WFC 2012: Day 3 - Sucking The Life Out Of Me

Today was a slower day as far as panels were concerned.  Beside lunch break, I spent two hours sitting at the BroadUniverse table with Laurel Anne Hill.  I was relieved she stayed, because I would have muddled through, but I am quite shy if I don't have a five foot instrument to hide behind and sound knowledgeable about, and she was also fun to talk to.  We discussed anthologies a bit; I've always been frustrated by my inability to find closed calls and invite-only anthologies.  Since my real love in short fiction is the anthology, not the magazine, this is something I very much want to change.

I keep haunting registration, waiting for them to put out the sign-up for Brighton (WFC 2013).  By now, I imagine the volunteers working the table are sick of seeing me.

On to the panels!

(With a caveat:  I only saw the first 40-some of this first panel because I wanted to make it to the BU table before the dealer's room was officially open, and I also missed the first few minutes of the next one I attended.  Neither was due to lack of interest, just timing and my desire to be diligent.)

Relevance of Revenants (Barbara Roden (m), Jeffrey Ford, Paula Guran, Michael Kelly, Kit Reed):  The panel discussed ghost stories as one of the last oral traditions - the stories kids still tell each other; the interest in scientific explanation of ghosts (a mention of EVP, which has always fascinated me); and the evolving of the ghost story to fit with modern settings and technology, such as cellphones, email and computers.  Doesn't the very concept of internet communication - disembodied figures floating through our lives? - sort of sound like a ghost story?  Paula shared a moving personal story that illustrated how thin the barrier between life and death can be for the next generation.

I came to this panel thinking, "Gee, I'm not really interested in ghosts."  Uh ... no, Lindsey.  I'm always writing about mediums, spirits, and really, if you look at it from a certain perspective, Journal of the Dead is one massive ghost story (and it's sort of Victorian, the age of ghosts ... hmm, that was totally accidental).  Even Flow has a ghostly apparition appearing at a crucial phase in the story.  And, of course, I think of Dead Like Me, which remains my favorite portrayal of life after death.  Hands down.

Eerily, I came out of this panel and noticed several tables with Kleenex.  My immediate reaction was, "What?"  Then I discovered there was a memorial service occurring concurrently in the neighboring portion of the ballroom ...

The Real World In Fantastic Fiction (Ian Drury (m), Donald Crankshaw, Geoff Hart, Kristin Janz, Christopher Kovacs Kenneth Schneyer):  "Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle fantasy."  This was an amazing panel, with a lot of thoughtful discussion about how to approach the verisimilitude in fantasy, such as:  pay attention to the consequences, especially in elements of the world where breaking basic assumptions of reality; consider the attributes of control and access when introducing magical elements that can muck about with basic economics (teleportation, anyone?); when using real world societies as a starting point, try to avoid modern judgment and see the society from within; aaaand ... do your research.  But, of course, it's not what you know, it's what you think you know and you don't - the unperceived needs of research.  I was also fascinated by a discussion of idiomatic language being central to a story, which is something I love to muck about with.  You see it a lot in Butterfly's Poison; it's a world with very little contiguous landmass, so there's a lot of water / ocean / sailing language.

The Changeling (Jeffe Kennedy (m), Holly Black Karen Dales, Graham Joyce, Sean Williams):  Another panel that got deep into the psychology and the deeper meaning / expression of fears that the changeling represents, more than just the outward shape.  I love fairy and what they represent (hi, Flow), so I adored this panel.  They discussed the protean, changing nature of the fairy, and the fact that it may be that they look just like us, and we don't recognize them because we don't recognize themselves.  The feeling of being a changeling was traced back by a few panelists to childhood experiences of deciding they must be adopted.  

(I remember my mother telling me a story about how she convinced her older brother that he was, and how much it traumatized him.  Of course, she said she found a document in the desk drawer, and my grandmother had to point out, "She's five.  She can't read.")

The panel also discussed the changeling story as a coming of age - stepping between two worlds and having to decide which to become a part of.  They concluded that fairies and humans are psychically interdependent:  one cannot exist without the other.  And fairies are also necessary to shift the blame and shame of society - scapegoating.  The case of Bridget Cleary came up, and I really want to get my hands on that account.  It's apparently online somewhere ...

