Jennifer Brozek's Blog, page 40

Tell Me - C.A. Suleiman

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

I've not yet met C.A. Suleiman but I have met a lot of the contributors to THE LOST CITADEL, all of whom are worth reading. This is one reason why they decided to do a shared world anthology. One I can get behind.

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"The city is called “Redoubt”... and so far as anyone knows, it is the last.

Seven decades ago, there were cities upon cities; kingdoms and nations, the remains of ancient empire. Cultures at war, cultures at trade. Races with varying degrees of alliance and distrust. Humans, elves, dwarves, and others; magic and monsters, rare but real. Regions of desolation, certainly, but also regions of plenty; forests, farmlands, and fields. And so it was for millennia, through two dynamic ages the lorekeepers and scribes called Ascensions.

Until the world ended. Most call it the Fall, but whatever term a given people choose to use, it marked the point where everything—everything—changed. Nations crumbled. Races died. Magic sputtered. Nature sickened.

The Dead woke."

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The Lost Citadel is a shared-world horror fantasy edited and developed by yours truly, based on an idea I percolated with my longtime collaborator, fantasy and horror novelist Ari Marmell. The first project in the world of the Lost Citadel is an anthology of short stories called Tales of the Lost Citadel (now live on Kickstarter), featuring some of the most acclaimed voices in fantasy and horror fiction

The idea of the Lost Citadel is more ambitious in scope than a single collection of words. Both Ari and I grew up on, and were pretty strongly inspired by, the shared-world fantasy explorations of the late '80s, especially the setting of Thieves' World and its signature city, Sanctuary. That series was formative for more than a few fantasy writers, but Ari and I had what we feel is a 21st-century vision of the shared-world approach to world-building and narrative, and that's what really got us excited.

With this setting, we're trying to re-define the idea of what it means to “share” a fantasy world, to have different voices and talents come together to build, express, and explore a world with a particular set of themes and aesthetics. We're working with writers, yes, but also fine artists, musicians, graphic designers, cartographers, and more; anyone whose gifts might help flesh out and embolden the world of the Lost Citadel.

Like in all the best stories, the written word is just the beginning.

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C.A. Suleiman has contributed scores of books to some of fandom's top properties, including Dungeons & Dragons and the World of Darkness. Along with being the developer of the award-winning Mummy line, he co-authored the flagship game Vampire: The Requiem and created the Egyptian-fantasy world of Hamunaptra (first published in boxed set form by Green Ronin Publishing). He’s especially proud to have shepherded development of the world’s first fantasy campaign setting – Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor – and to have worked alongside its storied creator until his passing in 2009. In addition to the books he’s written and developed, C.A. has written material for board games, hobby periodicals, and of course fiction. C.A. is a long-standing member of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design (GAMA), for which he has served for years and as jury foreman for the annual Origins Awards, and is a regular Guest of Honor at hobby and fandom conventions around the world, including a two-time diamond Guest of Honor at Dragon*Con and Fan Expo U.K.

C.A. lives in the Washington, D.C. area, where his band (Toll Carom) is busy toiling away at its latest concept album. Despite the many and varied protestations of his better judgment, he finds himself a regular contributor to the Facebook.

 

Tell Me - Angélique Jamail

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

As a writer, I have, on occasion, been accused of pulling my punches.

Not often, but that criticism has been levied once or twice in feedback on a WIP. And like most writers, I’ve fallen into the hateful trap of obsessing over negative details (valid or not), rather than seeing what actually works in a manuscript. Some might call this counterproductive. Usually they’d be right, but paying careful attention to critiques that stick in my craw has helped me improve my work. And grow a thicker skin.

One time, though, this fixation led to a change in me, not in the manuscript. I was going through final edits of my novelette, FINIS.. In it, a character considers drowning herself. I knew in my gut the end of her arc was the right one. I wasn’t trying to be Kate Chopin or Shakespeare; nor was I writing realistic fiction. FINIS. is magic realism, a fantastical type of literary fiction. I could make anything happen to this character that I wanted, John Updike and the laws of nature be damned.

