Category: conventions.

conventions. travel. writing.

The public lives of writers (and the urge to comment thereon)

When I was in Glasgow for Worldcon, I shared a few pictures on my Instagram account. Among them were shots of the full Scottish breakfast I got to use as fuel for the day.

Someone commented on the post that I should “eat less and write more.” I’m sure the person who left that comment had no ill intent and meant it as a compliment of sorts, but it still rubbed me the wrong way just a little bit.

What I do—what all writers I know do as well—is informed and fueled by our lives. We synthesize our personal experiences and perspectives and turn them into fiction. In order to do that well, we have to, you know, live our lives. I do most of my work in a room by myself with just me and the screen or the notebook in front of me. Whenever I don’t work, I need to step out into life and refill those experience bars again, and I also like to meet old friends and eat good food because those are the sort of things that sustain me and keep me at my desk the rest of the time. In fact, whenever I go without them too long, I feel my writing dropping in quality because it’s not healthy to live almost exclusively in your own head and let those socialization and experience bars go down to nothing. The trip to Glasgow was, in fact, only my second trip of the entire year, and the only one that was work-related. I got to see writer friends I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic, and it was a much-overdue event for my mental health.

When you tell me to cut out enjoying that part of my life and go back to my office, you irritate me and spoil my enjoyment, and you make me pull back from sharing my life in public in order to avoid getting irritated and having my joy spoiled. It’ll also make my work less enjoyable in the long run because I’ll eventually suffer a creative slump or burnout if I am locked in the office by myself all year. Neither of those outcomes are in any way positive for either you or me.

I guess what I am trying to get across is this—writers are not vending machines, so please don’t treat your favorite authors as such, even if it implies that you love our writing so much that you’d rather we never did anything else so you can get your fictional treats more quickly. We need time to restock so you won’t be stuck with the stale novella in slot C5 that’s been put there without much care by a tired and overworked brain. Please think before you comment, and let us have a life outside of work as well without making us feel bad for it.

conventions. frontlines: evolution travel. writing.

CORVUS draft and Worldcon after-action report

As you can tell from the progress bar in the sidebar to the right, I have finished the first draft of CORVUS, the second installment in the Frontlines: Evolution series. It’s with the editor now, and I’ll see it again in a few weeks to begin the developmental edits, but for now it’s off my desk.

I spent a long weekend in Glasgow, Scotland, where I attended the Alfie awards dinner thrown by George R.R. Martin, honoring the authors whose works had been inexplicably punted off the shortlist by the powers in charge at the Chengdu Worldcon last year. I also spent much of Saturday at the con, where I got to meet up with some old friends I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic, so that was lovely. The travel itself was another story altogether. I took the draft of CORVUS with me to finish it on the way (spoiler warning–I didn’t finish it on the way), and deadline stress plus travel anxiety combined into a new and special cocktail of stress that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. But I finished the draft in my hotel room on Friday, literally two hours before the awards dinner, and everything was much more fun and relaxing once I hit “Send” on that email to my editor and agent.

In the wake of the con, a lot of people reported testing positive for COVID, including a good friend with whom I spent time at a pub on Saturday night, and several people who went to the same awards dinner I attended. I’ve tested negative three times since Sunday and I feel fine, so I hope I made it through a busy con and two packed airports without catching it.

I got back on Monday and took the last few days to recover from the combination of travel and deadline stress, but now it’s back to work. I have a project to keep me busy until I get the editor notes for CORVUS back, but I can’t disclose that one yet, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it’ll be cool and awesome.

Once I turn in this secret project, my schedule for the rest of the year consists of writing Palladium Wars #5, which doesn’t have a name yet. I aim to have that one done by the end of December, for a release in the first quarter of next year. I have news on the future of the Palladium Wars series, but that’s a matter for another post.

Anyway–the year is already almost two thirds of the way done, and there’s plenty of work to be done in that last third, so I’d best get to it. More news to follow soon!

 

conventions. frontlines. travel.

Wild Cards interview and convention schedule for 2020

The official Wild Cards page has an interview with me that’s probably the most detailed and in-depth one I’ve given so far.

In other news, work on Frontlines #7 (“Orders of Battle”) is progressing very well, and things are still on track for a completed draft by the end of December. I don’t want to promise too much, but my publisher thinks they’ll be able to slot it into the 2020 release schedule if I manage to turn it in on time. So far, so good.

I am filling out my convention dance card for 2020, and it looks like I may be able to do a few more cons than I managed this year. Right now I am tentatively confirmed for ConFusion in Detroit (which is in January), and Emerald City Comic Con in March. I’ll also be at Readercon in Boston just like every year.

The 2020 Worldcon is in New Zealand, and we’re still in the planning stage on that one. Right now I’d say the chance is about 50/50 that we’ll be able to go, but there are a few other things that need to align to make all the lights go to green. Worldcons tend to be expensive, but the flight halfway around the globe adds another layer of cash to that bill because there’s no way I’m doing a 16-hour flight in coach.

