David Lee Summers's Blog, page 116

Wild Wild West Con and Tucson Festival of Books

I spent the weekend of March 9 and 10 at two wonderful events in Tucson, Arizona. The first was Wild Wild West Con, a steampunk convention held at Old Tucson Studios. The other was the Tucson Festival of Books held at the University of Arizona.

My weekend really got started on Friday, March 8, as I drove down to Tucson from work at Kitt Peak National Observatory. A storm was blowing over Southern Arizona and I left just as snow was starting to fall at higher elevation. I dropped by Old Tucson and picked up some postcards from my friend Katherine Morse, one of the authors of The Adventures of Drake and McTrowell, to distribute at the Tucson Festival of Books. (Go visit their website for exciting steampunk adventures!)

The morning of Saturday, March 9 started early. Marina Martindale and I shared a booth at the Tucson Festival of Books and my wife and kids were along to help. We set up the booth, then my daughter Myranda and I drove over to Wild Wild West Con. We spent some time looking through the array of dealers and got our photo taken with Archimedes the Owl by Greg Ewald.

We then moved into a busy afternoon of panels and workshops. I sat on a steampunk authors panel with the other two writer guests, Thomas Willeford and Muffy Morrigan. We talked about steampunk fiction and nonfiction. Steampunk is such a great area for people who like to make things that “how-to” books are very big in the genre. Of course, steampunk fiction is also growing as people push the boundaries of the genre. For example, do you include magic in your steampunk world, or is it purely based on known science and technology. We agreed that whatever course you steer, you should make sure you know the rules of your world and abide by them!

After the panel, I was interviewed by Arizona Public Media. We spoke mostly about how my background with early twentieth century astronomical instrumentation has contributed to my love of Steampunk.

Myranda and I then grabbed a quick lunch and I went over to the Sheriff’s Office to present a Steampunk Poetry Workshop. I have been finding that these Steampunk Poetry Workshops have been well attended. I suspect some of that comes from the fact that music is such an important part of the Steampunk subculture and, of course, poetry is really the basis of song and music. People who attended the workshop left with poems or poems in progress and some thoughts about new things they could do with their writing.

My final presentation of the day was Astronomy in the Victorian Age. I’ve given this presentation before, but this time I was in a place where I had no multimedia, so I had to do everything with demonstrations and hard copy pictures. One thing that was nice was that I found a demonstration that allows one to see how absorption spectra work using diffraction grating glasses and Christmas lights. Again, I had a good, engaged crowd who brought lots of good questions.

The night finished up with a concert by Professor Elemental, Steam Powered Giraffe and Abney Park. Wow! Talk about a dream team of the Steampunk music scene. They were all wonderful and I returned to my friend’s house that night absolutely exhausted.

I spent the next day at the Tucson Festival of Books. As I mentioned above, Marina Martindale and I both decided to share a booth to show off our books. We spent the day visiting with people who came by. I was able to make the rounds and see several friends at other booths. Notably, I had a very nice visit with Scott Glener and Sue Thing at the TusCon Booth where we made plans for a very special workshop at the upcoming science fiction convention. I was also pleased to see writer friends such as Marsheila Rockwell, Gini Koch, Jeff Mariotte, Frankie Robertson and Roxy Rogers.

Fortunately, the rain never got very bad and Sunday was actually rather pleasant. All in all, it was a wonderful weekend and I was pleased that I could take part in two such wonderful events!

The Little Death

The Bene Gesserit sisterhood of Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel Dune recite a litany against fear that goes in part:

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer

Fear is the Little Death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

These words can apply to pretty much anyone, but I think there’s an especially strong relevance to writers. We have to confront the fear of rejection if we try to sell the book to a publisher. We have to face the fear that no one will buy the book. We have to face the fear that even if they do buy the book, they might not like it and leave one-star reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. I have known people who have let fear dominate them at any given step in this process. They quit after receiving a rejection. They quit after book sales didn’t do as well as they wanted. They quit after a bad review. For them, fear was indeed the Little Death that brought total obliteration.

Sometimes I look back at my first novel, The Pirates of Sufiro, and think how hard it was to get up the courage to send it to a publisher. That first publisher went out of business and I had to do it all over again when I got the rights back. To this day, this is a book that gets divided reviews. I’ve seen it get a one-star review one day and a five-star review within the week. There have been plenty of opportunities to let fear influence my decisions about this novel in particular and my writing career in general.

