Conventions

Con Report: BayCon 2023!

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BayCon 2023
BayCon 2023!

 

So, last weekend I went to BayCon in Santa Clara. It was the first time I’ve been to a con by myself since TimeCon ’87; since then I’ve been with friends or with Jennifer. I was expecting to feel kind of lonely and sad without Jennifer at the con with me, but I didn’t. I made new friends, I met old friends, and I met other writers (including old friends who are writers), and in general I had a blast.

Cover of The Repossessed Ghost
The Repossessed Ghost by Brian C. E. Buhl

My good friend Brian C. E. Buhl launched his debut novel, The Repossessed Ghost, and I snagged a limited edition signed copy. I also met some other writers, but I already had copies of their books, and since I hadn’t brought their books with me, I didn’t get any signed. Ah well.

There was also gaming at the con, but I didn’t avail myself of any games since I had simply too many panels to attend or people to meet and have meals with. One of the people I met with on Saturday morning was a new agent. Mind you, I don’t have any projects ready to pitch to an agent (the novel And the Devil Will Drag You Under isn’t close enough to ready), but it was a good conversation nonetheless. They invited me to lunch, which I’m told is a good sign, but I needed to get coffee and head to Brian’s reading.

I went to panels on AI in writing and the arts, on panels about general topics in writing, and a panel that had five writers doing a dramatic reading of (of all things!) Modelland by Tyra Banks. I am not 100% convinced that this book really was written by model Tyra Banks; it might have been ghost-written, I suppose, or someone wrote this and slapped her name on it. Either way, it was really, really bad, and perfectly deserving of five writers doing a dramatic reading in exaggerated tones and voices.

I checked out the dealer room, where I bought a t-shirt, a pair of robot earrings for Jennifer, and way too many books. A pair of books that caught my eye were From Girl to Goddess: The Heroine’s Journey through Myth and Legend, by Valerie Estelle Frankel, which outlines a very different version of the Heroine’s Journey than Gail Carriger does in her book on the topic; and The Villain’s Journey: Descent and Return in Science Fiction and Fantasy, also by Valerie Estelle Frankel.  I also picked up a copy of Classic Monsters Unleashed, which looks right up my alley.

Each night I headed back to my hotel room after dinner and flumpfed onto my bed. I fully intended each evening to get back up after an hour or so, but it just didn’t happen, so I missed most of the evening events and parties, which makes me kind of sad. Maybe next year I will budget my energy better.

Dragon*Con is in a couple of months. I have friends who are going, but I am not, even though some of my favorite writers will be there. I haven’t been there since 2006, when attendance was something like 30,000; I understand it’s much larger now, and I’m likely to get overwhelmed. Also, I entertain this fantasy that the next time I go to Dragon*Con, it will be as a guest. It’ll happen.

As I mentioned, the last con I went to on my own was TimeCon ’87. I went to TimeCon ’86 (on my own) prior to that. I also attended TimeCon ’88 with a lot of friends. I’ve been to several cons with friends or with Jennifer since then. I’ve only been to one con that I didn’t have a lot of fun at and that con shall remain nameless for now.

For a bonus bit of blog, here are the program covers for two of the TimeCon events that I attended in 1986 and 1987. Anyone remember these?

Cover of the TimeCon 1986 Program Booklet
Cover of the TimeCon 1987 Program Booklet
Music

A Secret Uncovered!

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Jonathan Coulton, Singer and World Master
Would you trust this man with your planet?

Through exhaustive research and millions of man-hours listening, I have uncovered the dark secret behind one of the internet’s most beloved singing sensations, Jonathan Coulton. Sure, he may look innocent and mild-mannered, but in reality what he secretly is looking for is WORLD DOMINATION. In this blog entry, I will demonstrate how his early music clearly states this goal, and how it has driven him throughout not only his career, but his entire life. All we have to do is consider some of his early songs. Now, granted, I haven’t really kept up with Mr. Coulton’s career, but is that truly necessary? Here we go.

