BayCon 2014 Recap

This was the first year that I volunteered to participate in the BayCon Writers Workshop. My group was scheduled for Saturday, May 24, from 2:00-5:00pm. I had three stories to critique, so I set aside the weekdays prior to BayCon to read -- and reread -- mark up, and then critique the three stories.

The other "Pros" in my workshop group were Jennifer Carson and Candy Lowe; the three "Writer Participants" were Dana Ardis ("Whetstone"), Susan Mittmann ("Perceiving Gabi"), and Francesco Radicati ("A Fistful of Brifgars").

I understand that the BayCon Writers Workshop follows the Clarion format, but that doesn't mean I have to agree with said format. Each of the three writers was critiqued by the five other workshop participants. We had three minutes apiece, I believe, to provide feedback to the respective writer. That means each writer had to listen to input for fifteen minutes (and from five different people) before responding. Fifteen minutes yields a lot of input. If the writer jots down notes, then the note-taking process interferes with the ongoing critique: one cannot write down what has just been said, or a question in response to what has just been said, and listen to new input at the same time. Fifteen minutes of input is simply overwhelming. Regardless, that is the process, and a writer who participates in the BayCon Writers Workshop must work with it.

The story "A Fistful of Brifgars" by Francesco Radicati was a takeoff, an homage, of the movie A Fistful of Dollars. A delightful story with a surprise ending. Our review of the story yielded a couple of specific improvements that would have given it a rock-solid plot, at which point we felt the story could be submitted for publication. Unfortunately, Francesco had already sent out the story to every print and online magazine we suggested, and the story had been rejected by all of them. (Remember, this was prior to our suggested improvements.) Francesco will now have to dig a bit deeper into second- and even third-tier venues in his effort to have this story published. The lesson learned here? If you are going to have a story critiqued -- workshopped -- do it before you submit the story for publication, not after. Of course, the caveat is that you may not realize the story needs work before you send it out. In that case, once the story has been rejected by two, or even three venues, consider that it might need some rework before sending it out to every venue you can think of.

The fifteen-minute critiquing format aside, the workshop was both an enjoyable experience as well as a learning experience for me and I would be willing to participate again next year, if they'll have me.

Before going any further, I need to give a shout out to the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara Hotel. When I reserve a hotel room, I specifically request a quiet room as well as a feather-free room. I can handle a feather comforter, but I have to avoid feather pillows, otherwise I will experience breathing difficulties throughout the night. So, when I first enter a hotel room, the first thing I do is check the pillows to make sure they are foam, and not feather. Unfortunately, this time around, I neglected to perform that critical check. We (my wife Diane and I) checked in around 11:00am on Saturday, and once in the room immediately unpacked and then prepared to meet someone for lunch (more on this in a bit). We were just about ready to leave the room when the phone rang: the front desk had called. Evidently the staff person realized I had checked in early and the room still had feather pillows and blanket. I requested that just the pillows need to be swapped out and before we had left the room for lunch, housekeeping had shown up to remove the feather pillows. Had the front desk not caught my negligence, I probably wouldn't have discovered the feather pillows until late that night when we were readying for bed, and I would have had to deal with getting foam pillow replacements from the hotel's night shift. So, thank you Hyatt Regency for being aware of your guests' special requests.

My other shout out goes to the staff of the TusCA Restaurant, located within the hotel. I will admit it, I am a chocolate freak. When I travel, I typically take some chocolate with me; but this time I forgot. By Sunday afternoon Diane and I were both craving chocolate, and there was none to be found. So we planned to have some chocolate dessert after dinner. Unfortunately, the dessert menu only had a couple items with a chocolate sauce; we wanted chocolate! When the waiter (my apologies but I do not recall his name) (I seem to be forgetting a lot lately...hmm....) returned to our table for our dessert order, I explained the problem -- chocolate sauce, but no actual chocolate dessert. He said that he just may be able to get us a slice of chocolate cake: Would that do? YES! And, of course, he returned a short while later with a huge, and wonderful, slice of chocolate cake, which Diane and I shared. (Actually, I think she took a couple bites and said enough, and I ate all the rest; remember, I'm the chocolate freak.) Now the waiter could have said something like, I'm sorry that we don't have the dessert you want; I'll bring you your check. But he made the extra effort, which was the icing -- literally and figuratively -- on an excellent meal.

Writing 101: Reality Check

Fair use allows me to use the cover art to this wonderful manga comic Reality Check!, however truth in advertising requires I state that this blog post has absolutely nothing to do with this comic. I just needed a catchy graphic that contained the words "Reality Check" -- and this Rikki Simons comic [full title: Super Information Hijinks: Reality Check!] serves that purpose.