I recently had occasion to read the novel again. From the perspective of twenty years after I wrote it, I understand and even agree with much of the thoughtful criticism about the book. That said, I really appreciate those people who love the novel and I’m delighted that they had fun with it and decided to follow the characters into the sequels. Alas, some of the criticism I’ve seen hasn’t been so thoughtful—that I just do my best to shrug off.

On reflection, rereading my first novel left me with a good feeling. Overall, I think it still works as the fun pulp-inspired novel I’d intended, but I also see why it’s not for everyone. What’s more, I’m glad I’ve persevered and continued to write, explore other genres, and improve my craft. As the Bene Gesserit litany says at its conclusion:

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.

If you’d like to give The Pirates of Sufiro a try, the ebook is free at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Big Weekend in Tucson!

Two wonderful events are coming to Tucson, Arizona on the weekend of March 8, 9 and 10. The first is Wild Wild West Con, which will be held at Old Tucson Studios on all three days. The other is the Tucson Festival of Books which will be held at the University of Arizona on March 9 and 10. I’m fortunate enough to be able to attend both events. If you’ll be in the area, I hope you’ll join me. Learn more about the events, venues, and people mentioned by clicking the links throughout the post.

Tucson Festival of Books

My company, Hadrosaur Productions, will be sharing booth 106 with Marina Martindale’s Good Oak Press. We’ll be under the banner “Martindale and Summers.” We’ll have our complete line of books available along with my novels that have been published by other houses. My wife, Kumie Wise, will be manning the area with Marina on Saturday, March 9. I will be at the booth all day on Sunday, March 10. We’d love to see you whichever day you arrive!

Wild Wild West Con

Wild Wild West Con is a Steampunk convention held at Old Tucson Studios, just outside Tucson, Arizona. It features make-and-take workshops, panel discussions, and concerts by such luminaries as Steam Powered Giraffe and Abney Park. I will be there all day on Saturday, March 9. Here’s my tentative schedule of panels and presentations:

Steampunk Authors with Thomas Willeford, Muffy Morrigan in the Chapel at Noon.
Steampunk Poetry – Make and Take Your Own Poem in the Sheriff’s Office at 2:00pm
Astronomy in the Victorian Age in the Sheriff’s Office at 4:00pm.

I was also a participant at the very first Wild Wild West Con in 2011 and it was a blast. If you’re in Tucson next weekend, I hope you get a chance to sample one or preferably both of these wonderful events!

Versatile Blogger Award

This week, Bell Night presented me with the Versatile Blogger Award. Bell is a writer with a passion for the strange and mysterious who writes an interesting blog containing trivia about well known and historical authors. Thanks for the nomination, Bell. For the rest of you, go check out her blog!

As indicated by my link above, the Versatile Blogger Award has its own blog where you can find the rules. Of course, the goal of these awards is simply to allow us to “pay it forward” and recognize other bloggers plus provide an opportunity to answer some questions or cite some trivia about ourselves we might not cover in other blog posts.

My response to this particular nomination comes at the end of a busy week that has involved tracking asteroids, trying to set up a spectrograph for infrared observations before a blizzard came in, and weathering said blizzard at Kitt Peak National Observatory. I’ve just returned home where I plan to accept stories for coming issues of Tales of the Talisman Magazine, discuss some business with one of my publishers, and prepare for Wild Wild West Con and the Tucson Festival of Books which are both happening the weekend of March 8-10, 2013.

In the case of this award, I’m supposed to tell the person who nominated me seven things about myself. These seven things all have some relation to this past week.

The first blizzard I remember happened during a family trip to Fort Tejon, in the Grapevine, north of Los Angeles.
The first observatory I took data at was the Smith 24-inch telescope at Mount Laguna Observatory run by San Diego State University.
I live in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
I also have a residence at Kitt Peak National Observatory outside of Tucson, Arizona where I work.
Tales of the Talisman used to be known as Hadrosaur Tales .
My first novel was The Pirates of Sufiro and it was originally released on audio cassette in 1994.
The first convention I attended as a dealer, as a panelist, and as a guest was CopperCon, all in different years.

In the spirit of paying it forward, I’ll recommend some blogs I like to visit. Now, a lot of these folks are busy and I don’t expect most of them to respond to this award meme, but I’d nevertheless be delighted to see their answers if they choose to. Either way, you should go check out what these folks are up to!