First, we have the song “The Future Soon”, from is album Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow. This song is clearly from the point of view of a man who has a crush on a woman (called “Laura” in the song, but that may be a pseudonym). Coulton leaves her an anonymous note and is spurned; but instead of moving on, he dreams of becoming a notorious scientist and conquering the world with his army warrior robots. Listen to the song for yourself:

Next, we have Mr. Coulton taking on a soul-crushing job as a computer programmer (he makes no secret about the fact that he really did work as a “code monkey” at one point in his life. In his song “Code Monkey” from the album Thing a Week III, he sings about this boring life and how it destroys his creativity and soul. We find that  he has given up his dream of taking over the planet with his warrior robot race (even though the warrior robot race doesn’t actually show up in any song other than “The Future Soon”). Have a listen:

Office life continues for Mr. Coulton, as he tells us in this next song, “Big Bad World One” (Thing a Week IV). He sings in this song about loneliness, sadness, and the isolation that everyone faces in the modern world. But all is not lost for Mr. Coulton!

No, things are about to turn around for our nemesis. In the same dark, smoky place where he ended the last song, he encounters the ghost of George Plimpton, the dilettante and hero who has inspired so many of us, in “A Talk with George” (Thing a Week II):

Inspired, Jonathan Coulton goes out and conquers the world, finds a henchman, takes a captive (the Laura from “The Future Soon”, perhaps?), and sings about his plans for the planet in “Skullcrusher Mountain” (Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow):

So. We can see that Mr. Coulton’s plan is in full motion at this point, and he’s planning on igniting our planet’s atmosphere if his nefarious demands are not met. We are very fortunate that Paul and Storm, another internet music sensation, have talked him into postponing his dark plans and taken him on several cruises, or we may not be here today.

If you have uncovered other clues about Jonathan Coulton and his dark deeds, let me know in the comments here. Or on Facebook. Or on, as Matt Wallace calls it, the Goddamn Twitters (though I probably won’t see it there).

(I should mention, before I am taken hostage, that all these songs and plenty more can be found for download and ultimate enjoyment on the Jonathan Coulton store. Please share and enjoy!)

 

Writing

No One Asked For It…

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Writer with dragon
Me, writing, under close supervision from a dragon

…but here is my May writing update. I ought to write about something other than… uh… writing, but I’m hard-pressed to find a topic. Suggest something to me? I’m not very interested in discussing politics here anymore. It’s not that I’m avoiding the news and political discussions, which is a very privileged position; it’s just that I know I’m not going to change the minds of anyone who has already made their minds up on issues and who have strong opinions that are just WRONG.

Anyway.

In April I submitted eight manuscripts, and most of them were rejected. Others are still waiting for a response.  I worked pretty extensively on my revisions for And the Devil Will Drag You Under, which I’m pleased with, and made significant progress on a new short story. I’m pleased with that too.

I’ve also sort of planned out what I’m going to work on next. First is the full-novel-length version of Witness to the Scourge, which was originally a short story that morphed into a novella. People generally liked it, but had questions about the main character’s narrative arc, and several said it has too much worldbuilding for one wee story. So I’m going to expand on it. It will require research into monster folklore from around the world, and that’s always fun.

The project after that will, thanks to comment a friend of mine made to me over brunch yesterday, probably be an actual middle-grade novel featuring cosmic horror and it will be specifically for kids with depression and anxiety. I was such a kid myself, and I was fond of scary stuff, so I this is right up my alley. It will require plenty of research, though, into subjects such as child psychology, depression and anxiety in children, and so on, and, of course, how to write middle grade fiction. One of my writing friends asked me whether the depression in the kids in the novel would be rooted in some sort of trauma, and I don’t think it will. Some kids suffer free-floating depression and anxiety, and I want to acknowledge that.

So there’s that.

