Again with the Creds!

A couple of days ago, I read another 'would like to be a panelist' email. I'm not trying to be mean here. This is for educational purposes. But dang, it's hard sometimes to keep a civil tone. I know agents and editors get this way too, just because they see it so much. Have you ever seen the Palpatine on the Escalator skit by Robot Chicken? (Warning, language, politically incorrect, and, btw, Palpatine, not a good guy, right?) Anyway, the point being that, try as I might to not be, I think I'm getting jaded. Which is bad. The 237th person to query might be annoying because they're making the exact same obvious, dorky mistake that 159 people made before them, but it might well be their very first time querying, so how could they know? They're like Gary the Stormtrooper on the escalator (the one that bows his head and says aww) who gets cussed out for doing the same thing everyone else did, the thing he was supposed to do as far as he knew, btw. They totally don't deserve the brunt of someone's annoyance that has built up from the gizillion people before, right?

So, with that in mind ....

The person emailed the programming department, which is the right place/people, with their micro-publisher hat on, saying that one of their authors was local to a con and was interested in attending as a panelist. The person then asked who to contact about this, and signed with their first name, last initial, and the name of the press.

What's wrong with this, you ask?

Nothing, except that the email was phrased exactly as I paraphrased it, with no specifics. No name of the author. Last initial instead of full last name? Really? No link to the press website? (Turns out there wasn't a website, at least not one I found.) You're going to make me Google you? Seriously? Oh, and, this is the killer part. They did not mention *which* author was interested.

So, I do the Google dance. At this point I'm only mildly annoyed. The only thing I could find of any substance (and by substance, I mean something more than just a listing on a list page) was on B&N, so I click on the link. There are four books on the B&N publisher page. As far as I can tell, it's a full list. Four books, well, that's pretty tiny even by my standards, but I'm not going to knock them for that.

So, Name F. looks like he wrote two books that were authored by Name Full-last, but it could be coincidental, right? Maybe. At this point I'm grinding my teeth. Is Name F. inquiring on behalf of Name Full-last, which is probably himself? Then why the flip not say so in the email? Hi, my name is Name Full-last, I wrote a couple of books and I'd like to come to your convention. Here's a link to my stuff. Thanks for your time!

See how easy?

Sadly, this story gets worse. One of the authors of the four books is clearly a pseudonym. Either that, or a family that coincidentally has a fantasy-sounding last name decided to name their child after one of the major characters in LotR. And I can't help but think, could this be a pseudonym for Name F.? Which makes me suspect that the other author name (which looks like a traditional American name, more or less) might be a pseudonym for the same person too. At which point I'm so done with this person. Because 'one of our authors' should actually be 'I'. Anything else is a lie.

I must operate from the benefit of the doubt position, and assume that there are at least two people working together here, but that didn't stop me from developing a bias against this person. I'll combat that bias to the best of my ability, but, sorry I can't erase the experience from my brain and I don't feel I should have to. Every email I get builds the relationship between us, whether its a 'argh, more spam, I hate you!' relationship or 'yay, an email from my friend!' relationship. If there's more positive than negative, I'll look forward to our next correspondence. If, OTOH, it starts with vagueness that stinks like bullshit, and continues on to even more odiferous bullshit, that's hard to recover from.

The publisher's cause is so-not-helped by really poorly designed book covers that look like they were done by the publisher's art department, namely him again. If he hired out, he needs to change book designers and find one of a multitude of pro designers that work for cheap.

I haven't seen a response from this person yet. I'd like to think he's too busy doing publisher stuff or doing day job stuff. Hopefully he's not thinking up vague specifics to the questions the official staff sent back along the lines of which author? What creds? What experience/knowledge would this person bring to the con?

Things the staff shouldn't have to ask, because it should have been in the first email.

I hope that by writing about this stuff, more people will have a better idea of how to present themselves. Because cons need fresh ideas, new people with unique backgrounds to trot out and entertain their members. I hate to think of all the people that got passed up because they put their literary feet in their storyteller's mouths. Much of the time, I think it's like a slush pile–there isn't enough development there to be at the pro level yet. But sometimes I think the ability is there, but the communication disconnects as people try to present themselves as something more than they are.

If you think you're not enough as you are, then either grow to be what you dream to be, or accept that you may in fact be awesome enough as you are and run with that. Lying, bad. And misrepresenting or puffery is lying. Be honest, true, clear and specific, and you should be good, no matter how it breaks.

That works in writing, art ... everything.

How to Get on Convention Panels & Generally Impress Folks

I just reread someone's application letter for a convention. I reread it because he resent it, most likely because he didn't get a reply the first time. There's a reason he didn't get an immediate response.

Here's the deal, all y'all who want to be panelists on conventions, or want to include creds in a bio, etc. People aren't dumb. They can see right through the very thin veneer of vague to your lack of applicable experience. Trying to gloss over a thin or non-existent qualifications does a lot more harm than good. Trust me! Especially when it comes to hitting up a convention committee for inclusion on their panelist list. This goes double for cover letters for submitting writing to a publisher.

Here's a classic: twenty years of experience. That particular number irks me because it's used so often by people who are trying to sound impressive, when really they've been part-timing or hobbying for that twenty years. Which is cool to do, and extremely valuable time spent while learning your craft, but trying to make it sound like you've been doing something full time for twenty years seems to say one of several things. I'll mention two here:

A) You've been struggling to break through for twenty years and yet can't point to a single, specific, wow-worthy example of the fruits of your labors in your letter? Ouch.
B) You're seriously going to make me Google you instead of giving me something exact and definable so I can gauge your skills?

This person may be amazing. I can't say one way or another, and that's the problem. I feel like I'm being lied-at, even though the words may be true. I've had this happen to me before, quite recently*, actually. Most of us have. I would be far happier if, say, this person said that they've worked on this movie or that script or published in this magazine or through Cute Micro Press than try to sound all important about how they've been in the biz for twenty years.

My mood was not improved when I did Google this person and found some stuff that could have been easily included, and would have sounded a lot more appealing than the generic, hand-wavy references made in the letter. In fact, it wasn't a lot of accomplishment for twenty years. He did, however impress me with what he'd done. If I hadn't known it took him twenty years to do that, I might have said, kewl, this is nifty and worth exploring further. Instead, perhaps unfairly, I had the feeling that it wasn't a lot to show for the time expended.

So please, dear persons trying to impress folks with your creds:

Time spans aren't as important as specifics. Look at Stephen King's cred list sometime on his books. For the man who seldom needs an introduction, there's a mention of number of total books so far and a couple of current ones. For someone who hasn't been writing prolifically and famously for that long, a couple of specifics are fine, or even none. Yes, I said none. If you're working on a novel, say you're working on a novel, not that you've been writing for twenty years. If you have written a novel based on your experiences at a Space Camp, that's awesome. I want to know more about the Space Camp and maybe other folks want to hear about it too! If you're writing a cover letter and this is your very first short story, let the short story speak for you and just write hey, I wrote this thing and I hope you like it. Thanks for your time. I did that on cover letters for years, and it works just fine. If you want to be a panelist at a convention, think about the things that people might want to hear about, and if you have something to offer, mention that. Say, that you worked for three weeks with script writers for a movie produced by Twentieth Century Fox ... that might not sound like much compared to twenty years of something if you look at it one way, but from where I sit, I don't feel like someone is trying to deceive me, and that's something specific and true that I can consider.

Besides, as much as you might want to be at a specific convention or sell at a specific time to a magazine or whatever, it's better to look at the long term than the immediate pay-off. Maybe you don't have quite enough going for you this time, or this specific story doesn't fit in with what the editor wants right now. Selling it harder isn't going to make it happen. Living well and working hard is going to help you achieve your goals. And as you achieve them, you won't have to write vague letters anymore. Maybe they'll even hunt down your email address to invite you to conventions and anthologies and all kinds of kewl stuff.