Joy’s Live Journal
Author Ryan Schneider
Dark Cargo
Dab of Darkness
Robert E. Vardeman
Stephen D. Sullivan
Ernest Hogan
Emily Devenport

Night of the Meteors

As many know, my “day” job is at Kitt Peak National Observatory outside Tucson, Arizona. I operate telescopes and assist visiting astronomers with observing projects. My current shift started yesterday on February 15. My task was to help an MIT astronomer use the Kitt Peak 2.1-meter telescope to watch a hunk of rock called 2012 DA14 as it passed near the Earth. The photo below shows the Kitt Peak 2.1-meter enclosure.

The importance of this event is that to date, this is the closest approach witnessed by an asteroid of its size. The object is about 50 meters across and it passed about 17,000 miles above the surface of the Earth, closer than many geosynchronous satellites orbit. Kitt Peak is on the wrong side of the world to have seen the object at closest approach, but the hope was to catch it as it sped away from the Earth.

By what seems to be completely random coincidence, a meteor struck Russia earlier in the day. The best estimate I’ve seen for the size of this object was 17 meters before it started disintegrating in the atmosphere, so a little bigger than a third the size of 2012 DA14. The meteor came in from a completely different trajectory than 2012 DA14, so this seems to be completely unrelated.

As it turned out, I saw neither of these objects. The Russian Meteor is probably obvious, since I’m not in Russia! The reason I didn’t get to see 2012 DA14 had to do with the tricky nature of observing asteroids and the nature of my job. My job was to get the observer going at the 2.1-meter telescope—show him how to make the telescope track asteroids (which move at a different rate and direction than stars). When the time was assigned, it looked as though the asteroid would be visible early in the evening. However, as the orbital calculations were refined, astronomers discovered it wouldn’t be visible from Arizona until 4 in the morning. My duties pulled me to another telescope before the near-Earth asteroid would rise.

Even though I didn’t get to see 2012 DA13, I did get to see some other near-Earth asteroids. The observer at the 2.1-meter had several different targets to look at and I helped him get to know the telescope and the camera with those targets. These asteroids basically look like little dots even in fairly big telescopes, little different than the background stars. The only way you know they’re an asteroid is that they move against the background of the stars.

For those who are wondering, the only real difference between a meteor and an asteroid has to do with where the object is. If the object is in space, it’s an asteroid (sometimes called a meteoroid, usually if it’s relatively small). If the object is hurtling through the atmosphere, it’s a meteor. Once it hits the ground, it’s a meteorite.

For those interested in my literary pursuits, I’ve written two short stories about meteor strikes. The first is called “An Asteroid By Any Other Name” which tells the story about an asteroid blown up on approach to Earth. The pieces land in South America and start moving through the jungle. The story is available in Wondrous Web Worlds 7 and was nominated for the James Award. The anthology is available at: http://www.sdpbookstore.com/anthologies.htm#www7

The other story is called “A Garden Resurrected” and imagines a village that decides to resurrect the local vampire to help them survive in the aftermath of a meteor strike. The story is available in the anthology Apocalypse 13 which is available at: http://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-13-Padwolf-ebook/dp/B00AIEYJMI/

My Fantasy Circle of Five

A couple of weeks ago, Paige Addams tagged me to share five fantasy characters I’d love to spend time with.

What’s more, I’ll be participating in the Time Traveler’s Outpost at the 4th Avenue Trunk Show in Tucson, Arizona, hosted by the Tucson Steampunk Society today. The event runs from noon to 6pm. Visit http://www.fourthavenue.org/4th-avenue-trunk-show/ for details. Tomorrow, I’m the guest of the Tucson Steampunk Society’s Book Club where we’ll be discussing my novel Owl Dance at Antigone Books starting at 3:30pm. If you’re in Tucson, I hope you’ll drop by one of these two great events.

In keeping with the wild west steampunk theme, I decided to pick the five western or steampunk characters I’d most like to spend time with. Clicking on the images will take you to Amazon where you can find a book or DVD featuring the character.

Agatha Heterodyne

When we meet Agatha, she’s a student at Transylvania Polygnostic University with a drive to create, but the worst luck in the world. Over time, she learns her true heritage and unlocks the inner spark that allows her to create amazing devices. The story is still continuing and she’s now fighting for the city and castle she inherited from her fore bearers, a line of mad geniuses called the Heterodynes.