My goals for May are:

  • Finish up revisions of And the Devil Will Drag You Under (my self-imposed deadline for this is June 21)
  • Finish up my short story “Little Old People”
  • Start writing my next short story, “Feast of the Forgotten”
  • Submit another nine manuscripts (I submit every Monday and Thursday, so this is very doable)

Even though I did not get into the prestigious Odyssey Writers’ Workshop this year, I’m excited for what the year ahead holds writing-wise. Excelsior!

This Random Thing Called Life, Writing

Writing: A 1st-Quarter o’ 2023 Update

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Three-headed dragon at a typewriter
A three-headed dragon tapping away at a typewriter

I know you’re all about my writing, oh ye who come regularly to my blog, so here’s an update:

First, since January, I’ve submitted twenty-six manuscripts to various markets; my goal for 2023, as it has been since 2021, is 100 submissions per year. I’ve gotten plenty of rejections, some personal with actionable feedback, some personal without actionable feedback, and some form rejections. Mostly form rejections. Editors are a busy lot, so they don’t tend to send personal rejections unless they are really impressed by the story, so I’m pleased with the ones I got.

Right now, I have eight outstanding submissions. I haven’t sold any stories to any pro markets, but I have high hopes for the rest of the year.

BUT! My sale to LOLCraft last year was enough to qualify me for membership in both Codex, an online writers’ group, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA). Getting into both of these organizations has been on my bucket list for quite some time, and I honestly had gotten to the point where I didn’t think I’d ever get into them. But lo and behold, I did! Yay me!

Anyway.

Work continues apace on revisions to my novel And the Devil Will Drag You Under, which I hope to have done by the end of June. After that I am planning to revise The Solitude of the Tentacled Space Monster, that bane of my existence since 2005. After that, I have an idea for a novel called Witness to the Scourge, an urban fantasy novel that has grown out of my short story of the same title (earlier titled “The BIM” for reasons which I can no longer recall). That’ll be fun. I’m enjoying all these projects, but the vastness of revising a novel is… well, it’s intimidating, even if I’ve taken a class from Cat Rambo on novel revision and read a couple of articles and a book about the process.

Ah, well. The words continue to spew forth.

In other news, I went to a dermatologist on Wednesday to have a suspicious growth on my leg looked at. Did you know that there are over 3,000 diagnoses that can be associated with dermal conditions? I didn’t. But that’s the kind of small talk you get into when you chat with a dermatologist while he’s injecting anesthetic into your skin, slicing off a growth, and cauterizing the wound. I also hadn’t realized that the skin on the shin is so thin that wounds there can’t be stitched closed, so cauterization is necessary. Interesting.

I’ve also been attacked by kobolds the past week… and if you haven’t been around here long, kobolds are my chosen representative of depression. Winston Churchill had his Black Dog. I have my kobolds. Nothing major happened. I’ve been sick with a cold, though that’s lessened, and that always exacerbates things.

Kobold Playing a Lute
A Kobold playing a lute. Because why not?

But I’m feeling fine now. A little bit wheezy and short of breath, but the kobolds have moved on and I’m feeling better.

I hope you’re all doing well. Until we meet again.

Excelsior!

Philosophy

A Morbid Topic: Life, Death, and Wisdom

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The cover image for the "Strange Customs" podcast
Sasha Sagan’s podcast, “Strange Customs”

I was listening to the latest episode of “Strange Customs“, the podcast hosted by Sasha Sagan (yes, daughter of Carl), and the topic of death came up. I try not to be particularly morbid or maudlin, but it’s something to think about. So I started thinking about life and death and wisdom.

I am, as you well know by now, a Christian — specifically, I am an Episcopalian, though I haven’t stepped into an Episcopal church since the Before Times. Thus, I do believe in an afterlife. I differ from many Christians in that I make no belief statements about what that afterlife might be like. Is it spending an eternity in the presence of God, just soaking up their infinite glory (yes, I use they/them pronouns for God, since I believe God transcends gender)? Is it just like life on Earth, except you get to hang out with the likes of Socrates and Einstein? I don’t know. Frankly, I think it’s beyond the comprehension of us living human beings. It’s trite, but I like to think of the process of dying as similar to the process of being born: when we are developing in the womb, we have no idea what life will be like on Earth. Similarly, as we are developing on Earth, we have no idea what the next stage of our existence will be.

