Brian Olsen's Blog, page 5

Make That Sausage: The Last Steps Before Self-Publishing (3)

(Part One) (Part Two)

Last time, I was left with the final draft of my next book, Dakota Bell and the Wastes of Time, in its completed state, all ready for the actual publication process.

The next step was to update my web site. I’m about to make a bunch of e-books with links leading back to it, and I need to make sure I have someplace for those links to go. First, a page for the book itself. I use a plug-in called MyBookTable which generates a page for each book. Here’s the link to the page for this book, if you want to check it out – as I write this, some of the links on it are active (and by the time you read this, all of them may be), but when I first made it, instead of the price it said, “Coming soon!” and there were no vendor links at all. Otherwise, it looked like it does now.

Next I needed to make a landing page for people who have finished the book. For each of my books there’s a hidden “thank you for reading” page, not accessible through the web site’s navigation menu. At the end of each book I ask the reader to leave me a review, and provide a link back to the page on the appropriate site – if you bought the book from Amazon, for example, it’ll send you back to the book’s Amazon page. That means for each and every vendor, I need to make a completely distinct e-book with unique links. That’s a lot of e-books! So I actually do this just for the major vendors – the rest get sent to this “thank you” page on my site, where they can then click the link for their appropriate store. (Yes, it would save a lot of work to have the generic link in every book, but the fewer times you make a reader click, the better.) Also, the first time I upload, I won’t have the link to the book’s pages at the vendor sites yet, so the generic link serves as a placeholder until I do. Here’s the “thank you” page, if you’re curious.

One last thing – wherever Dakota Bell is mentioned on my site, it says “Coming 2015!” Time to delete that, at long last!

Now I’m ready to make the epub files. Epub files are used by everybody except Amazon, which uses its own file format called mobi. Even though Amazon will be the first site I upload to, I’m leaving the mobi file for later. You can’t crack open and get inside a mobi file as easily as you can with an epub, so the epub is better at this stage, where I’m trying to find potential formatting issues. As I said, I’ll need an epub file for any vendor for which I think it’s worthwhile to provide direct links. At this point that’s Barnes and Noble, Kobo, iTunes, and Google Play. (But that might change – more on that later.) There are a few smaller vendors I distribute to through Draft2Digital, an e-book distribution platform, either because it’s not worth the effort to go to them directly, or because they don’t accept self-published authors directly. They get a general epub with all the links going to my website. That’s the one I’ll make first, for testing, because it’s the most generic. The body of the book is the same from version to version, so if this one is all right, I’ll only need to check the backmatter for the other versions.

I write my books in a program called Scrivener. I love, love, love Scrivener and recommend it for anybody who does any serious writing. It’s got a million features, most of which I ignore, but the most useful is it’s “Compile” function. It takes the book and turns it into whatever kind of file I need. I use it to make a Word file to send to my beta readers, and now I’ll use it to make all the epubs. It even generates a table of contents based on the chapter titles I created.

Once I’ve got the epub file, I open it in a free program called Adobe Digital Editions, which is an epub reader for your desktop. I go through it page by page, looking for anything weird. I was very lucky this time through – there were no formatting problems in the body of the book. When I did this for Mark Park and the Flume of Destiny, I discovered this bizarre issue where punctuation was not staying married to italicized words. So if, for example, I had somebody saying  a sentence with the last word emphasized, like:

“Can you believe that guy? What a jerk!”

and it came too close to the end of the line, it would display as:

“Can you believe that guy? What a jerk

!”

which is not attractive. It took me an entire day to figure out what was happening. Scrivener doesn’t allow you to look at the raw html of your document (something I really hope they fix in a future update), so I used another free program called Sigil to figure out that the html tags for the italics were creating a space between the italicized word and the non-italicized punctuation. I wound up having to put all the trailing punctuation in italics too – that was a bit of a process. (I could have fixed it in Sigil and re-saved the epub there, but then I’d have to use that as my source forever and ever rather than Scrivener any time I wanted to make changes – no dice.) Since I knew about that issue from the start this time, though, it was smooth sailing. (But if you find any orphaned punctuation in my books, do let me know, would you? Thanks.)

I did find one mistake, though – the links to the individual pages for the books on my website were wrong. They were pointing to the old links, before I used MyBookTable. So that had to be fixed, not just in Dakota, but in the three prior books as well.

One more check. Just because I think the epub’s code is fine and dandy doesn’t mean it is – there may be some invisible glitch in the html that will cause the vendors sites to reject it. Luckily there is a free epub validation website that does just what it says on the tin – you upload your book and in a few seconds it tells you if the code is good. Isn’t it nice to feel validated?

I made the epubs for all the other vendor sites (Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iTunes and Google Play), checked the links, and verified them. They all checked out, so I sideloaded them onto the various reader apps on my phone for a closer look at how they’ll actually display on devices. (I don’t have a Kindle or a Nook or a Kobo or a…whatever the hell you read Google books on, so this is the closest I can get. At least it’s an iPhone, so I’ve sort of got one of the five.) I checked Google first – it’s my second-best selling site, after Amazon. And while it displayed just fine and dandy, I realized I had made a mistake.

I have a short story out called This Is What He Should Have Said, and after rather dismal sales on other vendors I made it exclusive to Amazon so I could take advantage of their Kindle Unlimited program. Unfortunately, I apparently forgot to remove the links to it in the “Also by Brian Olsen” section at the back of all the non-Amazon books. Whoops! I need to delete that from each of the ebooks, and go back and do it for the first three books in the series too. Even small changes to an epub file can have unexpected consequences, and deleting a whole page isn’t all that small of a change. So I need to decide if I’m going to go forward and review all the epubs as they are, or go back, remake, reverify, and resideload them. But that’s been quite enough work for one day, so I’ll have to sleep on that and figure it out tomorrow.

Ooh, a cliffhanger! Seems like a good place to leave off, until next time…

Make That Sausage: The Last Steps Before Self-Publishing (2)

(Part One)

I’m kind of wishing I had come up with a better title for this series of posts. Ah, well.

I left off last time with a relatively clean draft in Scrivener. All my edits and notes from my beta readers were in, and I had made a sweep for common errors and for general clean-up. I was ready for my final editing pass before publication.

After I put up that blog post, I got back to work. I used Scrivener to make a .mobi file, which is the type of file used by Amazon for the Kindle. I’ll get into the specifics of that in my next post – there’s a lot more e-book creation to come – but I made a .mobi because I want to read the book on the Kindle app on my phone. I don’t own any actual e-readers, but my phone has got the Kindle, Nook, Kobo and iBooks apps, so I can approximate how my books will look on other devices reasonably well. I’m going with the Kindle for now because the Amazon store is far and away where I make most of my sales, so it takes top priority when it comes to book formatting.

Once I sideloaded the book onto my phone via iTunes, I started to read. I read the book aloud to myself because it’s a great way to catch typos. I only started doing this with my last book, Mark Park and the Flume of Destiny, but I’ll be doing it with all of them going forward. When you read words on a page or screen, especially when you read the same thing for the umpteenth time, your mind tends to fill in the blanks if something is missing – your eyes just dart right past that missing period or preposition. When you read aloud, you’re forced to pay closer attention. Even if my mouth is moving on automatic, it’ll trip over a typo almost every time.

I’m not making many significant changes at this point. I’m correcting obvious errors, and occasionally altering some word choices. If a non-trivial word is repeated within a paragraph, I’ll change or delete one of the instances to something else.  For example, I came across this sentence: She spun around, gesturing to the city around them. Two “around”s in one sentence is awkward and redundant, so the second became “surrounding,” which sounds a little better. (Although now I’m thinking they still sound too similar. Ah, well. Books are never finished, only abandoned, as da Vinci sort of said.)

Very occasionally I’ll catch something more crucial. The major continuity errors have all been fixed (fingers crossed), but some minor ones have slipped through. There’s a character from earlier in the series re-introduced in this book (no spoilers!). A new character asks the protagonists how they know that re-introduced character, but just two chapters earlier they had already discussed him, and she had been present for that conversation. Whoops! Fixed. I didn’t catch it before, because there had always been several days between editing those two chapters and every time I just plumb forgot she had already been told who he was. This time I’m reading the book so quickly that mistakes like that jump right out.

Another example – in chapter twenty-two, Tayisha can’t fit an important object in the pocket of her jeans. This time through, I remembered that back in chapter twelve she had fit the object into her pocket with no problem at all. The object not fitting is more important, so back to chapter twelve I went to figure out another way for Tayisha to carry the object around.

