So first of all, go here if you want to read my article on parenting and gaming. Fun stuff to write, neat magazine to have written it for and all thanks (like so much else in my life these days) to Matt McFarland. (Thank you, Matt!)

So I’ve had some time to process the Writers’ Convention I went to this weekend.  I have a notebook full of notes and thoughts and I realize how few of them will actually apply to anything but my own work, this will be ironic soon. (What, ten years of pretending to be a writer, a year or two with a bit of success at it, and NOW I actually think about plot construction for the first time in my life? Yeah, I win the internet.)

The thing that I couldn’t get past most of the time, is how strange the writer is as an animal, especially when it’s free range and face to face with its own species. Curious, occasionally friendly, and by some staggering percentage, utterly unable to think about things outside of the terms of their own needs. (I'm not saying this is a universal truth, just what I observed this weekend.)

Now granted, I’ll give you that all of those writers there spent a few hundred dollars to learn the few things they needed to make their manuscript the next DaVinci Code. I can’t blame them for having their heads pretty far up their own manuscripts. I know I tend to think and relate new information to things I already know or understand, that’s how my brain works, but when I’m in a large learning space I do try to take that information and make it universal. I learn more and others around me do as well. (Did I mention I couldn’t keep my damn mouth shut through most of the workshops? I had a few people, speakers included, thank me, so I guess I wasn’t too obnoxious.)

I also saw a non internet troll. It was fantastic. A grown man in his mid to late fifties. A man who at least pretend to have a real career as a writer, and so you would think he had good things to do with his time and money. Like any internet troll, apparently not. He sat in a class and spent the whole time muttering his side comments to someone beside him. Eventually it got so obvious and irritating that the speaker stopped and asked him what his issue was with what she was saying.  Being a troll, he backed off, saying that wasn’t the time and place. Better still, he spent the rest of the day (at least from what I could tell, he was prevalent in the break room) complaining to any and all how he was ‘yelled at’ by one of the speakers. When, after a while, someone who had been in the first class came in to try and still his belly aching a bit, he got up and left saying ‘they just don’t understand the point.’ Classic troll behavior, and best of all, this guy had never even been on the internet! (He’s a letter writer, he explained, dozens of pages of letters a week.) Funny how it never occurred to me that such a thing could exist outside of the net.

There were questions at panels so narrow and specific to a writer’s work that the panelist couldn’t possibly answer it. Loud personal phone calls in public places. More complaining about minutia then you could shake a complaint form at, and of course all of it coming from people who had been to this conference a dozen times before and would go a dozen times again, age permitting.

Don’t get me wrong, I ran into a lot of people who were just fantastic, people who I hope to some day call peers. There’s one young lady who has, no kidding, ACTUALLY done something new with the standard vampire novel, and I am dying to be her pal when she’s rich and famous. I had a blast and learned things at every turn, but then, that’s what I wanted out of that conference. I wonder if I’d gone into it wanting to ‘fix’ my manuscript or land an agent or find something to complain about, that’s just what I would have found.

Long ramble short, really, ladies and gentleman, have fun if you’re going to go. If not, I’m sure you can find things at home to bitch about.

One day I watched my almost-eight month old defy death. Nothing tragic really, she just decided to crawl off of the edge of the bed and plummet head first to the ground.

I was watching, mind you, and got my hands on her fat little trunk before she got all the way over the edge, but it was clear her intent. Yes, she wanted to crawl off the bed. No, she didn't know it would hurt her. She hasn't any concept of 'I could get hurt,' or 'that might be scary."

In fact, she really has no real sense of fear. Now, don't get me wrong, she'll get afraid after the fact. Also the dark. But things that she can see and reach for, things she can touch or taste, or somehow experience, no, she hasn't any fear. She just reaches and pushes and explores with little concern for the consequences.

Sometimes, she'll storm her way across the couch at a full crawling clip towards the desk where my husbands computer sits. The purpose for this? Apparently, her only desire is to grab on to the printer/scanner monstrosity on his desk and hang from it. There's no where else she could go on the desk. She just wants to hang and climb and challenge herself, and gravity be damned! My husband thinks her suicidal need to hang from the printer/scanner has something to do with scanning her butt like those drunk secretaries do at company Christmas parties.