If there is a Heaven, then I think everyone will be surprised by who else makes it there. Except I’m not sure there IS a Heaven or a Hell. Again: I don’t know what the afterlife is like. Jesus hinted that there might be a physical resurrection, but I don’t know how to interpret that.

We’re not granted much time here in Earth. We are born, we live for a few decades, possibly a century at best, and then we pass on. Personally, I don’t think that we can gain a whole lot of wisdom in that period of time. We can talk all we like about how older people are wise for their years, but if we all meet a maximum of wisdom over our lifetime, we’d all be more alike. Instead, everyone is wise in their own ways. What kind of wisdom would we gain if we lived to be two hundred years old? Or five hundred? Or a thousand?

Okay, maybe that doesn’t make any sense. Eh, I’ll leave it in.

Of course, you don’t have to be old to be wise. Young children have their own wisdom to share. Adolescents do as well. It simply behooves us to pay attention and listen to what they have to say.  Wisdom is wisdom, no matter where you find it.

The third Jumanji film, Welcome to the Jungle, is a fun film to watch. Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillian, and the rest are a delight, and so is Danny DeVito. In the beginning of the film, Danny DeVito, whose character journey is, I think, the heart of it, states, “Being old is a curse”.  At the end, after all his life-and-death adventures and building up his relationships with his friends and family members, he changes his tune: “Being old is a blessing.”

Me, I’m currently five-five years old. I don’t consider myself “old”, though I suppose by some measures I am. I don’t think of my age as a curse, even as my body self-sabotages itself occasionally and close friends and family members pass on. I like to think that as I do get older and become a wizened old man, I will gain some wisdom, and be more like Danny DeVito at the end of the film. Life is a blessing, Old age is a blessing. Death itself, for whatever reason, might be a blessing.

We’re not given a whole lot of time on this tiny Earth. The time we have we should spend listening to others, being kind to them, caring for them and this precious Earth that we find ourselves on.

Pirates! Yarr!, School, Writing

Difficult Decisions

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Today I decided that I’m going to fire — or, at least, shelve indefinitely — my pirate novel. I had a vision for it, and I wanted it to take place in the real world as a novel of historical fantasy; however, the more I learned about the history and culture of pirates and the world they inhabited, the more I realized my vision just wasn’t going to work out. I may return to it someday, I suppose. I still have all the books I bought on the topic of pirates, and the books that people have given me, so I’ll continue the reading. Pirates are fascinating, and the history of piracy is a really interesting topic, but it just wasn’t gelling.

The other difficult decision I actually made several months ago, when it was time to enroll in spring courses for the MLIS program: I decided to drop out. This decision was made for a number of reasons:

  1. Stress. Last spring, I was very stressed out about the classes I was taking. While it didn’t really have any deleterious physical effects on me, I was getting depressed and anxious. And definitely not looking forward to the following Fall semester of courses.
  2. Academic ability. This is probably the wrong term for it, because it implies that I’m not very smart. I know I’m an intelligent guy, and that I can accomplish a lot when I put my mind to it. I’ve done it before. However, writing academic papers on obscure topics just isn’t my thing. I did write one, on the information-seeking behaviors of cryptozoologists, but it received a poor grade, and even though the professor gave extensive feedback, I still have no idea how to improve it. I have books on how to write academic research papers, but I haven’t read them.
  3. Career prospects. I did quite a bit of research into career prospects for entry-level librarians. They don’t look good. I would need to be a high-level librarian to make the kind of money I would need and earn a salary equivalent to what I earn now. This was extremely unlikely. In the field, you rarely are able to find a job that (a) pays what you need, and (b) is located near you.
  4. Future satisfaction. There’s also the fact that a lot of librarians simply didn’t like their jobs, and the more I learned about what their job entails, the less I liked the idea of being a librarian. Public librarians must act as liaisons to the community in addition to serving regular patrons, and these community members are often insane (think of the growing number of book bans happening throughout the country). Academic librarians — specifically, science librarians, which is where I wanted my own career to go — must deal with academia (very often a toxic environment), and, to progress in the field, often must possess an advanced academic degree IN ADDITION TO the MLIS degree. No thanks.