“You want nice things to happen to your characters,” one workshop partner insisted, her nose crinkling just slightly above her smile. “You love tidy endings.”

I didn’t roll my eyes.

But while finishing the edits for FINIS., I did wonder if I had a problem.

That week, I got a call from a friend I’d gone to college with. Another of our contemporaries, Heather, whom I hadn’t seen in a few years, had died. She’d drowned. Tethered to a paddleboard in a calm-looking but swiftly moving river, snagged underwater by some fallen tree branches, her board got lodged, and she got held under. Her ten-year-old daughter screamed and screamed for help, but when it arrived, Heather was dead.

Every part of this, from the unnecessary loss of my friend’s life to the trauma of her young daughter’s watching it happen, is horrifying. There’s no getting around that, and no amount of condolences, though appreciated, will ever change a single detail.

In my grief, I put my story away. I couldn’t even look at it. But deadlines don’t care about the dead, and eventually I had to bring it back up and smooth out those final line edits.

I considered changing the story, but I knew that wouldn’t be right for the character. I fixed a comma splice and changed a few more words around. I tweaked a metaphor and added a line of wry dialogue. In places, I’m told, FINIS. is funny, but I couldn’t feel it anymore. I couldn’t take pleasure in the craft of writing. All I could hear was Heather’s daughter crying for help, and all I could think about was that the child’s anguished shriek was the last thing her mother ever heard.

I’m told that drowning is a peaceful way to go. The senses dull, everything fades into a heavy quiet, a liquid thrumming. Like going to sleep on a boat, maybe like going to sleep in the womb. I don’t know, but the idea that there is peace, that one goes back to the beginning of things, was strangely comforting.

I added that detail to the story. That was the extent to which I changed my manuscript as a result of Heather’s death.

But the more I worked on those edits, the more I let the story wash over me, the more I submerged myself in it––the more my grief subsided, like ripples on a lake growing wider, gentler until indistinguishable from the lake itself. No longer a disturbance, but a feature of the world. I will never lose this grief. I don’t have to. It simply is.

Tim O’Brien, in The Things They Carried, speaks of writing as unintentional therapy. I don’t think that’s what was happening to me, not really, not in the way writing about the Vietnam War arguably staved off his PTSD. But in the chapter “The Lives of the Dead,” he writes about a nine-year-old girl named Linda, whom his character Timmy loved and lost to brain cancer in elementary school. Later, in his adult life, he dreams her back into existence. She speaks of the afterlife as if being dead were like being a book on a shelf that no one is reading at the moment. It’s not some agony or paradise, it just is. And he realizes that writing a book about a character who is himself is like trying to save his own young life “with a story.”

I don’t know if something could have saved my friend’s life. I don’t know whether it’s better or worse to think that her accident could have been prevented. I look at my own ten-year-old daughter, on the cusp of middle school, and worry preemptively about the things she’s going to deal with in her world, and I hope that the worst tragedy she ever encounters is the death of our ancient cat. We cannot save everyone, after all.

But we try. We are writers and we destroy lives and worlds and ideologies. And sometimes, we don’t.

And sometimes, that choice is the right one.

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Angélique Jamail’s poetry and essays have appeared in over two dozen anthologies and journals, including Time-Slice (2005), Improbable Worlds (2011), Pluck Magazine (2011), and The Milk of Female Kindness – An Anthology of Honest Motherhood (2013). Her work was selected as a Finalist for the New Letters Prize in Poetry in 2011. Her magic realism novella Finis. (2014) has been praised by fiction writer Ari Marmell as having “some of the most real people I’ve encountered via text in a long time,” and by poet Marie Marshall as “a witty tale of conformity, prejudice, and transformation, in a world that is disturbing as much for its familiarity as for its strangeness.” She teaches Creative Writing and English at The Kinkaid School in Houston. Find her online at her blog Sappho’s Torque (www.SapphosTorque.com).

 

Origins Schedule

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

If you are going to Origins Game Fair, I will be there as a panelist or in the Library section of the Dealers Room. Come by and say hello.

