Scott Lynch's Blog, page 3

Commencement of the Snoopy Dance

Monday, 17th of June 2013. This morning my editor in London found these waiting on his desk.

Mirrored from Lynch Industries.

Being good can be a shortcut. There is no shortcut to being good.

The give-and-take with the audience at any bookstore or convention appearance I make usually comes around sooner or later to the topic of publication. How to get published, how to stay published, what it’s like working with publishers; all that inside baseball. It’s probably a dreary subject to the folks that just love the stories or the genre, yet it’s like Kryptonite-laced catnip to those who want to write professionally. I know the feeling intimately. I was hungry to be published from about the age of five, and none of my less realistic career fancies (Air Force F-15 pilot long-haul trucker cartoonist!) ever truly displaced that yearning.

Most of the publication-hungry folks I’ve ever met have struck me as honest, receptive, and realistic, but there’s always a tiny minority I can spot by the nature of the questions they ask and the statements they fixate on. They’re not interested in hearing about hard work, study, or self-improvement. Their eyes glaze over when I talk about concepts like effort or practice. They want nothing to do with developing actual skills, and in a few cases they don’t even want a damn thing to do with me or my work. They just want me to tell them how to duck under that imaginary velvet rope.

It doesn’t fucking exist, this shortcut. This magic steam-catapult to perceived stardom. This underground railroad for misunderstood slacker geniuses. It’s just not there! Yet these people keep on renewing their memberships in the cargo cult and imagining that all they have to do is catch a published author in a particularly off-guard or generous moment, and they’ll receive The Secret. I don’t know exactly what they envision. Some kind of handshake? A special phone scrambler? A certain Masonic arrangement of manuscript pages that slush readers can detect with their activated third eyes?

Cripes. Once I spot them in an audience, I’m pretty sure I can see them actively translating my words to their sub-reality. “I’m not saying networking isn’t useful,” I might say, “but you’ve got to have something worthwhile to sell before you start selling!” In their heads, this transmutes to “ZOMG! THERE REALLY IS A SECRET CLUB!” And don’t even get me started on what happens when I talk about work or discipline; I can see my advice turning into the noise the adults make in a Peanuts cartoon: “MWA MWA MWA MWA MWA, MWA MWA.”

Look, read this next bit very carefully: Famous useless idiots get book contracts all the time. Let us assume that we are not famous useless idiots, you and I. Therefore their situation is not germane to ours. Terrible, terrible writers also get book contracts all the time; this is because there’s no accounting for taste and because there is no accounting for taste and because, if you dig, there is no fucking accounting for taste. I can’t teach you how to get hit by a meteorite; I can only tell you about the “actively try to not be a terrible writer” approach, because it’s how me and most of my peers end up on the shelf at Barnes & Noble. This situation, which is my situation and, not to put too fine a point on it, YOUR situation if you’re unpublished and want to kill that ‘un-,’ is defined by the following equation:

Hard work + self-awareness + perseverance = MAYBE

“Maybe?” you say. “What the hell do you mean, maybe?”

What I mean is welcome to the universe, kid. No guarantees about anything, and the clock is already ticking. Try the potato salad. But that MAYBE is a golden result compared to the way the equation turns out if you subtract hard work, self-awareness, or perseverance. When you do that, MAYBE becomes NEVER. In fact, it becomes NEVER in bold followed by THIS MANY EXCLAMATION POINTS. !!!!!!!!!!!! 

So I suppose it’s only natural that a tiny but aggravating minority of wannabe writers out there prefer to keep putting their chips on:

Fucking around + resentment + begging for mercy = SHORTCUT!

And they keep coming to my readings and convention panels! It’s just too damn bad that shortcut doesn’t exist.