My reality check, the one about which I am writing today, has to do with that point in a writer's life when s/he has to come to grips with the manuscript they've been working on for months, possibly even for years.

In mid-2007 when I was acquiring for Golden Gryphon Press, I received a submissions query from a writer who was a fan of "pulp sword & sorcery" fantasy fiction. He explained that since little fiction had been written recently [at the time of this query] in the style of Robert E. Howard and Lin Carter, among others, he had written his own pulp sword & sorcery novel and was seeking publication.

His email was well-written and quite intriguing; he had my attention, so I replied in kind. In his next response, he attached a copy of the full manuscript, but included a caveat:

...the opening couple of chapters are admittedly the weakest portions of my novel, and I am at a loss as to how to improve them, so if you wouldn't mind reading ahead to chapter three or so where the real action begins, I would greatly appreciate it.

Trust me, this is not something I want to hear as an acquiring editor, that the first two chapters of a submission are weak and the author is at a loss on how to fix it. [Maybe just begin the novel with chapter 3 and weave in the necessary back story from chapters 1 and 2 where appropriate?]

So I read the first three chapters; actually, the novel began with a lengthy prologue, too! The overlong, wordy, winding sentences, that seemed to ramble on and on, nearly drove me to drink (well, at least an excessive amount of coffee)... As a test, I rewrote one paragraph (only two sentences!) without all the unnecessary verbiage and reduced it from 84 words to 77 words. Doesn't seem like much but it made a huge difference in the flow of the paragraph. In another scene he introduced five major characters -- plus a demon -- all with names that weren't...well, they weren't as easy to pronounce as "Conan."

So I sent him a response that included quite a bit of feedback: the paragraph example from above, the overwhelming number of characters in the scene from above, a few examples of sentence structure issues (misplaced phrases), grammar errors, etc. I also suggested that he find himself a local writers group, through a bookstore, or library, or college, so that he could obtain feedback from fellow writers. His response to my email was quite cordial [I had also mentioned that I was leaving Golden Gryphon Press at the end of the year] but not what I had expected:

Thanks for taking the time to evaluate my submission, and best of luck to you, as well, in your future endeavors. As for your suggestion to allow my work to be critiqued by some manner of reader group, I will have to pass, as I generally find writers to be a rather pretentious lot, and I have no desire to associate with such. Just so you know, I wrote this novel for my own personal amusement, and only decided to shop it around to publishers at the behest of friends and family. Obviously, based upon your critique of my work, I should just stick to writing for pleasure as I obviously haven't the necessary skills to compete in the professional market nor do I have the drive to make myself more competitive. Lesson learned.

That, boys and girls, is a reality check.

Conjuring Norman Sperling at Westercon

I attended Westercon 64 in San Jose, California, over the July 4th holiday weekend; the convention was held at the classy Fairmont Hotel in downtown SJ.¹

I was assigned to five panels, and though all the panels went well (despite the lack of necessary equipment at one panel and two panelist no-shows at another), I was a bit disappointed in the attendance, and not just at the panels, but during the overall con as well. The dealers room seemed nearly empty during each of my visits; I saw very few people throughout the weekend that I knew, and there wasn't much of a "bar-con" going on either. Of course, a band played in the bar area Saturday and Sunday nights, which made it near impossible to hold any kind of conversation without shouting, even to the person sitting next to you.

And though I participated in all five of these panels, there is only one that I wish to mention -- my first panel on Saturday morning, July 2, which ran from 10:00AM until 11:30AM in the Regency Ballroom 2. Here's the official description, along with the names of the other panelists:

Fantasy Houses with SF Furniture in Them

If there's magic in it, the book is fantasy, right? But what if the magical power is on tap like water and you pay a monthly bill to the city magic utility, as in Walter John Williams' Metropolitan? What if magic is described, studied, and practiced in the language of physics and software, as in Charles Stross' The Atrocity Archives? Is this a new genre, a hybrid genre, or still just fantasy?

Panelists: Chaz Brenchley, Paul Carlson, Lisa Goldstein, Marty Halpern, and Deborah Ross (Moderator).

