Jennifer Brozek's Blog, page 38

May the Skies Be Ever in Your Color

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

This weekend was a whirlwind trip through Port Townsend and the surrounding area. The Husband decided we needed a weekend away and we had volunteered to clear parts of Port Townsend for a mega-field (Ingress game). One of the beauties of playing Ingress while vacationing is the fact that seeking out unique portals to hack and capture leads me and the Husband to some of the neatest places.

[Quick aside about Ingress. It's an ARG—augmented reality game. Think of it as a cross between digital geocaching and capture the flag. All the portals are based on real world locations and you must be within 30 meters of it to hack or capture. Two portals can be linked. Three portals can be linked to make a field. No links can cross each other. Nothing can be linked if they are under a field. There's a lot of layers to the game. It's not for everyone, but for some people it's the bee's knees.]

This past weekend, we explored Port Townsend, Port Gamble, Fort Worden, Fort Flagler, and the surrounding areas. We followed the portals and the missions connected to them. We discovered and visited a marine, an orca museum, a couple of literal castles (Trollhaven! Castle Manresa!), crazy roadside attractions, a couple of farmer's markets and a ton of parks. We walked so much. The Husband's pedometer had him walking 27,000 steps on Saturday. I did less than that, but enough that my feet ached.

The highlight, of course, came from helping create a field so big that it covered both Seattle and Portland and stretched into Montana. We didn't do much. Cleared a couple of links but the hour of sitting in the dark, waiting for the "Go!" command was awesome. Everyone was the enemy... the teenagers sneaking out of their house and looking at their phone, the dog walkers looking at their phones, even the coyote that randomly showed up. (Another cool thing about Port Townsend--the random deer and other wildlife around.) When you play Ingress, everyone with a cellphone is a potential enemy or ally. Do you know how many people stare at their phones all the time? :)

In the end, there was elation at being part of such a big endeavor. Over 50 agents and operators in all. Satisfied with a job well done, we took the long way home on Sunday to find more interesting places that we would never have found without playing Ingress. It is a great game for people who like to travel and explore. It's even better when the op is successful.

May the skies be ever in your color. (In this case, Enlightened Green.)

RIP Rich Taylor

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

I hadn’t realized that it’d been so long since an official blog post. Thank goodness for Bubble and Squeek. I’m sorry that today I’m writing about the death of a dear friend, a brother of my heart, Rich Taylor AKA UnkyRich. I wish it weren’t so. I just spent an hour looking for a picture* I took of Rich the day we met at one of Chris Senft’s parties.  I can’t find it. I probably put it in a very safe place. I think it was about 1993. The earliest picture I found of Rich is 1995. He liked having his picture taken as much as I do.

I hate that I’m already automatically writing “liked” versus “likes.”

Rich died on September 17th. Today is his memorial. I couldn’t go. Sometime in the future, Cil and I will meet up for a drink and remember him together. For now, just the thought of that sentence closes my throat and brings tears to my eyes.

And yet, I can’t help thinking, “What did he have in his pockets when he died?” Because Rich talked about carrying strange little items with him so that, if he suddenly died, the coroner could see his things and wonder what the hell was up with him. It’s one of the reasons I carry skeleton keys in my purse.

Also, one of the reasons wanted to find that picture of Rich was the other thing he said he wanted to do: Get two pictures of someone about fifteen years apart and write dates on them—something very early for the older picture and something later for the younger picture with the question, “How did he do it? I must know!” on the back of it. Then leave those two pictures in a safety deposit box. Just to give people something to puzzle over.

Rich touched my life in many ways. He was a best friend and confidant. I missed him a lot in the years I’ve lived in Washington. I tried to see him and Cil as much as possible but it’s been less and less over the years and my more busy travel schedule. But when we’d talk… it was like no time had passed. I appreciated that.

I wish I had been able to play in one more of his games.

I guess there’s not much more to say. I loved him as a brother and I will miss him as a friend.

*Physical picture. This is from the 1990s when we didn't have the internet like we do today. Get off my lawn!**

**Something else Rich used to say a lot. :)

Bubble and Squeek for 22 September 2015

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

This is a big Bubble and Squeek today. A lot stuff came in all at once.

Article: For writers on the SFWA Blog. How do you ask for blurb?

Article: I talk about my love of gargoyles on My Favorite Things.

Article: SFSignal MIND MELD: Second Chances. I talk about why I gave Stephen R. Donaldson a second chance.

Article: Over at Ragnarok Publications, I talk about how I used my anger to fuel my writing career in Dreamer No More.

