin's loft, and all three of my cats have decided to be in the top bunk. I hear them wrassling from time to time. They *were* all cuddling with me for a while, but each time I cough they get scared and jump away. So they decided to hang around with me... from a safe distance.

What I'm here to point up today though isn't my health. I wanted to mention that I added the video of the Daron's Guitar Chronicles kickstarter to my Goodreads profile so folks here can easily see it. What the kickstarter is about is trying to raise the funds to produce a paperback omnibus that would put volumes 1, 2, and 3 of the ebooks into one big "real" book. For a $25 pledge, you can pre-order the book (including shipping) or if you're interested in other perks, there are some fun band merch rewards. As of right now we've raised over $900 of the $2,750 needed to make it happen! There are 20 days left in the campaign and once it closes, it's over. If we don't make the $2,750 goal by then, no one gets charged. If we do, then everyone chips in their pledged amount and off we go!

All the details on how much to pledge (as low as $5) are on the kickstarter page for DGC, here: http://kck.st/IlE7Bi.

If you're fans of Daron, there are some bonuses associated with what happens if we got OVER the goal amount, too. Like at $3,500 Daron will do a live one-hour online chat with all the donors. Please have a look at the video and tell your friends if you think the project looks cool. :-)

Kickstarter update! 29% funded with 20 days go!

So a little over a week has passed on the Daron’s Guitar Chronicles Kickstarter, and it’s going great! We’ve been averaging about $100 per day, and at that pace we’ll just hit the target with maybe a day to spare? It’d be AWESOME if it sped up because I worry I don’t want to hit people over the head with it. But the one day I didn’t post, tweet, or Facebook about it was the one day donations were zero. So that seems to say I have to mention it every day to keep it going until we hit the target.

As of this writing we’ve raised $819 with $1,933 to go to make the $2,750 target. One thing I should point out is that if you’re waiting for your paycheck to clear before donating, your donation WON’T be charged until the last day of the campaign. Kickstarter waits to see if the target is successfully reached, and if it is, they charge everyone at once at the end. So you won’t be charged until May 22 at the earliest.

Here’s the link to the Kickstarter page, which has all the info on rewards (one of which is you just pre-order the paperback tome for $25) and where you pledge! http://kck.st/IlE7Bi Thanks! And remember, spreading the word and telling other people why you think the project is worthy of support helps, too!

Trying to embed that Kickstarter video one more time…

I uploaded it to Youtube and we’ll try it with the old style embed code and see if that works. (For those who missed my earlier post: I launched a Kickstarter! Please help me put Daron’s Guitar Chronicles into a paperback edition! Full details on the Kickstarter page here: http://kck.st/IlE7Bi)

I’m an NLA Writing Award finalist! Woo!! Complete list of finalists:

FINALISTS ANNOUNCED FOR NLA-I WRITING AWARDS

(Columbus, OH) — National Leather Association–International (NLA-I), a leading organization for activists in the pansexual SM/leather/fetish community, announced today the finalists for its annual writing awards for works published in 2011. Named after activists and writers Geoff Mains, John Preston, Pauline Reage, Cynthia Slater, and the groundbreaking organization Samois, they are awarded annually to recognize excellence in writing and publishing about leather, SM, bondage and fetishes.

The finalists for the Cynthia Slater Non-fiction Article Award are:

Jack Fritscher, “Leather’s Burning Man: The History of the Folsom Street Fair” (Bay Area Reporter)
Mollena Williams, “Tables Briefly Turned” (from her blog at: http://www.mollena.com/)

The finalists for the Geoff Mains Non-fiction Book Award are:

Tracy Bain and Owen Keehnen, Leatherman: The Legend of Chuck Renslow (CreateSpace)
Gayle Rubin, Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader (Duke University Press)
Jim Stewart, Folsom Street Blues: A Memoir of 1970s SoMa and Leatherfolk in Gay San Francisco (Palm Drive)

The finalists for the Pauline Reage Novel Award are:

