The podcast of 7th Son: Book Three was released this weekend. On Friday evening the author and about seventy other people including yours truly attended a book drop event in the virtual world of Second Life. The affair included a question and answer session by the author J.C. Hutchins, the premiere of some set pieces from the book on Podcast Island, and a reading of the first two chapters. It was a lot of fun and many notable podiobook authors were in attendance like Tee Morris, Christiana Ellis and Phil Rossi. The event was so well attended we crashed the sim at least once. I finished off the night with a concert in a neighboring sim by one of my favorite Second Life musicians Duzzy Ryder who performs live acoustic rock from his home in Tokyo, Japan.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Balticon 41 took place over the Memorial Day weekend. For those unfamiliar with it Balticon is a science and fantasy fiction convention which has been running in the Baltimore area since before dirt was invented. With its focus more on the literary end of scifi, Balticon has long been a meeting place for writers of genre fiction. The last time I attended was many many years ago as a fan. This weekend I went back as a writer and the experience was wonderful. I met and listened to many published and unpublished authors and came away from the weekend with a better idea of what I want to do with my books once they are completed.
While on vacation in Florida this week I began a new story, but I really have no idea if it will be a novel, young adult novella or short story. I feel very strongly about this one, so I’m just writing it out and will wait and see where it leads me. Please have a look at the first page of The Empress Sword in my First Pages.
Nothing’s really happening, but it’s been a month since I last updated this page so I’ll just tell you what I’m up to. I’ve officially dropped The Jolly Rogers from my active pile and put it back in the vault. I’m no longer convinced it’s the great idea I once did and I’d rather put my efforts into something with more potential. Likewise the untitled novel will remain untitled indefinitely as it too is going back in the vault. All this is a way of saying I want to focus more on Konshin: Coming of the Soul Rider formerly titled ‘Young Heart’.
This weekend the Anime USA convention was held in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia and I went down for some much needed R&R. While there I met fellow writer and noted podcaster Tee Morris. I picked up a copy of his book The Legacy of Morevi and am finding it hard to put down. I sat in on his ‘Anime Podcasts’ panel and was really inspired. Who knows, maybe someday you’ll be able to listen to my writing in the form of a podcast?
What happened? Some of you may be wondering what happened to me and the NaNoWriMo contest. The answer is that I hit the ground running and real life reached out and tripped me up. On November 4th, 2006 my cat Shadow died after a sudden illness. She’s been my only pet for about eleven years and losing her was a big blow. Then I was hit really hard with urgent requests at work, this is always a writing killer because work tends to drain my creative reserves. So, my NaNoWriMo attempt is pretty much dead in the water for this year, but I’m not giving up on Young Heart by any means. Look for the word count to start growing again soon.
I have decided that I will be writing Young Heart for NaNoWriMo. The outline was almost complete and I’ve been looking for a way to start writing on this one for a while. The story is a fantasy about a middle-aged woman who is thrown into a world where the ruling class lives on by taking over the bodies of peasants raised just for the purpose. She must deal with the political conflicts between rival warlords while trying to cope with life inside someone else’s sixteen year old body.
This past weekend I went on a graveyard search through southern Virginia with my mother. She’s been collecting family genealogy and has lots of birthdates, but very few deaths. So we went traipsing across the hills of Grayson County, Virginia and Ashe County, North Carolina digging up old relatives, figuratively of course! We started our day at the Wythe-Grayson Regional Library where we were met at the window by Purrl Reedmore, the library’s adorable white cat. My thanks to the wonderful ladies at the library who helped us.
National Novel Writing Month is coming up and I’ve decided to participate. Every year writers from all over the world compete to produce a 50,000 word novel in just 30 days. At this point I have no idea what I’m going to write about. I guess I should really have an outline together before it starts… not to mention an idea! This should be interesting and I’ll be sure to let you know what’s happening.
The web site is finally up. It took goDaddy.com longer than usual to setup the hosting, so I was nailbiting all night. It still wasn’t up when I left work yesterday and I was hopeful for last night, but when I got home I discovered that my cable was out. I had the devil of a time getting the cable company to give me an early appointment for today. They finally showed up and it turns out that a crew repairing the sidewalk cut my line and didn’t report it. Anyway, it was quickly fixed and when I downloaded my mail there was the activation notice from goDaddy.
