Cometary Tales Blog Monday at BayCon 2013

Monday at BayCon 2013

There are fewer options on the final day, and the available time is short, so opportunities for plans to stray from reality are fewer.  We’d expect less divergence…here are the results of our field test:

Time Frame What the Plan was What really happened
Monday morning Sleep in a bit, then go to session on James Bond vs Dr Who, and finally pick up art if I win any auctions.

One of Patricia McCracken's Little Dragons came home with me!  Find your own here http://www.patriciamccracken.com/miniprint.html

One of Patricia McCracken’s Little Dragons came home with me! Find your own here .

Did sleep in.  Fed horses & scooped manure, too.  Didn’t arrive until close to noon.Trekked to the Art Show first to pick up the two pieces I’d bought, but then also discovered my single bid on the dragon-butterfly print was the winning bid.  So paid and went to look for that panel talk.  JB vs DW still ongoing, but after a half-hour I figured I’d had about all I needed on the topic.  So no regrets about turning up so late. 

My next move was to get my art safely into the car, though I did make a detour to make sure there was no boffering available today.  Dang.  Just another panel talk going on in what had been Boffer Central.

 

So I betook myself down to the Gaming Room to buy a coke and eat lunch.  Two older teenagers who had joined in on the dancing last night were there playing some form of D&D.  The one thing I haven’t done at this convention is play games, and it looks like that will have to be another time.  For now, I just have to settle for having spent some time hanging out in the Gaming Room.

Monday afternoon Go to session on “how to build a spaceship.”  Go home!

First firing of the Falcon 9-R advanced prototype rocket. Via Elon Musk on Twitter. Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/102692/spacex-tests-falcon-9-r-advanced-reusable-prototype-rocket/#ixzz2WVt42LYG

First firing of the Falcon 9-R advanced prototype rocket. Via Elon Musk on Twitter.   At least there is a good place to read about the topic I skipped:  start here.

 

MKB's latest novel in the Star Wars universe

MKB’s latest novel in the Star Wars universe

 

 

California Autism Foundation

California Autism Foundation

 

diy

 

 

 

 

 

It was easier to walk to the media tie-in panel from the Gaming Room, so that’s where I went.   I hadn’t actually looked at the list of panelist, so it was a pleasing surprise to see Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff  there, in her capacity as a leading author in Star Wars novels.  Her panel partner, Kevin Andrew Murphy, works also in gaming tie-ins and had a much more positive spin on the quality of that literature than the board-game guy in yesterday’s panel.  Overall, I gained a much better picture of life as a tie-in fiction author.  And an appreciation for authors who can face intense fans in the middle of a panel.    Btw, about half the people in the audience are people I recognize.So things were winding down, including the dealer’s room.  So I went on up to the closing ceremonies.  In between that and the “hiss and purr” session, there was some dead time.  I poked my head into the Art Room to see how the art auction had wrapped up.  One of the women I remember from dancing last night was clutching the steampunk flamingo.  Turns out it hadn’t had any bids, so the artist had offered it to her at a lesser price in order to avoid hauling it home.  Good for her! 

Next stop:  the Gaming Room, for one last donation to the California Autism Foundation (the beneficiary of the Charity Vending machine) from which I gained a Coke for myself and an accidentally-vended ginger ale which I could donate to one of the nearby volunteers.

 

I was determined to stay for the critique session because I wanted to praise the DIY idea.  The downside was having to sit through a huge laundry list of facility complaints and an equally lengthy recitation of praises for hotel staff.  However, managed to retain my nerve enough to actually participate in the “programming” discussion.

 

After that subject was concluded, I took off for Nob Hill.  Not the SF landmark, the grocery store.  Got home before the guys and even fixed dinner for everyone.  Does tacos count as dinner?

