Myth, the Universe, and Everything

There it is, folks! Lindsay Archer finished the cover art, and I could not be happier with her work. If you're interested in getting prints of her other projects, I noticed she has a number of things on sale at her store right now -- it's worth browsing through just to see her other projects!

And with that, I just have some random thoughts from an extra-tired weekend.

• My characters really need to stay out of other people's worlds while I'm dreaming. First Lydia and Kennerly were on a train facing off with a changeling magician (reminiscent of Xen'drik) and the next night, Taru and Nara were in the middle of bad things happening in Skittersill, a bad neighborhood from Max Gladstone's Two Serpents Rise. They're really not equipped to handle such things...


• As I was losing coherent thought, I wondered what it might be like if, in times of tiredness nearing dreamstate, you also lost your coherent physical structure. Would some people wander about with fuzzy edges all the time? Would the best rested among us have sharply defined exteriors?


• Playing the voices of Elsa and Anna from Disney Frozen at the request of Bug has led me to wonder about the history and future of Arandell. According to my improvisational dialog, Anna's idea of national defense is to have Elsa craft an army of snow monsters, while Elsa prefers creating situations in which friction is reduced (as if gliding over ice), and conflict can be avoided. I also wonder what kind of adventure Rapunzel and Eugene had during the summer freeze that got them stuck with the rest of the courtiers attending the coronation. I suspect it was one of their first official state visits (what with neither of them having any sort of international relations training prior to marriage), and that they probably got up to some trouble preventing the Duke of Weaselton from getting away with something dire while Elsa and Anna were otherwise occupied...

I got to write about Frozen over at Questia, and I've been having fun with webcomic and game reviews at Black Gate Magazine. Otherwise, back to revisions for me!

Great news for art lovers! Lindsay Archer has agreed to let people in on the early stages of the art process, so we've created a $35 reward that includes all the $25 rewards, plus digital updates as Lindsay works on the cover. Our new stretch goal also involves art: If we hit $4300, Lindsay will do a signed and numbered limited series of prints of the cover art -- we'll start with 12 available as a $75 reward (which will also include everything from the $35 reward), and if demand is high (and we continue to raise funds), we'll make more available.

If you're not familiar with Lindsay's work beyond what I've already posted here (you've seen a lot of her work over the past few posts), she has an amazing gallery at her home page that is well worth browsing. I am delighted to have served as one of Lindsay's models as well!



I'd love to see us add more art rewards, and if we can keep raising enough funds, that will become an option -- but most of those rewards won't be available until we go over the initial budget. So if you'd like to see more of Lindsay's work show up in this Kickstarter, spread the word!

I don't know how I do this. When I start out with a new calendar, it's blank and clean and pretty! (My 2009 calendar is a lovely print calendar by Lindsay Archer (the 2010 version is available here if you're interested.) And yet, somehow, those dates get filled with black ink to mark my day job hours, blue for appointments, purple for classes, and green for social engagements. (I switch colors on pretty much everything except the red deadlines and the black day job hours -- I'm not as organized as I'd like to think.)

Usually, I'm a few steps ahead on the autobio project -- though, granted, the first half of the year deadline is always much easier than the one late in the year (because I get the contract for both in the late summer/early fall, which means the first deadline is a crunch and the second deadline is languid and serene). This time around, I had to hand off more than usual to fellow copyeditor and Substrater Michelle while I organized the administrative details. (It's a good thing she's a copyeditor I really enjoy working with! I love working on the essays myself, so it's hard to hand over the work to someone else. It has to be someone I trust -- and Michelle certainly fits that bill.) I've got a great batch of writers this time around, and I'm very much excited to see them all in print.

But in the meantime, there's a 4e adventure that needs to be finished over the weekend, not to mention the rest of my first chapter installment in my joint Baeg Tobar project with lyster. (Have I mentioned Blood and Tumult by name yet? No? It's in progress! I'm 1500 words in on my first segment -- unfortunately not the full 3000 that would let me pass it back to Max. *sigh*) I have School Library Journal reviews that need to be written, not to mention the overdue reviews for Flames Rising.com and the overdue article edit for Journey to the Sea. (Alas, the free work always ends up falling behind those paid assignments.)

I was raised to keep myself busy as a kid, and I think I've taken that lesson to heart. My mother was the kind of teacher who always had several projects going outside of the classroom -- the biggest one was building a life-sized rainforest in an empty mall store. So I'm sure I get some of this impulse to take on so many projects from her.

One of these days, though, I think I'd like a vacation. It's a good thing I've forbidden myself from taking any work that's due in March! (I'll be busy with another little thing around then, but she's sure to be a handful.)

I went to my very first Gilbert and Sullivan performance tonight. I'd sung parts of The Pirates of Penzance before. Heck, I've been to Penzance, England. But I'd never seen the show. The awesome Junius (who may or may not have an lj identity--I haven't internet-stalked him *g*) invited us to go, and so we went. The orchestra was awesome, the performers were quite excellent, and I learned something I'd long suspected. Gilbert and Sullivan are right up my alley as far as humor goes. The whole show is very, very silly--and that's what's excellent about it.