I've even found her attempting to climb my book shelf. Maybe to get at my books, or maybe, more likely, just to climb -something.-

I remember shortly after she was born. She would roll onto her stomach and cry and cry, mostly we figured, in frustration that she couldn't move. She couldn't go. It was so sad to watch her little head bob up and down, and her little feet kick no where to get her somewhere. The moment when she first got to her knees and really honestly crawled for the first time, she literally squealed with joy. Joy at being able to move and be in control. The dangers and perils that come of being in charge of your own movements just don't matter. Moving matters.

Willy Shakespeare says 'Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.'

What does this have to do with creating, with writing? To be honest, I didn't know at first, I just watched my daughter and her fearlessness and kept being nagged by a sense that there was something I ought to learn in it. I realized it was trait in her that I respected, and envied it a little. Which is when it occurred to me, of course, I'm a dummy. I'm afraid. I'm afraid of putting my out there that it's going to be rejected. That after all this time I'm going to find out I was never a 'real writer' after all. Whatever that means. I was afraid to take a risk just because there might be a consequence.

In that silly little moment of realization, I put together what my daughter was trying to teach me, unknowingly perhaps, when she tried to crawl off the edge of the bed.

I've decided to shrug off fear and doubt, and dive head first into the thing I'm the most afraid of. (You know, other than motherhood, 'cause that's one I was gleefully thrown into, rather than dove.) So I'm putting my writing out there, out everywhere. I'm biting back my fear and taking a chance, because, like my daughter, I don't know if I'm absolutely going to fall if I climb up on the scanner, and so what if I do? I've got plenty of people who love me and will catch me.

So anyway, thank you Tina, for being fearless, and reminding me how. /gooey mom time.

Also: Updates on the Anthology I was included in, you can download a sneak preview.

Three of my White Wolf titles are out, buy them at your local Dork Store. Immortals, Ancient Mysteries, Ancient Bloodlines.

And, my article for Pyramid Magazine is now out, here.

The first anthology I've been invited to write for is available for preorder now and I couldn't be more excited. 12 to Midnight's Buried Tales of Pinebox, Texas.Real fiction and everything!

You can read more about it here, including the bios of some of the other writers involved. David Wellington? Are you kidding me!? I'm having a fangirl moment. Shane Hensley might be one of the nicest guys on the internet. Remind me later to tell you what an idiot I am and how it involves that kind gentleman. Who doesn't love Deadlands? I'm not ashamed to see my name below any of the names included.

So go get your preoder out of the way. I'll be waiting right here.

So what have I been doing? Celebrating some holiday fun with Thaumatrope Twitter fiction. (Twiction?)



And

Oh, and did you see the Collection of Horrors? You should, I’ve written two bits of it, and you can download one RIGHT NOW. (Or, if you rather, get a subscription and get a whole bunch of Hunter the Vigil goodness, I can’t blame you. There’s some great stuff in there. Even some great stuff by David, the man from whom my babies come.)

 

Oh, and did I tell you I'm going to be in anthology? A real book and everything. Why yes, you should preorder your copy now.

 

Later, more book reviews and maybe some links.

Among a lot of other things going on this summer, it looks like I'm going to this writer's conference in June. I'm trying to collate some info on dos and don'ts for the first timer at this kind of event. (I want to get the most out of it.) If I get any good stuff, I'll post it here, practice it and tell you how it worked after the conference.

So, I put it you, internets. What do you know about this sort of event? Any personal thoughts, or short of that, good leads so'as I can school mah self?

So, I’ve geared up to destroy the last project I have on my plate (at this point) for White Wolf. I have my plan of attack and my detailed outline ready. (Detailed is a lie. Anal is the word I’m looking for.)

So in my planning and outlining stages I do all kinds of other silly things that aren’t necessary. I have spread sheets for shaming myself into beating yesterday’s word count. I have web pages I might reference tabbed together on my browser, I even shuffle my PDFs around in a folder so I can find them if I think they’re relevant. They rarely are. And that’s just on the computer. I have two white boards, three colors of dry erase markers and sometimes, colored pens for writing on my hands. –Well, that last part is more with my creative writing than this freelancing stuff.

And yet, and YET I still feel like I don’t have enough prepared or organized. I want programs. I want computer programs that will do everything for me. I want them to organize my time, congratulate my successes and berate me for my failures. I want programs that do my dishes, but of course, that isn’t going to happen. I think this endless search for the perfect free writing program is a distraction I’ve created for myself so I have something to procrastinate about while feeling like I’m working. If it does exist, it’ll cost money, and I don’t make any money yet, so that’s out.