*I was trying to work with a guy on a design and during the hour-long conversation he kept bringing up the fact that he'd been working in the biz for fifteen or twenty years or whatever. All I could think was, how is this relevant to getting the job we have to do done right now?

These things I'll never say

I went to a lot of good panels at Orycon, almost always as a panelist, though I visited some that my DH was on. There were a couple that I didn't have time/space enough to say everything I wanted to say. I'm sure that was true for all of the panelists. Panels at conventions aren't meant to be comprehensive discussions of a given subject. They're supposed to be entertaining and informative. Mostly entertaining, I think.

Backstory Bedlam

What a fantastic group of insightful panelists. We didn't get a chance to talk about technique a lot. Mostly we discussed metastory – the environment of the story, and it's themes/flavor, and how authors need to bring in the necessary details without bogging the story down. I think the story's structure, especially character selection and development, are vital. If you've got a story that has a complex setting that has to come through in order for the story to make sense, or if the plot revolves a complex or obscure knowledge set, you have to somehow bring it in without boring the readers to death with the dry facts. Having a character that's an expert (not necessarily the pov character), weather incidents, equipment breakdowns (the fixing of which can reveal a lot about setting) or a naive character that needs to observe, experiment and root out information to survive all work really well to help a writer work in those necessary details. I pointed out that I like to start my books with the character in their normal, everyday setting doing normal things to ground the reader, but those normal things involve a serious problem. That problem will only help me illustrate the world in greater detail. It may have nothing to do with the main challenges the character will face, or it may end up weaving in.

Publishing Your Ebook

I think the thing that got us really going began with the first question: What's the first thing you should do before you publish your book? We discussed making certain that your audience can find your book, finding out how to put together a reasonable cover and estimating what it will cost, copyediting, formatting, and approaching publishing your book as a business. That last part is what it all boils down to, though, doesn't it? When you self-publish, you are the publisher and you have to look at all the things that publishers do. Copyediting, formatting, cover design, blurbs, back copy, ad copy, tag lines, interior design, marketing, distribution ... it's all on you, including budgeting and figuring out what it'll cost you to hire someone to do the things you don't know how to do, or how much time and money it'll cost you to educate yourself about the things you'll need to do.

Writing Believable Sex Scenes

It comes to this, folks. It doesn't have to be ultra-real, or a political statement, or normal. It has to be entertaining, use all the appropriate senses, must be paced like any other scene with its own story arch and character development, and should include telling details that will give the reader a sense that you know what you're talking about (and thereby will hold up that suspension of disbelief.)

Handling Sexuality with Dignity

The audience said they wanted to talk about the sociological aspects of sexuality, but at the end they wanted to hear more about how to be able to hold your head up high when writing about sex. I felt the panel was a lot of fun but ended up kind of muddled and unfocused. Which is fine. The takeaway points revolved around being aware of others and educating yourself. I didn't get a chance to talk about concepts like refrigerator heroines and other tropes that make gender roles unappealing at best to half (or more) of a given audience to works of fiction and media. Just finding out about this stuff helps immensely with communication in the real world and in fiction.

That sums up Friday at Orycon 35. And once again I'm up past my bedtime. G'night, all. I'll type to you again soon.

A good time was had by the young

I had a lot of great conversations this weekend at OryCon 35. It's possible to sign up for Orycon 36 right now at the hotel, and they'll have the website up to accept online preregistration very, very soon. For only $30 (price good only until Dec. 31, 2013) you can have a whole weekend of fun.

One of the reasons I enjoy going to science fiction and fantasy conventions is the opportunity to talk shop with writers at all levels of experience, skill, and stage in their career.  In fact, I had a great time interacting with a four year old writer. Yes, you read the age right. I had to dictate for him, but he wrote the story himself and signed it. In the same group, a young lady still in grade school produced a story (inside of an hour and handwritten, mind you) that had great structure and depth of emotion. Her protagonist went through a try-fail cycle, faced danger, and came through at the end. No joke, I was genuinely moved.

I'm a little too punchy, thanks in part to my late-and-then-early schedule, so I won't embarrass myself by trying to talk about various panels in a coherent fashion. But check back and I'll see what I can come up with after some sleep.

Maybe a day or two of sleep.

OryCon 35 Schedule

I'll be a panelist at Orycon again this year. Yay! Here's my schedule:

Friday, Nov. 8

noon Backstory Bedlam
     I love backstories. They make good short stories later on when I'm obsessively thinking about a book I've already finished and published and can't touch and then a character's backstory just has to, must be told! Knowing that's a possibility keeps me from vomiting every last detail onto the page.

2pm Publishing Your Ebook
     Apparently I'm moderating this monster. I think my main job will be to make sure that the panelists talk slowly enough for the audience to take notes. I'm thinking about bringing a handout. Finding good info about ebook publishing from amid the vast hoards of people trying to make money on formatting books for you and people who do a terrible job but think they do a fantastic job and want to tell you exactly how to do it like they do, not to mention the folks who publish their stuff before it's really ready ... yeah, it's a mess. We'll get you on the right track, don't worry.

5pm Choose a Monster and Write Their Story
     This should be totally fun, and if you don't think so, you're a poopyhead who has cruelly smothered your inner monster. Er, child, I meant child. It'll be a great way to shake loose the last vestiges of the everyday world and get into the spirit of the con.

10pm Writing Believable Sex Scenes
     Let's just start with the basics of how to not make your reader laugh unless you intend them to laugh during your character's passionate moment of pleasure (or plunge into intimate darkness) and go from there, okay?

Midnight Handling Sexuality with Dignity
     I have no idea why they think I'm qualified to talk about dignity, but I'm game for putting on my serious face to talk about whatever, wherever and with whoever in what position ... while being respectful or at least aware of the audience.

Saturday Nov. 9

11am Political Systems in SF
     Game on! I'm excited about this one. Greek forum in a virtual arena anyone? How about the economics behind feudalism driving the political power granted to a particular senator? What about a true democracy via text messaging your vote and the unintended, (evil, naturally) consequences.

5pm Science and Spirituality
     I'm actually dreading this one a little bit, which means it should be an exciting panel. I can't be the only pagan to study physics ... am I?

6pm The Kami and Rory Show
     Actually, this is a half-hour reading slot that my DH and I share. May be prefaced a sparring match to see who goes first. There may be chocolate but you have to show up on time or it's gonna be all gone. I haven't decided what to read yet. If I remember closer to the con, I'll clue y'all in.

9pm Keeping it Clean – or at least not so dirty
     I love this topic. It's all about the bad words that only comedians are supposed to use in public. Let's get real and use the whole language, and maybe some other languages ... and try not to embarrass ourselves too much. Have you seen the Veronica Mars episode where she's at the college and the college guy who uses Frack instead of F*ck? Her expression and reaction? Yeah. That's what you're up against, SF writers.

10pm Smut, Gore and More
     Probably my favorite panel of the con. This is where I get a little political and thrash against the confines of American culture. But also, I'd like to see some discussion about sex, violence, and the glorification thereof.

Midnight Fifty Shades of Dreck
     I keep meaning to read it. Really I do. But what I think we're mostly going to talk about is sex (again, I know!) Non-vanilla sex. Don't get me wrong, I like vanilla ....

Sunday Nov. 10

10am  Infrastructure
     In fiction. Sewers or lack thereof, agriculture, air scrubbers ... why does every protagonist in a futuristic society have to be a scientist, a cop or a teacher? Let's get some air scrubber engineers in there, or a garbage hauler.

3pm Gardening in Fantasyland
     OMG, fantasy horticulture. Heaven! Plus, if you want, bring your real-world gardening questions and I'll try to answer them. BTW, my amarylis is like four years old now and it's soooo big, and my orange tree has two proto-oranges on it. I love this growing season! It's so long, and firm, and soon at the end it'll begin to glisten with moisture ....  Oops. Sorry. This is *not* a panel about sex or violence or use of profanity. It's about plants. My obsession. My guilty pleasure. It'll be a great way to wrap up the con. And if no one shows up to listen, I'll be there on my laptop working on a book or plant geeking with a fellow panelist or two if they're obsessed like me.