Now, I really want start singing again. I don't think that I really should ever have sung Mabel (I trained as a soprano in college, despite being rather more an alto naturally speaking, though my range was good enough to sing Handel arias and such). My voice remembers quite a bit more of the "O Wandering One" than I would have suspected, though, and it felt good to sing just a little bit when we got home. One of these days, I'll have to get myself back into good training. I fear that my instrumental training may be too far gone at this point to recover, but the singing, I should be able to get back.

(We discussed at one point this evening how stereotypes are associated with different instruments to those who have been instrumentalists, and I always wonder what people suspect I've played. Most people probably wouldn't peg me, I suspect--but I'd be entirely amused if they knew right off!)

On a completely different note, I just discovered that Lindsay Archer has a whole bunch of LJ icons available on her website, so you'll be seeing several new pieces of art by Lindsay in this blog. (I've also added a number of icons from Cowboys and Aliens and Steampunk Musha recently just to spice things up a bit.)

Even though I've been busy, the reading doesn't stop. Along with what I've read and reviewed for flamesrising, I've picked up a number of od books lately, and tonight finally got around to watching Waitress with Kerri Russell and Nathan Fillion. It may not appeal to everyone, but it's funny and dramatic and accomplishes exactly what it set out to do. I really enjoyed it, and have even more respect now for Andy Griffith than I had previously. (Really, I think he must be a pretty cool man. And even if he's not, I'm going to think that about him.)

As far as books go, I recommend picking up Alcatraz and the Evil Librarians, not because there's actually a conspiracy mind you (not that the librarians with MLAs at my library have informed me of, anyway, though now I'm a little more suspicious of that degree program than I was before). It's just a really fun book, and I think Brandon Sanderson (mistborn) found a great voice for telling the story. Or Alcatraz found a really good agent for dictation in Sanderson. Whichever.

I also recommend picking up Skullduggery Pleasant, which is a fabulous book about alternate societies of wizards and magical creatures told in a very Irish voice, and features absolutely quotable banter. It's really, really entertaining, a little bit scary, and a whole lot of adventure. Oh, and the title character is a talking skeleton. To quote the cover, "And he's the good guy." Definitely excellent stuff.

I'm also back reading Eberron novels (most recently Rise of the Seventh Moon) and am continuously surprised and pleased at the depth of the themes the novels cover. They're not just sword-and-sorcery novels, they're novels with deep moral quandaries, questions of faith, and ethical dilemmas. I don't know if the line was planned that way or if they just had several authors all interested in those themes, but I love how often the deep topics crop up.

On my book stand currently are: Confessions of a Part Time Sorceress by Shelly Mazzanoble, whose articles for Dragon have been excellent; In the Serpent's Coils, which I should have read when it first came out and am just now getting the chance; Persepolis 2 by Marjane Satrapi; Art and Experience in Classical Greece, which may or may not be useful for the upcoming Greece and Turkey trip; and also for the trip, Do Kamo, Saving the Appearances by Barfield, and a children's book of Greek gods that I used to read when I was little. I'll soon be adding the newest Percy Jackson book to that stack as well.

As a quick note, I will be attending I-Con in New York as a patron, in order to see the folks from Margaret Weis Productions (including Lindsay Archer!) while they're in town. If you are also going and have recommendations about things to do/see at the convention, please do send them my way. :)

I just found out that Lindsay Archer, who did all of the art for Into the Reach and Departure (as well as my lovely icon), has been featured at Margaret Weis Productions. Hurrah! You can see a lot of Lindsay's work over at DeviantArt.com.

In other news, non-scripted TV got rated very highly last week, and the article I read seemed to say that was a bad thing for the Writer's Strike. Thing is... since all of the scripted shows were reruns (except Desperate Housewives, which was number five in the most watched category), is it any surprise that the new reality shows that were just premiering got high ratings?

*sigh*

To those of you who visited the White Silver booth at GenCon 2006, you may remember an exhuberant salesman who pitched our work, brought people over to talk to Lindsay and me, and an all around great guy who supported the White Silver team. This man was Richard Wilhite, and I was very much looking forward to seeing him again in 2007. He was a vibrant person who filled the booth with energy, and was very much someone I would have liked to know better, and to consider a friend.

The convention circuit for 2007 will be missing Richard's energy. He passed away on March 18th for a seizure, a surprise to his family and friends. Many of them are keeping his MySpace page open as a way to honor his memory--a way to keep him alive and part of the circle. I realized today that MySpace only lets friends post comments, and I don't know if anyone is still managing the account to approve me. So I thought I would post here and say much of what everyone else is saying:

Even though I only knew you a short time, Richard, you will be missed!