I’m sure if I found something that could track multiple projects (There must be colors! And visuals! And motivational speeches, well, not that, maybe.) keep track of due dates and contracts plus payments… Well hell, I’d probably come up with something new I wanted even if I did find it. Ah well, the search goes on.

The important thing is the word count, and that goes. I’m just praying for the program that will organize everything so perfectly that I’ll suddenly double my production while getting all Donna Reed on my house. Ha, right? Ha.

(Also posted at my writing Blog.)

So GenCon, right?

It was big, incase you hadn’t picked that up yet, it was super duper big and I really really wasn’t prepared for just how big. (This would contribute to later acts of what might appear to have been screaming-fan-girl-it is I’ll address later.) I was there for the table top gaming, of course, and networking, but I figure I should address the general experience first, and maybe talk about the other stuff later.

First, let me get this out of the way. Yes. I have a tattoo on my chest. Yes, it has a naughty word in it. Yes, you can read it. Honestly, I have to wonder what people thought I put it there for if not for people to read. Incase you haven’t seen it or read it, ( here it is. )

And yes, you can ask me about it. If I’m not on fire or clearly busy, why wouldn’t I want to tell you why the word WHORE is in the middle of my chest. (Other than how cool PTA meetings are going to be.)

That said. I cannot believe how many nerds there are. Like, I knew there were a lot of us intellectually, (how many World of Warcraft players are there?) But I guess I suspected on some level that most of the internet was three guys complaining about everything.

How wrong I was.

I really loved seeing the scope and variety that creativity manifests itself. No matter how ridiculous the costumes, no matter how potbellied the Princess Leila’s (thanks weaver42) no matter how absurd the debates of ‘who would win in a fight’ (Hint: The answer is always Bruce Campbell.) What it truly expresses is a love and passion for the creative force. A real and legitimate effort to socialize in ways that work for people who are very different from the norm. Separate from it and not so overwhelmed by it, I love it and I’m glad I can see that now.

Things I truly loved:
The White Wolf people were SUPER friendly and kind despite my obvious shell shock. I have a lot of thank you Emails to write. (Matt, Jess, Kelly, Joe, Ethan, Marty, a Viking, Chuck, Bethany, John, Eddy, other people who’s names I got and forgot because its all a blurr, THANK YOU.)

The guys who did ‘The Gamers’ movie at a booth looking like famous movie stars. (No kidding, some of those dudes are HOT.)

Tshirts that said insane things like ‘Nerd Famous.’

Half naked people with no shame. Providence bless the unashamed.

My husband machineiv.

A dude at the Palladium Booth wearing a Coalition dress uniform. I was trying to be all professional and slip my card and my CV to Kevin Sembiada and the other guys there, but instead my heart was pounding and I got all squishy and gushy. I hope I left an impression of passion and not idiocy. I’ll find out, I’m sure. (My brother will never stop making fun of me for that, I’m sure.)

The games! But more on that next time!

Which makes it official. I'm working freelance on a White Wolf book. The money is good, the exposure is fun. The people are wonderful so far. The material is likely to be wonderful. Who knows what else will follow if I work my butt off on this job. That said, I'm going to go away now and get back to working on said project.

I'll be posting another paying market acceptance that I heard back a day after hearing from White Wolf once I get more details about it. 

Also at my website.

I just got a nice chunk of submissions to various and sundry contests and anthologies. With a second to breath, I thought I'd share with you a heck of a conversation I had.

I love the internet and its potential for spontaneous discussion and random pseudo-interviews. Here's the set up. Earlier in the day I had this conversation I had read THIS agents blog. A quote in it stuck with me.

"The type of writing a query requires is so far removed from the kind of writing a fiction writer does that, to me, it’s the equivalent of a dancer going to audition for the role of The Sugar Plum Fairy, and being made to stand perfectly still and DESCRIBE her movements, rather than simply being allowed to dance. Unless that dancer, then, is also a singer and has a way with words, that dancer may the most incredible Sugar Plum Fairy that troop will ever see, but the dance company will never know this." - Sandra Kring

So, I put it up in my G-Chat message. (That's THIS thing if you don't know.)

A few minutes after I posted the thought for all the internet to read I got a message from my friend The Man From Free Planet X.

Jared said to me: "Do you believe that? The ballerina metaphor, I mean?"

A answered: "I know queries make me want to cry." and then "The idea of using 200 words to prove to a stranger that my 89,000 words are good enough is jarring."

"Look at it this way," Jared said. "In a bookstore, you have only, what? A 7 word sentence to do the same thing? 200 words is a luxury."