 

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The Importance of Making ConnectionsThe Importance of Making Connections

I have lots of writer friends who cling to the old-fashioned notion of the lonely author toiling away in solitude, until emerging with their masterpiece ready to be snapped up by publishers. They know it’s not real. It’s never been real, but the myth has a certain romance to it. As a great bonus, it puts off into the far future that moment when you discover if your work has meaning to anyone other than yourself.

The one compromise they’ll take is to join a critique circle … more on those in a post I’m still working on. That way, you still have the comfort of an insular environment, listening to just a few voices who don’t actually have power over your publication chances. It feels safe, even when the feedback isn’t always “wow, that’s fantastic!”

Yet, as I’ve learned the hard way, and as publishing pros will tell you if you but listen, the journey to publishing that precious work (and all that follows) begins while you’re still writing. If you’re thinking of making even a part-time extra-gig career of being a writer, you need to approach it as a pro, and seek out the society of others in that endeavor. Sanity check? As an engineer in the power industry, I’m a senior member of the IEEE, our professional organization. It keeps me connected to advances in my field. Don’t you want that for your writing career?

Here are the key groups I’ve joined to network with other writers, learn new skills, and build a better platform for this career: the California Writers Club (and I assure you that wherever you are, there is a similar organization), the Women’s National Book Association, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.

The California Writers Club is a grand old organization, claiming Jack London as an early connection. The South Bay Writers branch is a friendly supportive group for writers at all levels and in all genres, including poetry. Quite a few poets, actually, who connect each other with poetry-focused events in the area.  The group hosts regular sociable (in person) meetings with a speaker and gets together for summer and winter celebrations. If you’ve followed me before, you’ll know we also sponsor twice-monthly online open mics, informal (not competitive) which also attract writers who can’t make it to meetings. At our last open mic, we met two new poets in the area (who didn’t know each other before but turned out to have a connection in their non-writing careers) and then we had a fun surprise, as one of our regulars was attending from his birthday celebration and shared not only a work-in-progress appropriate to Halloween but also the ceremonial candle-blowing-out portion of the party. Alas, he could not figure out how to send us slices on Zoom.

Birthday lit with last candle being lit, with candles that spell "Happy Birthday"
Nothing like friends when you need to celebrate

If you haven’t been a part of a professional organization before, keep in mind that in this context “social” has two elements: making friends (don’t we all need friends?) and networking (making friends who mutually help out each other careerwise). I’ve gained in both senses from being a part of this group, including making contacts beyond the group, as friends introduce me to other friends in the broader writing community. As is usual for CWC, all meetings are open to nonmembers, and usually attendance is free for a newbie, so anyone can visit and form their own impressions.

There are several CWC branches in my area, and they all welcome members of other branches, which is great for catching speakers you want to hear or just getting some variety in your mix of connections. Like others I kow, I’ve joined a second branch, the one based on the San Francisco Peninsula. It’s not convenient for me to attend most meetings, because they’re held an hour’s drive away, but that particular branch happens to have a higher concentration of sci-fi/fantasy writers, some of whom I’d met through online open mics. Now, I run that chapter’s online open mic and I’m leading the members-only anthology project. If I hadn’t joined this club, it might have been years (or never) before I’d had an opportunity to first assist an experienced anthology editor and then take the helm for the next edition.

Another resource I strongly recommend is the Women’s National Book Association, which has chapters all around the country and offers many online ways to interact and learn. This organization is all about supporting women and underrepresented authors as they work to professional goals; and no, you don’t need to be a woman to join or to attend events. The San Francisco chapter has a great cast of characters, including poets, nonfiction writers, novelists, short-story authors, agents, and local small publishers. Some members are involved with the annual San Francisco Writers Conference. Both the local and national organizations offer online programs as well as some in person events. During covid, this is one organization that took to heart the lessons we all learned about how effective the online environment can be to bring together those who can’t access distant in-person events.  For instance, they converted their formerly hard-to-access annual pitching workshop event to an online program, and chose to keep it that way.