It occurred to me that another variant of the changeling story giving parents an excuse to abandon unwanted children goes back to Greek myths, where many of the classical heroes were abandoned as children, sometimes by the order of the gods, sometimes by a jealous father ... but these children always were raised in good (sometimes better) circumstances by kindly rescuers.

Lunch break!

Special Guests Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon (interviewed by Fiona Patton):  These two seem like the perfect writerly couple - separate studies, strategic togetherness, brainstorming on road trips ... they were a blast to listen to, though they goofed juuuust a bit too much for my tastes.  I loved how Lackey discussed balancing writing with the other endeavors in her life:  writing until she runs out of brain juice, then switching to something else.  She also recommended a screenwriting book that sounded fantastic for writers, Save The Cat by Blake Snyder - first as outlining, but also valuable for characterization and even pitch.  Finally, the pair admitted that they had, every now and again, used fan sites to double-check facts on Valdemar ... which I think cracked the entire audience up.

Pencils, Pixels and Paint (John Picacio, Todd Lockwood, Charles Vess):  This panel featured three artists displaying works and walking us through the process of creation.  A lot of technical difficulties and snafus, but I was utterly absorbed by their various methods of working and how they let spontaneity influence their creativity.  Vess believed that paintings shouldn't be overly rendered, leaving viewers space to fill in the gaps.  Picacio has a fascinating technique of drawing in black and white, then creating paintings in the desired color scheme ... then overlaying and performing transparency in Photoshop.  I would give a lot of money to have enough skill in either to attempt this, because it sounds like so much fun as a creative process.  The color was also his way of introducing a chaotic, non-linear element.  Lockwood, too, mentioned the incorporation of chaos with a random pattern, to simulate organic forms.

After Twilight:  Whither The Vampire (Michael Rowe (m), Stephanie Bedwell-Grime, Sean Hayden, Nancy Kilpatrick, Rio Youers, Nancy Baker):  This panel was less interesting than I had hoped it would be, because the panelists got focused perhaps a bit too much on the Twilight phenomena specifically, but I still found they had a lot of interesting things to say.  They discussed the charting of sexual mores by the development of vampire fiction; the "Abercrombie and Fitch"ization (yes, really) of vampires by Twilight; the trivialization by reducing them to highschool; and that a fantasy that was originally of the other has become increasingly a fantasy of privilege.  They concluded that each generation is reinventing the vampire.

The fantasy of other vs privilege immediately made me think of the "vampires don't age" rule and how it's usually applied now - young and beautiful forever - versus ... well ... probably THE vampire for me is Claudia from Interview With The Vampire.  I'll admit I'm not well-read in vampire fiction, but she struck me like a lightning bolt.  If I were going to write in this particular vein, I think that's the angle that's most interesting to me:  the vampire who is eternally stuck at the wrong age.

Dinner break!

Broad Universe RapidFire Reading (Kathryn Sullivan, Brenda Carre, Me!, Ada Brown, Laurel Anne Hill, Carol Berg, Julia Dvorin (m), Cat Rambo, Heather McDougal):  Short excerpts from a wide variety of fiction in just as many styles - a great sampler of female writers.  We had an unexpectedly large audience, too.  Ladies, you all were excellent - dramatic, funny and enjoyable to listen to, and I was glad to meet those of you I hadn't before.  Of my own contribution, the less said, the better.

I found that I shared a table of contents with Ada Brown - in the compilation issue of Crossed Genres she brought with her, no less!  Her "Nadirah Sends Her Love" (Tragedy) appeared with my "Bird Out Of Water" (Opposites) in Quarterly #1.

WFC 2012: Day 2 - Charles Dickens' Chickens

This was a remarkably long day, even though I skipped a panel (a repeat topic with different panelists) for lunch and other sundry organization attempts.  As before, I'll talk about the panels first, then some personal thoughts that arose from them that don't necessarily directly relate to the conference.

First, though, I want to comment generally on what an amazing, eloquently, witty, funny group of people all these panelists were.  I think there was more uproarious laughter today than I can remember in a long time, and not just in the humor panel.