(“But Scott,” you might be saying, “you’re talking about traditional publishing! How is this applicable to the bold new world of self-publishing and e-publishing?” Well, the answer is that not a damn thing changes. I don’t look down on self-publishing. I admire it! And if you’re the sort of non-trad-publisher who works diligently for years to hone your craft, understand your markets, broaden your literary comprehension, and generally avoid being an asshole, then you have as solid a shot as anyone at that bright golden MAYBE. But if you’re the sort of person who wants to self-publish the first and only ten pages you’ve ever written because HA THAT WILL SHOW EVERYONE AND THEN YOU’LL BE A MILLIONAIRE, you’re still looking for the imaginary shortcut and you’re totally going nowhere at the speed of uselessness squared.)

How long does the process of hard work + self-awareness + perseverance take? I don’t know; how long is a string? There is no RIGHT path. There is no IDEAL way. There is no PROPER length of time. There is only your right path, your ideal way, your proper length of time.

I sold my first novel in 2004, to an editor I’d never met, halfway across the world, on the strength of about sixty pages and an outline. That doesn’t happen very often. I don’t have an office wall papered with rejection slips (which many superb, successful, award-winning authors do), because I have never received one for my fiction.* I’m not trying to be egotistical, I’m just stating bare facts: There was no secret handshake. There was no clandestine society ritual. An editor saw something worth cultivating, worth publishing, worth taking a chance on. He took that chance. The rest is my Wikipedia entry.

Wasn’t this a shortcut? Not even having a finished novel? In a way, sure. My editor, may he be blessed and protected from paper-cuts forever, thought the unfinished fragment was so good it was worth securing before someone else could notice it.

However, the part you didn’t see before that “shortcut” was the long span of years I spent writing miserable, pretentious, silly, derivative nonsense before I became capable of writing those sixty crucial pages. I went through a Lovecraft phase. I went through a Poe phase (Gah! My Poe phase. Welcome to Farcetown, population ME). I went through a confused Clive Barker-y phase. I wrote a looming shitstack of Vampire: The Masquerade fanfic and character fic that made later Anne Rice look respectable. I wrote and desktop published a series of roleplaying games. I wrote marketing crap, memos, and business letters. I did freelance editing and PDF self-publishing. I wrote hundreds and hundreds of pages of stuff that had to be presented with a modicum of competence and clarity. In those days, a modicum was about all I could manage. An older friend once took me to a Disney animated film, and as it started he whispered “Dude, you really need to pay attention to this. I’ve already seen it, and I brought you because you need to learn how basic story structure works.”

I was also reading. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books across the years. In the months right before The Lies of Locke Lamora sold, I was knocking back two novels a week, dissecting them, hungry to learn everything I could.

And that’s the secret behind my “shortcut.” I decided to pursue serious writing around the age of 15 and I sold my first novel at 26. Eleven years filled with piles of books and thousands upon thousands of pages, most of which were tripe and bullshit. Eleven years filled with a ludicrous amount of youthful time-wasting… but just enough hard work, self-awareness, and perseverance. Just enough by a narrow margin.

Being good is a great way to get noticed. But you can’t simply dance past the work it takes to get good. Would you expect to be invited to play first base for the Red Sox without the need to go through that tedious training, scouting, and development process? Of course not. So why the hell would you ever expect that I (or anyone else in my position) could just sort of hide you in a coat and smuggle you into a publishing career?

Still, some people do. If you read all of that and saw actual words, you’re probably not one of ‘em. If you read that and all you saw was MWA MWA MWA MWA MWA, please be advised that I’m fucking bringing garlic, holy water, and a shovel to my next convention appearance near you. Truly I am. Because mere words don’t seem to dissuade you and I’m more than willing to try burial at a crossroads.

Now, people don’t just go shortcut-stalking in person. These days, I’m a Free Special Secret Bonus Guest Lecturer and Stevedore at the Viable Paradise writing workshop on Martha’s Vineyard. VP is an emotionally intense, mentally and creatively demanding experience administered by a bevy of zero-bullshit fully-credentialled pro writers and editors. VP is not a Writing 101 sort of affair, and the staff and instructors spend weeks in unpaid and largely unheralded examination of manuscripts submitted by prospective students, winnowing applicants down to a maximum annual class size of 24.