Interview: Permuted Press asked me some great questions about NEVER LET ME SLEEP. We touch on body image and mental illness.

Interview: Over at Eating Authors I get to talk about ramen. Really, really good ramen.

Review: I get a nice shout out in this review of NOT OUR KIND from the Eviscerating Pen (what a lovely name!).

Pre-Order: Remember, you can pre-order NEVER LET ME SLEEP and the hard copy Melissa Allen compilation NEVER LET ME.  Also, if you missed it, here's a post that's all about my fabulous covers.

SFSignal: I gotta say it. I love seeing my name on SFSignal and in such good company, too.

Tell Me - Michael Pogach

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

Spiders, Gods, and Monsters

“What’s your book called?” I’ve been asked a couple dozen times since I announced its upcoming release.

“The Spider in the Laurel.”

“Oh. Is there a real spider in it?” is the inevitable next question.

This is where I get stuck. I want to say, “Yes, there is a real spider in it, insomuch as the gods and monsters we write about in sci-fi and fantasy are real.”

But I see the look. Spiders are creepy. Scary. I’m not buying a novel with a spider in the title, and on the cover, and in the damn book.

So I say, “No, the spider is a metaphor. A part of a fairy tale actually.”

“I like fairytales. Which one?”

Now I’m stuck again. If I say that it’s a brand new fairy tale that I made up, I get a new look. I’ll believe you wrote a hundred thousand word novel. But a brand new fairy tale. Come on, author-man. I’m not buying it.

I take the easy way out. I change the subject. I start talking about the novel’s title. It spent more than half its life being called Genesis Lied. I liked the title. It came out of a spit-balling session with my writers group at California Pizza Kitchen. I like it, but I didn’t love it. I stayed on the lookout for something better.

That something better arrived in the form of a 120 year old Herman Melville poem I found while searching for epigraphs for the book. The line, sort of the poem’s volta, just sang. I snatched it like a six year old pocketing a three pound gummy bear in a candy store – no thought for result or consequence.

The new title vanquished the old. But a new trouble arose. My novel had nothing to do with spiders, laurels, or Herman Melville. I had to take a step back. Re-see and reevaluate.

I’d already built an entire new mythos for the book by reinterpreting Mesopotamian and Minoan mythology, weaving this through Biblical tradition, and tying it to a little-known (at least, little-known outside of Europe) Dark Age relic called the Vase of Soissons.

But the thing about mythology is that it’s macro, by definition. It’s all about explaining origins and defining archetypes. That sense of scale, that aloofness, had pervaded the entire story. It had turned my characters into types, not people. I needed to re-humanize them.

The solution came to me while I was shopping in a bookstore with my wife, choosing which fairytale collections we wanted for our soon-to-be-born (at the time) daughter.

I set to, right away, thumb-typing into my phone’s ‘memo’ app. Fairytales, you see, are the next step in any mythology. They break from explaining the universal, and focus instead on teaching the individual. What better way is there for a parent to teach a child not to judge a book by its cover, or to beware strangers, or perhaps – as Simon teaches his daughter MacKenzie in my novel – to trust her heart most when the danger of betrayal is at its highest.

“Long ago, when it was still good to wish for a thing,” I wrote, “there was a red-haired princess in a kingdom by the sea.”

I wrote the whole fairytale in a day. I gave it to MacKenzie for safe keeping. And yes, there is a spider in it. But it’s only as real as gods and monsters. And when have they ever prevented a good night’s sleep or a happily ever after?

---
Michael Pogach is the author of the sci-fi thriller The Spider in the Laurel. He began writing stories in grade school. He doesn’t remember these early masterpieces, but his parents tell him everyone in them died. He’s gained some humanity since then, and has been known to allow characters to survive his tales these days. You can find his stories in journals such as New Plains Review, Third Wednesday, and Workers Write, as well as the chapbook Zero to Sixty. He is hard at work on two more novels, countless more stories, and keeping his infant daughter from eating everything she can reach. Michael's website is: www.michaelpogach.com.

Release date for The Spider in the Laurel is Sept 21.

All About the Covers

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

I am so happy with my Melissa Allen covers. The cover art was done by Ryan Truso. I don't know the model's name. I wanted a corn fed farm girl from South Dakota and that's what I got. An actual teenager on my YA series. I love this.

October 13, 2015 – Never Let Me Sleep (Set in the town of Onida, South Dakota. The nightmare begins and Melissa has to stop the apocalypse from happening.)