Faith And Fantasy (Jonathan Oliver (m), Ada Milenkovic Brown, Bill Willingham, James Moore, Kari Sperring):  One of the panelists -I think it was Willingham - described his upbringing as Jewish and Catholic, which meant he had to go to confession, but he was allowed to bring a lawyer.  They talked about the difficulty of removing belief from culture, how it serves to help us deal with not being the center of the world, and Welsh-born Sperring offered a hysterical rant about the cliche fantasy where the evil, monotheistic patriarchal religion persecuted the benign Celtic witches.  The idea of quantum physics entered it near the end, in the sense that if you go deep enough, we are all made of nothing ... and if the universe is infinite, then by definition, we are, in fact, at its center (and so is every other point).

Humor In Horror and Fantasy (Michael Plested (m), Sarah Beth Durst, Nalo Hopkinson, Tanya Huff, Patrick Weekes):  This was a great panel, and I was struck by how different it was from the perspective given at the Whimsical Fantasy WFC in 2010, though some of the same points predominated - that humor can be very sensitive to time period, but that character humor is universal.  Other thoughts:  it's funny because it's true; humor as a coping mechanism; faithful execution of an absurd premise; laughter as a way of bringing people together.  One writer said they loved unintentional character revelation:  a statement that seems normal to the character, but brings the reader up short and tells them a lot about a twisted world view.  Durst earned my appreciation by stating how much she hates characters embarrassing themselves as a source of humor:  she has to look away when it's on TV.

Another interesting possibility:  humor that is relevant for the characters, but the reader doesn't get, as a way of illustrating the alienness or difference of a culture.

Defining Urban Fantasy (Linda Poitevin (m), Ginjer Buchanan, David B. Coe, Adria Laycraft, Tim Powers, S.M. Stirling):  This panel confirmed a lot of the thoughts I had in the beginning of Oct about the growing definition in the field and distinction between urban and contemporary fantasy.  It has become its own thing, where the city setting, the close, noir voice, the grit, and often the female protagonist, have become critical elements, with some cross-pollination with paranormal romance.  Ultimately, the publisher on the panel, Buchanan, said it's a matter of sensibility.  They also discussed the importance of using as much real world "lumber" as possible to ground the setting.

They Call Me The Wanderer (David D. Levine (m), Rajan Khanna, Stefon Mears, Robert V.S. Reick, Patrick Rothfuss):  This panel proved both very philosophical and very specific, isolating the true wanderer, who has lost his place or cannot return, from the traveler, who has a destination or a home.  The wanderer has both a lot of power as a source of information, but is also continuously an outsider.  One panelist (can't remember who, alas) discussed traveling as building up a charge, and arrival as its release ... but the wanderer never truly arrives, so he maintains that electricity of potential.  They also discussed the wanderer more broadly as an isolated figure and that the journey might be in time (such as vampires, the Wandering Jew, other immortals) as much as place.

Gothic Fantasy Noir (Elwin Cotman (m), Dana Cameron, Gemma Files, Elizabeth Hand, Rhiannon Held, Nicholas Kaufmann):  This panel was far more intriguing than I had anticipated, comparing the conventions of the noir and the gothic and how they blend together in urban fantasy.  They discussed the idea of a secret culture and how it operates in our world:  one way of practice at home, another as soon as you walk out the door.  The idea of the apocalypse came up in discussion:  the gothic is a slow apocalypse; in other contexts, it's almost comforting, because you don't have to worry about the crushing details of mundanity.  By contrast, the urban fantasy offers more hope:  by giving real life phenomena you can't control (such as the rise of crime) a supernatural cause, such as a vampire boss, you can, well ... kick its tail.  And both the noir and the urban fantasy frequently feature a moment of sacrifice, where something is put right, even as the protagonist has to pay the price.

One point was made that I loved:  that too much grit is just as unrealistic than too much gloss, if not more so.

Here I took my break.