Well, the White Silver Web site is not entirely back up from the hacker attack, but they've added a bunch of new content to the part of the site that is functional again. One of these is stats for all of the Into the Reach characters. I wrote them, so I fully authorize them as the official stats, and the profiles give hints to some of the events to come in Departure. They're also accompanied by new art by Lindsay Archer, and that alone makes them worth checking out. So go ahead. Click the link...

Ah ha! Live journal is more clever than I realized, and it seems to be enabling me to post pictures from GenCon in a public forum. (I suspected they would have to be uploaded online somewhere else, first. I am relieved, as that was a quest I wasn't looking forward to.) I do recall having discovered this once before, but I'm just as happy to have discovered it again.

( pictures! )

Should you happen to find other GenCon pictures featuring the White Silver crew on the Web, please let me know! (The publisher, of course, has some up at the White Silver Publishing Web site as well.)

Currently Reading: In the Claws of the Tiger by James Wyatt. I'm looking forward to writing a bit more about the theosophical leanings when I've finished the book! (I did sneak in a quick romance novel last night: Perils of the Heart by Jennifer Ashley. She writes very fun pirate romances.)

This is the first chance I've had where I actually had time to sit down and write about what's been going on with GenCon. What makes this unfortunate is that it means I'll abridge and inevitably miss some really cool stuff that happened, but this is the way of things. Since I was only semi-coherent on Wednesday anyway, there are probably things I'd miss regardless.

Wednesday: Left at 3:45 a.m. for the airport. Slept a little on the plane to Detroit, but couldn't sleep from Detroit to Indianapolis. I planned out my Eberron: Xen'drik Expeditions character, instead (which I still haven't had a chance to play).

The convention registration opened at 5 p.m., so most of the early day was spent by exhibitors putting together their booths. The folks from White Silver picked me up at the airport, dropped me off at the hotel (where I couldn't check in yet), and then took me over to the convention center. Nominally, I was to help set up the booth, but as the guys from White Silver told me, they're from the South, which means I wasn't allowed to lift very much. (Someone is always offering to take heavy things from me, which shames my internal bookseller, but makes my arms quite happy.) I unraveled some wires that had tangled up in transit, which was quite productive, then let them handle most of the rest while I went to training for True Dungeon.

If you've never been through the True Dungeon before, it is a must see event. As it runs over $20 for an 1 1/2 event, it's a little outside the price range of some gamers. This didn't stop the event from filling up entirely in the first two hours that the event tickets went on sale at the convention. I imagine that traversing the dungeon (which is similar to a haunted house, except with puzzles, riddles, and mock combat) is well worth the price. The other great way to experience True Dungeon is as a volunteer, and they need plenty of them to keep the place running. I picked up my make up and wig and chatted with folks to find out how it worked (and got a new copy of my script, which I'd left somewhere in Connecticut), then headed back down to the exhibit hall.

Because of the loading and unloading through the docks outside the hall, the convention staff said the air wouldn't be turned on until Thursday morning, making it quite a warm place to set up. Despite the heat, banners rose into the air on fork lifts, buildings were built (the Wizards of the Coast booth has an entire small library with furniture to create a cozy environment for author signings), and books made their way onto display. I wandered over to the Kenzer and Company booth and helped them with the set-up, doing my best to use my Barnes and Noble bookseller training to create an attractive display. (Pyramid displays really *do* look better than other arrangements!)

By the time I returned to the White Silver booth, huge banners were rising from the booth, displaying prominently the cover image from Into the Reach and the cover image for the Chronicles of Ramlar Core Rulebook. There wasn't a whole lot for me to help with other than shifting boxes and starting to arrange displays, which didn't entirely work as it's hard to maneuver around a booth with seven people trying to help. Mostly, I stood with editor Tony Lee and we pretended to supervise.

I headed back up for the rest of my True Dungeon training and realized I hadn't had nearly enough to eat, so I headed down to the Champions Bar at the Mariott (where the True Dungeon was being held) and ran into Jolly Blackburn, creator and writer for Knights of the Dinner Table. We chatted while I waited for my food, then I headed back up to True Dungeon to watch the walk through for the VIP attendees, in order to get an idea of how the show worked.

Sadly, this was not to be, as my body decided to shut down around 7 p.m. I said farewell to the True Dungeon staff, headed over to the convention center to tell the White Silver folks I was headed home (and said a very sleepy hello to Lindsay Archer, the artist who did the cover and interiors for Into the Reach. Then I headed back to the hotel, where I slept for about an hour at a shot; tired as I was, I had a severe case of nerves. I don't know if it's easier to just know your book's release date and mark it silently or if it's easier to be right there in the thick of the action and knowing exactly how well your book is selling in those first few days. I imagine the first might be just as nerve wracking as the second, and the second is pretty darn nerve wracking!

More when I have another chance to write. I'm back over to the convention center to start another day of carnival barking and book selling.