November 10, 2015 – Never Let Me Leave (Set in an underground lab in North Dakota where Melissa discovers she's not the only one to save the world... and that someone on the inside wants to kill them all.)

December 8, 2015 – Never Let Me Die (Set in Richland, Missouri. This is my favorite cover. Melissa has had enough. It's been well over a year since that day in South Dakota and she lost everything. She's gained some of it back but now someone else wants to take it all away from her again.)

May 3, 2016 – Never Let Me (The Melissa Allen Omnibus with the extra story. The extra story "Never Let Me Feel" gives you a hint of what's to come for Melissa after the events of Never Let Me Die.)

I'm talking about this series on a couple of upcoming podcasts.

Tell Me - Wendy Hammer

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

Wendy Hammer is the newest Apocalypse Ink Productions author. She's an excellent writer and a fun person to be around. Here's is what she has to say about THE THIN.
---

Three Things about THE THIN: Cross Cutting (Book One)

1.  

  I started the first Cross Cutting story with a clear image of the main character—her personality, appearance, and magic ability. Trinidad’s name didn’t come together until I figured out her history.

That choice started with setting. Her magic is tied to place, but she doesn’t have a permanent bond with one. When I start thinking about stories, contested spaces, displacement, identity, and power, my mind turns to postcolonial theory and literature. I teach literature, so it’s an occupational hazard, I suppose.

My graduate school research had a lot to do with Africa in literature so I turned there first. Then I became interested in the relationship between her magic and island territories, and I eventually turned my attention to the Caribbean. Trinidad, in particular, stood out for its history, culture, and beautiful language. I chose Ireland to pair with it for similar reasons.

Once I could pinpoint where my character came from, the name Trinidad O’Laughlin didn’t take long to come up with.

 

2.  

I like to create music playlists for inspiration. I’ll drive or walk around and listen to that music while I think about character and plot points. I usually have to stick to instrumentals for the actual writing part, but anything goes the rest of the time. The list for the first Cross Cutting novella was a mix of calypso, soca, rapso, chutney, Irish folksongs, contemporary Irish bands, and random songs featuring variations of the word walk. I threw in a few punk songs for good measure—and because I’m a longtime fan.

 

3.   

The inspiration for THE THIN came from walking along the Cultural Heritage trail in Indianapolis. My imagination was fired up by the sight of a bunch of vans parked in a garage at the corner of Virginia Ave and Maryland Street.

Though I fudged a few details here and there, I did use Google Maps’ Street View while I was writing the novella. One of the best surprises was when I noticed that the vans are there.

It gave me shivers. I love that kind of thing.

---
Wendy Hammer grew up in Wisconsin. She has degrees in English from The University of Wisconsin-Madison and Ball State University. She teaches literature and composition at a community college. Thanks to her job, she's heard all the usual MC Hammer jokes, but figures someone will surprise her with a new one someday. She's mostly cool with that. She writes speculative fiction (fantasy, horror and science fiction) and is an affiliate member of HWA. Wendy lives in West Lafayette, Indiana with her husband.

 

About the Hugo Awards in Interview Form

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

Q: Now that the Hugos are over, how do you feel?
A: I feel fine.

Q: Really?
A: Yes, really. Yes, of course I’m sad I didn’t win—it was a beautiful award and I worked really hard. I wanted to win, but as I said on twitter, I’m happy people voted the way they felt they needed to. There are other nominations and other Hugos. All voices need to be heard. I don’t want to dwell on anything else. It’s done for me.

Q: What about the numbers?
A: The numbers came out exactly as I thought they would. Without “No Award,” Mike Resnick would’ve won.

Q: What about the nomination numbers, discounting the slates?
A: I saw that I probably would’ve been 6th or 7th nomination place in Best Editor, Short Form. Respectable. More importantly, I saw that CHICKS DIG GAMING got 92 nomination votes in the Best Related Work category—second only to Jo Walton’s WHAT MAKES THIS BOOK SO GREAT. Which meant, incidentally, I lost a second time on Hugo night. I lost an Alfie to Jo. Still, that means I probably would’ve been nominated for a Hugo whether there was a slate or not. So, I’m feeling pretty good about things.

Q: Alfie?
A: Go ask GRRM. It was a kind gesture.

Q: Hey, in and around the Hugo stuff, I saw that you’ve become the Managing Editor of Evil Girlfriend Media. What happened to Apocalypse Ink Productions?
A: It’s still there. I’m still the Creative Director of AIP. I’ve just added the job of Managing Editor of EGM to my roster.