Over the course of the comics, it’s clear that Agatha has a sense of fun and she’s great with machines. As someone who likes to tinker and build things, I would enjoy comparing notes with her and see what trouble we could engineer. As an added bonus, I love a good cup of coffee and at one point in the comic, Agatha builds a machine that brews the perfect cup!

Captain Nemo

Captain Nemo was created by Jules Verne for the novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I’m recommending the wonderful comic League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill in which Nemo joins a team fighting a villain intent on destroying London.

Nemo as envisioned by Verne and continued by Moore and O’Neill is an Indian Prince who built a submarine to make a life from the sea. He fights the English who invaded his homeland, but helps those in need. I would love to meet Nemo and hear his remarkable story. I would love to wander through Nemo’s salon aboard the Nautilus and explore his library while he played the organ, then sit back and see the wonders of the ocean revealed through the submarine’s great windows.

Artemus Gordon

The Wild Wild West was the series that introduced me to steampunk before the term had even been coined. When I was in junior high, I used to watch reruns of the show religiously. My parents watched westerns and frankly, when I was a kid, they bored me, but this was something different, a western with a science fictional jolt.

My favorite character was Artemus Gordon, sidekick to the show’s title character, Jim West. Arte invented all the gadgets Jim used, but he was good in a fight and utterly loyal. He was also a lot of fun. My own steampunk costuming is modeled on the clothes Arte wore in The Wild Wild West. What can I say? Arte has been a favorite character for decades. Of course I’d want to meet him!

Brisco County, Jr.

Brisco County, Jr. was a lawyer turned bounty hunter, hired by a group of wealthy men in San Francisco to track down the men who murdered his father. In the process he learned about the orb, a mysterious device from another time that had amazing powers.

What made Brisco County, Jr. such an appealing character was that he was educated and he was always interested in what was around the corner in the next century. As with most of my other picks, he’s a traveler who has seen many places and many things. Although he was a pragmatic realist who wasn’t afraid to fight when he needed to, he always maintained his sense of wonder and optimism.

Fatemeh Karimi

True, I’m engaging in some shameless self-promotion, but seriously of all the characters I’ve created, Fatemeh Karimi is one of the people I’d most like to meet.

Fatemeh is by nature a healer in the ultimate sense. If she sees something wrong, she will attempt to fix it. She also works to balance her rational and spiritual selves. There are times when I could really use her wisdom and council and I’m glad I can seek her out within my own mind. I just hope I do her character justice through my words.

Because these things are more fun with other people also play along,  I’ve decided to tag the following people to play along and name the five fictional characters they’d most like to spend time with:

Marina Martindale
Deby Fredericks
F.T. McKinstry
Sandi Layne

Tales of the Talisman 2013 Reading Period Update

I spent much of the last week laying out the winter 2012/2013 issue of Tales of the Talisman Magazine. The issue is now at the printer and soon will be available at TalesOfTheTalisman.com and Amazon.com. You can already pick up a copy at the CreateSpace e-store. If all goes well, I’ll be shipping copies to subscribers and contributors during the next break from my “day” job operating telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory.

Now that the winter issue is at the printer, I find myself at a point where I need to evaluate a few things. One of those things is the publishing schedule. We’ve fallen somewhat behind my ideal schedule for the magazine. I would have been happier if the winter issue had shipped in December. Another thing to evaluate is my task list for the remainder of the year. In addition to the magazine, I have story, anthology, and novel commitments I need to meet this year not to mention my commitments to the observatory. The question is how can I bring the magazine back on schedule and maintain all those other commitments?

With that question in mind, I have one last item to evaluate. Because we’re in the midst of the winter reading period, I need to look at our story inventory. When I look at that last item, I realize we’re actually in pretty good shape. We easily have enough short-listed stories to fill two more issues. In addition to that, I have a large stack of stories passed to me by first reader. I suspect I could fill another issue from that batch alone.

Back in December, I wrote a post that addressed one of the questions I’m most frequently asked: “How do you do everything?” One of the things I said was that I try not to bite off more than I can chew. I also noted that I should be forthright with people I’m working with about conflicts and deadlines.

If I work to get Tales of the Talisman back on schedule and also work to stay on track with my other commitments, I see a potential conflict this summer when the next reading period comes up and I suddenly get a new wave of stories to read. Fortunately, because the current reading period is going so well, I see a solution to this conflict. If I fill the remainder of the volume 9 issues this reading period, I could cancel the summer reading period and use that time to catch up the publishing schedule and keep up with the other commitments I’ve made.