Bibliofantasies (Helen Marshall (m), Tina Connolly, Jennifer Crow, Michael DeLuca, Don Pizarro):  One of the best panels I attended today, this was a thought-provoking discussion of the qualities of the fictional book, of why it intrigues so many people.  The imaginary book, of course, is always more fascinating than any real tome could be, because our mind builds it up that way.  (One panelist commented that the real horror of such stories is the fact that we can never find them and read them.)  It binds the reader together with the character, because both are performing the same act, that of reading, and both are - or should be - changed by it.  They also discussed how the electronic age influenced this, and came to the conclusion that the nature of the barriers had changed, but they still existed ... and there will be always be tension between what one wants to know and what knowledge you have access to.

I brought up Jasper Fforde's books and asked for comments, and the immediate response was, "They're awesome."  Yep ... that's pretty accurate.

Special Guest Tanya Huff (interview by Sandra Kasturi):  This was an amazing interview - Huff is a warm, personable, funny woman who said a lot of things that struck a chord with me.  For instance, she always writes to an ending, and her outlines frequently phrases like "a bunch of stuff happens in the middle."  She says she hits two-thirds of the way through a book, suddenly has an "aha!" moment as to what it's really about, goes back to tweak ... only to find her subconscious has been designing it that way all along.  She also said that her personal recommendation is to stay away from your reviews, good and bad.  One doesn't need the ego inflation, and the bad review will stick with you more than the  dozens, even hundreds of good reviews.  I was also heartened to see how many people nodded along when she said as a child, she never realized The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was a Christian parable.  And ... she read D'Aulaire's Greek Myths as a kid as well.  Oh, how I loved that book.

New Twists On Accepted Myths (Marie Bilodeau, Mercedes Lackey, Virginia O'Dine (m), Meg Turville-Heitz):  This panel started on an aggravating note, the discussion of cultural appropriation and even the claim that one should possibly avoid taking on a mythology to which one has no personal connection.  Oh, this is such a pet peeve of mine.  Why should any mythology be more sacrosanct than another?  Why should happenstance of birth define what I "should" write about?  An audience member pointed out that this wariness can manifest as racism and a form of censorship, and drew the response from the panel that truly, any good writer needs sensitivity to their subject, regardless of its source.  I'll go with that.

The panel otherwise focused on how myths move through time, and that the authentic ones can't be divorced from culture and the progression of history.  The anthropologist in the group commented it was fascinating how historians place so much importance on found objects, not realizing that just because it was preserved, doesn't necessarily mean it was essential.  Ultimately, mythology is how people understand the world, and create mythos have to embrace that.

I mentioned Ladyhawke, which is a fantastic example of a wholly invented myth that completely fits the themes and tropes of its originating culture.

So I said I wasn't going to buy any more books, but Patrick Weekes (see the humor panel) described his book, The Palace Job, as a humorous fantasy take on a heist story, ala Ocean's Eleven, and I pretty much couldn't summon up the willpower NOT to buy it.  I am vastly looking forward to this one.  How could it not be awesome?

Today, my writer thoughts were mostly about the Citadel, my setting where the gods of all the worlds have mysteriously vanished, leaving mere humans to use the tools they've left behind to serve as stand-ins.  I've had a story published in this setting:  The Weather-Woman, which appeared in Reflection's Edge and was basically a romance.  But I had a brainstorm:  in the story, which was the last novel I've ever abandoned outright (which I did because I think I was 60,000 words in and I realized I hadn't even gotten to what I thought was the meat of the story), I had decided I was going to reveal what really happened to the gods.  It struck me that it's far more interesting to leave that nebulous, a setting point outside of the main conflict.  Of course, there goes (more than) half my plot.

I'm also thinking through my FWO challenge story, which is being obnoxious in that it wants to start much earlier than I had originally intended for an ensemble piece - but I have an opening image so clear and vivid it has to begin there.

Considering this and how complex the zombie story is turning out, I think my brain is telling me if I don't work on a novel soon - and writing, not editing - there's going to be a revolution.

Oh!  Almost forgot to explain the title:

Met Sheri Lane today, and it turned out she grew up in Cincinnati and found out in her research that Charles Dickens did a book tour in our city.  Promotion was important even back then.

WFC 2012: Day 1 - Enter The Bagpipes

This post comes in two parts - first, commentary on events and panels, and then some related thoughts / decisions of mine.  I'm going to assume most folks are interested in the former, so feel free to stop there.