I think that's everything. I've got a really busy schedule.

BTW, if you're a panelist and you *don't* have a busy schedule and you want one for next year, here's what you do:

You volunteer for every conceivable panel you would deign to attend, and if you're only vaguely interested, rate it low, which I think is high. Check the scale. It's at the top of the page. Lots of panelists pick 5 for their favorite when 5 actually means that you'll do it if they drag you to the panel and chain you to the chair. Also, send programming a note if you'd like to do a special presentation, and be sure to check the reading and/or autograph session boxes if they're there, even if it looks like it's intended for someone else. That will at least start a dialogue with programming.

Be available all day every day if at all possible.

Suggest panels right after you fill out the form.

Speaking of the form, fill it out early and often, and if you've had trouble with the form going through in the past, send an email asking if they got it.

Most panelists who have trouble getting on panels pick the five panels they want to do, and are available for maybe six hours on Saturday and four on Sunday. That will usually get them zero panels, or one. Not because programming is punishing them, but because you won't be the only person on the panel, right? And all other sorts of people will also want to be on the panel, and their schedules will have to be juggled with yours, and if all theirs match up for 6pm and you said you're only good until 6pm ... you'll get bumped off because the panel ends at 7pm. The other thing that kills their schedule is if only one or two other people volunteer for the panel, and all three of you have such divergent schedule needs and conflicts that the only person available for the panel is you. Then the panel won't happen. If you love a panel idea so much that you're willing to do it as a solo presentation, again, email programming so that they know that.

I think I volunteered for half the panels being offered this weekend, and I made myself available until 2am. As a result ... here I am.

See you at the con!

Orycon 34

Orycon is coming up.  Orycon 34.

My relationship with the convention has changed a lot over the years.  My first (unofficial) time, a friend and I went downtown and snooped around on a Sunday afternoon while everyone was packing up and closing down.  I think it was one of the early cons, Orycon V or maybe '84.  A Dr. Who mini-fest was playing in one of the rooms.  My friend said we couldn't go in there without a badge.  I picked up a free Buckaroo Banzai headband.  I still have it.  I'm not sure if those were being handed out to promote the 1984 movie, or if they were leftovers after it had already come out.  You'd think I'd be able to date it.  Nope.  That was in the 80's, and that was a looooong time ago.

Years later, I got an official membership and tried out the writer's workshop.  Back then the convention had a lot more editors showing up.  Different time, different economy.  I got a lot of encouragement from two people I respect to this day:  Dean Wesley Smith and Gardner Dozois.  I ended up being invited to a small writer's group.  I had no idea what wonderful relationships would grow from that group.  I don't see Mary Rosenblum and Mike Moscoe (aka Mike Shepherd) as much as I like.  Orycon is the one place I can depend on seeing them for at least a few minutes.

As I began to show up more regularly, I made some convention friends I looked forward to seeing each year, and I put up art in the art show.  I even made some sales there. 

Later still I became involved in helping out.  It started so innocently, organizing the Child Care room.  I graduated to the writer's workshop.  C.S. Cole took over for me and now runs an amazing ship.  I briefly became involved in Programming, then faded away as my work load at home and the day job ate up what little time I had to devote to it.  I still help when I can, but sadly, not as much as I'd like to.

Which brings me to this year.  I'm a panelist.  I have some e-books out.  I have a teeny, tiny micro-publishing company.  I've published a couple of short stories, with one still in the pipeline for a really great magazine.  I can't wait to announce that when it happens.  I have to decide soon whether I should try to put up something in the art show again, and whether I should print up promotional materials.  It's not as clear-cut as you might think.  I used to try to make professional connections and break in with my writing.  Now the whole writing world has changed, and I have all these great friends ... mainly I want to just hang out and listen and learn and give hugs to long-found friends.  Promoting my cover art and writing doesn't seem natural after spending so many years as a member of a community.

But there are always the new kids, and some of my buddies might want to have a look at what I've been up to lately, I guess.  

It'll be interesting and fun, as it always is.

More Whining about Outlines

I stink.

I've been sick (nasty sick) for the past 24 hours or so. The sort of sick where having oatmeal for dinner was a big accomplishment. I'm pretty sure that it was food poisoning, but that's a trickier thing to diagnose than most people realize.

I'm feeling much better now, after having slept all day. I may even take a shower. The idea of going back to bed makes me tired (heh) but if I don't, my sleep schedule will be even more messed up than it already is.

All that aside, I had a fantastic time at Radcon. I was able to hitch a ride with the amazing and talented Sara Mueller. We spent the entire time talking while my poor daughter listened to the music loop over and over because we weren't paying attention to the CDs enough to notice when they'd gone back to the beginning. And then, after a good lunch at the Atomic Pub, we got to be on a panel together.

To Outline or not to Outline: We had a huge number of panelists, and still the non-outliners outnumbered the outliners five to one. Seriously? Being a non-outliner, I wasn't surprised ... which is directly opposite to my point. My point being that it's harder for me to find those little surprises when I outline. Good outliners find their twists and shockers in the outline. Bearing in mind that I don't know a large enough group of writers to call my observations in any way definitive, scientific, etc. and also bearing in mind that my stints with outlining have been brief ....

Outliners who struggle often run into the following situations:

The story moves from scene to scene in a very linear, logical fashion such that the reader will see the ending coming a mile away. This isn't a huge problem if the story is incredibly entertaining, and the characters are fun to watch. A good sign that the story is working even if everything is fairly predictable is that the author is having a ball writing it. If you're having fun, chances are the reader will have fun too.

The writer skips around the book as s/he writes, planning to fill in later. After all, it's all planned out, right? Why not write the scenes that you're excited about writing and get to the others when you have a really good idea on how to approach them? I've noticed two pitfalls here. The people I know who write this way have a much more difficult time finishing the project. They never get around to writing those harder scenes. Also, there's often a flow issue. When scenes are written in order, they often lead into each other naturally, even when there's a pov switch. Our brilliant subconscious has a great sense of word and tone choice that can subtly connect one section to another. This is less of an issue if there are radical jumps in the storyline. Interestingly, I've heard many writers who write multiple points of view or who employ time travel or make a story of characters who are in different parts of the world and never meet often write the whole story of each character/setting/time and then carefully break these up and fit them together like a puzzle. Very kewl!

Outliners also sometimes spend so much time outlining that it gets in the way of their actual writing. Why not put off putting words on the page when it's so easy to delay in favor of tweaking the complicated and scary middle game portion of the book?

I tried using the Snowflake Method. Developed by writer and engineer Randy Ingermanson, I found it to be an incredibly helpful tool. If I were to outline, this is the method I'd use. Having said that, if I went much past step five or six, the project began to languish. I lost a lot of the sense of excitement of discovery, and I became reluctant to write the project. It felt like it had already been written, if that makes sense. When I write, I'm telling myself a fun story. I like it when things pop out at me from nowhere, and I love it when I realize what's really going on (which sometimes forces me to go back to the beginning and change and add a few things.) Snowflaking necessarily took away that feeling in process. The surprises all happened in the outlining stage, and it became less interesting to actually write the dang thing.

Having said all that, there are many fine outliners out there writing great books. Also, different books require different approaches, and different styles of outlining. If I were writing a murder mystery, I wouldn't dream of going in without some sort of over-arching plan. I'd have to know whodoneit at minimum, and preferably have an idea of what sort of clues might be available. Maybe I don't write them in part because it would take so much effort and planning on my part. Writers who can write these books may be able to write them without an outline because their brilliant minds are geared for it. But I will say that of the mystery writers I know, at least back in the early days, they wrote with a plan. With experience, a plan may become less necessary--or their ability to outline effectively becomes so honed that it just becomes part of their genius.