 

 

 

conventions. travel.

Emerald City Comic Con

It looks like I’ll be attending Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle from March 12-15. I don’t have a schedule yet because the panels have yet to be approved, but if it’s anything like last time, I’ll be participating in a few panels and most likely do a signing as well. So if you are planning to attend ECCC or thinking about it, mark your calendar if you want to see me and/or get a book signed.

I’ll post a more precise schedule for the con once I get word back on the approved panels.

conventions. friends. travel.

Emerald City Comic Con after-action report

This past weekend, Robin and I went to Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle. My publisher, 47North, is an Amazon Publishing imprint, so they’re based in Seattle, which meant I finally got to visit the Mothership and meet most of the rest of the APub team.

The Doppler building, where Amazon Publishing is housed, is FULL OF DOGGOS. It’s a dog-friendly building, and it seems like every third or fourth employee brings a dog to work. We were hanging out in the lobby for a bit at the start of the business day, and the stream of Good Boys And Girls coming in with their owners was a cheery and relaxing sight. If I had to work in a corporate environment, a corporate headquarters with lots of dogs in it would be my top pick.

Oh, and the view from the office isn’t bad either:

Then there are the Spheres, which are the most Science Fiction-looking piece of architecture I’ve ever seen. We didn’t have the time to check them out on the inside, though.

I was on two panels at Emerald City Comic Con. One was a pop culture throw-down with fellow authors Chuck Wendig, Django Wexler, Cherie Priest, Amy Bartol, and Kevin Hearne. Chuck, Amy, and Cherie are friends (Cherie is a fellow Wild Cards writer, Amy is a fellow APub author, and I’ve known Chuck online and in meatspace for years), and it was great to meet Django and Kevin. My wife is a big fan of his Iron Druid books, which are narrated by the same guy who does my Frontlines books, the awesome Luke Daniels. She was thrilled when he came over to her and introduced himself before the panel.

The second panel was about world-building for magical and futuristic worlds, where I sat in with fellow APub authors Emily King, Charlie Holmberg, Amy Bartol, J.D.Horn, Robert Cargill, and Jeff Wheeler. Both panels were extremely well attended and a lot of fun, and I am happy to say that while I didn’t win the pair of fuzzy shark slippers for the victor of the throwdown (that honor went to Chuck Wendig because he got to answer ALL THE STAR WARS TRIVIA), I managed to avoid ownership of the Jar-Jar Binks mask that was the last-place prize.

I did two signings, and there were quite a few fans showing up to get their books defaced, but my signing line wasn’t nearly as busy as those of the guys to either side of me (Chuck Wendig and Kevin Hearne), and all three of us put together probably didn’t sign as many books as Patrick Rothfuss or Terry Brooks did. Here’s Kevin and Chuck at work:

The thing I enjoy most about cons other than meeting fans is getting together with my friends and colleagues in the business. We go months or sometimes years without meeting in real life, but when we do, it’s always like we just saw each other at a con a week ago. The SF/F genre is so small and familial that it feels there are no more than two degrees of separation between any of the writers working in the field. If you don’t know the writer in question, you are friends with someone who does. (I may have said the sentence “How do YOU know each other?” in astonishment more than once last weekend.) My field of work is full of awesome people, and that’s part of what makes this writing thing the best job in the world.

There was only a single negative thing that happened on this otherwise excellent weekend trip, and that was the loss of my iPad Pro, which I left in the seat pocket of the plane to Seattle. I remotely activated Lost Mode and filled out the online lost property form with Delta, but I’m not terribly hopeful. Lesson learned, I suppose. Next time I’ll take the 10-pound Alienware with the 17″ screen, which won’t get lost in between the safety card and the in-flight menu because it won’t fit into the seat pocket. As a side effect, I only had my phone all weekend, but it was kind of nice to be mostly unplugged for a few days.

Now it’s back to work–I have a novel to finish that I meant to complete before ECCC (and the face-to-face meetings with my publisher). Thankfully, they didn’t lock me up in the secret author dungeon in the basement for blowing my deadline…

conventions. friends. travel. writing.

Home again, home again, etc. etc.

We have been back from Europe for a week now, and my brain is still adjusting. You know when you start a lawnmower up for the first time in the spring after it’s been sitting in the garage all winter? That hesitant sputtering? Yeah, that’s what it feels like, even though I came back from Worldcon with a bunch of new ideas and motivation. But on Monday, the kids will be back in school, and things will be back to normal.

I didn’t do any official panels or programming at Worldcon. I attended the Hugo reception as an acceptor for my friend Scott Andrews, who couldn’t make it to Finland this year. Alas, Scott didn’t win (my friend Kat calls him “the Susan Lucci of the Semiprozine category”),and I didn’t have to hold a speech in front of a few thousand people.