I didn't find that much comfort, and told Jared that. He laid it back out for me like this: "It's like brick-laying. As a bricklayer, you're going to have to learn how to smooth out the mortar after to you place the bricks. Does this, matter, really? Does this make the wall any less stable? Or more? Not really. But it's a skill you need to have in order to get more people to hire you bricklay."

A little bit later in internet time, he came back with: "Which is why I feel like the ballerina metaphor misses the point It might be better if, before the ballerina auditioned, the director said "Wait. Let's see if you fit in the costume first."

That resonated a great deal and I'm really rather grateful for his opinion on the matter. Thanks Jared.

(Oh, and about five minutes later, Jared said, "That said query letters are horrible.")

ZOMG!

I have been published in my first print mag!

You can pick up your copy over at Mouth Full of Bullets.

Thank you, Mr. Borg for including my Jack Doe short story "The Baked Bank Job."

This is also up on my writing blog at my website.

If you know me in person, you've heard me say before that I enjoy the maxim by Raymond Chandler.

“When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.”

Anyway, I'd love to hear your opinions.

Mmm.. The Huzbun got my laptop up and running again, so today I could do more market research. I love that crap. Duotrope, you is my favorite.

I came across an neat looking fledgling market I thought I'd share.

Big Pulp

I mention it since it might be of interest to a number of my friends out there.

zephrin, my other writer friends out there, they pay up to 25$ for fiction.

blackwell, szeret21, they're looking for photography. I couldn't find the pay rate, but I'm sure they pay.

planetx, they're looking for comics!

So, here, I'm making more competition for myself! Submit 'em if you got 'em!!

...Okay, so I'm not really famous yet, but my short story "Mars Ain't No Place for Ladies" did get blogged about here.

That's a step in the right direction, I imagine.

Plus, the 'zine that it was published on was nominated for the Predators and Editors Reader's Choice Award for 2007, from the editor. If haven't yet voted with P&E for your favorite 'Zine, you should go vote for Spacewesterns.com. Seriously. Nathan Lilly is a good guy and the 'zine is something fun!

Click me! Click me!!!

I think the editor, Nathan Lilly, did the art there for me. It's really beautiful and I didn't even know he was doing it.

So, in case you didn't catch my husband's almost brutal show of support, my short story "Mars' Ain't No Place for Ladies" will be up at Space Westerns next Sunday.

While you're there checking it out, you might notice zephrin short story is the latest update available. Glad I could point you to a paying gig, and congrats!!

In other news, I got another short story accepted by the nice gentleman over at Mouth Full of Bullets . They are full up till Spring of 2009, but still not a bad place to throw a submission. I heard back the same day I submitted, which I'm pretty sure was record time and a fluke.

I wanted to thank blackwell, your advice about contracts was spot on, and I know I'll be getting paid as a result.

Also, Tina will be a year old on the 9th of next month. I have no idea what to do about that, I mean, aside from celebrate like it's 1999.

I'm having a little success, and with each bit of good news, I'm praying for all the people I know, I'm wishing that what ever good is resting on my shoulders and giving me these little bits of accomplishment can be shared with everyone I know and care about. The fact is, for good or bad, I know that who I am today is a result of who I have known and do know. I know that everything I do is a manifestation of the experince I have had, and so therefore, the interactions with people I have had the joy (however dubious) to know.

So, everyone out there in interweb world, whether I talk to you every day, or haven't said a word in years, thank you. Thank you for brushing my life and if only I could literally share what ever success I have with you.

So, the first real hard edits of THE BEAST are done. I'm handing it around for some polish opinions while I dust up my query letter writing skizills and hunting for agents who won't hate me too much.


Is it silly to take pictures of a manuscript? Yes, but I did it anyway. Ha ha ha.

My piece, "Mar's Ain't No Place for Ladies" is in talks with the editor of this site.  The editor seems like a great guy, and he seemed to like it, so I'm excited.

I would actually recommend you take a look at the site for some quick fun reads. I've only read a few stories, and they were just that- fun.

David told me he'd buy me a laptop when I got my first story published in a paying market. Of course, just because the editor told me he'd publish the story is not the same thing as actually being published, so I guess I shouldn't put my cart before my wagon.

Still... I can already picture me sitting on my lawn with my lap top while Tina plays in the yard and eats bugs.... It's a lovely picture really.

So if you know a good place to get a cheap laptop, let me know!