I’m a pretty fast reader, so this editing pass moved right along. I can get through about three chapters in an hour – that’s an approximation, because the length of the chapters varies quite a bit. The shortest is 1,290 (chapter nineteen) and the longest is 10, 503 (chapter twenty-eight – the big climax), but those are outliers, so let’s average. Right now the book is 124,565 words. (Thanks, Scrivener! You make counting easy.) At 29 chapters, that’s about 4,300 words per chapter (sounds about right for most of them), so about 13,000 words an hour.  I got through six chapters that first Saturday, but almost every day since then I’ve had either a fetish festival or work. (One of those was way more fun than the other.) I’ve only had about an hour in the evening to edit, but that’s still three chapters a day, sometimes more. And this past Saturday, while resting between Pride celebrations (of which I took many pictures that you can see here), I went on a binge – I got eight chapters done, and finished the book.

So that’s it! A clean fifth draft of Dakota Bell and the Wastes of Time, all ready for you to read, right? Well, not quite. Now the fun really starts, as I get ready to format. More next time…

 

Folsom Street East 2015

The Folsom Street East festival happens every year in NYC. It’s a street fair celebrating and serving the LGBT leather/fetish/kink community. I’ve always wanted to check it out, despite the fact that I am more vanilla than a dish of vanilla ice cream with vanilla sauce and a starter of vanilla-flavored Lactaid. I’ve never been able to make it to the festival before, but with the sun shining and nothing but free time on my plate, I took the A train down to Chelsea.

(Fair warning – my pictures are all pretty tame, but I guess they could be considered not safe for work, unless you work somewhere particularly awesome.)

The festival took place on West 27th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues. It started at 11, and I got there I think around 11:45. The guy on stilts with the umbrella was greeting everyone with high fives. Note the guy in the dog mask making a call. Gotta be hard to hear through that thing. On the other side of the street, notice the bare butt. There were a lot of those.

I confess, at first I was somewhat underwhelmed. Here’s the event stage – there were supposed to be performers, but there was just a DJ playing pop songs. (He was playing Erasure when I walked in, so no complaints there, but it wasn’t particularly exciting.) And there wasn’t much of a crowd. There was this, though.

Can’t have a queer event without assholes! The High Line park ran directly over the entrance (you can see the underside of it in both of the top two pictures). Most of the passers-by seemed to be enjoying the unexpected sights, but this guy was camped out all day, wasting his life. That’s all I ever want to say to these people – I don’t want to fight or yell. I just want to say – you’re wasting your life on hate. Stop wasting your life. You only get one.

I walked the length of the block and back again, and I was feeling a little disappointed. There weren’t a lot of people there, and the vendors were fine, but since I don’t really need a leather harness there wasn’t much for me to shop for. I people-watched for a bit, then stopped to rest, and a guy in a dog mask (a different guy) complimented my Doctor Who shirt and gave me a bottle of water, which was nice. But after maybe forty-five minutes I felt like I had seen all I needed to. So I left and got lunch at a nearby pub. After, I decided to swing back and give it one more chance. I had already paid my admission fee, after all, so I might as well get the most out of it.

The fair had picked up – there were a lot more people there. I walked to the end again, and even though the vendors still didn’t really hold my interest, it was fun to check out all the different people. I love when people get together to show their love for some interest they share, particularly when that interest is somewhat outside of the mainstream. (It’s one reason I love comic conventions so much.) There was just such a nice, friendly atmosphere. I was glad I had given it a second try, but I decided to leave. I wasn’t taking a lot of pictures – I don’t think anyone would have minded, but it seemed intrusive, particularly as this isn’t really my community. So I made my way to the exit. Then I stumbled onto this.

The New York Bondage Club was just beginning a demonstration! The guy in the red and black pants was laying down the mats as I walked by, so I stopped, figuring something was about to happen, and wound up with a front row seat as the crowd filled in behind me. He tied up the guy in the green and proceeded to swat him with a paddle. There were also clothespins on nipples, which made me wince a little. I took a lot of pictures, but I’m afraid this is the only one I can share without having to put an adult-content filter on my blog. After they were done, they hugged. It was very sweet.

I continued on my way towards the exit. I turned back and took a picture of the crowd.

Such a friendly bunch! I did not try the sausage, since I was still full from lunch.

My timing was perfect, because just as I got back to the front, the performers were finally starting on the stage.

That’s Will Sheridan, singer, rapper, and former college basketball player for the Villanova Wildcats (fun fact!), with his back-up dancers. He was fun and filthy and his performance was kick-ass. Seriously talented with a good sense of humor about everything – I liked him.

I didn’t get this guy’s name (and can’t find it online) but he came out and rapped during one of Sheridan’s songs.

There was a lull between performances, so I snapped some more crowd pics.

These were the hosts for the afternoon. The far left was the ASL interpreter, next to her is Farrah Moans, and on the far right is Paul Short. In the middle is a representative from Visual AIDS, one of the charities benefiting from the festival. Folsom Street East is a not-for-profit – money also went to the New York City Anti-Violence Project. So who did more good today – the organizers of this fetish festival, or the God-botherer with the sign?

These are The Glamz, a pop cover band, and girl, they werked! Stunning voices, great song selection – a Spice Girls medley, TLC’s “Waterfalls,” Scissor Sisters’ “Filthy Gorgeous,” Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls,” and a bunch more. They sang, they danced, they killed it.

There were more performers to come, but I was leathered out so I called it a day. Even if this isn’t quite my scene, the LGBT leather/fetish/kink community is always just so damn friendly it would have been impossible to leave this festival not in a good mood. Add awesome performances from Will Sheridan and The Glamz on top of that, and I was very glad I came. So thanks for a fun Sunday afternoon, Folsom Street East! See you next year. (Maybe.)

 

 

Make That Sausage: The Last Steps Before Self-Publishing (1)

I’m in the final steps before publication of my fourth book, Dakota Bell and the Wastes of Time. If you’re curious about the nuts and bolts of self-pubishing (and why exactly it takes so damn long between the time I trumpet on Facebook that I’ve finished the last draft and the actual time you can get the book), over the next few weeks I’m going to write some posts going through the final stages of the pre-publishing process. (My stages, that is – other writers have their own processes, but this is what works for me.)

Yesterday I finished the fourth draft of the book. The first draft is, obviously, the first time putting everything down on paper, working from a chapter-by-chapter outline I already prepared. (In this case, I wrote the outlines for the second, third and fourth books in this series immediately after I published the first book). My second draft consists of major revisions – during the first draft I don’t go back and make major changes, I just take notes of what to look at later (so if I find halfway through the first draft that I still need a character I killed off earlier, for example, I don’t go back and fix it then and there, I just keep moving forward. He gets un-killed in the second draft). When I finish the second draft, I load it onto the Kindle app on my phone. I read it through while sitting in front of my computer – looking at it in a different format helps me catch typos and errors I missed before. That’s how I create the third draft.

This third draft is then sent to my beta readers – I’ve got five for this book, and they all go far above and beyond what would be expected of a typical beta reader. I don’t hire a professional editor, so my beta readers serve that function. (Most of them are writers or editors in their own right, so they do a pretty great job.) When I get the notes back from them, I go back through the book incorporating the notes I want to keep (which is most of them). This is also the fastest I’ll go through a draft, which is good – it helps me catch plot, continuity, or stylistic problems I might otherwise have missed. (It’s easy to relate a bit of exposition more than once, for example, just because I forgot I already went through it earlier in the book.) (In this book, one of my beta readers pointed out that the main characters are very pleased with themselves in chapter twenty-seven for figuring out a plot point that was flat-out explained to them back in chapter three. Whoopsie!)

So that’s the story so far. I finished the fourth draft yesterday, and today I begin the fifth and final draft, the draft that will actually see publication. Today was basic maintenance – I have a sort of style guide for myself of problematic words and phrases that pop up in my books. Some of them can be spelled in more than one way and I want to be sure I pick one and stick with it, or they’re words that are easy to get wrong so I want to do one final check for them.