Finally, with some effort, I’ve managed to qualify for membership in my genre’s professional organization, SFWA. They do require a certain amount of sales, and I work with a small publisher who likes my slightly off-the-beaten-trail work, so I was lucky there. However, even before I qualified for membership, I volunteered as a tech for the annual conference (when it was online) and have learned that I’m good at contributing on that end (the engineering degree did help a bit, there), which meant I could eventually earn my way to attend the annual writing conference, which otherwise would be outside my means. That’s another trick I’d learned from engineering conferences, where volunteering got me into events I couldn’t otherwise have attended. SFWA offers a lot of support, cameraderie, and networking connections to members. Not to mention the chance to hobnob with some of my SFF heroes and meet in person writers and techies I’d only been able to meet through Discord or on a Zoom call.

This essay started as an email to a new friend, a poet working on her MFA who was looking for connections in this area and reached out through our open-mic signup form. She’s taking a strong route, creatively seeking to build bridges early in her career. You, too, can look for the connections that will help you grow as a professional. Hey, if you’re not (or not only) a writer, but an engineer or an Amazon tech or a scientist or whatever, remember to connect with organizations that bring together others in your field for mutual benefit. (Yes, of course that includes unions.) Trust me, even if you’re an introvert like me, taking that step works to draw you out of your isolation and enliven your life and empower your career.

Learning to ThreadLearning to Thread

A screen grab from a twitter posting:  text is within blog post.

For my New Year’s Day new learning, I worked out how to create a thread (properly) in Twitter, in order to post my very first awards eligibility thread.

I know, I know, none of these are going to win any awards, though one has already been nominated (by the editor of the anthology) for a majorly major award. Nominations count; just being nominated is a huge, huge thrill.

But not everyone likes to hang out on social media. Facebook is broken. Twitter has deep wells of toxicity, Instagram is all about being pretty (and owned by Facebook), and Tik-Tok is … out of my league.

So in this blog post, I’ll try to recreate the Twitter post. I have two 2021 stories that are Hugos-eligible (the science-fiction ones). What awards do you know about that you’re eligible to nominate for? You might be surprised!

Let’s jump ahead now, and make this Not About Me. It’s readers who nominate for Hugos, and readers don’t care if the author is famous, made a bucket of money, or only managed to sell one story. Sure, the list of finalists is short, but consider–what did you read last year? What moved you? If you’re a 2021 or 2022 WorldCon member, you can nominate the things you liked. You can nominate up to five things in EVERY category. They don’t have to be the movies, stories, novels, or magazines that your friends liked, that your social-media leaders went on and on about. You can voice your own preferences.

So, pitch made. GO forth, write reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, nominate all your favorites for awards, and then enjoy all the new (and not-so-new) stories out there in 2022.

Here, then, is my Twitter thread. Do ya love or hate my cartoony profile pic? I’ll only put it in for the opening tweet; otherwise, it gets annoying in blog format.

Cartoon image of woman with reddish hair in silly ponytails and grees streaks in the hair. She's holding a teacup and wearing glasses.

The official awards-eligibility thread. In 2021, I had three short stories published:

1. a #scifi story about stolen land

2. a light #scifi #romance featuring a favorite 20th-century artist

3. an upbeat piece of literary fiction grown from #autism, #depression, and #optimism.

2/7 “Heart’s Delight,” anthologized in Fault Zone: Reverse, edited by @LaurelAnneHill and published by Sand Hill Review Press. An intelligent ecosystem repels those whose ancestors took the land unjustly, returning custody to its true caretakers. #SFF

3/7 For the record, I live on Tamien Nation Territory, bordering Popeloutchum (Amah Mutsun) land, connected to the territory of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area. These people are all, right now, working to protect this land, e.g.: http://amahmutsun.org/history

4/7 “Parrish Blue,” published by Water Dragon Publishing (Dragon Gems short fiction). In an elite restaurant on a climate-ravaged Earth, under the glow of a recreated artwork, a young woman rediscovers a dream of life immersed in wonder—and finds one who shares that dream. #SFF

5/7 I’m dropping in an image of the piece of art these two fall in love under (Romance, by Maxfield Parrish). Just because.