It's worth it to try to outline once or twice if you've never attempted it. It can be a fantastic tool, and there's no way to know if it'll enhance your writing or not until you give it a go. It didn't work for me, but it might work great for you. Also, don't be afraid to bubble diagram or use any other creative development tools out there. They exist because they work. When I get stuck, I sometimes doodle around with bubble diagrams, but usually I do better with a hot bath or taking a walk.

I may write about the rest of the panels later on. You know me. Sometimes I get to it, and sometimes the chickens get out of their yard and I have to tell y'all about chasing them around the garden for an hour. Until next time ....

WorldCon Reno: Renovation Memories

Fast forward to my first day of work after Worldcon, and then going home to zucchini sauce on squash ravioli (delicious, btw.)  I'm really tired but I want to spend all my spare time either writing or gardening, preferably both.  What I really could use is a way to dictate stories while I'm gardening.  There are ways to do it.  I just can't afford them (yet).

I learned a lot from the panels I attended at Worldcon, and I got to talk to some really fabulous people.  I'll write about highlights in no particular order on the blog until they no longer seem interesting to anyone, even me.

Convention Highlight One

I went through the art show early on.  I was impressed by the quality and quantity of art, so much so that I suffered a kind of burn-out thingy that made me feel like I was skimming Shakespeare and not getting the important parts.  And then I reached the Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell panels, and realized I was looking at cover art.  Something went ping in my brain.  

I'd been looking at cover art with an artist's eye for composition, rather than a graphic designer's eye for where the hell will we put the title and author's name.

I'd just about finished processing the wow moment (it took about 48 hours) and I thought I had it all figured out, when I attended a panel about book covers.  

Naturally, my world flipped another 180 degrees, and because art is magic, I didn't end up in the same place I started.  It was like coming home after a few years and finding that nothing is quite as I remembered it.  

If you can imagine this (assuming you care):  You can plan your art to include the title and author sections and get a really nice, capable and striking cover, or you can compose a spectacular piece of art and in the process of trying to figure out where to put the damned title and byline, do something really creative and get a spectacular cover.

There's also plan C, where you leave opportunities for text on the cover, but do whatever you want to make things full of awesome, and then place the text in creative and unexpected ways that will often make people take a second look as much if not more than the art itself.

Part of it is luck, and part is design, part is time constraints and part is what energy you have to devote to this stuff.  I took notes in the form of sketches because I couldn't write adequate descriptions fast enough, but I can do a halfway decent 30 second sketch thanks to life drawing.

Personal convention highlight one:  Having a double hot chocolate with the extraordinary Chris York and her wonderful husband.  Good times, good conversation, fun, learning, sadness (I didn't let her know at the time that I still feel pain at my father's passing after almost twenty years) and much talk about Sydney, literary agent.

Non-convention highlight that's conceivably anyone's business but my own:  playing in a warm pool with my DH, remembering what it was like to pretend that I was a mermaid.

Good times.  I could have stood for at least one more day in the area.

Alas, now it's back to work, and double-alas, not the work I want to do.  But it's necessary.

Roughing It

Here we are at Worldcon in Reno, Nevada. So far I've gone for a swim, ate dinner, and met a couple of great friends in the hallway. We got to the convention center too late to pick up our badges, so I have a temporary Thursday thingy. Not that I'll use it. Exhaustion has set in.

I love our room. It's so ... tacky. Normally I'm all over the gilded mirror, elaborate tile and big beds but partly because it's squeezed into a relatively small space and partly because it's not very well matched up stuff, I feel like I'm staying at a Victorian-meets-pseudo-Roman bordello. It's wonderful. I especially like the huge jet tub (almost as big as our bed) that's right next to the bed. And the jet tub has a mirror over it--gilded (of course!) Our shower doubles as a steam room.

I would love to peek into their giant suites like the bridal or presidential just so I could giggle. And yet, in its own tacky way, it's almost kinda gorgeous.

If you've stayed in this hotel you know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm not going to out them, though. I don't want even the slightest chance of anyone feeling bad, though I'm sure they're not exactly blind to the shortcomings of their decor. And those shortcomings are offset by the fun.

Tomorrow: more pool time, silly drinkies by the pool, meet-up with some wonderful writers, gawking at art, writing, etc. But first I have to go to reg and pick up my badge. I come all the way out here and it's nothing but work work work ....

Soon Now ... WorldCon!

My DH, the girl and I are all sick. Being the last holdout (I really thought I might skip this one) I of course am getting worse about the time that they're getting better. I don't feel too sorry for myself. So far it hasn't been that bad, plus I wasn't ill all winter and spring, so I guess it was about my turn. If these things take turns. Who knows.

The real news, though, is that I'm going to Worldcon in Reno. I've never been to a Worldcon. I've been to a few different ones, namely Norwescon, OryCon, Radcon, Potlatch and a few others, but I have a feeling that this one will be different. First of all, I've heard of all of the GOHs (Guests of Honor) including the musical special guests. That's pretty rare for a con for me. Also, I idolized one of the GOHs since mid-high school. That would be the incredible Boris Vallejo. I greedily absorbed news about him the same way normal people today follow the dramas of rock and movie stars, complete with commentary about artistic choices and yes, I blush to admit, even a bit of his romantic life (to be precise, rumors thereof--there was no Snopes back then to confirm or deny urban myths.) But mainly it was about his art.

My interest in collecting his books, scanning new books at the bookstores searching for his latest covers, buying posters and calendars waned over the years, but the admiration never flagged, so I'm excited to see what's been going on this past decade or two that I've been utterly ignorant of. I'm sure he's grown and changed, as artists tend to do, just as I've watched in awe as the core skills I coveted now carry through with even greater refinement.

Some of you might have caught that 'decade or two' and may be wondering just how old this guy is. Well, for your info he's been amazing the world with his work for a looooong time, well before I became aware of him. In fact, his career began before I was born. His entire family, including his wife, are all creatively talented. It's pointless to be jealous of him, though now (and correct me if I'm misusing the slang) I can say his art is sick and mean what I really mean--that it's beauty is beyond what I can describe in non-slangy terms without using terribly purple prose.

Will I walk up and say hi, or ask for his autograph? Heck no! Well, maybe, if I don't actually have to say anything. He's one of the few people that can easily turn me into a stammering idiot, so I won't even try to speak if I bring one of his books with me to sign. I'll just put a post-it note with my name spelled correctly and hope for the best. I think I'd have a better chance of saying hi to Johnny Depp than I would to Mr. Vallejo. It would probably come out mmmgggnnn-eep-myfriendwasyurbiggestfan-er,I mean metoo, ImeanIwas except I lost track and I don't have all your books or anything-- and then I would have to hide for the whole rest of the con to avoid the possibility of making eye contact with him thereby reliving that awful awkward moment.

I like the post-it plan. Let's go with that. I might even dare to put a smiley face on it.

I'll probably go through a dozen post-it notes before I make a smiley face worthy of him. Argh!

Norwescon 2009 Pt. 2

I have to lead this in with the comment that by now my recollection of Norwescon is pretty hazy.  I'm in the throws of prepping to travel to a women's retreat and Ireland (squee!!) and that's where my focus has been.

Saturday morning I got up waaay too early for Cat Rambo's writer's breakfast, and I sat right in the middle so I could listen to multiple conversations if I wanted.  Great stuff.  Then at 10am I met with Sonia Lyris and had second breakfast with her.  We fired up Skype after a bit and my DH was able to attend breakfast as well.  Steve Barnes dropped by but he couldn't stay--he was waiting to meet someone else.  And Richard Threadgill also popped in.  So that turned into the three hour breakfast, not nearly as long as the five hour dinner Friday night, but just as fun.  Lunch was not necessary under the circumstances.  Richard nicely helped me pick out which story to read at the Broad Universe reading for later that night.  I ended up not reading Inner Skull, but my hard SF paranormal "Advances in Science."