The rest of Worldcon was basically just hanging out, meeting up with friends, and sightseeing in and around Helsinki, which is a nice place full of impossibly attractive people. Like I said on Facebook–you know when you see that boy or girl on the street that would have been the hottest thing in your high school by a wide margin? Helsinki has one of those every fifteen yards. And they all dress like they just stepped out of an A&F catalog, too. Even the ones in the sloppy outfits look like they spent about half an hour putting together just the right sort of sloppy look. Robin and I concluded that there’s a Finnish facial type that looks model-esque to North American eyes.

This was also the first trip we’ve taken together where we were both equally disadvantaged in the language department, because neither of us spoke the primary language. We usually end up traveling to places where one of us is in reasonably good command of the language, but we were both uncomprehending illiterates in Finland. The one assist I got was the bilingual signage–I could make sense of the Swedish signs. But Finnish isn’t related to Germanic or Romance languages at all, so even with German, Dutch, English, and Spanish between us, we couldn’t even guess at most of the Finnish words. Luckily, most of the Finns spoke good to excellent English, so we weren’t reduced to pointing at pictures.

We combined Worldcon with a visit to Germany and some sightseeing in the Netherlands and the UK, so this was our one big trip this year. I know some writers who are on the road far more than I am, but I don’t know how they do it. Not only do I not get anything written while I’m traveling, it also takes me a good while to get back to my regular work routine after the trip. But we’re back, the laundry is done, the luggage is stored, and I have stuff to write, so back to work I go.

conventions. shameless self-promotion. travel.

My revised public schedule for 2017

After overbooking myself on cons in 2015 and 2016 a little, I decided to lay off the conventions until April this year, mainly because I have a book to finish. But the con year is about to start up again, and I’ve gotten to add a few things to the list. So if you want to meet up in person and say hello*, here are your opportunities for 2017:

April 28-30: ConStellation 8, Lincoln, NE (Author Guest of Honor)

May 26-28: Manticon, Minneapolis/Bloomington, MN (Author Guest)

June 4-10: Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop, Laramie, WY (attendee) (This is not a public event, but if you’re a writer or IRL friend who lives in the area, we may have an opportunity to have dinner and/or drinks.)

July 28: Otherland Books, Berlin, Germany (Reading/Signing) (This is a free event, so stop by if you’re in or around Berlin at that time.)

August 4-6: Nine Worlds, London, UK (attendee)

August 9-13: Worldcon 75, Helsinki, Finland (attendee, although I may be on a few panels related to Wild Cards)

October 27-29: Honorcon, Raleigh, NC (Author Guest)

And that’s it for 2017 unless I get another invite I can’t turn down because I have a really hard time saying “no”.

*And yes, do say hello if you spot me at one of the cons listed and I’m not otherwise engaged. DO NOT meet up in person and say hello by coming up my driveway unannounced. That would be a little, how do you say, weird. And the dachshunds would maim you before I could even unlock the gun rack.

 

books. conventions. travel.

back from honorcon, and some award braggery.

I just got back from Honorcon yesterday, where a lovely surprise was waiting for me during the awards ceremony for the inaugural Rampant Manticore awards.

Not only did I get the Best Military SF Novel award (for ANGLES OF ATTACK), but I also managed to win the H. Beam Piper Memorial Award. These are doubly meaningful and special because they are fan-voted awards (the membership of Honorcon and Manticon voted on the Rampant Manticore), and the awards themselves are just plain cool-looking. They are little engraved glass books, and they are quite heavy for their size. Luckily, TSA didn’t have an issue with them in my carry-on, so they made it home safe and sound in my hand luggage.

Thank you again for your hospitality and your votes, Manticon and Honorcon attendees, and thank you to TRMN (the Royal Manticoran Navy, the official Honorverse fan group) for having me as a guest at both cons.

Also: congratulations to Larry Correia (who won Best Fantasy Novel for “Son of the Black Sword”), Linda Nagata (who won Best Fantasy Short Story for “The Way Home”), and all the other winners.

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awards. books. conventions. friends. writing.

the dragon awards have been dragon-awarded.

NEWSFLASH: I did not win the Dragon Award for Best Military SF Novel. David Weber did, and congratulations to him. Congratulations also to Larry Correia, whose SON OF THE BLACK SWORD won the award for Best Fantasy Novel.

(I didn’t expect to beat David on votes because he has a lot more fans and a lot more books out than I do, and I am but an egg in the genre.)

But it was fun and an honor just to be nominated, and I want to thank everyone who voted for CHAINS OF COMMAND and got it onto the shortlist. I wasn’t at DragonCon because I promised the wife I’d take September off from traveling, but my friend Melissa F. Olson graciously agreed to accept for me in the unlikely event of my win. I don’t know who’s more relieved now—Melissa because she didn’t have to walk up to the podium and make an acceptance speech…or me because Melissa didn’t have a chance to get creative with that acceptance speech.