Here’s my list:

log in, logged in, log out, logged out as a verb; log-in as a noun
backup as a noun or adjective; back up as a verb; never back-up
online, not on-line
workstation, not work station
okay, not ok
blonde for a woman, blond for a man
board of directors, not Board of Directors, unless used formally: “the Amalgamated Synergy Board of Directors,” but “Jack sat on the board of directors.”
Wi-Fi, not wifi or Wifi or WiFi
Thirty-third Street, not Thirty-Third Street (I have gone back and forth on this one a million times)
geez, not jeez
email, not e-mail
leaped, not leapt
make-up, not make up
park-goers, not parkgoers or park goers
park employee, not parks employee
smartphone, not smart phone
charcoal-gray, not charcoal gray
St. Mark’s Place, not Saint Mark’s Place
trapdoor, not trap door

Then there are those characters of my own creation whose names I’m constantly getting wrong:

AmSyn, not AmSym
Tamsin, not Tasmin
Leelee, not Lelee
McAuley, not MacAuley

After I’ve done that, I’ve got one final sweep:

Convert all double spaces to single spaces. This happens a lot after punctuation. Easy to fix with find and replace.
Remove all dangling spaces before or after paragraph marks. This is one place where Scrivener, the program I write in which I otherwise adore, fails me – it can’t find paragraph marks. I have to convert to Word, find them there, then manually delete the spaces in Scrivener.
Convert all hyphens being used as dashes into proper dashes. ( – to – )

Then there may be random things I have to fix that can vary per book. When I made invisible characters (like spaces) visible, I saw that in this book for some reason after every chapter number (”Chapter Two”) there was an unnecessary tab. Delete and repeat.

Now, in theory, I have a clean draft with no errors. (Hah! Ah, hah hah. Sorry, I couldn’t keep a straight face there.) The next step will be to make an epub file and load it onto my Kindle app for one last pass through. But I’ll get into all of that next time…

Flame Con 2015

My con-a-thon come to an end yesterday with the nerd convergence I had been looking forward to most of all: Flame Con, New York City’s first queer comic con. Book Con and Special Edition, although a lot of fun, leaned a little straight, so I was looking forward to cranking up the ‘mo and getting my gay geek on.

The event was in Brooklyn, at the Grand Prospect Hall (“We make your dreams come true!“). I wasn’t flying solo this time, I was joined by my friend and comrade in gay geekery Mike. We got there around noon, just as the event was starting. There was no line to speak of, probably because check-in was very well-staffed – we were in nice and quick.

 

I probably could have composed that picture better. We made our way to the Ballroom, which is where most of the exhibitors were located (that’s it in the background of the picture above), and immediately ran into an old grad school friend, the immensely hilarious Keisha Zollar!

That’s Mike, Keisha and me. Keisha was there to promote a web series she’s appearing in and writing for, In Game, a comedy about LARPing. Check it out, nerds! Keisha’s brilliant, so anything she’s worked on is bound to be brilliant too.

Mike and I had about an hour before the first panel we were planning on attending, so we wandered the tables, taking in the exhibitors for a while. Lots of great queer indie artists. Oh, and cosplayers, of course!

Here are Power Girl and Black Canary, boob window and fishnets and all. More cosplayers to come, but first, that aforementioned panel. It was called “No More Mister Nice Gay: Uber Violence and Queer Storytelling”, and it was in the Salon, which was a nice little room with comfy chairs and a pile of disused furniture in the back separated from us by some big sheets of plywood that were just leaning against it…uh…that was a little odd. Storage problems at the Grand Prospect Hall, maybe? (Actually, the Hall is a really interesting venue. It feels a bit tacky and past its prime, but in an oddly charming way. Although we did worry that the off-kilter chandeliers might come crashing down on the Ballroom at any minute.)

Here’s the panel. Left to right, that’s Kelsey Hercs and Lawrence Gullo, co-writers of the web comic Bash Back; Steve Orlando, writer of DC Comics’ new series Midnighter; and moderator Bobby Hankinson of Towleroad.com. It was a good discussion, although I can’t say they really got too in-depth on the topic at hand. But it was interesting to hear Orlando talk about Midnighter, the first solo ongoing series starring a gay male character from one of the big two comics publishers. (Although it’s technically true that Midnighter is the first gay male character to headline a book from DC or Marvel, this isn’t the first series to do so, because Midnighter already had his own ongoing series a couple of years ago. Everybody seems to be pretending that never existed for some reason.) (Also, Northstar had his own series at Marvel in the 90’s, but that doesn’t count because 1) it was a four-issue limited series, not an ongoing; 2) his homosexuality was never once mentioned; and 3) it was fucking terrible.)

There were no panels at two o’clock that we wanted to see, so Mike and I decided to duck out for lunch. But on the way out, more cosplayers!

This Empire Strikes Back Luke Skywalker sat directly in front of us at the panel and he wasn’t at all distracting, nope. (Doesn’t Yoda look so happy? Like he’s giving Luke a big hug for doing such a good job at his Jedi training that day.)

Sensational Wonder Woman! I don’t know this cosplayer’s name but I feel like I see her at a lot of cons, always serving perfection. I think I want to be her when I grow up. (Update! This is Jay Justice, and you should check her out because she’s super cool.)

Day drinking! There wasn’t much in the way of food at the con, but luckily there were plenty of options just around the corner.

Stomachs full and livers filtering, we returned to the con. We skipped a panel on horror in favor of finishing up exploring the floor, and stumbled across this guy.

That’s Bill Roundy, cartoonist extraordinaire. You may know him from his comic Orientation Police, about his experiences dating trans men, which went viral a short while back, or, if you’re a Brooklynite, from Bar Scrawl, a series of cartoon reviews of Brooklyn bars (which I am obsessed with, even though I’ve never gone to one of the bars and have no serious plans to). I met Bill many years ago through the Gay League, an online group of gay comics fans which used to have weekly meet-ups for New York members. I’ve lost touch with just about everybody else from that group, but I’ve stayed in loose contact with Bill, mostly thanks to occasional random run-ins at bars every other year or so.

The woman in blue, seated two people down from Bill, is Molly Ostertag, whom I bought a book from at Special Edition last week (which I talked about in my last post). I waited until she had people browsing her books and then told her somewhat loudly how much I had enjoyed Bacchanalia. Hope I spurred some sales!

More cosplay! This Raven stayed constantly in character (or possibly he just has a naturally morose resting face).

We had seen just about everything in the main Ballroom by this point. I picked up a few books, including a collection of Virgil by Steve Orlando (Midnighter guy). He introduced me to  Genevieve Valentine, current writer of Catwoman, who was seated at his table with him, and I told her how much I’m enjoying her run. (Selina’s the crime boss of Gotham now, and also bisexual. It’s pretty good – mob drama with supervillains.) I also picked up a comic created specifically for the con by Scott Sosebee, an artist whose work I was unfamiliar with but looked pretty good. I always like to take a chance on a new indie creator at cons, and Scott was the lucky winner this time! I’m looking forward to reading the book.

We crossed over to the Atrium to see the exhibitors there, but the abundance of windows made for a greenhouse effect that the Hall’s AC just couldn’t overcome, so we only made one quick tour through before fleeing the heat. So back to the Ballroom we went, for more cosplay action!

Here’s another Titan, Starfire. Love it!

A triptych of X-Men: Storm, Jubilee (with bubble!) and Kitty Pryde, with an adorable little Lockheed.

Never have I been angrier at my stupid camera for taking blurry shots. Here’s Captain America and Woody. Essentially. Or a guy in Captain America Underoos and someone from the Toy Story porn parody. Captain America seemed confused as to why I wanted to take his picture. I was confused by his confusion.

Aquaman! Also a bummer how blurry this came out. My camera is slow to focus, and I hate to ask people to keep waiting until I get a good shot, so if the first one doesn’t come out well, I’m out of luck.

We were starting to get a little tired of walking and there was still a good amount of time until the next panel, so we retired to the balcony, where some seating was available. It provided a great opportunity to get a shot of the entirety of the Ballroom. Man, I wish somebody had cosplayed as Waldo.

Our feet stopped complaining so we went back downstairs to the Fancy Suite. (I’ll give you a topic – the Fancy Suite is neither fancy nor a suite. Discuss.) The topic this time was “Diversity in New Media,” and the panel featured (left to right) Kevin Gilligan, co-writer and actor on the webseries Gigahoes; Krutika Mallikarjuna, from BuzzFeed; Lisa Bunker, actor in the web series S-her-lock; Kate Tracy, creator and director of S-her-lock; Dylan Marron, the voice of Carlos on the podcast Welcome to Night Vale; and moderator Dana Piccoli, an editor for AfterEllen.com.