Thursday 2pm, C223
Freelancing 101
What does it mean to make a living as a freelance writer or editor? Our panelists tell you how it's done.
Bryan Young, Josh Vogt, John Helfers, Jennifer Brozek, Aaron Rosenberg

Thursday 4pm, C223
The Novel and You
So you've written a few (or a few hundred) short stories. A novel should be easy, right? Wrong! It's a whole different skill set. Our panelists discuss writing a novel from inception to completion.
John Helfers, Josh Vogt, Tracy Chowdhury, Jennifer Brozek, Gregory A. Wilson

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Friday 2pm, C223
Writing for RPGs
What goes into writing a campaign or an entire game setting? These authors have traveled that road and can show you the map. 90 minutes.
Aaron Rosenberg, Jennifer Brozek, Josh Vogt, Richard C. White, Donald J. Bingle

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Saturday 4pm, C222
Ask the Editor
Do you have questions about writing, editing, or submitting your work? Now is your chance to ask an editor anything that's on your mind.
Jennifer Brozek

Saturday 5pm, C222
Consult on My Query
Jennifer Brozek

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Sunday 12pm
Anthology Creation Workshop
How do editors make an anthology? Award-winning editor and author Jennifer Brozek walks you through the process from idea generation to finished product.
Jennifer Brozek, John Helfers

Where is Jennifer?

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

This weekend begins a five week stretch of off-and-on travel. It is the heart of convention season for me and why I pushed so hard to get the rough draft of NEVER LET ME DIE done.

So, where is Jennifer through the end of June?

May 22-24: Crypticon in Sea-Tac, WA
June 3-8: Origins Game Fair in Columbus, OH
June 16: Reading at the University Bookstore in Seattle, WA
June 20: Wedding in Marysville, WA
June 25-29: LepreCon in Phoenix, AZ

For most of this, I’ll be traveling alone and the Husband will have charge of the house and the kitties (who will become angry balls of fur at my disappearances). For the one time the Husband will be with me, I’ve got a house/cat sitter lined up (the cats love the sitter, he bribes them with treats).

I’m looking forward to each of these events. I’m hanging out with Katie Cord and Tim Long at Crypticon. Origins is one of my favorite conventions ever. I’m reading at the University Bookstore with Kristi Charish, a super keen author and podcaster. Yay weddings! It’s always fun to go to a friend’s wedding where you will know almost everyone. I’m very excited about LepreCon because my PA, Sarah, will be there with me.

All this means that my life is going to be insane. Because, while I’m doing all this, I’ll be editing two novels and two novellas for myself and for AIP.

It’s going to be crazy but fun.

Bubble and Squeek for 20 May 2015

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

It's been an amazing couple of weeks. Really amazing.

Awards: I've been nominated for two different Scribe Awards. One for best tie-in short story. One for best tie-in YA novel.

Conventions: I've been named on of Gen Con's Industry Insider Featured Presenters. I'm really excited about this.

Election: I've been voted in as one of the new Directors-at-Large for SFWA along with Matthew Johnson. I will take office on July 1, 2015.

Interview: I've been interviewed by Katie Teller, focusing on my Dark Quest Books anthologies.

Review: Thomas Gondolfi of Scifimonkeys.com reviewed CALLER UNKNOWN and gave it an "Unexpected A-". He had some interesting points to make.

Hugo Packet and Scribe Awards

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

The Hugo Voting Packet is now available for those people who are eligible to vote in this year’s Hugo Awards. In 2014, I had four anthologies published. (Blog post about my Hugo nomination.) I knew that Baen Books was going to have Shattered Shields put into the packet because both Bryan and I were nominated for Best Editor (Short Form).

I chose to have Bless Your Mechanical Heart added as well because it was diametrically opposed to Shattered Shields—which is military fantasy. Bless Your Mechanical Heart is pure science fiction and is still one of my favorite anthologies.

I thought the two anthologies would give Hugo voters a good look at my range. I hope everyone who reads them enjoys them.