Lauren Gallagher, Reconstructing Meredith (Carnal Passions)
Jeff Mann, Fog: A Novel of Desire and Reprisal (Bear Bones Books)
Cherise Sinclair, To Command and Collar (Loose Id)
Cecilia Tan, The Prince’s Boy: Volumes 1 & 2 (Circlet)

The finalists for the John Preston Short Fiction Award are:

Kissiah Aiken, “Transformative,” which appeared in Nobilis Reed (ed.), “Coming Together in Flux” (CreateSpace)
Laura Antoniou, ” The Man with the Phoenix Tattoo,” which appeared in Tristan Taormino (ed.), Take Me There.
Jeff Mann, ” Jeff and Sam: After the Concert,” which appeared in Shane Allison (ed.), Brief Encounters: 69 Hot Gay Shorts.
M. Svairini, “Mouth,” which appeared in Lauren P. Burka (ed.), Up for Grabs 2: Exploring More Worlds of Gender (Circlet)
Xan West, “It’s My Job,” which appeared in Richard Labonte (ed.), Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (Cleis)

The finalists for the Samois Anthology Award are:

Rachel Kramer Bussel, Surrender: Erotic Tales of Female Pleasure and Submission (Cleis)

Rachel Kramer Bussel, Best Bondage Erotic 2012 (Cleis)

Alison Tyler, Slave to Love (Cleis)

The winners will be announced at the National Leather Association’s Annual General Meeting, which will be held during Tribal Fire (4-6 May 2012) in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Please contact the award committee chair, Steve Vakesh, for more information about the awards at stevevakesh@gmail.com. For more information about Tribal Fire or the National Leather Association, see: http://www.tribalfireokc.com/ and http://www.nla-i.com.

I'm an NLA Writing Award finalist! Woo!! Complete list of finalists:

FINALISTS ANNOUNCED FOR NLA-I WRITING AWARDS

(Columbus, OH) — National Leather Association–International (NLA-I), a leading organization for activists in the pansexual SM/leather/fetish community, announced today the finalists for its annual writing awards for works published in 2011. Named after activists and writers Geoff Mains, John Preston, Pauline Reage, Cynthia Slater, and the groundbreaking organization Samois, they are awarded annually to recognize excellence in writing and publishing about leather, SM, bondage and fetishes.

The finalists for the Cynthia Slater Non-fiction Article Award are:

Jack Fritscher, "Leather's Burning Man: The History of the Folsom Street Fair" (Bay Area Reporter)
Mollena Williams, "Tables Briefly Turned" (from her blog at: http://www.mollena.com/)

The finalists for the Geoff Mains Non-fiction Book Award are:

Tracy Bain and Owen Keehnen, Leatherman: The Legend of Chuck Renslow (CreateSpace)
Gayle Rubin, Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader (Duke University Press)
Jim Stewart, Folsom Street Blues: A Memoir of 1970s SoMa and Leatherfolk in Gay San Francisco (Palm Drive)

The finalists for the Pauline Reage Novel Award are:

Lauren Gallagher, Reconstructing Meredith (Carnal Passions)
Jeff Mann, Fog: A Novel of Desire and Reprisal (Bear Bones Books)
Cherise Sinclair, To Command and Collar (Loose Id)
Cecilia Tan, The Prince's Boy: Volumes 1 & 2 (Circlet)

The finalists for the John Preston Short Fiction Award are:

Kissiah Aiken, "Transformative," which appeared in Nobilis Reed (ed.), "Coming Together in Flux" (CreateSpace)
Laura Antoniou, " The Man with the Phoenix Tattoo," which appeared in Tristan Taormino (ed.), Take Me There.
Jeff Mann, " Jeff and Sam: After the Concert," which appeared in Shane Allison (ed.), Brief Encounters: 69 Hot Gay Shorts.
M. Svairini, "Mouth," which appeared in Lauren P. Burka (ed.), Up for Grabs 2: Exploring More Worlds of Gender (Circlet)
Xan West, "It's My Job," which appeared in Richard Labonte (ed.), Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (Cleis)

The finalists for the Samois Anthology Award are:

Rachel Kramer Bussel, Surrender: Erotic Tales of Female Pleasure and Submission (Cleis)

Rachel Kramer Bussel, Best Bondage Erotic 2012 (Cleis)

Alison Tyler, Slave to Love (Cleis)

The winners will be announced at the National Leather Association's Annual General Meeting, which will be held during Tribal Fire (4-6 May 2012) in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Please contact the award committee chair, Steve Vakesh, for more information about the awards at stevevakesh@gmail.com. For more information about Tribal Fire or the National Leather Association, see: http://www.tribalfireokc.com/ and http://www.nla-i.com.