I had my picture taken with Darth Vader and a couple of stormtroopers (sorry, it's not digital and I still don't have my scanbed working!) then crashed the Fairwood Writers social.  Not sure crashed is the right term since I'm pretty sure I was welcome, but I'm not a Fairwood Writer and I haven't been part of their workshop, so ... anyway, all the usual suspects were there, and it was fun to be an atypical suspect, since I'm not a regular at Seattle cons.  If they didn't travel to Portland, I might have been a curiosity, but I'm slightly too familiar to be that.  

I dashed off to lurk in the hall outside a panel so that I could catch up at last to Mary Rosenblum, and we went to the Green Room to talk.  I know pros have kids too, but you know, it was not relaxing to have kids running around screaming in there.  Not sure what the best thing to do in that situation would have been except to grin and bear it, so that's what I did.  I got to meet one of Mary's students from Longridge, which was cool, and we got to chat with a ballista maker (he had a ballista with him, btw) and talked about potato guns and fun things to launch.  I also met Steve Barnes again, and we talked about life and death and physicality.  One of these days I'm going to have to get over to Mary's for a drowning of sorrows, and get a chance to talk much longer to Steve about Stuff.

I went to grab something to eat and saw Cat Rambo and her husband.  I pounced and we got to talk about animals and stuff.  (hand waving something else I did that I can't remember) and then I went to Talebones Live!  If you can make it to one, please do.   At the end the sad announcement came--Ken Rand would no longer be with us, as he had requested the machines that sustained his life for so long be switched off.  (If you know Ken, he and his family have requested privacy at this time, so feel free to spread the word, but don't try to contact them.)  One of the first books I had recommended to me as a new writer was Ken's 10% solution.  I've recommended it countless times myself, and loaned out copies, and when the copies don't come back (as is sometimes the case) I just get a new one.  This chapbook is worth every writer's time.  Ken, many blessings upon you and yours.

Sobered, I went to the reading.  We had some folks turn up that were not Broads, and I think the stories were all great, but then again I was adrenalized.  Not as badly as the first time I read.  I practiced some breathing techniques, and imagined that I was teaching rather than reading.  How weird is that?  I'm much more comfortable showing people stuff they don't know how to do than reading something I wrote.  My brain can be very weird and poopyheaded sometimes.  After, some of us had some absenthe and navan.  I wanted to hit the Reno Worldcon party and the dance before the Radcon party, so our group temporarily split up.  This caused me to miss hanging out with Lizzy Shannon--drat!  Anyway, I must have been dehydrated or something.  I was at the dance all of fifteen minutes when I suddenly felt very ill.  I drank lots of water and went to the room for some quiet and fresh, cool air.  Some balcony time and quiet reading fixed me up famously.  

The others showed up, so we headed down to one of the best dances I've ever been to that didn't include my DH.  The fact that they mostly played retro didn't dampen things too much, though I would have preferred more techno.  Dan shouting that he was with the two hottest chicks at the con, and dancing with an amazing gentleman with a powdered face, elegant clothes and a crystal cane were highlights.  We closed it down and helped wind up the hundreds of feet of electrical and sound cords before calling it quits.

Sunday we said goodbye to folks and parted ways with Mary Hobson after reiterating that she was the most awesome roommate a gal could ever have.  C.S. and I had breakfast, and then we drove home.  I managed to make it to my mom's birthday party without falling asleep at the wheel coming or going, and thus concluded a stellar weekend.

More stellar journeys to come.  Stay tuned, but be warned--posts will be very sporadic.  

Norwescon 2009 Pt. 1

There may not be parts 2 onward--I have a lot to do this week in prep for Ireland, so I may not have time to blog.  But I had to at least talk about how awesome Norwescon was!  There were some quirks, but nothing that made me feel bitchy.

C.S. and I came in Thursday afternoon.  Check in went smoothly, but immediately we realized that there would be insufficient parking for everybody, so no moving the car once it was parked.  The closest parking spot we could find was somewhere in Canada--it was a long hike back to the Tower.  No fridge in the room, so we put our booze and food on the deck.  C.S. managed to get the very last roll-away bed!  Thank goodness.

I grabbed food at the bar, clam chowder and salad (with drinks.)  I wish all my meals were that good.  The rest of the food was okay, but that clam chowder was a great start to the weekend.  I did commit a sin, though.  I ate alone.  Then, dancing.  Yes, a dance was held on Thursday night, and I was a very happy camper.  The music rocked.  I noticed that new luggage had appeared in our room, evidence that the wonderful M.K. Hobson, our roomie, had arrived.  We ran into each other later, and I commenced to talk her ear off.  Luckily she had more than one ear, so I was able to talk more ears off later.

I liked the techno to dance to, and there was plenty of that on Thursday night.  As much as it's fun to go down memory lane, as we did on Saturday night, it can't compare to the intoxicating rhythms of music designed to induce a euphoric melding of mind and body.  Saturday night's music would have been greatly improved if it had more techno mixed in.  Anyway, I got to see for the first time 'balloon man.'  The story (rumor) goes that he had to lose a lot of weight to save his life, so he started dancing.  He chose a unique way that's sort of a cross between rhythmic gymnastics and tai chi.  He alternates between using feathery wings and a giant, translucent ball that he manipulates with grace and zen-like focus.  Every time I landed at the dances, he was there.

At 11pm, Jeff Soesbe held a kewl spelling bee.  Wookiee has two ees.  Really.  I would have gotten it wrong too!  Oh, and when someone asks you to pick a number, don't pick 3.

Friday was Ken Scholes day.  I went to his infamous class for writers.  We had some pros appear, both to provide input and, it seemed to me, to listen and learn.  If you're a writer and get a chance to go to a Ken Scholes presentation/workshop/lecture on writing, do yourself a favor and go.  He had three hours for this class, and we ran out of time.  I took lots of notes.  

Afterward I parked my butt in the bar to eat, and started running into people.  Before I knew it, I'd been introduced to and spoken with many wonderful folks including members of Fairwood Writers (a fantastic pro writing group,) the excellent Cat Rambo and her car-kewl and mellow husband Wayne, the amazing Kelly Robson aka kelly_yoyo, the awesome A.M. Dellamonica.  and others.  I was in the bar for five hours.  Finally I got my numb butt out of the chair and headed up to the room, where I talked M.K.'s other ear off for a bit before going to Jeff Soesbe's reading (described on his blog, and yes, they were well received and I enjoyed the stories a lot.)  I also stayed for Mark Teppo's reading.  The stories created openings for much discussion later and will continue to do so.  Jeff came over for absenthe (it's spelled many ways, more usually absinthe but that's the way it's spelled on my bottle--maybe it's a French thing) and Navan.  

Lots of fun.  Saturday and Sunday to come, if I have time to go over them.  I'm sure I'm forgetting kewl stuff (including a pro party I remember crashing at some point,) and I probably got some stuff out of order, but that's what happens.  Best thing to do if you want to experience a con is to go and grok it.  Grok.  G, R, O, K, grok.

Willgone

I'll be away from the blog for a few days.  Probably.  You know what a hopeless addict I am, especially when it comes to report good times.

Last year C.S. got a phone call letting her know that she got honorable mention for a story she submitted to the Writers and Illustrators of the Future contest.  We both squealed like crazy sorceresses broken out of Azkaban and had celebratory coconut rum.  I also got to be a panelist for my very first time ever, not just on one but many panels.  Ever since then I've thought of Radcon as a kind of lucky convention for INK.  I'm looking forward to this one a lot.