Registration came this morning with a massive bag of books, more than I remember in previous years and some that look very intriguing.  As always, there was a swap table in case someone already had a book or something else looked better.  I was disappointed, however, to notice that there were apparently no anthologies in the book bags, so I told myself I was allowed to purchase one.  Just one.  No, really.

I also assisted with setting up the first of the freebie tables, since they weren't up that morning.  This means I got my bookmarks and cards out first.  Kathryn Sullivan had the excellent idea (particularly for a writers' conference) to create pens, so I'm actually using one of hers to scribe notes with.

Also walked out the rooms and noticed that the two locations for panels on Fri-Sat-Sun could not be further apart.  Oof.

Next stop - panels!

Whither The Dark Arts? (Stephen Pearl (m), Richard Gavin, David Sakmyster and Derek Kunsken):  The panel discussed psychic detectives, whether the concept is alive and well, and how it plays out in modern fantasy.  As happens in so many of these concepts, the panelists took a particular delight in debunking the panel title and the flavor text.  A lot of intriguing example works were mentioned, such as Charles Stross' series that combines computer IT with something like the Cthulhu mythos, a work whose author I didn't catch named Zeus City, and mysteries featuring angel Remy Chandler.  They talked about how so frequently, the two worlds of the psychic detective - the mundane world and the speculative one - overlay each but don't interact; the analog (or lack thereof) with the hardboiled detective and the knight-on-white-charger phenomena; and the narrative power of mysteries:  ask a question and the reader will hang with you until it's answered.

I asked here about the difficulties of balancing an occult power that could potentially end a mystery before it starts - for instance, the medium who can speak to the deceased and asked who killed them.  How do you keep coming up with mysteries in these circumstances without it feeling contrived?  Not that - as I think about it more - regular mysteries are immune to this:  think of how many people just happened to drop dead around Jessica Fletcher ...

The Wilderness Within (Eileen Gunn (m), John Clute, Nathan Crowder, Lois Gresh, Matthew Moore):  Such cosmic irony in the timing of this panel.  It was meant to imply that the exterior wilderness has given way to a more internalized, urbanized form ... but the topic that infused much of the dialogue was that of Hurricane Sandy and what she demonstrated - the malice of the world, our belief that we have a much bigger place in it than we do, that we can control it.  It was pointed out the Puritans thought the wilderness was evil; we've evolved beyond that view, but we're sometimes still conflicted by it, balanced between fear and respect.  There were also a few anecdotal stories that evolved into a comparison between a sea of elk and a sea of outlaw bikers.  (Thank you, Eileen Gunn.)

Opening Ceremonies (Gary K. Wolfe introducing Guests of Honour and Special Guests):  This was only about fifteen minutes long and basically consisted of an introduction to the guests of honor and expressed hopes that we could all hit the bar.  It was prefaced by a piper in full dress, and I had to explain to the poor person sitting next to me (hi, Folly Blaine!) why I had just said, "Get me a shotgun."  That is:  why yes, harpers and bagpipers have an ongoing feud.

Reality Made Fantastic, Or Fantasy Made Real (Garfield Reeves-Stevens (m), Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Judy Reeves-Stevens, Kat Richardson):  (Mercedes Lackey was, regrettably, still en route at the time of this panel.  Safe journeys, Ms. Lackey!)  First of all, it needs to be mentioned that apparently, Patrick Nielsen Hayden gets tweets from dyslexic Neil Patrick Harris fans.  The Reeves-Stevenses (... no, I don't know if that's the proper plural.  Is it like Jacks-in-the-box?) are into film and media tie-ins, and had a lot of interesting things to say about approaching the fantastic element.  For instance, when pitching a Witch World pilot, they found they could take two angles:  start with the fantastic world, then introduce the modern character, or start with the modern character and then pull back to the world.  PNH stated that that many books that are "almost publishable" are those that have too much invention, too fast, and Kat Richardson drew a parallel to The Matrix:  you can only swallow one pill at a time.

Another very interesting concept was that of imagination overhead:  both for the reader, who has to have the capacity to encompass certain ideas, and for the writer, who has to use the proper frames of reference.