I enjoyed this panel – they did a good job of staying on-topic and keeping the focus on new media, particularly web series. There was a lot of encouragement for people to go out and create their own work. Dylan Marron was particularly well-spoken on the topic – it made me regretful that I haven’t jumped on the Welcome to Night Vale bandwagon yet.

We were just about conned out at this point, but we decided to do one more swing through the Ballroom before heading out, as I had one last mission unaccomplished. I’ve never bought a table at one of these cons, as they’re generally pretty pricey and I’m not sure I’m at the point yet where I’d be able to capitalize on it and make the most of the expense. Illustrators tend to do better at these, from what I’ve seen. But I had seriously considered going for it with Flame Con, since gay geeks seem like a pretty good demographic for me to target. Obviously I didn’t, I just didn’t feel like I could pull it together in time, but there were several self-published authors at the con and I wanted to see what their experiences had been like.

I had swung by author Simon Graves‘ table earlier in the day, and he seemed like a friendly enough soul for perpetually shy and socially awkward me to strike up a conversation with. He was incredibly helpful, and spoke very positively of his experiences at Flame Con. He definitely got me thinking about getting a table next year, although I’ll likely take his advice and try to find another author to split a table with. So a big thanks to Simon! I just bought his collection of horror short stories, FIND’M, on Amazon (and you should, too!).

The con ended at six, but by five or so Mike and I were all tuckered out, so we headed back to his apartment for our dinner break. Yes, dinner break – Flame Con was done, but the evening was just getting started! At eight o’clock the tables were cleared and the venue transformed for the after-party, the Fire Ball! Since we were still full from our late lunch, Mike and I had a bottle of vodka for dinner, so we were ready and raring to go!

Here’s the ballroom again, with the tables gone and the runway stage in place. The stage was lined with paper, and markers were provided for everybody to write or draw whatever they liked. Of course, the place was full of amazing artists so the blank paper looked pretty great by the end of the night. Here’s what I contributed:

A mangled quote from Animaniacs and a wonky drawing of Charlie Brown. Did I mention the bottle of vodka?

There wasn’t as much cosplay at the party – at least, not off the stage – but I did spot these fellow Whovians and had to take a pic. Dalek Oswin and regular Oswin! (And their friend in the middle, I’m afraid I don’t remember if she was in costume.)

I also got this kick-ass Domino, although the picture is horrible. In fact, from here on out, just assume the pictures are going to be terrible – manage your expectations. I’ve already explained about my camera, plus the lighting was very dim, everybody was moving very fast, and I was drunk off my ass.

I also have no clue as to who most of these performers are – I just wasn’t able to catch their names. I’ve gone to the internet for help but only identified a few, so my apologies to those who remain uncredited. You can see the full list of performers here, if you’re curious. They were pretty much uniformly fantastic. (And if anybody can match my pics with the performers, leave a comment and I’ll update the post!) Most of my pics are unusable even by our now lower standards, but here’s what I got…

DJ Superman!

Terrible shot of the performer. The crowd came out perfect, though.

I spotted this fierce She-Hulk in the crowd on my way to the restroom.

Storm was everything. I got a few pics of her because she just killed it.

Ripley, with Newt puppet, was the best thing ever.

Nightcrawler! Let’s just pretend he’s mid-bamf and that’s why he’s blurry.

Misty Meaner as Agent Carter.

Mike thought this was Elven King Thranduil, Lee Pace’s character from The Hobbit, and I have no reason to think otherwise.

Hey, that She-Hulk I spotted was one of the performers! I do love this picture.

Man, I wish the pictures of this guy had come out. (I think this is Levi Karter from porn site Cocky Boys.)

It’s Flamey, the Flame Con mascot! This was the end of the show – after, the runway was turned over to dancing!

At least until they made everyone get down. But I got a picture first!

And one last pic – Jason Romas is an actor as well as one of the organizers behind Flame Con. I’ve known him for a few years, since I directed him in a show. He was running around like mad all day but I made him interrupt whatever important thing he was doing to pose for this horrible picture with me.

And that was it! No pic of my loot this time – I left my bag at Mike’s for later recovery, so as not to lose or damage anything at the party. Overall I would say Flame Con was a great success – I was really impressed with how smoothly it ran considering this was the first year. Looking forward to the next!

 

Special Edition NYC 2015

I’m in the midst of a con marathon. A conathon, let’s say. Yesterday I attended my second of three cons in three weeks – Special Edition NYC. It’s run by ReedPOP, who also produce New York Comic Con (as well as Book Con, which I went to last week), and it’s sort of a mini-NYCC. It’s a con devoted exclusively to comics, and it’s on a somewhat smaller scale. It wasn’t at the Javits Center this year, but rather at Pier 94. I only decided to go a few days ago, when I saw they still had tickets available. I was getting out of two straight weeks of tech for shows I’ve been directing, and the thought of giving up a restful Saturday was not appealing, but I decided I’d regret it if I let it pass by. I was second-guessing my decision, though, when I arrived and saw the line.

Pier 94 is at W. 54th Street. The con began at 10, and I arrived at about ten of. The line wound out the door, through a small park next to the venue, then out along Twelfth Avenue. It got up to W. 59th Street, crossed Twelfth, and went halfway up the avenue block towards Eleventh. And people continued to fill in the line behind me – I have no idea where it eventually stopped.

That’s a long line. It took me about fifteen minutes to walk from the start to the end of it. It started moving pretty quickly, at least – I assume they opened the doors promptly at ten. The above picture was taken on Twelfth, somewhere in the vicinity of 57th Street. We stopped there for a while, but things picked up again and by around 10:30, I was in!

Well, almost. I reached the building, at least. After another short wait I got to the Will Call line to pick up my badge, and then I was in!

Here’s a shot of the exhibition floor. It being on a pier and all, the hall is mostly one long rectangle. The vendors are toward the front, Artists’ Alley further back, and the dining area at the rear. There were two theaters hosting panels, next to each other, just off to the right. I thought I was going to miss the first panel, but it turned out it didn’t start until 10:45, so I just made it. But first, cosplayers!

Let me just apologize once and get it out of the way (note – I will probably apologize repeatedly) – my camera’s kind of crappy. I usually have to take multiple shots to get one good one, but I don’t like to make the cosplayers wait around for me, so I take one and hope for the best. Sometimes the best is not so hot. But anyway, here’s Blue Beetle and Booster Gold! I love cosplayers, they’re one of the most enjoyable parts of a convention for me. (I was really hoping there’d be some literary cosplayers at Book Con last week, but apart from one half-hearted Harry Dresden, nobody bothered.)

Here’s the line-up for the first panel I attended, “So Where Do You Get Your Ideas…and What Do You Do with Them?” From left to right, that’s moderator Heidi MacDonald, with panelists Alex de Campi, Joe Harris, and Brandon Graham.

I think that’s who’s who, at least. Special Edition’s web site is not great about listing panelists – I get the feeling a lot of line-ups were up in the air until the very last minute. (Brandon Graham is not listed on the site, somebody else who wasn’t there is, but Heidi MacDonald’s Twitter feed came to my rescue.) The panel schedule was very much in my favor, in terms of being able to see whatever I wanted – Theater 1 held all of the promotional panels from the comics companies while Theater 2 held the craft panels. The promotional panels are much more popular, but I don’t care about those in the slightest – it’s all just hype, and I’ll hear anything of interest on some comics news site before the day is out anyway. So all of the panels I wanted to attend were easy to get into, and easy to get a good seat for. The only real problem was that the two theaters were only divided by a curtain, so despite the sound amplification it could be hard to hear over the cheers from next door. A small gripe, and as long as the panelists swallowed their microphones it was mostly fine. I’m not sure how this could be fixed, apart from moving back to the Javits Center next year.

This panel was reasonably interesting. Alex de Campi writes Archie vs. Predator, a series out now that is as absurd and wonderful as it sounds, so I was happy to hear from her. I wasn’t familiar with the other two, but they both had some good things to say about how an initial idea is turned into a full story. I can’t say I really learned anything, but they were full of good advice for the questioners in the audience.

I had a good hour and a half before the next panel I wanted to attend, plenty of time to explore the floor and take more pictures of cosplayers.

Just outside my panel I caught this intimidating/sexy duo, Batwoman and Nightwing. Love the white eyes on the Batwoman mask.

