Penguicon 2014!

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It’s been since 2010, but this year, I’m going to Penguicon! I haven’t always been able to make it, but I’ve been attending off and on since Penguicon 2.0 in 2004.  I’ve posted a few times about it. Pictures, too.

This year, I’m going purely as a fan of things technical and fictiony. I’m hoping to meet up with old friends and re-connect, meet new friends, and learn a bunch of stuff that I didn’t know before. I’m not scheduled to speak on any panels this year, and I won’t be doing much advertising.

Okay, maybe I’ll talk up Two Vampires a little bit.  And the upcoming Adam’s Name novella. And the rewrite of the Remembrance.  The thing is, and this is hard for me to admit, I’m really proud of these projects. I’m proud of finishing them, and I’m proud of not giving up on the work Nikki and I are doing. I’m excited about them, too. I’m hoping to get over some of my social anxiety and feeling of being a pretender, and just share my excitement.

If you see me wandering into or out of a panel – this year I’ll be focusing a lot on the technical ones – carrying my Decepticon notebook, come up and say hi. Share with me what you’re excited about. Don’t be offended if I ask you to slow down; you’ve hooked me and I’m taking notes.

That excitement is my favorite part of Penguicon. This year, instead of leaving it in Southfield on Sunday, I want to take it home with me.

Inadequacy

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IMG_0050My parents gave me this journal. It was a Christmas gift, if I remember correctly. I was living on Fairview. It came in its own box, the same color as the cover. I remember being enthralled with the ribbon bookmark, the stamped leather cover, and the gold leafing on the edges of the pages.

This journal was simply too fancy for me to desecrate with my chicken scratchings.  How could I possibly taint it with anything less than perfect handwriting?  What if I spilled coffee on it, or got diner grease on the pages?  Those were badges of pride in my second hand or homemade journals, but seemed offensive in this work of art.

This journal was NICE.

It spent a year or two collecting dust in that house, and then in storage, and then in my nerd cave in the Bancroft house.  A couple of months after the move to Bradley Ave, I picked it up, brushed the dust off of the gold leafing, and steeled myself.  I took my collection of convention badges and ribbons and taped them throughout.  It no longer shut properly.  The gold had gaps in it.  When it opened, the pages naturally parted to multicolored evidence of nerdy shenanigans.  It was no longer too nice for me, and I could write in its pages with abandon.  I had given myself permission.

I’m glad I did.  The pages are thick and solid.  They’re a bit glossy, creating issues with some pens, but work fine with most.  The ribbon bookmark frayed slowly at the end, but never enough to impede its function.  It’s been an absolute joy to write in.  Somehow, it avoided both grease and coffee stains.

And just in case you’re interested, they’re still made.  In Dublin.  I highly recommend them.

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Crafty learning

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photoI’ve learned something from this little project. I’ve learned not to use paint left in my house by the previous owner, that has likely gone bad, with a stencil project. No matter how much you stir the paint, the oily and watery parts will seep beneath the stencil, and into the parts of the cover that have been scored by what looks to be a mechanical pencil tip, and create a mess.

It’s a neat-looking mess. Once it dried (four days!), I put the stencil back on, and went over it with a black marker. Marker doesn’t usually stay on paint, I’ve been told, but the black dry erase marker that I used (hey, it was just sitting there, on my desk, unused and unloved) seems to have gone permanent. I’m not gonna complain.

The symbol is from Tron: Uprising, though modified slightly for stenciling. The end look makes me think of graffiti, which ties in nicely with the last few episodes of the first season of the show. Silver lining!

I’m pretty happy with all of my journals now, so my next craft project will likely involve a Dresden Codak patch and my new work backpack.

Writing Journal

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For The Remembrance, from 15 March.

The first half of the chapter works just as I want is as a journal, recounting events of the past. The second half works just as I want it as normal narrative fiction. I had accidentally transitioned from one to the other while writing it. I didn’t notice the problem until it was pointed out to me. I made a half-ass attempt to shoehorn the second half into journal format, but it was lame and the end result was terrible. Now I’m left with a broken first chapter of the Remembrance – again – and a question. What now?

I could trash the second half and rewrite it. From scratch. I very much do not want to do this.

I could trash the first half and rewrite it. From scratch. I very much do not want to do this.

I could create a framework for the chapter that allows for the first half to be journal and the second half to be narrative. That seems clumsy, and a little bit like lazy writing, but I’m not sure that there’s another option, save from giving up on the book.

Chapter 2 moves in and out of journal mode fairly successfully (despite all of the red ink that Nikki is spraying on its pages), but its model seems significantly different. The opening of Chapter 1 has Jason writing in a journal trying to make sense of what’s going on around him. Could he reach a point in the story where he concludes the effort, or gives up on it, and then the story progresses as normal fiction?

If he could, the point would have to be after he buries his mother, before he heads back to the asylum. I would have to change some time references in the first half, and then add a short bit about what he does with the journal once he’s done writing in it.

Nikki immediately liked this idea, which is only a little terrifying. She suggested the same spot to make the break. So, that’d be it.

What would he do with the journal? Will it be like Herod’s old letter, stuffed in the mailbox? Or would he leave it on the porch? Would he take it with him, to keep safe in case he needed to write in it again? Or would he just want to keep the record of those thoughts safe?

Would he operate on instinct, grabbing it and putting it in his coat without thinking?

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Do the Dance of Done!

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The novella, set in the new-to-everyone-but-me Adam’s Name universe, is finally finished.  Three rounds of editing with Nikki and a character name update later, and it’s a MUCH better work.

Seth, Susan, and Sol. Julia and Jonah. What was I thinking?

The way that things are shaping up, the cover art will be the professional debut of an up-and-comer. More news as the details are sorted out!

Writing Journal

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For Too Dimensional, from 9 February.

Is it a revolver, or is it a gun that takes a magazine? I’d always pictured it as a more modern magazine pistol, but Nikki says she’s pictured it, through all the rounds of editing, as a revolver. It doesn’t make much of a difference until Jonah goes to shoot it.

Which means this needs to be specified when the gun is introduced, so the reader isn’t thrown out of the story when they find out it’s not how they’d imagined it.

Older revolvers do not have hammer blocks, let alone manual safeties, as I understand it. (Gun experts, please pardon my quick Googling. Your knowledge and opinions are more than welcome in the comments!) So, depending on the gun style, I will need to rewrite several bits, or not.

I have consistently referred to the gun as a pistol throughout, I think. Yup, either “gun” or “pistol” or “handgun.” I like the idea of the gun being as old as Adam. Revolvers, while certainly still being made and improved upon in the modern day, strike me as an anachronism. So, if I’m going to stick with a pistol that takes a magazine, I’m going to need to be more specific about it as soon as the gun is introduced.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

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Tomorrow (today, if you’re in the Eastern time zone), I leave San Francisco for Lansing.

But, Dave (you may say), you just got there!  Not so.  I’ve actually been here since the 2nd of February, which was around the time that the Writing Journal posts kicked back into gear.

Fooled you!

Um, anyway, in other news, the server upon which the blog is hosted is currently being migrated, so certain aspects of the site may not be available intermittently.

In other news, because I can’t resist their mocha tesora, I happily provide a link to Philz Coffee.  Mmmmmmm.

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