And yet, I'll miss the boy and the girl, morning chats with my DH, the dogs, the cats, the way the goats come out of the barn when I go out for a walk and meheheh insistently (this is especially wonderful after losing two so close together) and having such a big part of the day to write.  I'll miss my baths, and reading in the evening, and silly minor stuff like my yoga mat (no, I'm not taking it with me.)  And I'll worry.  The kids have plenty of food and people to call if they need something, but ... I'm a mom.

I'll be back right quick, and happily settle back into my routine.  In the meantime I'll appreciate my working vacation, meet and greet, shake hands, kiss babies, and maybe we'll hear some good news at our lucky con!  If I can keep it all in my head, I'll post my usual reports on the panels when I can.

Electric Barbarella and Doc Savage

I'm going to be hostess for a party for the Reno 2011 Worldcon Bid at Radcon.  If you're going to be at Radcon, please drop on by.  No, I don't know our room # yet, but we'll post it around the con and I know it'll be Saturday night, so look for us, okay?

I'm practicing making Electric Barbarellas, which can be layered or mixed.  I prefer them mixed, but the layered drink looks waaaaay kewl.  I made it up with help from my friends.  Here it is sans proportions but I suggest that you keep the layers to more of a direction of a pony shot rather than a full shot because they're all sweet.  You want color and just enough to savor without getting sick of it.  Too much is not a good thing.  Fix in a tall and narrow glass, such as an extra tall skinny shot glass or, if you really want the full effect, a tall very narrow champagne flute like the open-stemmed kind.

Electric Barbarella

Blue Curacao

Hpnotiq

1/2 midori, 1/2 ice cold water and a splash of coconut rum

Pour the blue curacao straight in.  Using a spoon or a knife to slow the flow, carefully trickle in the hpnotiq.  The hpnotiq will mix a little bit in with the blue curacao, and will compress into a thinner layer when you pour the last stuff on.  Mix the midori, water and rum in a container that pours readily without spilling when you trickle it.  Test out your container with water before you mix and pour into your glass!  A small measuring cup should work well.  Shot glasses (ahem) don't work at all.  Trickle the mixture in very carefully, making sure that your spoon or knife doesn't touch the surface of the hpnotiq.  

This is a very beautiful drink, but it actually tastes much better as a mixed drink.  Shake with ice or just stir together at room temperature, leaving a thin layer of blue curacao at the bottom.  Yum!

Our Doc Savage is just tequila and tonic water.  For some reason bars don't get it right--I think their tonic water isn't the right flavor.  Get a nice tonic water from the store that you like and make as you would a gin and tonic.

In addition to the heavy drinks we'll have a case of Fat Tire, some wine (I'll find some fun ones at Trader Joes and Costco) a star generator thingy, balloons, brochures, delicious goodies, music, and lots of blah blah blah.  

The weekend that ate the moon

We've got a busy schedule still, but the busiest part of it is done.  

The convention was a great success!  I made people cry (in a good way, I hope) at the Broad Universe reading,  got very encouraging feedback on the openings I read for the ORCs, and excellent feedback on the Mayhem opening for the writer's workshop.  My DH sold lots of books.  I got a free signed copy of a book from a very nice pro.  As far as I know, I didn't make a fool of myself at any of the panels I was on.  And I learned tons, including how to properly do the Five Tibetans straight from Steve Barnes.  This will come in handy when I beta-test a life improvement system for him.  

So not-selling any art this year didn't sting.  It would have been nice to sell something, but I didn't feel like I wasted my time or art show space.  An extra perk--people said nice things about my work, and one of them was an unsolicited remark from artist Alan Clark.  I admire the heck out that guy, so it encouraged me that I may be heading in a good direction.  

That's all I have for now.  I have a pillow to hit.

Programming Pre-Hell games

So I was all feeling proud of myself for putting out one of my personal fires for programming when I decided to deal with another situation.  It's only 2:30 am, I reasoned.  I can do another half hour of work and knock off one of my last chores before programming hell.  Piece of cake.

So I opened up the database, and blinked.  And stared.  And realized that it was not to be at 2:30 am.  In fact, it might not be to be until Monday.  Granted, Monday is when I figured I'd get my data together, but since I'd planned on getting my data via the database on Monday, and it's not there, I will now have to get my data another way.  It will probably involve chocolate shipped to certain addresses and possibly some groveling and hopefully by Monday these things will have paid off and I will have actual useful data on Monday.

I know.  These non-specific whining posts are so dull.  I'm too tired to care.  And I'm annoyed.  But glad.  Glad I caught this before Monday, because if I caught this on Monday, I'm not sure when I'd get my data.  Later than I want it, later than other departments need it.  So staying up late to finish this stuff paid off.  I'm now aware of a problem that I didn't know was a problem.

On the other hand, I have a problem.  Poopyhead software.

Boxers or Briefs?

On Saturday at 5pm I had a moment of doubt.  The panel:  Boxers or Briefs?  When is enough information on your character too much information on your character?  The panelists:  John Helfers, Diana Pharaoh Francis, Renee Stern, K.L. Young, Dr. Harry Turtledove (pictured here from opening ceremonies) and, er, me?  I didn't have stage fright.  More like I had this dread that I would start to yammer, or put my foot in my mouth, or otherwise make a complete fool of myself.  I only get stage fright when I don't know what I'm doing.  I get the dreads when I feel like I don't belong.  But I got over it.  (Thanks Renee for the words of encouragement afterward!)

In a lot of ways, despite this being an amazing set of panelists, this turned out to be the least informative of the panels, at least for my own edification.  We talked about toolboxes, how to fill them (read books about writing, attend writing panels at conventions, etc.) and why you need them.

And why do we need writing tools?  Because sometimes writing is awkward.  You need to insert X information about your character in order to get people to care about them at the beginning.  What X is varies from character to character.  As you continue writing you add Y information to justify the character's ability to cope with their environment and deepen the readers' knowledge (and hopefully caring) of the character, so that they become like a friend/guide to the universe/champion (or whatever your mix may be.)  Getting that information on the page can be very tricky.  Readers are easily bored by things like lists, exposition, and skill demos that don't involve risk.  I've found that trying to use intuition alone to get me through the information dump portions of a novel is a lot like trying to make lasagna based on how I think it should taste.  Writing tools, recipes, whatever you want to call them, will give you ways to transmit information about your characters without making a mess of things.

To illustrate, how about explaining a lion to someone?  You could give the height, weight, hunting habits, etc. in dialogue, as an expository lump, and so forth.  Or you could describe the lion on the hunt, especially an unsuccessful hunt.  The horns and hooves of his prey flashing in his face, the confusion of black and white stripes.  How he hooks his claws and teeth into his prey and how it screams.  The storm of a stampede, the ground shaking, dust, the musk of panicked zebras.  Adrenaline tunnel vision, his eagerness and maybe even desperation, the depths of instinct and previous experience and how they work both for and against him.  How it feels to go home with the smell and taste of blood on your face but no meat in your belly, and the half-sleep as you rest hungrily for the next hunt.  This set of tools is explanation through action, and it's one of the best tools out there.

Good writers use visual cues, auditory cues, taste, smell, touch, mental and physical balance, and they use stress to trot out their characters' best and worst characteristics.  Each individual sense is also a tool.  So is the use of repetition.  Who likes their martini shaken, not stirred?  So is the use of tag lines.  I really enjoyed getting to know the rat-faced Drasnian, even though I didn't know what a Drasnian was when I started.  The use of language in the tags, the sound of the words and the rhythm, gave me hints into the character.