None of the vendors really caught my interest – I don’t buy single issue comics anymore, as my existing collection already fills my apartment. I read everything digitally and buy trades of the stuff I really like, but I can get those easy enough elsewhere. (Although for some reason The Seven Soldiers of Victory Archives – Volume 1 has become my great white whale at these conventions. I have volume two and love it and I want to get the first. Yes, I know I can get it online very cheaply, but it won’t be as satisfying as hunting for it and finding it in a bin. Don’t try and follow my logic, I haven’t got any.)

So I bypassed the vendors and headed to Artists’ Alley, my favorite part of any con. I love strolling through and taking in all the original artwork, and getting a peep at some my comics heroes. Like this guy.

Phil Foglio! I’ve been loving his stuff since the golden age of Dragon Magazine. He’s holding the book I bought from him, the trade paperback of the comic adaptation of Myth Adventures. I was astounded that his table wasn’t swamped – the guy’s a legend!

I wandered some more, and snapped pics of what cosplayers I could.

Spider-man (love the webbing backpack) and Daredevil.

Blurry Huntress. (Sorry.)

Batgirl!

I loved this Plastic Man, I wish I had gotten a better shot.

The Scarlet Witch and the Vision! Who says you can’t put together a good costume with what you’ve already got in your closet?

I grabbed lunch at the cafe in the back – not a lot of selection (hot dogs was it for hot food), but for a convention it was pretty reasonably priced. Somewhat recharged, I made my way back to Theater 2 for my next panel, “#blackcomicsmonth: Diversity in Comics.” This was far and away the best panel of the day.

The hashtag #BlackComicsMonth was created by Miz Caramel Vixen this past February for Black History Month to highlight the lack of diversity of characters and creators in comics. Since diversity is needed 365 days a year, not just 28, she created the website blackcomicsmonth.com to push the message that “every month is black comics month!” Vixen was the organizer and moderator of the panel, and I’m very sorry that I didn’t get a usable picture of her. This was far and away the most popular panel in Theater 2 all day, and I was seated a little further back than my poor camera could handle.

There were so many creators I couldn’t get them all in one picture, but from left to right above is (I hope) Kim Gaines, Alitha E. Martinez, Amy Chu, Greg Pak, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, Valentine De Landro, and Skuds McKinley. Just out of shot is Che Grayson (but you can see her in one of the pics below). It’s a pretty impressive line-up.

And yes, it’s THAT Darryl “DMC” McDaniels. He makes comics now, but I have to admit I enjoyed more his stories about the origins of Run DMC.

It was a great discussion, steered well by Miz Vixen. The overall message was very positive – although minorities are clearly underrepresented in comics, these creators said they don’t receive much, if any, push-back from editors or publishers when they create more diverse characters. Hopefully things will continue to progress.

A short ways into the panel, there was a surprise addition…

Brian Michael Bendis took time out of his all-day signing to join. He told some great stories about the creation of Miles Morales, the Ultimate Spider-man, and what it meant to people when such an iconic character was reimagined as a person of color.

And as if all that wasn’t enough, they also gave out a ton of comics. I got a copy of the first issue of Alex de Campi’s No Mercy, which I had wanted to check out after seeing her on the previous panel. Hooray!

This was the first of three panels in a row I wanted to see, so I just stayed put as the panel got out. Next up was “Publishers Weekly Presents: People in Comics,” which is about as vague a title as you’re going to get. The description in the guidebook suggested it would also be about diversity, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

Calvin Reid (unpictured) was the moderator, with panelists Regine Sawyer, Dylan Meconis, and Natalie Nourigat. I confess I had never heard of any of them, but they all seemed interesting enough. I sat through their initial comments, but I was finding the topic a little loose – there really wasn’t any mention of diversity and they all just seemed to be talking about whatever. Which is fine, and the panel may have gotten more interesting, but I really had to pee and the only men’s room was halfway back across the pier. So I snuck out. My apologies to all of you. But hey, more cosplayers!

Loved, loved, loved this Silver Age Jimmy Olsen. Perfection!

Mera! Also you can see a really good Loki off to the side, whom I never managed to pin down for a pic.

Hawkman! Distressing lack of beefcake at this con so I was happy to stumble upon this guy. (I have high hopes that Flame Con will make up for this lack next weekend.)

Having skipped out on a panel I had a good amount of time until the next one, but I had pretty much already seen everything I wanted to see. I bought two more comics – a self-published anthology from Amy Chu, whom I had really enjoyed at the first panel, and then a one-shot called Bacchanalia by Molly Ostertag. I don’t usually buy comics without knowing anything about them – and I had never heard of Ostertag – but she seemed nice and the comic looked kind of gay, plus it’s about Bacchus, my favorite god, so I figured what the hell.

When you’ve got time on your hands, fill it with alcohol, is my motto. Okay, not really, that’s a terribly self-destructive motto, but I did buy a glass of wine to pass the time. No chairs available, so I just sat down on the floor and chugged it down. I’m classy like that. They were not stingy with the pour – it was a gigantic plastic cup filled to the brim, so I was in fine spirits as I staggered back to the last panel. There wasn’t much of a crowd so I got right up front for “Freelance Like a Rock Star.”

I thought I didn’t know any of the panelists, but the one on the left is Molly Ostertag, from whom I had just bought a comic moments before. Neat! Next to her is Katie Lane, Ron Chan, Cat Farris, and moderator Lucy Bellwood. I really enjoyed this panel, and not just because I was drunk. I can’t say I got much from it – I was hoping for some tips on my own freelance writing career, but the whole thing was very illustrator-focused. Still, all of the panelists were smart, and the topic was fascinating, even if not particularly relevant to me.

There was one more panel I was somewhat interested in, a fannish discussion about movie and TV adaptations, but it was an hour away and I had pretty much run out of con to see, so I decided not to wait. But I did do one more circuit for cosplayers before heading out the door.

Speedsters! That’s Impulse, Kid Flash, and the Golden Age Flash.

Superman’s always gotta horn in on the speedster’s races. It’s like, come on, Superman, you have so many other powers, let them have the super-speed. I don’t know why Superboy’s even trying, he doesn’t stand a chance.

I am living for this Dick Tracy costume. I would wear that out, not even as cosplay.

Hawkwoman! She did not appear to be with the Hawkman I spotted earlier – I wonder if they connected?

And that’s it for Special Edition NYC. Less to see and do than Comic Con, but that also made it a lot less stressful. I’m glad I went, as tired as I was. I’ll leave you with my haul. Hey, kids, comics!

 

 

 

 

 

Book Con 2015

I went to Book Con again this year – it was only the second year of the event, but after last year I was a little wary. While I had fun the first time, I found it pretty disorganized, and for events of this size that’s a big problem. The exhibition space had been crammed full of vendors who didn’t seem to know who their audience was (Book Con, which is for readers, overlaps with Book Expo, which is for industry professionals – a lot of the vendors last year didn’t bother differentiating their booths for the distinct audiences), and the line management for the big events was abysmal. The folks at ReedPOP, the producing organization, must have learned their lesson, though, because this year’s con ran much more smoothly.

The con started at 10 AM on Saturday. A lot of people were getting there early to get in line for the mainstage panels, featuring, throughout the day, guests like Mindy Kaling, Nick Offerman, Aziz Ansari, and YA author heartthrob John Green. I would have loved to have attended any of those (except Green – sorry, I guess I’m outside the target market), but I wasn’t willing to get up extra early (I was in technical rehearsals for a show I’m directing all last week), and there were so many other panels I wanted to go to, I didn’t want to trade any con time for waiting in line for hours. (That said, the con handled the lines so much better this year, and I probably could have made it to one of the later mainstage panels if I had tried. But I didn’t.)

The first thing I did was make a bee-line to an autograph session for an artist I love. Chris Giarrusso is the creator of G-Man, a comic series about a kid super-hero, and he was doing a signing at the Andrews McMeel Publishing booth. I misread the description and thought he’d be at the signing tables at the other end of the Javits Center, so I arrived at his booth rather sweaty, but he didn’t seem to mind.

Isn’t he handsome? I have a mild crush. (Talent is sexy.) I’ve gotten two other books signed by him at New York Comic Con, but I didn’t have a copy of his new book, The G-Man Super Journal: Awesome Origins. I was all set to buy it, but they were giving it away. Score! He drew a little sketch of G-Man saying my name on the inside. I love it.