Seeking dominant woman/submissive man artwork…

Help me find cover art for a gorgeous book about a dominant woman and her male submissive!

So, Circlet Press will be publishing a book very soon called The Viscountess Investigates by Cameron Quintain. It's an erotic mystery in a BDSM fantasy world which intersects our own, in which a dominant woman (the Viscountess) and her submissive (the aptly named Severin) are a detective team who must move through the various BDSM "dominions" (alternate universes reached through a kind of S/M-based magic) to search for a killer.

It's a smart book, very sexy, with touches of victoriana, leather culture, and many many sf/fantasy references. Most importantly, its main characters are not young fluffy porn models.

The search for a cover photograph or image has so far proved fruitless. Most of the stuff out there with any kind of BDSM theme is of 18-year-old girls with teased hair and blue eyeshadow in collars and PVC. Um, no.

What I would love is something like:

- a tasteful image of a woman's boot-clad leg, being kissed by a worshipful male submissive

- a shot of her leather gloved hands, one holding a whip/flogger and one a Sherlock-Holmes-style magnifying glass

- A woman in Victorian dress with a man (clothed or no) kneeling at her feet

Now, you'd think a photo of a man kissing a shoe or boot wouldn't be too hard to find in stock photo sites, but it's just a barren wasteland.

Our budget is not huge, but I can offer up to $50 for use of an image if someone has one to sell me the rights to. It needs to be 300 dpi and a minimum of 6×6″ in size (6×9″ is ideal, but we can deal with other aspect ratios). Suggestions, pointers, artist friends, please send them my way. Thank you!

Calligraphy: in which I engage in fanart of a sort…

So, I am not an artist. Art class was always one of my favorites in school, but I've never had any talent at drawing or really in transferring either what I see or what I imagine onto paper. As the de facto art director for Circlet Press over the past 20 years, I've become a decent designer, though, and as a writer by trade, the one form of visual art that has continually drawn my interest since I was a teenager is calligraphy.

So, I've dabbled in it here and there. But when a creative pursuit (such as writing) is one's livelihood, that often doesn't leave a lot of time for other creative hobbies. Acting, playing music, and lettering have all taken back seats so far back they may as well be in a different bus from me. (Writing fanfic is by far my favorite hobby… and it's indistinguishable from what I do for a living, except for the non-commercial part.)

But on February 20th I decided I wanted to spend about 15 minutes a day practicing my lettering and learning/inventing some alphabets. About five years ago I actually set up a calligraphy work desk and now, five years later, I'm finally USING it!! So, under the cut, picspam of the letterings I've been doing!

You know how coincidences happen, right? On February 20th I decided I was going to start calligraphing more. A few days later, out of the blue, a friend sent me a link to the Goulet Pen Company website, where they sell scented inks, including a line of not-so-subtly Harry Potter themed ones with names like "Magic Boarding School." I posted then about it, and placed an order for a bunch of samples.

Well, the order arrived just a few days later, and I've spent the past few nights making some Potter-themed pages. After all, with names like "Magic Alchemist" how could I resist writing something Snapely? Oh and check out the nicely penned note on my order:

Penned note reads "I love Harry Potter" with a smiley face.

(I had put in my comments on the online order that "I recommended you to my Harry Potter fanfiction friends on Livejournal!" after seeing that one of the pull-down menu choices on the "How did you hear of Goulet Pen Co.?" question in the check-out process was "Harry Potter Fan Fiction.")

First, a review of the inks. I opened each small bottle for a sniff first. All are pleasant in their way, though a bit strong for someone like me who doesn't wear perfume or use perfumed soaps or detergents. However, no one is going to be smelling these right out of the bottle except curious letterers like me. These little sample bottles were $1.75 each from Goulet Pens.