Since I had acquired and edited Charles Stross's The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue for Golden Gryphon Press, and had worked on the third novel in the series, The Fuller Memorandum, for Ace Books, this seemed like an ideal panel for me. [Note: If you care to indulge, I've written a lengthy blog post about my work on these three Stross novels.] But, as it turned out, it wasn't an easy panel. For such a panel, one feels the need to define "fantasy" and "science fiction" in order to determine the room (environment) and the type of furniture, so to speak. And, of course, a discussion of this nature can go round and round and round. But it was still an enjoyable panel discussion, at least for me. And I had an opportunity to meet three panelists for the first time -- Chaz, Paul, and Deborah -- and re-meet, as it were, Lisa Goldstein, whose wonderful new novel The Uncertain Places, I proofed and copyedited for Tachyon Publications.

But I have another reason for sharing this event with you.

Alien Contact Anthology -- Story #9

If you are new to this blog and are wondering what's up with this Alien Contact anthology (forthcoming from Night Shade Books in November) and this "Story #9" -- you may want to begin here. On the other hand, you could always read on and return to here later....

"The Gold Bug" by Orson Scott Card



This story originally appeared in the July 2007 issue of Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, an online subscription-only zine -- and is approximately 11,600 words in length.

"The Gold Bug" is part of the Enderverse, the series of stories and novels of Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, which began with the 1977 novelette "Ender's Game," later expanded into the Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel Ender's Game, published in 1985. Wikipedia maintains a chronology of the Enderverse, showing the relationship between the eleven novels and thirteen stories in the series.

I asked Orson Scott Card for some thoughts/background on the story:

When I started my online magazine, Intergalactic Medicine Show, I hoped to promote it by including a new story set in the Ender's Game universe in every issue. That worked for a while -- as long as I could come up with stories I could be proud of. But after a while, I learned that I can't come up with stories on demand.

Then the launch of a comic book series led to the idea of doing an original story in the Ender's Game universe as an original comic book. For me, the comic book form requires that there be a much stronger visual component than in narrative fiction. So I began to think of ways to put humans in contact with Formic technology.

Only instead of having machine-based tech, I thought: What if the Formics did their mining by using specially bred animals? Abandoned machines rust and decay, but what do abandoned animals do? I had my visual, and then searched for (and found) my character.

But I didn't write it as a comic book. I know how to write comic book scripts, but it doesn't give me the sprawling room that I'm used to in fiction. Instead, I wrote this story, exactly as it appears here, and another writer -- Jake Black -- adapted the comic-book script. So in a way, I "novelized" the comic book before it existed.

Then, in writing Ender in Exile, I used characters and situations from this story as part of what happens while Ender Wiggin is on his way to the colony he is going to govern. So this story is an integral part of the Ender saga. But I also hope that even if you know nothing about Ender Wiggin, this story will work on its own merits. Because, ultimately, it's just a cool sci-fi idea.

More Baycon with Picacio

I wanted to follow-up on my earlier May 21 blog post, at which time I announced that I would be interviewing and chatting one-on-one with John Picacio, the Artist Guest of Honor at this year's Baycon, on Saturday, May 28, at 2:30 PM.

Though I spent a couple worrisome hours prior to the event, ensuring that the room was set up correctly -- and on time -- for the Flickr slide show I had prepared, thanks to the ballroom's tech support crew, the slide show worked famously, and the event did indeed start on time as well. (Thanks, all!)

My wife Diane took a few pics of John and me on the stage during the event. (Note that the photos are a bit dark as the ballroom lights had been turned down for the slide presentation.):



Artist John Picacio (right) and Marty Halpern at Baycon 2011:
Artist GOH Interview & Slide Show



In the photo above, the graphic on the screen to the far left is the postcard that John had handed me (in lieu of a business card) when we first met, at the 2000 World Fantasy Convention in Corpus Christi, Texas. You can read more about that first meeting -- and the end result of that meeting -- in my recap of that convention.

To help set the scene prior to the start of the panel, I taped dust jacket flats along the edge of the tables on the stage; these flats were for books that both John and I had worked on together during my time with Golden Gryphon Press.

Artist John Picacio and Marty Halpern at Baycon 2011:
John listens to a question from the audience

I had prepared a Flickr slide show totaling 29 graphics, including preliminary drawings, full wraparound cover art, and the final book covers with typography. As John and I chatted about each book -- the history, the process, along with anecdotes and a few quotes from past emails (as well as a few secrets that may never be revealed again!) -- the audience viewed the graphics for each of the eleven books, and one poster.

Pictured on the screen in this second photo is the triptych covers for the trade paperback reprint editions of Jeffrey Ford's Well-Built City trilogy: The Physiognomy, Memoranda, and The Beyond.