So how much character information is too much?  Easy, and hard.  Some of it is about context and timing.  When it doesn't matter, it's too much.  In the boxer/brief question, we don't care if Sally wears a thong in the opening scene of your novel because it's not important.  However, if we learn Starbuck, an established character in an established series, wears a thong, or boxers, we've been given a tantalizing glimpse that adds just a little more depth to the character.  The choice of underwear implies a great deal about her only because we know she's a tomboy, that she's tough, unapologetic, etc. and a highly feminine choice like a thong or a masculine choice like military issue boxers gives us a subtle cue about how she sees herself.  We wouldn't get that at all unless we had a lot of context first.  Some of it is about relevance to the story arc.  It will never matter that Sally knows how to fish while she's running around on Io, especially if no one else knows how to fish (no connection to the other characters) and that skill doesn't come into play (although I can see her fishing for a mini-monster or jigging for a part that's fallen out of reach--but that's a stretch.)  Maybe at the end Sally can finally go back home to Earth and go fishing, but that only proves the point--that's relevant to the story arc.  So you want details, but details that enrich the character, the plot, or both.  If it's a throwaway, throw it away.

How much is too little?  Also easy, and hard.  When there isn't enough to set a character apart from all the others, it's too little.  Much as I enjoy J.R.R. Tolkien's work, I have to say that in my estimation his characterization is weak.  The good guys are all about the same as each other, as are almost all the bad guys.  We don't learn many personal details about them.  One of the reasons the hobbits are a little more engaging than the other characters is that we learn a little more about their home life and their longing to return home.  One of the things that makes Aragorn more interesting is his unwillingness to take up his destiny, and Faramir stands out due to his isolation and desire to please his father.  The movie did a much, much better job of bringing out the individuality of the characters and making us care about them.  But the movies were based on the books.  So what happened?

The readers filled in the blanks.  Tolkien trusted his readers a great deal more than most modern authors do.  I think he trusted too much.  A lot of people who are invested in the idea of finishing the Lord of the Rings trilogy can't make themselves get all the way through it.  It's too much to ask if you force your readers to make the characters shine for you.  If you're an unknown and your work isn't considered a classic (chances are very high that you're in this category) you can't count on social pressure and expectation to get your readers through your work.  You need to give readers more than Tolkien did, but not too much too soon.  

Easy.  And hard.

One more panel to go:  The Sketch Book:  Your key to sanity.  Then we'll return to, um, more stuff about writing, and small farms, and gardening--the usual.

Knowing Your Plants

After a brief hiatus, here we are discussing Radcon 5 again.  

Apparently this panel has been extremely well-attended at other conventions.  Well, not at Radcon 5.  I brought an attendee with me (the unstoppable C.S. Cole) and Gayle, Gerald Nordley's delightful wife, decided the panel would be a great place to knit.  She was absolutely right.

Frieda Orsborn, my fellow panelist, had a wealth of herbal knowledge and she brought some magazines for reference.  I paged through one as we waited for others to show up (didn't happen, although two young men arrived, sat for a minute, probably realized we weren't discussing government moles, and left) and when Gayle asked about ephedra I got to laugh and tell her that it was being re-released to the public by the FDA and here's the article, enjoy!  (I do not endorse the use of ephedra, nor any other herbal product with a very few exceptions, and I'll explain why below.)

Despite the fact that the attendees of Radcon 5 weren't interested in the growing with roots plants as opposed to spy-type plants, we had a lot to say about them.  

For example, say that your fantasy has the characters moving from point A to point B or is describing village life and it sounds like every other fantasy.  You can spice it up considerably by flavoring your text with a healthy dose of what it's really like to  live off the land without modern agriculture and distribution/grocery stores.  

Your job as an omnivore is to be able to eat just about anything to sustain yourself.  A plant's job is to reproduce successfully, and there are several clever strategies by which to do this.  Edible fruit with an undigestible pit is a great one, because your seed gets distributed everywhere.  The trick is to not make your leaves and bark very nutritious or as many an orchard owner can lament to you, the deer (who have adapted to eat stuff that will give us the runs like crazy) will eat the whole tree down to a pitiful stub.  Other methods include relying on seeds that blow around, sprouting from the roots or tips that arch down to the ground and forming big thickets, or dropping seeds from toxic berries and letting those slowly spread your kind and being as poisonous as you know how so that hardly anyone wants to evolve how to eat you when there's a perfectly good apple tree sapling right there to nibble down to a stump (darn you, deer, darn you!)  There are strategies in-between, but remember this is developing with evolution and it's tricky to have totally toxic leaves and yummy fruit at the same time.  It's not something you can necessarily plan, as such, anymore than you can plan to have a boy as your first born without getting nasty (or lucky.)  

But I digress.  The point is that when your heroes head out into the wilderness, they need to find stuff out there that's edible to them that hasn't already been eaten.  If they're out there in the winter, especially in late winter, good frickin' luck.  Everything edible out there has been searched for and assaulted full time by the wild critters.  Also, think about hunting for a little bit.  We have an enormous abundance of deer right now (Kami shakes her fist at them helplessly from the house) and yet there's many a hunter with all kinds of equipment, including firearms, and all the time they can get off work, that will take days and days to bring home their deer.  Wild animals are great at running away from things that want to eat them.  So, your adventurers turn to living off the plant life.  They have options--pine nuts, certain leaves and needles that can make tea, some roots--but it takes a lot of time to find and collect enough of these things to get a halfway decent meal.  Yes, you can eat grubs, but finding and digging for them is time consuming and they're not very filling.  (If you want to try this, I suggest cooking them.  You don't have to eat them raw.)  Also, lots of green matter without starch is going to give them a nasty case of the trots.

Having your villagers wish for the first of the harvest in summer while they're picking greens in the spring can add a lot to your setting.  So can a real understanding of the cyclic nature of primitive agriculture and haphazard storage capabilities of a low-tech society.  It can also be great fun contrasting availability of items in a city where they have access to snow/ice year-round vs. a temperate city vs. the tropics where you can usually find something fruiting year-round.

You certainly don't have to include this stuff in your writing.  After all, folks read to escape the realities of starvation, feast/famine, and the joys of diarrhea.  But like I said, it can set you apart from everyone else and add some tension if you like.  

What about medicinal uses, Kami?  I want my herb wife to be able to heal my character who just got hurt.  I don't want to deal with infections and stuff like that.

You can do that.  But again, let's have some fun with this.  There's a lot of material out there with borderline or outright magical people who can heal heroes from the brink of death with a chocolate-coated magic pill.  The way to make things interesting is to take into account the guesswork involved in this sort of thing.  One of the reasons there are fewer herbs on the market than really ought to be has to do with how our bodies are only partially adapted to eating things that don't want to be eaten.  The gov tries to bring things down to the lowest common denominator, and therefore things get taken off the market or are never approved because an unacceptably large proportion of people are allergic or sensitive to what's otherwise a really good product.  When you use the whole herb rather than a refined extract, the chances that you're sensitive to one aspect or a combinations of an herb's profile of components is that much higher.  The combination/complexity can also provide more benefit than a refined version, or the components can cancel out the overall benefit.  Some systems, most notably the Chinese system of herbal medicine, maintain that medicines have to be crafted for each individual and can't be mass-produced for any real effect.  

Suddenly you can have a lot more fun with your herb wife as she hits and misses with your character's individual chemical tolerances and her local herbal availabilities.  Also, side-effects can be fun to play with.  Your character doesn't get an infection, but now he's nauseated, or groggy, or both and trying to fight the bad guy.

If you know your plants, you can also have a lot  more fun inventing poisons that don't exist.  They sound and act more nasty if you have reality to draw from.

We had a great time, the four of us, discussing plants and how to apply them to fiction (and real life too.)  We got a little bit into lore and how it develops (multi-use or very important core plants can become the center of an entire culture, even naming the people who use it) and chatted a bit about gardening.  (Why the heck is basil so hard for me to grow when everyone else can grow massive pots of it??!!) But mostly we talked at the edges of a really big topic, because an hour is not even close to being enough time to go deep with this stuff.

BTW, I'm always available to answer your plant questions.  I don't know everything, by any means, and I'll let you know if I have to research it because you may be better off researching it yourself.  But if your rhododendron is ailing or you want to know how hard it is to grow a camellia sinensis for tea, etc. I'm here for ya.  Know your plants.  Love 'em.