The first one I opened was "Black Roses." The rose scent is reminiscent of the rose soaps one used to be able to get at Crabtree & Evelyn. (Perhaps one still can; I don't know having given up scents years ago because of allergies. I can't even go into the store without breaking out in hives. Now that I think about it, shopping malls in general give me the willies also, so I haven't frequented them much since my teen years in New Jersey which I ESCAPED THANK YOU VERY MUCH.)

Ahem. Anyway. Very nice rose scent.

I decided to take one of my Snape drabbles, pare it down to under 30 words, and letter that. So here it is, entitled "Severus Snake."



The text reads:

The mark is new, the skin, sensitive.

It is raised, like the embossed title on a leatherbound book.

This is one skin he will not be shedding soon.

Then I decided to take an artier photo of it:

After the ink had dried, I could still smell the rose perfume. The next night, the scent was fainter, but still there. Now, a few nights later, I can still smell it. I wonder how it would be if sealed in an envelope and then opened by the recipient. Would it be detectable if they didn't know to sniff the paper? Not sure, but I think it was nice, anyway.

The above was written with some no-name pen I got as a gift from a friend of a friend, who brought me a whole set of nibs and such in a bookstore-packaged gift set. (The brand is "The Writing Collection." I believe one finds them in museum stores often, too. Thank you, Patricia!) So the pen is just a tooled wooden dowel piece with a place for the nibs to be slotted in. I have barely experimented with the nibs, I admit. Soon.

Next, I decided to do some "method" calligraphy for the next drabble-ish thing. "Advanced Potion Making" I though could stand in as if a page of young Severus's notes. So I wanted a lettering style that was spidery and spikey. For this one I opened the bottle of "Magic Alchemist."

"Magic Alchemist" was described on another website as "masculine, astringent, and mysterious." Yes. It's not flowery ("feminine") at all, and very earthy. Rather reminiscent of leather dye, with a rich loam undernote.

I'm not happy yet with the spidery alphabet I'm trying to develop, but here's a sample:

I used a quill with a metal nib, one of my oldest pens, which my best friend from high school, Bonnie, gave me ages and ages ago. Amazingly, she gave it to me in a set with a bottle of blue ink, which is still in use! That's some good ink, man. I have several jars of much much more recent vintage where the ink has turned to: jelly, dust, stone, etc…

Now, back to our "Advanced Potions" story. The plot thickens when someone else (you imagine for yourself who…) crosses out "potion" and replaces it with "relationship." That's copper ink you see below. Whose hand is that? Hermione? Draco? Lily Evans?

The third of the scented inks I tried was Sandalwood. This one is a greenish blue, and the scent wasn't really at all like sandalwood to me. It did smell basically like the white handsoap that comes out of lots of soap dispensers, the brand is Softsoap. Very pleasant to smell, if a bit perfume-y.

By the way, I was pleased to find none of the scented inks so far has set off my allergies. No sinus headache, no itching eyes. I can't even set foot in a Yankee Candle Shoppe or burn a bit of incense without suffering, so these are very gentle in impact on me.

With the Sandalwood, I tried another spikey/spidery variation, with yet a different pen. I'm still not happy with it — mostly I think my hand needs to become more expressive and also settle a bit more on what letterforms I'm trying to use. This was another one where I tried to "channel" Severus. This one is a fountain pen I got for Christmas a few years back, a German refillable, brand name "Lamy." Yes, another gift pen, and thank heaven for friends who not only support but outright foment artistic endeavors. (Including the friend who pointed me to Goulet Pens in the first place…!)

Anyway, this one is a wee bit of a joke, "Severus Snape's To Do List:"

Finally, I set about trying the actual pen(s) I bought from Goulet along with the ink. I bought two Pilot Parallels, with the 3.8 mm nibs, for doing more gothic style lettering. The result is this, what I think is one of my better pieces to date, though the spacing still needs work, and some of my letters aren't consistent. Anyone who knows calligraphy will pick out the amateur mistakes in here. But I am fairly happy with the general effect achieved on this piece.