A fairy-tale castle stands on a hill, with peaks risin gin the distance, and people in old-time fantasy clothes gazing on the scene from a collonade
(Note: on Twitter, alt-text includes artist attribution: this is a photograph of a public-domain artwork. The photograph came from Plum Leaves at Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/eoskins/5841870848).

6/7 “Reunion,” anthologized in Fault Zone: Reverse, edited by @LaurelAnneHill and published by Sand Hill Review Press. Two young people, separated in childhood by separate traumatic events, renew a friendship forged through shared suffering.

8/7 These are all findable via my linktree.

Glowy orange sunset clouds float over  a cluster of treetops at lower left. With text linktr.ee @Vanessa_MacLarenWray | Linktree. Character-drive literary speculative fiction. Science-y stuff. Cats. Ponies.

7/7 If this story resonates for you, consider further research at https://autisticadvocacy.org or connect with mental-health resources in your community. Also, remember to reconnect with friends in 2022.

Image of text screen: Rainbow-colored octagonal logo. ASAN Autistic Self Advocacy Network. autisticadvocacy.org. Home. Nothing About Us Without Us

It’s surprising hard to recreate a Twitter posting in a blog! Go follow me on Twitter, OK?

Two Poems by AnwegweTwo Poems by Anwegwe

Sunset #734

the fire dies down, and the colors rise up
rivers flow amber, gold, and blood-rose
cascading one upon the other
wave upon wave around the sky
pushing back the eastern dark
holding the light for one last hour
giving us time, time to remember
all of the days we have had together
the glorious days beneath the sun

The main character in my recent book, All That Was Asked, is a poet. It’s a first-person narrative, and he keeps mentioning how people reacted to a poem, or how much he enjoyed writing a poem, or that he likes to watch sunsets because they inspire poetry. But . . . there aren’t any poems in the book itself. It seemed to me I couldn’t quite measure up to the standard implied in the text . . . one gets the impression, although Ansegwe is self-effacing about it, that he’s actually rather good.

Still . . . it’s nagged at me, that I didn’t have any poems by Varayla Ansegwe. After spending hours and days and weeks and months with him, I’m sort of a fan, if you will. If I were a real fan, I’d have his work, wouldn’t I?

So I gave it a try. It’s interesting, to try to write personal-style poetry from someone else’s perspective. The one above results from all those mentions of poetry related to watching sunsets. Imagine our hero trotting down the hill after enjoying a really nice day’s-ending light show, muttering to himself, wriggling his fingers, anxious to scribble down this latest idea. We can leave it to your imagination how he improved this “draft”.

For a second poem, I tried to combine two things from his background. First, it seems Ansegwe had a fairly decent collegiate-level ranking in, well, whatever ball game is popular in Korlo. I envision it as sort of like baseball, maybe like an upsized version of kickball, with a larger, rugby-sized ball. Lots of running, jumping, catching, throwing–very energetic. Second, it’s evident that he was quite the one for romantic entanglements.

If I can gather enough of these, I’ll put together a little “collection” that I can share at events and such. Oh, and as a reminder . . . consider these as translated from Korlovian.

(Photos are mine. All from our own universe, alas.)

Intercept

In this moment,
there is only the ball, gliding on its parabolic arc.
It requires all of your mind to calculate the leap
the extension of your arm, the stretch of your fingers
the breath you draw at its approach
the strength you need to hurl it to your comrades.
 
For this moment, you do not know that she is gone.
For this moment, your heart is no more than a muscle.
Whether the ball glides into your hand
whether it skims your fingertips and caroms off under the lights
either way, you will crash to earth again
the world's gravity will bear you down
the moment will end
and you will know.
 
But in this moment, you leap
and time stretches to meet you.

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