WindyCon

I'm sitting on the couch with a purring kitten on my lap. My brain is finally coming back to reality. It's always disorienting to return from the SF bubble. We had a phenomenal WindyCon. It was an extremely successful weekend for the Lynne and me.
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Shakespeare with Profanity

Oddly enough, that was a comment about my work by one of the pros at the writing workshop. It was meant as a criticism, but I got a kick out of it.

The important this is, I survived the writers' workshop. It was very useful, but a bit uncomfortable. I believe that my wife would have described it as being like a pelvic exam given by a doctor with ice-cold hands.

This was my first proper workshop. In my wasted youth, I had creative writing classes and a writers' group. That was a long, long time ago, and those had all been train wrecks. This workshop was a thousand times more useful.

The setup was simple. Three aspiring writers sat down with five professional writers (Trey Thoelcke, Jody Lynn Nye, Jim “The Hammer” Hines, Michael Z. Williamson, and Francisco Ruiz) to have a piece critiqued. In my case, they each read the first chapter of my novel, Murder Ballads. Basically, I sat there as everybody took turns telling me what was right and wrong.

Even though these authors came from very different backgrounds, they all pretty much gave the same advice. They liked most of my language, imagery, and setting, but thought that I could improve the clarity, character motivations, and general structure of the chapter. Most of the fixes will just involve cutting some crap and adding a bit more information from the later chapters. I'm afraid that my fear of exposition dumps led to an opening chapter that was way too mysterious.

I also met another nice, aspiring writer from Illinois (amberdine). I really liked her writing. I do believe that she will one day get her novel published.

I'm very happy that I went through with this workshop. I feel like a took a big step forward.

My Wife Rocks!

This weekend, rarelylynne added three more authors to NIU's SF Archive. For those of you keeping score at home, here is the current official list:
Jack McDevitt
E.E. Knight
Sarah Monette
Donald J. Bingle
Elizabeth Bear
Kage Baker
Kelly McCullough
Tamora Pierce
Tobias Buckell
Caroline Stevermer
David Weber
Sarah Prineas
Catherine Lundoff
Jim C. Hines
Eric Flint
Robert Asprin
Jody Lynn Nye

That's a hell of a list, and that doesn't include the 25 or so other authors who said yes.

I am very proud of my wife's vision.

Tweets for Today

• 09:24 @AlexBledsoe I think that Santa might get Caitlin some of those. He already got her the Star Wars Galcatic Heroes Dagobah Christmas set. :) #
• 13:26 @heatherlyshaw Hooray! Now all you need is time and energy. :) #
• 13:28 @AlexBledsoe The Yoda of the Christmas set has a candy cane lightsaber. It's so wonderfully ridiculous. #
• 13:31 @mlvalentine I understand. I don't think we've had a quiet week in months. #

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