Q: Can you do both?
A: Yes. I'm talented that way.

Q: So, what are you going to do now that the Hugo stuff is over?
A: Keep on keeping on. I’ve got my YA SF-Thriller series coming out in October, starting with NEVER LET ME SLEEP. I’m editing NAUGHTY OR NICE: A HOLIDAY ANTHOLOGY for EGM. I’ve signed a contract for something very, very cool that will be announced soon. I’m working on the outline of my next tie-in novel. I’m a busy-busy freelancer. There are some great things to come.

Q: Did you bring home anything cool from the con?
A: I did! Cat Rambo gave me a SFWA 50th anniversary coin. Howard Taylor gave me a couple of “Not my circus. Not my monkeys.” coins. I bought a print by Rob Carlos, the newest Ken Scholes fiction collection, and Apparitions, a book of translated Japanese ghost stories. Also, of course, my little Hugo rocket pin—I earned that sucker.

Q: Are you sure you’re okay?
A: Yes. I promise. I'm okay. I appreciate everyone’s care and concern. I get the warm fuzzies when people tell me how much me and my work meets to them. Yes, I lost three awards this year but I won one and that’s awesome.

Q: Anything else you want to say?
A: Yes. Thank you to everyone for your support. I want to give a special shout out to Howard and Sandra Taylor, Kelly Swails, Jonnalyhn Wolfcat, Minerva Zimmerman, Sarah Hendrix, and Seanan McGuire who were heroes behind the scenes, super kind, and helped keep me relatively sane.

Tell Me - Ari Marmell

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

Ari is a friend of mine and someone who has written for me. He’s a great guy and an even better writer. I’m happy to have inspired him in some small way. I really like the Mick Oberon books.

---

It's both funny and highly appropriate that I'm writing this "Tell Me" post about HALLOW POINT for Jennifer's web site. See, she doesn't know this—or I guess she does by the time you're reading this, but she didn't before I sent this to her—but in a small way, she's part of the reason that my character of Mick Oberon exists at all.

Real quick, first, for those of you who don't know. Mick Oberon is a PI in Chicago in the 1930s, very much in the model of a Chandler of Mammett protagonist. He's also, however, one of the aes sidhe, and a noble-in-exile from the Seelie Court. The books about him—both the new one, HALLOW POINT, and the first one, called HOT LEAD, COLD IRON—are a mixture of gangland/noir mystery and urban fantasy.

Now, I've been asked before how I came up with Mick, and what I tell people is that he's basically an "Athena character," by which I mean he sprang full-grown from my head one day. And that's true, so far as it goes; he really did just pop to mind. I didn't set out tp envision any such character, nor was I planning to write a noir/fantasy mix. It all just came to me.

But part of the reason it came to me is that I was already thinking about fairy tales. And the reason I was thinking about fairy tales is that I'd just been invited to contribute to an anthology of short stories called HUMAN TALES, a book of "reverse" fairy tales. (That is, where the faeries or other supernatural creatures with the protagonists, and it was the humans who were the monsters or the mysteries.) The story I wound up writing for that book, called "Tithe," had nothing whatsoever to do with Mick Oberon; he wasn't really an appropriate character for what I wanted to do with that project.

He stuck with me, though, and wound up developing into a character and an idea for which I've already written two novels, and hope to write a great many more. It's not quite like anything else I've written, and it's not quite like most of the other urban fantasy out there. These books are their own thing, Mick's his own character, and maybe I'd have come up with him even if I hadn't been contemplating fairy tales that evening. But then again, maybe I wouldn't.

So thanks, Jennifer, for this opportunity to talk to him—and just possibly for spurring me to come up with him in the first place.

---
Read more Ari at his website: Mouseferatu: Rodents of the Dark.

 

Tell Me - Russ Pitts

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

Russ Pitts 
President, Flying Saucer Media 
Project: Stage of Development Kickstarter (stageofdevelopment.com) 

I was in my first year as Features Editor for polygon.com when I sat with Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantonio in Austin, Texas for an interview about their game, Dishonored. The game was coming out in a few months and nobody at studio Arkane or at publisher Bethesda was sure how well it would be received. Tracey Thompson from Bethesda had called me to ask if I would write a thing about Harvey and Raph to drum up interest in the game’s creators (and by extension the game) and I said yes and so there I was. 