“But Richard,” I hear you say, “isn’t this the second time you’ve dropped out of library school?” Aye, it is. This time, though, I feel good about my decision, whereas the first time I was ambivalent and never really felt good about it.

The only guilt I feel about these decisions is financial. I spent a lot of money on pirate books and one-shot lectures about pirate history. I spent even more money on tuition and class supplies and various professional memberships. But without the semi-annual tuition cost, our finances might be better off.

The sunk-cost fallacy is hard at work here. I mean, you put a lot of resources into a thing, you may as well see that thing through to the end, right? Well, not if the end result is no good. In the long run, my creativity will be freed up to work on other projects, and my brain will enjoy not having to study all the time.

On the other hand, my brain has decided to punish me with an idea for a new trilogy of novels, which frustrates me since I haven’t finished And the Devil Will Drag You Under yet. But that’s a topic for a different blog entry.

This Random Thing Called Life

Thinking about bucket lists

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glow-in-the-dark ghost bucket
Oh no! A ghost bucket!

I’ve been thinking about the term “Bucket List” for quite some time. I first heard it in reference to a 2007 film called The Bucket List, but I don’t think I’d heard of people using the term for their own lists of things they wanted to do before they die until about ten years ago. I’m not sure, though. Who knows.

At any rate, I figured that since I don’t really have a bucket list, I ought to put one together. Here’s some items to get me started:

  1. See Dropkick Murphys/Flogging Molly in person. I almost had a chance to do this three or four years ago, and missed it. I wanted to see David Bowie at some point before he died, but then he died in 2016 and the world went to Hell.
  2. Travel some more. There are plenty of countries I’d like to viist. New Zealand. Egypt. Plenty of places in Europe. Japan. Etc.
  3. Write more novels. Natch.
  4. Heck, just see more concerts in general. I’d love to see The Hu or Bloodywood in concert as well, but I fear I might feel… old in their audiences. I’ll check with some folks I know are the same age as me who have been to those concerts, though.
  5. Finish my novels.

That’s it. Whew. Not much, I suppose. Maybe I ought to get into some specifics. But not now.  Right now I’m just feeling lazy.

What about you? Any suggestions for my list? Do you have a list to share?

 

Holidailies 2022

What We Do for New Year’s Eve…

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Squid vs. Sperm Whale animated gif
Embiggen this picture by clicking on it to see some hot squid on whale action!

…Or, at least, what I do for New Year’s Eve, which also happen to be my birthday, is refocus. Or try to.

As always, I have some areas that I want to refocus in. I wrote about these in my personal journal (which I’m keeping on my spiffy reMarkable 2 notepad computer! I bought this as an early birthday gift for myself). These areas are:

  • Friends and Family
  • Learning
  • Faith and Spirituality
  • Writing
  • Daikaijuzine
  • Community
  • Health and Fitness
  • Work

That last one was added reluctantly, of course, but it’s a necessity. While I’m not angling for a position as supervisor or (God forbid!) manager in my job, my boss does want me to take more of a leadership position in the project I’m part of, and to become a Subject Matter Expert in it. Considering I’m probably the least experienced programmer on the team (by no means incompetent, but I still have a lot to learn), this may be difficult to achieve.