I can’t tell you anything specific about this process, but I will tell you that the scrutiny is intense and the discussion is quite involved. What the instructors are looking for is evidence of the three qualities I cited above: hard work, self-awareness, and perseverance. That’s it. That’s the secret. That’s all it takes to make you the “right sort” for this kind of literary boot camp. A willingness to learn and grow and toil on your own behalf. Viable Paradise is not about fluffy generalities. It’s about learning how to command and harness your creative skills to produce an original, working story on a very tight schedule.

The applications that are marked for rejection most quickly are the ones that are clearly fishing for that mythical shortcut. What boggles my mind is that people imagine they can actually get away with this shit… that they can send text plagiarized straight from published works (hint: professional SF/F editors have read a lot of books), or keep offering up something that was rejected in a previous year, without alteration or improvement, in the hopes that the instructors will suddenly drop their standards or experience total group amnesia.

If Step 1 is “write something,” Step 2 is “write something new while you shop it around,” not “sit on your ass for the next twenty years and keep petulantly holding out the Only Thing You Ever Wrote.”

If you want to be a writer who occasionally sells to professional markets, that’s one thing. But if you want to be a professional writer, you must understand that this is not a one-time gig you’re applying for. You will be expected to do this hard, lonely, brain-bending thing, and then do it again. And again. And again. Imagine yourself as a bright little kid who comes home with a graded paper, which your parents pin up on the refrigerator for everyone to admire. Then they roll out a clean new refrigerator and stand there waiting for you to decorate that one, too. Your life is now an endless line of refrigerators, kid. If you’re lucky, it rolls on all the way past the horizon and into the graveyard.

You can’t fake the ability to meet that challenge. You can only train yourself up to it. So don’t talk to me or anyone in my shoes about shortcuts, because the concept of the shortcut is like the Easter Bunny– something cuddly and reassuring and totally fictional.

*****

*I did receive a firm but gentle e-mail rejection from Steve Jackson many, many years ago, in response to a proposal to write the introduction to a certain GURPS book. A proposal I only belatedly realized could be used as an object lesson in how to NEVER EVER structure a proposal. Still, I was chuffed. Rejected by Steve Jackson himself! I wish I’d printed a copy of that e-mail.

 

 

Mirrored from Lynch Industries.

More Amazing Coolness! Statement on Fanfic and Other Forms of Fan Art.

Milena Aijala, known on Tumblr as qwertyprophecy, recently finished creating an animated credits sequence for an imaginary Gentlemen Bastards television series. If you haven’t seen it, do follow that link. It’s lively, gorgeous, and superbly executed.

(Credit for the animated gif, I believe, goes to Tumblr user veecissitudes.)

Milena also has a series of captioned photographs detailing some of the laborious process (Weeks of work! Light tables! An actual tank of water! Her mom!) of creating this thing of beauty.

I’m so deeply pleased and flattered by this, and more or less as dumbstruck as I was by Kathryn Sutcliffe’s insanely beautiful costume sequence based on The Lies of Locke Lamora. It really breaks an author’s heart (well, this author’s heart) in the best possible way to see people with visual skills I can’t dream of possessing hanging such lovely cloth on the bare frames of my words.

It also has me thinking about fan activity, repurposing, re-imagining, and so forth. Cecilia Tan has a superb statement on fanfic that I happen to agree with almost entirely. Steve Brust has adopted that exact statement with Cecilia’s permission. It’s been an energetic couple of months for that portion of the Gentleman Bastard readership I’ve been able to track online, and I hope it’s going to stay energetic, so I think it’s time I also made a few things clear forever.

I like non-commercial fan art, fanfic, cosplay, and everything related. I am flattered by these activities and totally copacetic with them. If it brings you pleasure to create anything based on my work, I want you to know that you have my total support and encouragement. Please just keep the following points in mind:

1. All such activities have to be non-commercial.

2. All such activities have to be clearly labelled as non-commercial. They also have to be clearly labelled as not originating from me or being directly endorsed by me. Don’t pretend to be me, and I won’t pretend to be you. Fair?