One of the hallmarks of the Pilot Parallel Pen is the ability to change color while writing. Hence the mysterious slide from authoritative black into red at the end… why would the writer need to transfigure his blood into ink and why toward the end might that transfiguration begin to fail…?

Here's a final shot of a portion of my work desk. Combining my interest in lettering with my Harry Potter habit probably bodes very well for this hobby.

Creative people panel, ahoy

I'm going to be on a panel of creative folk speaking on the subject of "Tales from the Net: Making A Living as a Creative Person" at the Mass Pirate Party Conference!

We're looking for one or two more panelists, so if you know a musician or webcomic artist in the Boston area who might like to speak, the fellow to contact is Jamie O'Keefe. More info here: http://www.masspirates.org/blog/conference/

Ascendio is coming!

The programming folks for Ascendio, the Harry Potter convention in Orlando this coming July, will soon begin announcing some of the chosen programs, presentations, and panels. I have a sneak peek here of a few items in the Quill Track that I will be speaking on!

Accio Books! How Digital Publishing Has Made Gatekeepers Of Us All



Panelists: Cecilia Tan, Mark Oshiro, Lev Grossman, Erin Pyne

Summary: With the advent of the e-book and the ease with which writers can self-publish to platforms such as Amazon Kindle, many authors are bypassing the traditional book publishing model in favor of self-publishing. This panel will discuss new avenues for publishing, and the pros and cons of going the traditional route, vs. self-publishing.

Schools of Magic: A Staple in Fantasy

Panelists: Lev Grossman, Cecilia Tan, Molly O'Neill

Summary: J.K Rowling was far from the first, and won't be the last, to write a fantasy using a magical school setting. From A Wizard of Earthsea's Roke to the Unseen University in Discworld, from Jane Yolen's Wizard Hall to Tamora Pierce's Carthak University, the magical school or university is a staple in fantasy literature. Why? In books intended for a young audience and featuring young protagonists, school may seem a logical setting for the age group, but there are many more reasons why an educational setting lends itself to fantasy storytelling. Lev Grossman sends his main character to Brakebills in upstate New York, while Cecilia Tan hides her Magic University inside Harvard.

And I'm not speaking on, but am looking forward to this one:

Katniss, Bella, and Hermione: Finding the Balance Between Asskicking Prowess and Emotional Realism in the Girls of YA Fiction

Panelists: Lindsay Ribar, Beth Revis, Aimee Carter, Michelle Hodkin

Summary: You've got Katniss, the champion fighter whose hard life has left her with little room for romantic emotions; and you've got Bella, who lives for love but trips over her own shadow and needs supernatural boys to save her. With literary role models like Hermione in the mix – Hermione, known for both her sensitivity and her asskicking skills – why are there still so many high-profile heroines who tend toward one extreme or the other? This panel will discuss the benefits and drawbacks of extreme portrayals of these various female protagonists, and what kind of heroines we want next from the YA market.

For more information on Ascendio, registering for the con, and other fun stuff that will be going on, check out http://hp2012.org/

And note that they are still taking proposals for presentations through February 29th! (Here: http://hp2012.org/?page_id=463)

Aspiring writers: some calls for submissions!

Three anthologies are currently open for submissions at Circlet Press:

Charming: Modern Gay Fairy Tales — we read for this over the summer/fall, but just didn't get quite enough. Deadline March 1st. Details: http://www.circlet.com/?p=3045

Erotic Shakespeare — come on, you know you want to! This anthology is being co-edited by Nikola Klaus with yours truly. Deadline: March 15th. Details: http://www.circlet.com/?p=3696

Like a Chill Down Your Spine: Erotic Ghost Stories — edited by Artemis Savory, the same editor who did Like a Moonrise. Deadline March 31st. Details: http://www.circlet.com/?p=3701

Circlet Press publishes erotic science fiction and fantasy, with occasional forays into the real world or literary fiction. The latter two anthologies are open to myriad sexualities and sexual identities, gay, kinky, straight, lesbian, transgender, unlabel-able, etc. There's more details if you follow the links above and leave questions for the editors on those posts so they can respond directly.