I won’t go into details in all of the above, because it’s probably boring to you. I will say that I intend to go to church more, reach out to my friends and family more, take my writing even more seriously, set and achieve some new goals with Daikaijuzine, volunteer more, and take better care of myself. These aren’t necessarily resolutions. I just want to spend my time more mindfully.

Come to think of it, maybe that’s my next series of blog posts: each of these areas of focus in turn. Maybe boring. Maybe not. Who knows? We’ll see.

It’s New Year’s Eve, and things are mellow in my house and will continue to be so. I’m writing this blog post, and Jennifer is working on one of the jigsaw puzzles she got for Christmas. The cats are minding their own business. Even Guffaw, who is the rowdy crazy boy in the house right now, is leaving Jennifer’s puzzle alone, which is very good for him. Lunch will be soon. Soon I will go run some errands, including buying diapers for our foster kitty who has manx syndrome and is therefore utterly incontinent. I may do some writing too.

It’s raining, which cancels our plan to walk to Corti Brothers nearby and look to see what sort of food selection they have.

And so it goes. Which reminds me that I received a few books on writing and craft from my family. My very spiffy niece gave me Pity the Reader, by Kurt Vonnegut; my nephew and his girlfriend gave me It’s All Just a Draft by Tobias Buckell; my sister-in-law gave me Conversations on Writing by Ursula K. LeGuin; and my mother-in-law gave me Bill Bryson’s Dictionary for Writers and Editors. Consider that all the authors listed here are among my favorites, this should be a good writing and reading year.

I also decided to reactivate my GoodReads account, which I am really kind of loath to do, since GoodReads is owned by a certain major corporation that is slowly gobbling up all internet commerce. But I want to track my reading this year, and LibraryThing does not give me the functionality I need. Maybe I’ll spin up a tool of my own in PHP. That would be a good project, I suppose, especially if I integrate it into WordPress.

Right.

Happy New Year to you, and may your 2023 be a good one.

It’s a thoughtful day for Holidailies.

Holidailies 2022, Published Stories, Writing

Publication Alert! Woo hoo!

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I had two short story acceptances in 2022 (out of 100 submissions). The first acceptance, “Blank”, is available from the Dark Recesses website (see my Writing page for a link). The second, “How the Old Ones Saved Christmas”, is available now in the anthology LOLCraft: A Compendium of Eldritch Horror!

You can get to the Amazon page for this fine collection by clicking the picture above.

I’m quite pleased with this story, which features the Old Ones Hastur and Nodens trying to save Christmas after Santa goes insane, for reasons which are revealed in the story. I don’t remember the true origins of the story, but it does feature some of the same characters found in “Night of the Frozen Elf“, even though it’s not a direct sequel or prequel. More of a “sidequel”, if you will. Whatever. The characters are the same. The story is different.

If you go out of your way to purchase the collection, either in paperback or electronic, I really hope you enjoy my story. The other stories are enjoyable, I’m sure (I haven’t read them because I haven’t received my author’s copy yet), but rest assured, my story is quite fun.

‘Tis an eldritch season for Holidailies

Holidailies 2022

The Next Adventure

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Now that Pancake the Penguin and Pep the Lungfish have finished their journey and retrieved their wings and we have seen the glory that is a village of flying penguins, what should I do next for holidailies?

I have no idea.

I was going to write about a dream I had — I dreamed that there was a school with a haunted basement and it was quite scary until I got to the end, when it was revealed that Stephen King had written it all — but I long ago realized that my dreams are only interesting to me and not to anyone else. Unless they’re dream analysts, I guess.

Then I was going to write about Christmas, but I’m too tired to do that right now. I got books, I got games, I got an honorary adopted emperor penguin, and that was a good haul. My birthday’s in a few days, too, so there are gifts yet to come.

Then I was going to write about 2022, the year that was, but then I decided I’d do that on December 31 (which also happens to be my birthday). My post about goals and areas of focus for 2023 will wait until January 1.

So for now… It’s the third day of Christmas for those of you with a liturgical bent, so celebrate accordingly.