After that I had to hurry all the way back to the other end of the Center again, to catch the 11 AM panel, “We Need Diverse Books presents: In Our World and Beyond”. We Need Diverse Books is a great organization, spawned (I think) from a social media hashtag campaign, that promotes diversity in literature (primarily children’s literature, I believe, but not entirely). I went to their panel last year, when they were still a fairly new organization, and it was well-intended but a bit of a mess – lots of speechifying from officers and founders before getting to the actual panelists, lots of preaching to the choir. This year’s was much better. It was focused on diversity in science fiction and fantasy literature, and that slightly narrower focus made for a much more spirited, interesting discussion. Also, no speechifying.

Left to right – and hopefully I will get this right – are Miranda Paul (who did the introductions), Daniel José Older, Kameron Hurley, moderator Marieke Nijkamp, Ken Liu, Joe Monti, and Nnedi Okorafor. It was a pretty interesting discussion – obviously there wasn’t anybody there arguing against diversity, so there was a lot of talk about definitions and terminology, as well as the problem with inertia in the publishing industry when it comes to change. I particularly enjoyed the comments about internationalism, and the potential pitfalls involved with writing from an American-centric view of what constitutes a “minority” or a “person of color.” (They all had good points, but I found Okorafor the most engaging.)

But the panel ended on a sour note for me. A question came from the audience about how self-publishing fit, or could fit, into the diversity landscape (with the idea being that self-published authors don’t have to worry about publishing houses squashing their attempts to diversify their characters). (I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the exact wording of the question.) Daniel José Older fielded that one, and his answer was essentially that self-publishing was a solution, but it could not be the solution. Which is fine, obviously we don’t want to stop pushing the major publishing houses to become more inclusive.

The trouble was his tone. He sort of smirked and laughed his way through the answer, making repeated parenthetical remarks about how he didn’t mean to suggest there was anything wrong with self-publishing, while all the time suggesting exactly that. I don’t remember anyone else on the panel commenting, but there was some laughter at his backhandedly deprecating remarks. The overall implication was that self-publishing isn’t real and doesn’t count.

So, you know. Fuck that.

I get it. Self-publishing, for a lot of people, is still tainted by the idea of the “vanity press” from the pre-e-book days, when it meant spending thousands of dollars on paperbacks that you desperately tried to sell out of the trunk of your car. To a lot of people, self-publishing your book means you failed at getting a publishing contract and so putting the book out yourself was your only option.

Of course, that’s complete bullshit, and I suspect that many of the self-published authors I know are doing way better, financially, than many, perhaps all, of the authors on that panel. (Snap!) The simple truth is that a successful self-published author is just going to make far more money than a comparably successful published author. Not that it’s all about money, of course – there are many ways to measure success.

That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with being, or wanting to be, traditionally published. The houses make a lot of things easier on an author, and they offer some perks unavailable to self-published authors. Such as sitting on a panel at Book Con.

As far as I can tell, not a single panel at Book Con featured a self-published author. Which is no surprise, as whatever the discussion topic, these panels are meant to sell books, and the publishing houses can provide a lot of support to a convention that individual self-published authors can’t match. Still, it would have been nice if the beginning writers in the audience, particularly those who want to write something other than straight white male protagonists, were given some indication that self-publishing was a viable option for them, that they don’t have to wait for validation from Random House, that they could go home that night and have their book for sale on Amazon the next morning. Changing the publishing industry is a worthy goal, but the person who asked the question doesn’t need to sacrifice himself to a life of rejection notices in its name.

But I digress.

I left the panel, fired off some angry tweets, and immediately got in another line. It was going to be an hour wait, and I had to pee, but the short line was rapidly lengthening as other panels let out. This was one panel I did not want to miss, so I crossed my legs and got in line to see Felicia Day.

All hail the Geek Queen! I took about ten pictures of her with my crappy camera to get this one good one, but isn’t it nice? She’s so pretty. I love Felicia Day, from her appearances on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Supernatural, and her self-created webseries The Guild. She’s also a lot of fun to follow on Tumblr. She was promoting her upcoming book, You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost). She was funny and charming and told some great behind-the-scenes stories about the various shows she’s worked on. Well worth holding my bladder.

Side note – I love attending cons with friends, but there is one great benefit to attending alone: it’s very easy to find a single seat towards the front at panels, even if you’re near the back of the line coming in. I was third row center for this one.

After Ms. Day, I rushed up to the showroom floor, where the Downtown Stage was presenting an interview with Norton Juster, author of my absolute favorite book when I was a kid, The Phantom Tollbooth.

Also being interviewed was Cathy Goldsmith, former Art Director for Dr. Seuss. She was promoting a recently discovered new Seuss book, and it was somewhat interesting, but I was there for Norton. It started as Felicia Day was ending so I missed the start, but I got there in time for some great stories about working with Jules Feiffer. I grabbed a seat and listened and just grinned from ear to ear the entire time. Man, The Phantom Tollbooth is such a good book.

It was close to three by the time that ended and I still hadn’t spent any time exploring the exhibition hall. But there wasn’t time for that yet, I still had someplace to be.  Michelle Visage was signing at the Chronicle Books booth, and what kind of a gay would I be if I missed that? The bigger publishing houses sort of made rooms on the exhibition floor, with walls made out of shelving. The line for Michelle Visage was out and around two corners by the time I got there, but I expected it would move fairly quickly. And while I waited, I got to look at this:

Yes, Scientology had a booth at the con, offering free stress tests, Dianetics in numerous languages, and photo ops with two young people dressed as pirates for some reason. I was very tempted to see if I could find a copy of Going Clear somewhere and ask one of them to sign it.

Several people were getting the free stress test. I found this quite distressing. Book Con, maybe no booths for dangerous cults next year, okay? Okay.

So! There weren’t a whole of gay boys at the con that I noticed, but we were all in line for Miss Michelle. There was an adorable young couple in front of me, they kept alternating running to the front of the line to get a peek at her. I had been told by a woman at Chronicle that she was a hugger, so my excitement was building the closer I got, as were my nerves.

It’s only occurring to me now that there might be some poor souls out there who don’t know who Michelle Visage is. She’s a singer, radio DJ, talk show host, and, most importantly, a judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race. I kind of love her on that.

Anyway, I got to the front at last, passed my camera off to the nice woman from Chronicle, and met Michelle. They had been giving out posters to be signed (she’s promoting a book, but it’s not out yet), so I handed it over. I told her I was a fan, she asked me who I was rooting for on Drag Race. I said Pearl, but only because I wanted to fuck her.

And Michelle Visage laughed.

Michelle Visage has a unique laugh, it’s a sharp, loud, “Ha-HAAAA!” that comes right from her gut. And I got her to do it. I was, and am, immensely pleased with myself. We had a quick conversation about Pearl (out of drag, he’s super hot), but I won’t repeat it – it probably would be fine to do so, but she said something about people working on the show that maybe shouldn’t be repeated. Anyway, she was very nice, she gave me a big hug, and I got a great picture.

Doesn’t she look great? And I also got this signed poster, which I will treasure always:

 

She called me darling!

After collecting myself, I had to make a decision as to whether to try to make it to the “Brave New Worlds” panel on writing for fantasy or not. I decided to take some time to explore the show floor instead – that panel would have taken me to five o’clock, leaving only an hour left before the floor closed, and I still had yet to explore.

So I wandered a bit. No pictures, I’m afraid. They were pretty stingy with the free books this year, although maybe they were all given away first thing and I just missed it. I picked up a fantasy freebie from Random House, Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, which I’ll give a try, but passed on some free children’s books. I was hoping to find some services for self-published authors, but there wasn’t much. I stopped by the booth for the Editorial Freelancers Association – the woman I spoke to was very nice and I’ll check them out, but I think they work more with established houses. She asked me a lot of questions about how self-publishing works, which gave me the idea that it wasn’t something they were overly familiar with. (Although to be fair, it’s not like an editor really needs to understand the self-publishing business to edit a book.) And there was a service I won’t name that’s fairly new, meant to be a sort of social network site for readers where they can get and share free books. I got a really hard sell from the woman manning the booth, it was difficult to extricate myself. It didn’t seem like something that was destined for great success, and she lost me completely at the twenty-five bucks a month fee for authors. There was one other I’ll check out, that provides various author services (but isn’t Author Services, the great evil) (although Xlibris was represented, who are affiliated with Author Services – authors, beware!).