Artist John Picacio and Marty Halpern at Baycon 2011:
John autographs books at the end of the event

 

In this last photo, I get clean-up duty while John signs a few autographs, before he had to rush off for his next panel. First in line for autographs is my old friend Michael Tallan.

A good time was had by all. Well, at least I had a good time! Spending time with John Picacio is always good (grand, in fact), and to be able to share that time with others makes it all even more special. Afterward, at various times throughout the convention, I had people approach me and express sentiments such as it was the best panel they attended, or they appreciated seeing the sketches and not just the final cover art, and so on. It doesn't get any better than that!

Cheers, John; and thank you as well for a delightful event!

Writing 101: Thog's Masterclass at BayCon

If you've attended any of my convention panels having to do with the craft of writing, then you have undoubtedly heard me refer to Thog's Masterclass.

Who is Thog? According to Thog.org, "Thog the Mighty, a not terribly bright barbarian hero, is the creation of John Grant (Paul Barnett) in his 'Lone Wolf' fantasy novels. Thog first appeared in The Claws of the Helgedad (1991)."

Thog's Masterclass is a regular feature of David Langford's zine Ansible, enshrining prose gems primarily from science fiction and fantasy publications: "It is to be assumed that the chosen selections are stuff which brutish Thog really likes." The site goes on to explain how the tradition began at the 1993 UK EasterCon, when David edited the con's daily newsletter with Paul Barnett's assistance. I'll leave you to further investigate Thog's history should you so desire.... (and more on Ansible¹ later in this blog post.)

Over Memorial Day Weekend I attended BayCon, an annual San Francisco Bay Area convention that is now in its twenty-ninth year. And this year I participated once again in the Iron Editors workshop: writers present the first 2 pages of a story or novel for review and critique by the panel of editors. The author's name need not be included on the pages, so while the writing may be anonymous, the critique is public. This allows other writers to learn from the critiques as well. In fact, writers may attend the workshop without having submitted anything for review.

Along with moderator Kent Brewster, this year's panel of editors also included Jeremy Lassen, Deirdre Saoirse Moen, the Kollin Brothers, and Dario Ciriello. The review process is quite hectic, to say the least. Kent likes to keep things moving so that a marked up submission is always on the display screen and open to discussion. Often I'll be working on one submission and have to stop what I'm doing to comment on my mark ups on the submission that is being presented. Consequently not all submissions are reviewed by every editor.

Usually a Thog's Masterclass-worthy sentence will arise from the heaps of paper, which will provide me with the opportunity to introduce the audience to Ansible and Thog. Due to the hectic nature of the workshop I didn't have an opportunity to write down the specific sentence, so this one will have to do (it is similar in content). This sentence is from a previously published story that was part of a collection that I acquired and published with Golden Gryphon Press. The author and story shall remain anonymous, to protect the guilty.

...his face: a strong jaw, cheekbones ruddy with cold, softened by a well-proportioned nose, and eyes which skipped from aisle to counter to shelf like pebbles glancing over water.

The boldface is, of course, my addition to highlight the content that I know Thog would really like. When I brought this sentence, and Thog's Masterclass, to the author's attention, the author chose to rewrite the text before including the story in the collection. But this isn't always the case. In Liz Williams's Detective Inspector Chen series of novels, you'll find sentences like this one:

Sung's eyebrows crawled slowly up his broad forehead.

In the Chen novels, Liz wants that stylized, exaggerated content; a better word might be "campy." And as the editor for all five (so far) of her Detective Inspector Chen novels, I'm right there with Liz on this. So story content is dependent on your style, your goal, what you wish to create within the story. Just be aware that these types of sentences just may find themselves in some future entry of Thog's Masterclass.

Savoring Baycon with Picacio

I briefly recounted my initial meeting with artist John Picacio in a previous blog post, in which I share some thoughts on the 2000 World Fantasy Convention.

However, if you'd like to hear that story -- and a few others -- up close and personal, come join John and me at BayCon 2011, Memorial Day weekend, at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara (next to the Santa Clara Convention Center and across the street from Great America).

I have the honor and privilege of interviewing and chatting one-on-one with Artist Guest of Honor John Picacio on Saturday, May 28, beginning at 2:30PM in the Grand Ballroom E & F. (I've never interviewed a GOH before so I'm a wee bit nervous about this, but let's not tell anyone, okay?)

John and I have worked together, as artist and editor, respectively, on nearly a dozen projects for books by Richard Bowes, Jeffrey Ford, George Alec Effinger, Bruce McAllister, and Lucius Shepard.