We had just gotten back for lunch. I’d eaten a small salad to be polite, but I wasn’t hungry. I’d stopped for tacos on the drive down from Dallas, because I’d forgotten to eat breakfast and was starving. This made me late, and Harvey and Raph had looked a little pissed off when I arrived, but these things happen. I think they were hungry. Now we were settled comfortably in a small room at Arkane, Harvey and Raph had finally eaten, and they were starting to talk. 

The interview opened with the usual stuff about how they got their respective starts in games, where they first met and so on. It turned out they had an interesting history of casual encounters and similar life circumstances before ever working together. They could almost have been the same person, apart for one being Texan and the other French. I felt like there was a good story there, and kept asking questions and listening to answers. 

Then, without warning, Harvey launched into this miserable and sad tale about how he grew up in a nothing town on the Texas Gulf Coast and his mother died of an overdose and his father commit suicide. How he joined the military to escape a dead-end future. How he barely survived both experiences. And how he now channels this tragedies into his video games. I was in shock. I had never heard such a real, raw and emotional story in a video game interview. 

I looked over at Tracey as if to ask “Is this on-record? ” 

She looked back, eyes wide and shrugged. She had no idea. Maybe? 

So I kept the material, wrote it intro the piece and the result is one of my favorite stories about video games of all time. It got a lot of people talking about Polygon, and Dishonored, and a few months later both endeavors would become hugely successful.
 
But the whole time I was talking with Harvey and Raph, writing that story and publishing it I was thinking, “F- - -, we should have had a video camera in there. ”
 
A few months later I got the chance to develop a web series based on what I wish I could have done with Harvey and Raph. Human Angle was just that — the human angle of video games. It featured people whose stories were at an intersection of humanity and video games. People of all kinds. We produced 12 episodes, but I always felt like we had just barely scratched the surface. 

Stage of Development is my chance to get back to that, and finish what I started with human Angle. Starting with the stories of Brenda and John Romero and Spry Fox, two stories that are a lot alike in spite (or perhaps because of) their differences. 

I’ve been following both stories for some time. I’ve been interested to see how John Romero has handled a transition from making big-budget games to more indie stuff. Seeing how his relationship (and then marriage) with Brenda Brathwaite, now Brenda Romero influenced his work, and vice versa. And now how the two of them, with the launch of Donovan Romero’s game Gunman Taco Truck, have truly crated a family business. To be able to capture their passion for family and video games, and — for them — how the two are inseparable was a privilege. 

Spry Fox is a different beast. You probably don’t know much about them unless you’ re a game developer. If you are, though, you know they’re one of the most influential studios in the business. Principals David Edery and Dan “danc” Cook are both highly regarded and well known in the industry. Dan especially is considered one of the brightest developers there is. So many people have told me they look to him for advice and guidance, I’ve often wondered why his own company had yet to see a truly blockbuster game. 

When I reached out to Spry Fox about Stage of Development, they were just finishing what they called “a little mobile game” that would become surprise hit Alphabear. I genuinely believe their success story is yet to be fully written, and I wanted to be there to capture it. 

If Stage of Development fully funds at Kickstarter, these are only the first of the stories we’ll be able to tell.

Sasquan-WorldCon Schedule

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

Here is my Sasquan schedule. There is, as usual, a no-shyness zone around me. If you want my attention, talk to me. I will have a limited number of my Story Convention Cards with me. Find out how I (fictionally) die at Sasquan. I do have several meetings and Hugo-related things not listed here and I will probably show up at some of the publisher parties.

THURSDAY
10:00 am - 6pm SFWA Board Meeting, 304 (CC)
7:00 pm - Role Playing Games as an Author's Tool, 401C (CC)

----------------------------------------------------------
FRIDAY
11:00 am - Comics and Graphic Novels for Teen Readers, 303A (CC)
12:00 pm - Hard SF for Teens, 401C (CC)
4:00 pm - Autographing, Exhibit Hall B (CC)

----------------------------------------------------------
SATURDAY
10:00am - The Range of the Small Press, Conference Theater 110 (CC)
1:00 pm - 3pm, SFWA Business Meeting, 300B (CC)
3:00 pm - Getting Your Game Published, 303A (CC)
6:00 pm - Hugo Pre-Reception
8:00 pm - Hugo Awards Ceremony, INB Performing Arts Center (CC)

----------------------------------------------------------
SUNDAY
11:00 am - Kaffee Klatche - Jennifer Brozek, 202A-KK2 (CC) [Note: This is the only event of mine you need to sign up for.]
1:00 pm - Worlds We Believe: YA World Building, 300D (CC)