3. I am not responsible for any laws you bend or break in the commission of your activities. It is possible to post something that is so egregious, in some fashion, or so blatant a misrepresentation of me or my work that I will be compelled to take action if it’s ever brought to my attention.

4. I’m never going to be able to keep track of all fan works posted online. I’m never even going to try. Never mistake my silence for any form of direct endorsement. In fact, never try to read anything into my silence. Don’t try to telepathically divine my intentions and I won’t telepathically make your head explode like in a David Cronenberg movie. Fair?

4a. Did I just imply that I have telepathic powers? Of course I did not. You say you read it with your own eyes? REMEMBER NOTHING. Now keep reading.

5. Understand that you create works based on my work and show them to other people at your own peril; that others may take inspiration from you, and you may find derived works being crafted from your work in turn. If you’re going to play with stuff originated by other people, don’t turn into an asshole when other people want to play with your stuff. Be generous. Give credit. Expect and demand credit be given in exchange.

I didn’t create The Lies of Locke Lamora in a vacuum; I drew from a vast number of public domain sources, including but not limited to the work of Dickens, Dumas, and Shakespeare. I didn’t lift anything directly, of course, but my work is also influenced by the thousands of novels and hundreds of films and TV programs and video games I’ve enjoyed over the years. We all live and create in the midst of a vast cloud of potential influences. The art and culture of the ages is ours to explore at the flip of a page or the touch of a keyboard.

Some day, my work is going into the public domain even if I have to directly will it so and bypass the increasingly ridiculous term extensions of default copyright protection (even if all I get is the traditional threescore and ten, some great-niece or great-nephew of mine could well be curating Weird Uncle Scott’s literary portfolio well into the 22nd century). In the meantime, I absolutely refuse to be the sort of tight-minded asshole who clenches up at the thought of someone re-imagining something I’ve done.

Nobody can take the Gentlemen Bastards away from me. Nobody will ever have to fear that I will refuse to share them (or anything else I ever write), to the limit of my abilities, with those that love ‘em.

 

 

Mirrored from Lynch Industries.

The Lies of Locke Lamora Read-Along Commentary

This morning I registered for a Tumblr, under the misapprehension that this would allow me to quickly and easily leave comments on other Tumblrs, specifically the ones holding discussions about the current group read-through of The Lies of Locke Lamora. What I discovered was that either a) I am old now and new things scare me, or maybe b) Tumblr was designed by crazy badgers with access to powerful hallucinogens. I prefer the theory with the badgers.

So, the sensible thing I’m going to do instead is post any comments I have here, in this corner of the internet where the buttons aren’t scary and they bring me my prune juice every day at three o’clock just the way I like it.

Thieves Prosper has reposted several lengthy responses to the question “Standard Fantasy Capitalization: Love it or hate it? Do you think it works here or does it make you roll your eyes?”, as regards the first sentence of TLOLL:

At the height of the long wet summer of the Seventy-Seventh Year of Sendovani, the Thiefmaker of Camorr paid a sudden and unannounced visit to the Eyeless Priest at the Temple of Perelandro, desperately hoping to sell him the Lamora boy.

I would say, peering at this sentence nearly nine years after I wrote it, that I did overdo it in a couple places. “Thiefmaker” is a proper noun, not merely a position, so it’s fine. Perelandro is a proper noun, but I’m not sure ‘temple’ needed to be capitalized. “Eyeless Priest” did not need to be capitalized at all. I think I must have intended for it to be the title by which all Camorri would generally refer to Father Chains, but as you all know that didn’t happen, and it really should have been “eyeless priest.” It’s a striking enough description that it doesn’t need the Added Emphasis of Standard Fantasy Capitalization.