Also, in other interesting news, I’ve been nominated for a Scribe Award for two categories. The first is my Valdemar tie-in, “Written in the Wind,” for Best Short Story. The second is my Battletech novel, The Nellus Academy Incident for best Young Adult Novel.

I’m so pleased to discover this. I enjoy both stories and am proud of them. I’m really happy that they’ve been nominated.

Memories of a Fictional Life

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

For the first time in a long time, I went out to meet a friend I’ve only known on the internet and it wasn’t a convention. The Husband and I met Olli at the Space Needle for dinner to start his coastal trip from Seattle to San Francisco to Maui (envy, I have it) and back.

While we were at dinner, he asked me if I remember how we met. I didn’t remember. It’s because of Andy Weir’s (yes, that Andy Weir) Casey & Andy comic. I was a sidekick character as the sorta hapless, weirdness magnet (international jewel thief) neighbor to the comic’s titular characters.

Apparently, Olli remembers me on the Casey & Andy forums, followed me to Facebook, then Twitter. When he reminded me of this, I realized who he was—one of the only people to ever recognize me from the comic that I didn’t already know.

I hadn’t thought of that comic in ages. It’s a fun read. If you haven’t read the comic, you should. It harkens back to an era I lived through. Casey was one of my real life roommates. Also, because of the comic, I’m an official 200 points GURPs character in the Casey & Andy GURPs supplement.

It was an unexpected trip down memory lane.

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If you are Seattle local and have free time this coming Saturday, May 16th, me, Cat Rambo, Raven Oak, and Tina Connolly will be teach a “How Not to Write a Novel” workshop at Redmond Library from 12:30 to 3:30.

Blogging While Noveling

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

Blogging while writing a novel is boring from the outside. My head is filled with the wonderful and horrible things I’ve done, am doing, plan to do to my character. It’s also filled with the myriad of things I need to figure out or research to get the novel done. All I can show for it is “Wrote 1400 words today. Feel good about them.” Or “Got 600 words in today. It was like pulling teeth.”

No matter what I’m doing, half my mind is with my novel. My husband and close friends are used to me tangenting in a question that is related to my novel or breaking off to talk about something that’s just happened in the novel or talking about some research I just did and discovered something new that affects the novel.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, I don’t have anything to talk about except… I’m writing NEVER LET ME DIE and I’m feeling pretty good about it now. I guess my advice is to not even try to be interesting.

Here. Have some kitty pictures.

Bubble and Squeek for 13 Apr 2015

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

I'm deep in the throes of writing NEVER LET ME DIE, Melissa Allen #3, so I'm not checking Twitter or Facebook right now. However, lots has happened. Here's a Bubble & Squeek for you.

Award: I was nominated for a Hugo Award. This is both exciting and terrifying.

Convention: I've been added to OrcaCon's Special Guest lineup. I'm also on their kickstarter with a custom game of Katanas & Trenchcoats for you and four of your friends.

Interview: I was interviewed by Douglas Hawk for his 7 Questions series. Want to know what my workspace looks like?

Publication Release: DocWagon 19 is out the door! Get it here:  Amazon | BattleShop | DriveThruRPG

Recommendation: Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix is one of the best, messed up horror books I’ve read in a long time. I will never look at a large home store the same ever again.

Recommendation: Science STYLE - Taylor Swift Acapella Parody. I just really liked this video.

Review: Goodreads review of Chimera Incarnate.

Review: Goodreads review of DocWagon 19.

Sale: I sold The Last Days of the Salton Academy to Ragnarok Publications! Yay!

OrcaCon Special Guest

(Crossposted from Jennifer Brozek)

I am an OrcaCon Special Guest for their kickstarter. There's only one of these:

Pledge $350 or more. Limit 1 of 1.
Ready to be a super sweet badass, in the style of Big Trouble in Little China meets Highlander? Game Designer Jennifer Brozek will be running you and 4 friends through Katanas & Trenchcoats RPG, in a custom con-only adventure! Five OrcaCon Standard Memberships included in this reward level.

C'mon... you know you wanna. This is going to be a blast.