I piped up with the third imagination overhead:  the character.  I asked the panel to comment on suspension of disbelief, when it's too fast, when it's too slow, and they generally agreed that the most important part was it had to be appropriate to the character.  Richardson commented that she almost found it more annoying when the character suspended disbelief too fast.  It was also pointed out that many modern transplant stories involve characters who themselves have read fantasy or seen recent pop culture examples, like the Lord of the Rings movies or Harry Potter.

Music Hath Charms (And Terrors) (Charles de Lint (adhoc m), Robert Eldridge, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Neil Williamson):  Ellen Kushner couldn't make it, so de Lint sort of got shanghaied into moderating.  I loved this panel, and it focused more than I had expected on the incorporation of music that really interests me:  when it's not overt / obvious, a musician character, but the influence of musical themes and the presence of music in a story.  De Lint commented he "scores" his fiction, using musical devices, such as staccato language, to convey mood.  I got (too) many recommendations of fiction to look up.  In particular, I want to look up Williamson, because he apparently has stories that are intended as musicals:  narrative prose, but all the dialogue is intended to be sung.

PNH discussed something which I was surprised I didn't know about, given my focus / study on the Renaissance era:  gallery music, which was essentially pub musicians brought in to play church music from the galleries, and their very rousing, toe-tapping renditions of what are typically thought of as stately church hymns.  It's a backwards take on what I'm familiar with, the religious borrowing and "taming" of traditional music.  Also covered:  music as pre-verbal structures of feeling, genre expectations in music itself, and the idea of avoiding a detailed description of magical music and illustrating it by the audience's reaction.

I took a moment to pipe up about my experience with a Scandinavian music class, where the teacher pointed out a certain comma end-of-phrase structure, and told us that it was present in the language, as well.  This really struck me as an illustration of the bond between music and language.

Our Monsters, Our Selves (James Alan Gardner (m), Lena Oakley, Ellen Datlow, Christopher Golden, Richard A. Kirk):  Great panel - way better than I expected it to be, considering it wasn't a topic of huge interest to me.  There was a surprisingly involved discussion of zombies, including as a metaphor for resurrection.  And I finally heard an explanation of the phrase "uncanny valley," which I had just taken for granted, courtesy of Oakley.  It actually comes from computer science / robotic development, where scientists tracked on a graph that humans become more empathetic to a robot the more human it looked - until the point it became *too* human, at which point the empathy drops sharply - hence a "valley" in the chart.

Other topics touched upon:  monsters as perverted versions of humanity; making something monstrous potentially allows you to draw it out and make friends with it; the fear / attraction of breaking taboos.

At this point, the panels are over for the day and I am feeling sort of like a zombie, myself.

I took some personal notes during all this, too.  I jotted down the story idea I had come up with waiting in the cellphone lot and watching the pair (they looked like mother and son to me, but I'm not so great with ages; they could have been a couple) in the neighboring car.  And I got some great ideas for the zombie story (yes, you read that right) I've been mulling over, in particular to use a "superstorm" such as Sandy to delay the kind of military reaction that would "realistically" shut down such an event.

Especially in the monsters panel, I keep hearing reinforcement for my newborn zombie idea.  I'm doing it "right" and tapping into the elements that I want to tap into, going into directions that bring out the kind of story I want to tell ... even though zombies aren't my usual tools.  I really want to work on the science aspect - not of the zombies themselves, but of a consequence that I think makes this is an unusual take.  It's the pivotal point of the concept, and it was inspired by two photos I got at a zombie walk.  (Yes, you read that right.)

I also purchased two books.  I only brought American cash with me to discourage myself from buying stuff.  This has ... sort of worked, but it's only Thursday evening.  Anyhow, the two were Booklife, by Jeff Vandermeer, which looked like a great resource for a writer not just limited to writing, and Rum and Runestones, an anthology of fantastic pirate stories from the BroadUniverse table.  I picked this one partly to support BU and Laurel Anne Hill, who rode to the rescue in starting up the table today.