Me Me Me, or, Them Pesky Ants

According to the program this panel had Patty Briggs (congrats Patty on your NYT best seller status!) Ted Butler, Bobbie Hull, Charity Heller Hogge and me.  BTW, Charity posted a great quote on her blog:

“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” ~Mark Twain

Yes, yes, yes.

I don't know if I'm right, but I still feel that if your background characters are rushing to the forefront, it's not a bad idea to make them more major characters.  If this happens with every single minor character and your whole work is littered with people more fascinating than your main character, find out what makes them so much more compelling than your mc and fold some of their traits into the mc.  A flaccid mc is a serious problem and beefing them up may solve the whole problem.

If not, maybe you're dodging the hard parts.  Sometimes it's so much nicer to go off on a tangent than to deal with the immediate problem.  I think Patty was saying at one point that she goes ahead and writes all that stuff, and then later cuts it out.  She finds that sometimes it's easier to use that tangent to transition yourself mentally to what happens next than to try to get from point A to point B without the assistance of a minor character momentarily taking over.  Eventually, though, you do have to write that hard part.  The hard parts are what deepen novels, so it's worth the effort.

At some point we got carried away in a discussion about plotting and discussed outlining vs. not outlining, the Snowflake method, and how plot supports the mc.  It still relates.  If your mc doesn't have enough motivation and enough going on in their lives then of course everyone else is going to be offering their life story to help fill in the dead spaces.

Another Patty suggestion is that if you have a really good minor character that won't shut up and that you love, promise them a book of their very own.  That often satisfies them.

Bad guys are often more compelling than good guys and the minor characters cropping up to take over the scenes is a symptom of this.  Again, I think it's a good idea to consider changing main characters if necessary.  Often we pick the wrong pov character and it's really hard to let go of that, especially when you've written 60,000 words or more of wrong pov.  It's a little easier to let go if you're a prolific writer, but even if you're not, give it a try in a separate file and see what happens.  If you grab the right pov character it's possible that you'll forget all about those hard-earned words in the other version and fly past your original word count.

Minor characters taking over can also be a sign of overwriting.  Minor characters shouldn't be elaborately described.  If you become acquainted with archetypal constructs then you can whip up a minor character in two sentences, have them do their part, and shuffle them off their literary coil without making them a person the reader comes to care about and misses when they disappear.  Patty mentioned that she has more trouble with female minor characters.  It makes sense.  In the genre we see lots of male characters, and quite a few female protagonists (though not as many as men) but there isn't a deep well from which to draw female characters.  For this we may have to turn to chick lit.  Chick lit features all depths and heights of women.  It's not that we have to learn about them.  We know the stereotypes.  But we need to be reminded of them.  An example is the innkeeper.  Everyone has an innkeeper in their mind.  As a writer, all you have to do is use the word innkeeper and dress him up with a few differences to make him pop (don't be lazy and just keep him generic) and you're golden.  Once you're reminded of female characters that aren't the bossy bitch or the the mighty warrior or the fainting princess, you're on your way to building minor characters without writing a three page essay on them and making the readers care enough to want to follow them around.

We had a great discussion on purpose.  Your main character really needs a purpose, even if it's to hide from their troubles and do as little as possible.  

Which reminds me, we talked about that in the character conflict panel too--that believable characters will often do the bare minimum and fight like heck to stay inside their comfort zone.  What they do outside their comfort zone is the fun part, and one of the considerations an author makes when they design conflicts for their work.  Watching a character fight to get back inside their comfort zone is often a missing or belittled dimension in writing, so think about that the next time your character is battling the throb monster and see what happens.  I also missed great commentary on internal conflict being as interesting as external conflict on the conflict panel.  Gah!  My brain is mush.  I'll just quickly add here that internal conflict can be very compelling, but you have to learn to discriminate internal conflict from naval gazing.  Also, it's more interesting and real to watch a teenager angst than it is to watch an adult angst.  Even a teen can become tedious, though, so be careful with that stuff.  

Now back to the purpose thing.  If your main character's only purpose in speculative fiction is solely to:

1. Foil the antagonist, or

2. Get married and have kids, or

3. Get laid, or just about any other one-dimensional purpose

then you'd better make that purpose more interesting than it appears at face value.  For example, if you have a really great antagonist who may also be a good guy and they've been playing hunt and hunted for a long time because of something in their history that has twists and dark spots and will have a fresh reveal that doesn't cause the audience to roll their eyes right out of their heads, you may have something.  Same with getting married and having kids.  Much harder to do when you're the last person on Earth, or there's a fertility issue, etc.  The purpose has to count, and it has to be something the readers want to read about to the exclusion of those pesky minor characters.  This is so important, I suggest that you think about your favorite main characters of all time and list their purposes.  Each will probably have more than one, so go to town.  Write it down.  Do some rereading.  Once you get going on this, the minor characters will be what they're supposed to be--a fascinating part of the setting.

Last but not least, a suppose:  Patty wondered if writers who outline have more trouble with the sense that their characters are out of their control than writers who write without an outline.  It makes sense to me.  If you outline, then characters will sometimes not cooperate and 'not do what they're supposed to do.'  If you don't outline, there's no 'supposed to.'  There's only what it is that they do.  ?

Challenging Your Characters

See the Barbie Lady post for some changes, not that it fixes anything.  

Onward, or rather backward, to Radcon 5.

At 10:00am on Saturday, after a great breakfast provided for the pros by Radcon (thank you!) I met with Bruce Taylor, Steve Libbey, Deborah Fredericks, Kay Kenyon and a roomful of participants to discuss battering characters and then sending them to Charybis and the Scylla.  BTW, if better links than the ones I provided exist, let me know!  

Some highlights:

The conflicts you throw at your character should arise organically.  It's much less interesting to throw rocks at your character.  I learned that throwing rocks is a common plot-flaw term, similar to plot ninjas from Nano.  It's all fun and games when you're trying to get through that first draft, but ultimately it's more interesting if the plot develops as a natural result of the character interactions with each other and the environment.

Which brings us to a related subject--there's a back and forth that often develops between the protagonist and antagonist.  Both need to have their say in the argument.  It's no fun if the hero picks on a villain that has an insupportable position, and it's equally no fun if the villain always gets the last word and makes everyone else look stupid.  Readers like a good horse race.  If it's obvious who will win and they do, or worse, obvious who should win but the hand of Gawd comes down and either squishes the obvious winner or helps along the loser, you'll end up with a lot of unhappy customers.

Victory should carry a price.  If it doesn't cost anything, it isn't worth anything.  On the other hand if everyone dies (and there were many audience comments about how they hated it if a character dies very early in the book, especially the first pov character, or if helpless beings like animals and children suffer and/or die unless you are very careful not to make it horrible or play it all out on screen--remember, this is supposed to be entertaining) the reader reaction is often 'why did I bother reading this?'  Great authors can pull it off.  As a first time author, I'm holding off on that sort of thing.  I may never go there, unless the idea demands it, and maybe not even then.

Most writers know that there has to be enough challenge and risk to make things interesting, but it's possible to go too far.  The result is a battered character who either is unable to act or save themselves anymore, which requires a rescue, or they become unrealistic, boring or laughable as they shrug off calamities that would drive a hurricane gawd to its knees.  

I believe it was Deby Fredericks who made the stair-climbing motions that helped illustrate the next point.  The action should build (organically, as previously mentioned) so that the stakes become higher and character reactions to each others' maneuvers become more desperate and/or more heavy-handed as they try to solve their problems.  At the climax, someone is going to fall down the stairs.  The higher you build them, the bigger the ouch at the bottom.

There was at least one more point but it's not springing to mind.  Hopefully you'll feel inspired to hop in and make additions in the comments.  It was a great panel.  I learned a lot, and had a lot of fun.  It doesn't get better than that.  Well, okay, chocolate might have made it better.