There was a good-sized crowd at the con this year, but it did seem less than last year. Or maybe the floor was just organized better – it was a lot easier to move around. But after an hour or so, I felt like I had seen anything of potential use to me, so I tried to make that panel after all – alas, I was too late, and it was closed. I came back upstairs and sat in on the event on the Downtown Stage, “The Creative Journey”. It wasn’t a discussion, rather three speakers talking about being an artist in the digital age (whatever that means). I missed the first speaker, Elle Luna, but caught the second, Jessica Hagy.

She was fine, but I have to admit she didn’t catch my interest that much and I started looking for a place to charge my phone. I feel a little bad about that, I’m sure she was making very good points but I was distracted by my phone dying and sort of missed it. But then the third speaker got up, Austin Kleon, got up, and he was actually pretty good.

He had some interesting things to say about the importance of insulating creative work from ideas of success or failure. And he used the movie Groundhog Day as his primary metaphor. I was on board. (Although I disagree with him about the ending of Mad Men.) All three authors were signing at a nearby table after, so I picked up one of his books and got it signed – Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered. Looks like a fun, quick read, and maybe I’ll get some useful tips from it. It was my only purchase of the day.

I tried to hit the exhibition floor again, but everything was shutting down so I came back to the stage for another panel – “Your Opinion Suck! Special Edition: Rotten Tomatoes Critics vs. Fans; Best and Worst Book to Screen Adaptations”. That’s a whole lot of title for a simple idea – audience members named a movie that had been adapted from a book, gave their opinion as to whether it was “rotten” or “fresh” and why, and then a panel of film critics either agreed or disagreed.

I have no idea who’s on the panel and I’m not looking it up. Sorry. But they were fun. Most of the people in line were kids arguing vociferously about why the film adaptation of their favorite book was an abomination. It was adorable – future cynics.

That ended around six, and the exhibition hall closed but the panels continued at the other end of the Javits Center. There was one I had been going back and forth on attending, as it didn’t start until seven. But I went downstairs, and the line was surprisingly short so I figured what the hell. I plopped down on the carpet and read my G-Man book until they let us in. I once again scored a seat front and center, this time for “The Laugh Button Live!” I do not know what The Laugh Button is, but it was hosting a really good line-up of stand up comedians.

And I apologize in advance, most of my pictures of this event are pretty rough. The lighting was terrible – the comedians kept commenting on it. They were basically in shadow for the whole night.

Anyway, that’s Sara Benincasa, the host. I’ve been peripherally aware of her for some time, I think through various internet writings, but I’ve never actually seen her stand-up or watched any of her videos – I’ve long meant to, but have never gotten around to it. I will, now. She was very funny – queer geek humor is right up my alley. (That’s not all she does, but it’s what I latched onto.) She was hawking a book, which I might check out.

Next up was Louie Kelly, whom I’m not familiar with (he’s on Louie, which I really should watch but don’t). He has this very white straight guy kind of act which could have gone very, very wrong with this particular audience of mostly queer-friendly intelligent young women, but it went pretty right instead. He knew who his audience was and did his thing without being at all insulting (except to himself). He was great.

Next was the main reason I decided to stick around – motherfucking John Leguizamo!

He didn’t do a routine – instead, he and Benincasa had an informal conversation.

He was promoting the graphic novel adaptation of his play Ghetto Klown, so they talked a lot about that, but they also just sort of riffed off each other. It was fun, and Leguizamo is immensely charming (and dreamy…), so this would have made the whole event worth it even if everybody else sucked.

But everybody else didn’t suck, everybody else was great.

Judah Friedlander, from 30 Rock, did a few minutes. He was amazing. Most of his act is one-liners, but he interacted with people in the audience and it seemed like he was coming up with a lot of stuff on the spot.

And finally…

Lizz Winstead also had a conversation with Benincasa rather than doing a routine. She told the story of how she co-created The Daily Show. I’m sorry I didn’t get a better picture of her. She rocks pretty hard.

And that was it! Overall a very satisfying Book Con this year. I was definitely more fan than professional, missing a few craft panels in favor of pure fun, but that’s on me. I’d like to see more acknowledgment of self-publishing next year, but I don’t know if that’s in the cards – that’s not where the money is. (Well, it’s where the money is for authors, but not for the people who produce conventions.)

I leave you with this year’s swag haul – pretty light. I usually leave Comic Con with a backache, but my bag was highly heftable after Book Con. More free stuff next year, please! I can always use more books!

 

Ten Thoughts on Cinderella

Cinderella (1950) had a lot riding on it. Walt Disney’s feature film output for most of the later forties consisted primarily of a bunch of package films, made up of shorts that were either considered not meaty enough to support a full-length, or were too expensive in the wake of the financial disasters Disney suffered due to World War II. Cinderella would be their first full-length animated feature since 1942’s Bambi, and rumor was that if it were a flop, the studio would fold. You probably know how that went.

Synopsis: You know this one, right? I’ve done a bunch of really obscure Disney flicks by now that could have really used a synopsis before I started, but I didn’t think of doing one until now, on the story that everyone and their godmother knows. Anyway, here’s the gist of it – Cinderella’s mom croaked and her dad remarried a mean old lady with two mean ugly daughters. When dad dies, Stepmom stops pretending to be nice and she and her kids turn Cinderella into a servant in her own home. One night, a ball is held at the palace and all eligible maidens in the kingdom are commanded to attend. Cinderella is prevented from going by the Steps, but with the help of her Fairy Godmother she gets magically dolled up and makes it to the dance on time. She and Prince Charming hit it off and dance all night, but at the stroke of midnight the spell is broken and Cinderella has to hightail it out  of there, accidentally leaving a glass slipper behind. The Grand Duke sets off in search of the maiden who fits the slipper – surprise, it’s Cinderella! Happily ever after, yadda yadda yadda.

The opening theme croons, “Cinderella, you’re as lovely as your name.” Is it really all that lovely a name, though? Just adding “-ella” to the word cinder? You could add “-ella” to anything and it would sound lovely. Dirtella. Bloodella. Crapella. Vomitella. Oh, Vomitella, you’re as lovely as your name!
Cinderella’s dad is kind of hot. He could have done way, way better on his second marriage. The Wicked Stepmother looks like John Kerry.
Like all pretty, kind-hearted girls, Cinderella can talk to animals. Because why not? Although I think I prefer a reading of this movie where Cindy’s been driven completely insane by her years of isolation and abuse. The mice! The mice made my dress! By the way, did you know that birds can’t control when they poop? If you’ve ever owned a pet bird, you know how utterly disgusting Cinderella’s room should be with all those birds flying around getting into everything. Frankly, mice aren’t too picky about where they drop their bombs either. Forget about sewing them all those cute little jackets and hats, Cinderella – make them some diapers before you get histoplasmosis. (Look it up!)
Stepmother’s room is AMAZING! So purple. Such luxury. Wow. Stepmother’s cat’s name is Lucifer, because the mice are good so the cat has to be evil. Subtlety! Bruno the dog was dreaming of murdering Lucifer and then laughed in his face when Cinderella couldn’t think of a single redeeming quality the cat had.  I kind of feel like any actions Lucifer takes from here on out are justified. I know you’re oppressed, Cinderella, but don’t punch down. And I’m jumping ahead a bit, but while we’re on the subject – Lucifer falls to his death at the end of this movie. I know he’s trying to keep Cinderella from getting out of the locked room and meeting her destiny and all, but he is chased out of a window by the dog and plummets several stories to the cobblestones below. They killed a cat. Everyone’s just okay with this?
I don’t think Drizella’s rendition of “Oh, Sing Sweet Nightingale” is that bad, honestly. I heard worse in summer stock.
If, by royal command, every eligible maiden in the kingdom must attend the ball, shouldn’t there be a whole bunch of servants there? Not to mention farm girls, tavern wenches…prostitutes… How wide a net are we casting, exactly?
I hope Cinderella is just being polite to the birds and mice out of a desire not to hurt their feelings, because that dress they made for her is fucking hideous. It’s a giant novelty birthday-present bow, Mardi Gras beads, and pool noodle shoulder pads draped over a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. The Steps did her a favor when they tore it apart.
The Fairy Godmother scene is the best thing ever. “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” is in heavy rotation on my main playlist, and I’m not the slightest bit ashamed of that. Also, the horse-coachman is way hotter than Prince Charming. Just saying. I would have made better use of those couple of hours before midnight. If this pumpkin’s a-rocking…
The Prince is gay, right? It’s not just me? The whole reason the King throws the ball is because his son has never shown any interest in women, always preferring to go off hunting (with the boys). Charming yawns in the faces of every single eligible girl in the kingdom, only showing interest in the one woman who doesn’t want anything to do with him – she doesn’t get in the receiving line with all the other eager beavers, and by midnight she’s already making up an obvious lie to get out of spending more time with him. He knows he’s got to marry somebody, so it might as well be the one woman who probably won’t push for icky sex stuff. Oh! And the whole glass slipper, hunt-through-the-kingdom-for-his-one-true-love thing? All the King’s idea. Charming doesn’t even go, the Grand Duke conducts the search without him. And we only have the Grand Duke’s word that Prince Bland is pining away – we never see it – and the Duke’s been ordered to get the Prince married under threat of death, so he’s pretty motivated to tell King Dad whatever he wants to hear. Also, the Prince is an excellent dancer. And he doesn’t have a single line on his face. Botox! Case closed. I find the defendant gayer than the Country Bear Jamboree.
In the original tale, the Stepsisters aren’t ugly. Making them hideous might get a cheap laugh, but it’s a pretty terrible message for Disney to send. Unattractive girls are bullies, and they deserve to be alone and unhappy. Poor, abused beautiful girls! Just keep being pretty and you’ll get your happy ending! Once everyone sees how lovely you are, you’ll marry the prince and you’ll be popular and the rightful order of things will be restored. Oh, also, the boy mice all have different appearances and personalities, but the girl mice are identical except for the colors of their dresses. Okay, I’ll stop with the social commentary. Wait, one more. If Cinderella looked like her Stepsisters, would anybody give a shit? Although, even if she started out that way, the Fairy Godmother would give her magic plastic surgery or something. There’s no way this story gets told where Cinderella isn’t conventionally beautiful at the end, and rewarded for it. All right, that’s enough of that. There’s a lot of messed-up stuff to unpack in this movie, but of course none of it takes away from the fact that Cinderella is fantastic. Sure, Cinderella has no agency whatsoever…crap, I’m doing it again. It’s gorgeous, it’s funny, it’s clever, the songs are beautiful, and even if none of that were true, the brief scene with the Fairy Godmother would be worth everything else. Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo!