As for the capitalization of “Seventy-Seventh Year of Sendovani,” that’s just part of the ornate and infuriatingly baroque way the Therin people name and track their years. The system was deliberately designed to be archaic and obtuse, just as the coinage of Camorr doesn’t slide neatly into divisions of ten like standard fantasy RPG loot.

In 2012, to support another group read-along of TLOLL, I did a series of blog posts discussing the development of the book, my visual inspirations, my discarded alternate approaches, and my criticism of my own work. For those currently reading TLOLL that haven’t seen them, you can find them linked below in reverse order:

Read-Along Bonus #4: YOU SUCK, LYNCH

Read-Along Bonus #3: Early Visual Aids

Read-Along Bonus #2: Other Roads Not Taken

Read-Along Bonus #1: It Came From Burger King

If you’re currently reading or re-reading TLOLL and you’d like to ask me something about it, please feel free to leave a comment here, or e-mail me (scott at scottlynch.us), or even just flag a Tumblr post with something like WOO SCOTT LOOK AT ME WOO.

Mirrored from Lynch Industries.

FEARSOME JOURNEYS LAUNCH AND CONTEST

It’s launch day for FEARSOME JOURNEYS, the Solaris Book of New Fantasy, and you can pick it up from Amazon or from Barnes & Noble or directly from Solaris/Simon & Schuster.

You can also enter a quick little contest to receive one of two free copies I’m giving away by mail! Send an e-mail to:

fearsomejourneyscontest@gmail.com

Make the topic “Contest Entry” and be sure that the e-mail address you’re sending from can be replied to (or that you’ve included a reply-to address of preference in the body of the e-mail).

Two winners will be selected randomly. No further notices, advertisements, spam, etc. will be sent to those that do not win. Your e-mail will not be added to any list, or sold, or any damned underhanded nonsense like that.

If you want to save time in case you win, you can include a postal mailing address, or you can just wait until I write back to you if your entry is selected.

I will take entries until Friday, May 31st, at 11:59 PM CST!

Mirrored from Lynch Industries.

Updates From Scruffy Author Country

Yep, that’s who’s scruffy-lookin’.

I am at Minicon 48 this weekend, along with my girlfriend, the lovely and talented Elizabeth Bear. We’re reading on Sunday, Bear at 12:00 PM and Lynch at 1:00 PM, in Veranda 1/2.

The Republic of Thieves continues to speed on its way toward its destiny; my editors on both sides of the Atlantic are pretty pleased, and with just a few adjustments, the book will be going to copyedit. I do not have any news at this time about a timetable for audio versions or releases in other countries, but as soon as I get any scraps of concrete info over the next few months I’ll shout ‘em.

There is more news coming soon, but for now I can at least say that the official launch-day signing event (and party) for The Republic of Thieves will be held at Pandemonium Books in Boston, from 7-9 PM on Tuesday, October 8th. Bear and I will both be there!

Mirrored from Lynch Industries.

THE REPUBLIC OF THIEVES

Hopefully, if you’re reading this, you now know that the semi-mythical beast known as The Republic of Thieves has at last been captured in the wild and given official release dates: October 8th in the US and October 10th in the UK. You can read the Gollancz announcement here and the Del Rey Spectra announcement here!

So what’s the deal with all the wacky release dates we’ve seen over the years?

They were more or less artifacts of bookseller databases. Basically, if a book is going to be available for pre-order, it needs to have a release date attached, any release date, even a ludicrous or fictional one. That release date kept shifting as the book kept failing to appear. Eventually, my publishers stopped even consulting tea leaves and the projected dates became still-more loosely tethered to reality. Add inertia and hearsay to the mix (some sites continued to post long-outdated fictional dates, others falsely reported that the book had been published) and you have the ingredients for a gigantic confusion pie.

And how do we know this release date is the real one?