I don’t take this decision lightly. I realize how much our wonderful contributors count on the reading periods as stated in the guidelines. However, I believe the only other viable alternatives are to let the production schedule slip further behind or put the magazine on hiatus—both of which run the risk of alienating readers. If readers are alienated and go elsewhere, the magazine will cease to serve a purpose.

I hope contributors will bear with me through the inconvenience of one canceled reading period with the hopes of improving the magazine’s schedule and helping me meet my commitments.

Her Royal Majesty's Steampunk Symposium 2013

Reblogged from Dark cargo:

Yeah! David Lee Summers gave us this cool report from his adventure upon the Queen Mary for the HRM Steampunk Symposium earlier this month. He shared his report with us last yer, too, here, brought to us by nrlymrtl. David Lee Summers is an author, poet, publisher, and professional star-gazer. His website, http://www.zianet.com/dsummers/.

Her Royal Majesty's Steampunk Symposium 2013…

Read more… 829 more words

This week, I wrote up a report of my adventures at Her Royal Majesty's Steampunk Symposium and shared it with my friends at Dark Cargo. Drop by their site to read the report and stay awhile to see some of the other wonderful SF/F discussions they have going on.

Collaborations

This past weekend saw the release of the steampunk anthology Gears and Levers 2 edited by Phyllis Irene Radford. The release of the anthology marks something of a milestone for me in that it contains the first collaborative story I’ve published. The story is “Endeavor in Halcyon” and I wrote it with Kurt MacPhearson.

“Endeavor in Halcyon” tells the story of Captain Penelope Todd of the East India Company’s Airship Endeavor. She is on a mission to find new trading routes when her ship gets caught in a mysterious storm and they are hurled into a strange new world.

This was an interesting collaboration because although Kurt and I have corresponded off and on over the years, we have never met face-to-face. He lives in Michigan and I live in New Mexico. The way this collaboration happened is that he suggested writing a story together. I had written the beginning of the story, but wasn’t really sure what direction I wanted to go with it, so I sent it to him. He wrote a couple of pages and sent it back. It went on that way for about three or four times until we came to a place we both thought was a satisfying conclusion. We then took turns polishing the story before sending it in to Ms. Radford. I was pleased she liked the story enough to buy it.

What else will you find in the anthology? Adventure and romance await in worlds that never were but should have been. Magic and science blend together as Gears and Levers explores the quest for all that makes up humanity. Battle pirates, walk with ghosts, fly in dirigibles, explore the wonderous world, and walk with automatons in twenty amazing tales set in Steampunk lands by masterful storytellers such as Alma Alexander, Chaz and Karen Brenchley, Shawna Reppert, Larry Lefkowitz, Tina Connolly, Jeanette Bennett, Voss Foster, Frog and Esther Jones, and many more. The anthology is available at Smashwords and Amazon.

At the same time as this book was being released, I was engaged in a collaboration of a different sort. Last weekend marked the third time Dino Staats and I have presented a Victorian Magic and Science panel. So far, no two of these have been alike.

The first time we presented this panel was on the Queen Mary a year ago and we were joined by Professor D.R. Schreiber who had a Windhurt generator and a great perspective on how the history of magic and science intertwine. In that panel, we focused a lot on the magic and science of electricity.

The second time we presented the panel was at San Diego’s Gaslight Gathering. There, much of the discussion focused on chemistry and biology and how they were utilized in magic.

Last weekend, Dino and I were again on the Queen Mary. This time we focused a lot of our discussion on the clockwork automata of Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin.

What’s exciting about these is that Dino and I never rehearse our presentation and really aren’t certain what the other will present. In fact, the first time, neither of the magicians even knew I had been assigned to the Magic and Science panel! For the latter panels, Dino and I have maybe exchanged an email or two about what would be fun to discuss and what would make the panel a little different for people who have seen it before.

Both of these collaborations have left me enriched. I’ve learned new things, improved as a writer and public speaker—and what’s more, I’ve forged friendships that I hope will last for years to come.

Scam Attempt Warning for SF/F Writers

I received a scam letter from “Arthur Peterson” of Brexton College asking if I would be a speaker there next month. Seems like these letters are making the rounds to everyone on the About SF speaker’s list. Don’t fall for it. Don’t waste your time on it. Go write something instead! Here’s John Scalzi’s blog post about the letter with all the details you need to know.

Scam Attempt Warning for SF/F Writers.