Ten Thoughts on The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949), in addition to being the last Disney feature of the 1940s, is also (mercifully) the last package film produced by the studio. Disney was still burning off films left unfinished due to their financial problems during the war, and these two adaptations, deemed unsuitable for feature-length, were reduced to shorts and smashed together into one picture. The two halves of the film were split up and shown elsewhere quite often since its initial release – on television, as shorts before other features, and on home video. I had seen Ichabod’s story before, but Toad and his friends were new to me.

There isn’t a whole lot of commonality between The Wind in the Willows and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the two stories upon which this film is based, and the seams are fraying in the framing sequence tying them together. They couldn’t even come up with a decent theme song – the lyrics are just the names “Ichabod” and “Mr. Toad” repeated again and again. After the credits we zoom into a library for the once original, now done to death conceit of introducing us to the tale by just showing us the book it’s based on. The narrators (Basil Rathbone and Bing Crosby – an even less likely pairing than Ichabod and Mr. Toad) essentially just say, “Hey, here are two interesting characters,” and don’t bother to provide any other justification for why we might watch their stories back to back.
Mr. Toad is up first. Never having read The Wind in the Willows, my only prior knowledge of this story comes from “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” at Disneyland. The shots of the interior of Toad Hall take me right back and I’m instantly terrified. (Shut up. Don’t tell me it’s not a thrill ride. They die and go to Hell at the end.) Basil brings us up to speed on the setting and characters very quickly – Toad, Ratty, Moley, and MacBadger – and we’re into the action. Ratty looks just like the Basil Rathbone version of Sherlock Holmes, which I’m assuming must be intentional. Good in-joke if so. Also, MacBadger has a really sexy Scottish accent. I’d be into him, if he wasn’t an elderly cartoon badger. (Although, I’ve done worse…)
The song “We’re Merrily on Our Way” is pretty great. I love Cyril the horse and I want him to take me for a wild ride in his cart. Any horse who wears a hat with holes cut out for his ears is okay by me.
I like Toad, but I’m not particularly sympathetic towards him. He’s definitely a one-percenter and will be the first amphibian against the wall when the revolution comes. The plot mostly concerns his friends’ attempts to save him from himself – he’s the owner of Toad Hall, the stateliest of stately manors in the Wild Wood, and his mania for fads is causing him to burn through all of his cash. MacBadger is worried that if they don’t stop him, he’ll lose the Hall. I say, let him lose it. Turn it into a museum. (But I’m a dirty socialist so don’t listen to me.) Toad is arrested for stealing a car and put on trial. His defense is that he legally traded Toad Hall to a gang of weasels for the car. Weasels, according to Cyril, are “deceitful and not to be trusted at all.” DAS RACIST! Toad’s found guilty and sentenced to twenty years in the Tower of London, which seems a little severe for a first-time offender, especially a rich one. Rich people don’t go to jail – doesn’t Disney know how the legal system works?
Cyril and Toad dress in drag to escape the tower. Love it. He runs to his friends and Ratty is instantly ready to turn him back over to the police. Man, a toad really learns who is friends are in situations like this, doesn’t he?  SNITCHES GET STITCHES RATTY. There’s a big fight scene against the weasels, which is pretty great, and they get the deed to Toad Hall back, which proves Toad’s innocence somehow. The end. Wait, they never go to Hell? What a rip-off! YOU LIED TO ME MR. TOAD’S WILD RIDE
Part two, and Bing takes over from Basil as our narrator. He spends an awfully long time describing Ichabod Crane’s appearance considering we’re looking right at him. Ichabod is an odd outsider walking through the center of town with his nose buried in a book while all the townspeople, including the ruggedly handsome leader of a gang of drunken roughnecks, sing about how strange he is. So it’s the opening to Beauty and the Beast, several decades early. That ruggedly handsome leader is Bram Bones, and hot damn. I’m not saying I searched DeviantArt for one of those “sexy Disney heroes” drawings of him, I’m not saying I didn’t. (I did.) Ichabod, on the other hand, looks exactly like Pepper, the microcephalic woman from American Horror Story.
I guess Bram is supposed to be the villain, but it’s pretty hard to sympathize with Ichabod. The two are rivals for the love of the beautiful Katrina, but Ichabod wants her because she’s rich, and fantasizes about her dad dying so he can take over their farm. There isn’t really a hero here.
At the dance at the farm, Bram dances with a plump woman only so he can swap her for Katrina, who’s dancing with Ichabod. He’s disgusted by her plumpness because ha ha ha fat women have no value! Blergh. I’d blame it on the 1940s but it’s not like this joke has gone away. This nameless woman is relentlessly cheerful, laughing uproariously as Bram drags her around the dance floor. She’s the most likable character in this and in a right and good world both men would be fighting over her instead of that manipulative tart Katrina.
FINALLY we get to the whole point of this story, the Headless Horseman and holy crap, it’s pretty scary. It’s a little discordant, though, the interplay of the realistically terrifying Horseman with Ichabod’s cartoonishly overwrought reactions. The story isn’t quite committing to either the fear or the humor, and each somewhat undercuts the other. Of course, that’s me as an adult saying this – as a kid, I remember freaking the hell out when the Horseman throws his pumpkin head right at the camera.
Ultimately, this odd pairing works so long as you take each of the two on their own merits. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow drags a bit but is worth it for the ending, whereas The Wind in the Willows is fun throughout but gives the sense that something wonderful was lost when the decision was made never to develop it into a standalone feature. Like many of these forced package films, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is probably better served by splitting up its component parts and watching them separately.

Derivative Hollywood

Author T. Ellery Hodges has written a great blog post about the difficulties facing cross-genre fiction in Hollywood. He’s active on kboards, a message board for readers and authors I frequent, and started a great conversation on the topic there – this blog post is the result. He mentions Alan Lennox and the Temp Job of Doom in his list of examples towards the end – in the blog post, we came up with “Urban Science Fiction” and “Comedic Thriller” as descriptive genres for the book, genres that don’t actually exist as supported categories on Amazon or any other vendor site. That makes it a little more difficult for books like mine (or those of the other authors he mentions) to gain visibility. Anyway, he says it better than I can – take a look!

Why Is Hollywood So Derivative? What Can We Do About It?