I have Tweeted several times that I would vouch for no release date until I formally shouted it, myself, from the ramparts of my own blog and other social media. This is me shouting from the ramparts. October, 2013 is not a random guess from some poor sod behind a database. My publishers in New York and London hold a revised version of the complete manuscript that pleases them both; with that in hand to work from they have set forth a release date that is not a mere prayer of hope muttered over an empty cocktail glass. In short, to prevent the release of this book, you must now obliterate the planet Earth. Good luck with that.

What about release dates in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, etc.?

I do not have that information at my fingertips, but as I acquire it I’m going to try to set up some sort of central repository of known availability dates.

Now, the next few items are mild spoilers, so if you’re the sort of person who wants to preserve as much of the surprise as you can, skip the rest of this entry until mid-October.

When does The Republic of Thieves pick up chronologically?

The “present day” thread resumes the story a few weeks after the end of Red Seas Under Red Skies. The flashback thread shows several episodes from Locke’s early years, and then a long adventure from when Locke, Jean, and Sabetha were about sixteen.

So Sabetha is actually in this thing?

Yes, Sabetha Belacoros is finally revealed in person for the first time and is a major character in The Republic of Thieves.

Do we find out more about the Bondsmagi?

The Bondsmagi are fairly integral to the plot. We meet several more of them and explore their home city of Karthain.

What else would you say to tempt us without spoiling?

Well, you’ll get to spend more time with Calo and Galdo Sanza, as well as Father Chains, and there are cameo appearances by a few other familiar faces from The Lies of Locke Lamora. You’ll find out how Locke and Sabetha met (you can read it right now, in fact). You’ll witness the very awkward teenage years of the Gentlemen Bastards. You’ll find out more about the customs of the hidden religion of the Crooked Warden. You’ll see Locke and Sabetha deploying the full panoply of their skills, against one another and against the world. You’ll discover who brought proper coffee-making to Therin society, and you’ll learn vital elements of crossbow safety!

Now that TRoT is in the bag, what are you doing?

My immediate project is to refinish a novella (another long overdue project) called The Mad Baron’s Mechanical Attic, which will be published by Subterranean Press.

Although TMBMA and its companion, The Choir of Knives, were conceived as prequels to The Lies of Locke Lamora, I have decided after lengthy reflection that I’m not willing to contribute another inessential prequel to our society’s towering heap of the damn things. Although I think TMBMA is a fun story with a great cast and setting, it ultimately revealed nothing surprising about Locke and Jean’s history and it stretched the boundaries of what I consider acceptable retconning. I have come to believe that prequels should cast some accepted facts of their universes in a new light, and I just didn’t have anything up my sleeve in that department.

What I am deeply interested in, however, is the further adventures of Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen now that I’ve recovered something of my ability to push them forward. Thus, I am retooling these novellas as a bridge story between the events of The Republic of Thieves and The Thorn of Emberlain, one that is entirely optional but hopefully enriching.

After that, I will resume work on The Thorn of Emberlain, already in progress.

Mirrored from Lynch Industries.

Now Begins Operation Jay

At this time, I am declaring Operation Steve and Emma to be a resounding success; thanks to your astounding generosity (and to the fact that those two have spent decades engendering warm feelings across the planet), I think they’re now as taken care of as they can be. Both are recovering from their surgeries, and have useful bulwarks against lost time, unforeseen disasters, and un-fun complications. I’m also stuck coughing up the complete list of incentives I offered.

And so, I’m turning the beam of Whatever This Not-A-Kickstarter Thing I’m Doing is on someone else. For the future, unless any sudden new emergencies erupt and need to be dealt with, (come on, writers, just quit having mortal frailties already) the 2/3 of QUEEN OF THE IRON SANDS donation income I give away will be going to lend a hand to Jay Lake.