Finally, I made some plans for the next few months.  Haven't figured out how my editing will dovetail, but next stories:  FWO November challenge; cellphone lot couple; prep and then write zombie piece ... and in January, I want to go back through my notes for all the prior World Fantasy Cons and strip out specific ideas and recommended reading.

As an aside, I got to recommend Connie Willis' Inside Job to someone today.  I really can't speak highly enough about the novella - it's awesome.  Great meshing of supernatural elements with a historical persona, and (coming from someone who hates titling) it has an absolutely perfect title.

WFC 2012: Day 0

Today, the majority of what I have to talk about is traveling and logistics, not writerly concerns, so feel free to skip ahead (when there's actually something to skip to).  I hope to entertain some of you with my haplessness, though.

Left earlier than I needed to today for the airport and had my bag checked by a butterfly. Oh, Halloween.  Spent a lot of time wandering around the concourse, just keeping myself in motion, which after the cumulative walking of the day ended up turning into a blister.  Really, I need to learn how to hold still.  I also bought lens cleaner - you know, for glasses? - for my laptop screen.  Because wow, really?

I had not just one but two heart attacks before boarding today.  First, I was called up for a passport check, which turned out to be routine.  Second, the woman scanned my boarding pass, I was halfway to the walkway, and then she said, "Wait a minute, miss .." asked me what seat I was in, and commenced serious-looking computer manipulation.  Net result:  I ended up with a seat closer to the front of the plane.  (Window, of course:  I love the ability to look out, even when it's cloudy.)

I spent an inordinate amount of time on the flight trying to come up with a name for Kit's future boyfriend.  Nothing seems to mesh ... and then as I'm sitting here, I suddenly realize that Alistair (or some spelling variant) would be perfect.  Thank you, brain.

Next up, made an utter idiot of myself at customs.  Asked the first agent if I had to pay any duties on the books; he assured me it would be handled further down the line.  The second agent said no ... and then I wondered if I'd heard his condition right, so I ran back and asked again.  Got a full explanation.  Sure he thought I was nuts.

Toronto was as drear and rainy as Ohio.  It was a longish (and expensive - oww) drive to the hotel, and unsurprisingly, the conference setup is in early phases, so I decamped to the attached food court for Thai food, then back to Starbucks for a ginger cookie and what is going to have to pass for breakfast.  (No, not another cookie.  Stop looking at me like that.)

(If I wrote with half as many parantheses as when I'm just casually writing, I would be edited to death.)

Looking forward to tomorrow!

Thursday Thoughts

This will be my last Thursday Thoughts post before the World Fantasy Convention in Toronto.  Next week, I'll be blogging about the happenings of the convention, the panels I'm attending, the wonderful authors ... the whole atmosphere.

I'm not expecting any marketing miracles whilst I'm in Toronto, but I know that inevitably, the question, "What is your book about?" comes up.  I want to be able to answer it without stammering and saying nothing ... or rambling on for two minutes at someone who really wants an answer about as in-depth as when they ask, "How are you?"  No one really wants the detailed description of your headache and how you almost missed your alarm that morning; give us the CliffNotes.

So I came up with both short loglines and longer (but still brief) descriptions if someone turned out to be crazy enough to express further interest.  Mind that I don't expect to rattle these off verbatim, but I wrote these to give my brain a framework for what I might say.  Now, there are three variants of this question - my published book, the project I'm currently shopping, and the projects that are currently in progress.  So that leads to three answers:

(Published)

Flow is a contemporary fantasy.  Teenaged Kit recruits water-witch Chailyn to hunt for her mother’s killer.  The pair run afoul of both fairy wrath and the attention of a human organization that hunts the supernatural.

(Shopping)

Journal of the Dead is a mannerpunk-style fantasy set in a world where killing someone causes their mind to leap into yours.  Aided by her spirits, an unwilling executioner must fight royal politics to reclaim her son.

(Working On - Editing, Actually)

 

Scylla and Charybdis is a soft science fiction novel about a young woman from an isolated space station who escapes to the polar opposite societies left behind in the wake of an alien disease, and Who Wants To Be A Hero? is humorous fantasy asking the question:  what would happen if a Greco-Roman pantheon invented reality competition television?

... from this, I can only infer that my brain is hyper.  Wish me luck!