As Jay has recently discussed quite nakedly on his own blogs, he’s currently in his third go-round with his virulent, recurring, simply-will-not-take-the-hint liver cancer. Jay has recorded, in excruciating detail, all the long physical and emotional struggles of his previous surgery and chemotherapy regimens, which have stolen his life for months at a time but not yet shut him up for good. If there’s anybody on earth who’s a Goddamn Cancer Professional, it’s Jay. Chuck Norris desperately wishes that his facts could be anywhere near as bad-ass as Jay Lake Facts:

Jay is trying to be level-headed and pragmatic in his pronouncements, but he says the math is clear… his mortality horizon is likely creeping into a single-digit number of years, and it’s not a big number. And that’s with a significant amount of remaining time being stolen, as before, by the hardships of treatment.

Jay has always worked hard to keep his financial house in good order, but the next few years are going to kick the shit out of much of what he’s worked for. Jay’s got to deal with providing for his teenage daughter, his treatment, his legal and estate expenses… and all of us want to see him claw enough time from this goddamn illness to write at least a few more things, and drop by at least a few more cons.

So know, if you leave a tip in Violet’s tip jar, that that’s where most of it is going for the foreseeable future. Jay’s new round of chemotherapy starts on September 21, one week from this writing. And if you’ve ever appreciated his work or enjoyed his company, let me gently stress that the time to send him notes and good wishes is sooner rather than later.

Mirrored from Lynch Industries.

Memory, Sorrow, and Mars

What a week or two it’s been. Technology has made me its chew toy several times over, and I’ve been smacked in the face by piping-hot anxiety attacks fresh from the neurological oven. On the bright side, I survived my first Worldcon and my girlfriend walked away with her third Hugo award. She’s now here in Wisconsin for a few weeks, and is essentially the reason I’m still coherent and functional.

I’ve been organizing the house and packing things, since I expect to leave this place before November (total distance of my intended move is about one mile, nothing dramatic), and I keep stumbling over the detritus and evidence of my ex-marriage in the goddamnedest places. The mementos of a 12-year relationship simply get everywhere, like fine volcanic ash. My reaction has been variable. Sometimes it feels like those things happened to another person entirely and sometimes it feels as though they happened five minutes ago. The scribbles on one envelope recognizably belong to the woman who left me in 2010; the writing on the very next piece of paper just as clearly belongs to the girl I fell in love with in 1998. Throwing them in the same box feels disrespectful to one or the other; I can never figure out which, and I never want to think about how long I’ve held these crumpled old things poised above the box while trying to decide… fuck it, sigh, mumble, sigh some more, into the box they both go. Into the hermetic memory vault I’m sealing up for Eventually Whenever. A little present tucked away in a corner of the TARDIS for some future regeneration to stumble over and curse me for. That’s the way it works. I had to clean up the mess the last guy made of this place. Future Me can figure out what to do with the papers.

In happier news, there is more Violet. QUEEN OF THE IRON SANDS continues with the second part (of three) of Chapter 8: Across Savage Mars. I hope to get the last third, the longest bit by far, up some time this weekend. E-Book making is frustrating at the moment, but good old HTML and RTF are so simple even a clusterdunce like me can reliably tame them.

 

 

 

 

Mirrored from Lynch Industries.

My Chicago Worldcon Schedule

I’ll be on three panels, as well as attending the Hugo Awards ceremony. This will be my first Worldcon. My panels are:

Friday, August 31

VIOLENCE IN FANTASY

10:30 AM, Wright: Silver West

The use and misuse of violence in SF and fantasy. How much is too much?

Saturday, September 1

WHY FANTASY DOMINATES SCIENCE FICTION

10:30 AM, Grand Suite 3: Gold East

How and why did fantasy emerge as the dominant commercial and literary force in the genre? Where did science fiction lose its way, in terms of attracting and keeping its share of the fans? What can written SF learn from motion pictures and television, and vice versa? What can SF learn from the more successful fantasy works?

DISASTER RESPONSE IN SF

7:30 PM, Gold Coast: Bronze West

Apocalyptic natural disasters, hungry zombies, devastating plagues. These are all mainstays of SF&F stories. The federal government has real National Incident Management System (NIMS) for dealing with them. How would NIMS react to some science fictional scenarios? What would the response look like?

 

Mirrored from Lynch Industries.