So if you're in the neighborhood, come join us for an artistic treat!



Full artwork for Two Trains Running by Lucius Shepard
(Golden Gryphon Press, 2004)
copyright © 2003 by John Picacio

Tim Powers: Not So Strange Itineraries

I spent nine days in Southern California -- Orange County, specifically¹ -- returning home in the early evening on Saturday, September 18. What with preparing for the trip, the trip itself, and then the necessary catching-up on business projects upon my return, well, that's why little has been heard from me for these past three weeks.

A wee bit of background (and I'll try not to bore you) on why I was in SoCal for those nine days: My mother had her knee replaced eighteen years ago. That knee had deteriorated, and it finally gave out on her about two and a half months ago. The knee was reset in the hospital, then my mother was carted off the next day to a rehab facility for two weeks (where I visited her during one of those weeks, as I previously reported in this blog). Unfortunately, four weeks later, the knee dislocated again, so the mum underwent full knee replacement surgery. The surgery went well, and she is now recovering in that same rehab facility yet again. I arrived just prior to her surgery on Friday, September 10, and stayed through the following week.

The rehab facility is on Old Tustin Avenue in Santa Ana -- just across the street and about a half-block away from Benjie's, a New York-style deli, and one of only two such delis (the other being Katella Deli in Los Alamitos) in the OC.

I have only eaten at Benjie's once before, and promised myself that I would make it back there for dinner at least once before departing SoCal this time around. I had three evenings from which to chose: Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday (September 15-17). I chose that Wednesday evening because, to put it bluntly, I was starving. By the time I had dinner at 7:00pm, it had been eleven hours since I had last eaten -- and you must be starving in order to consume completely one of Benjie's humongous "hot corned beef on rye" sandwiches.

So the waitress seats me, and I'm not paying much attention to the surrounding environment: I'm tired (sat with the mum in the rehab facility for eight straight hours), I'm hungry, I need to use the facilities, especially to wash my face and hands.

A short while later, my dinner is served. About the time that I've eaten nearly half the sandwich -- which, by the way, was wonderful -- motion to my left catches my eye. I automatically turn my head to look, and to my surprise, I recognize Tim Powers walking down the aisle toward the front of the restaurant.

I'm sitting in a booth; in the aisle next to mine (to my left), one booth back I now see Serena Powers, Tim's wife. When I had been seated, Tim's back was toward me, and he was sitting across from his wife, thus blocking my view of her.

So I waited for Tim to return, and then I stood and greeted him in the aisle before he reached his seat. Tim recognized me, but I was out of context and thus I had to remind him of where we had last seen one another, when we had last worked together.

Tachyon Publications released the long-out-of-print The Stress of Her Regard in August 2008. Toward the end of 2007 through February 2008, I scanned in that entire book -- 180,000 words! -- cleaned up said scan, and then copyedited the manuscript. The book that I had scanned had an inordinate number of typos and formatting errors, all of which I hope I caught. Tim also provided a dozen or so changes that he wanted included as well in this new edition, so I would say that the Tachyon Publications edition of The Stress of Her Regard is undoubtedly the author's preferred text. Tim did tell me that I did a "great job" on the book, so I'll simply take his word for it.

A few months later, at BayCon 2008 -- in which Tim Powers was the Writer Guest of Honor -- we participated in a panel discussion² entitled "Is the Short Story Dead?" on Friday, May 23, at 4:00pm (along with panelists Irene Radford and Tony Todaro). And as I'm sure you have surmised already, we all agreed that the short story is indeed not dead! In fact, even in 2008, the genre saw an increase in online magazines as well as an increase in anthologies, and though some  'zines (online and print) have ceased publication since then, there have been others to take their place.

Prior to these events in 2008, I copyedited Tim's short story collection, Strange Itineraries, also from Tachyon Publications. I completed work on this book in February 2005, and it was published in July of that year.

As I said, I could have chosen any one of three evenings to eat at Benjie's; but I chose that evening, Wednesday, which just happened to be the evening that Tim and Serena Powers were having dinner at the same restaurant. (They were also with a third person whom I didn't recognize.) It's just another example of how very small the SF/F community really is. I live in San Jose in Northern California, Tim lives in San Bernardino in Southern California, and there we were at the same restaurant in Santa Ana on this one particular Wednesday evening.

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Footnotes:

¹ Orange County is one of my least favorite places. Though I spent a number of years growing up there (age thirteen through high school graduation), I got the hell out as soon as I could. I returned for a few years simply because of the booming job market, but then left (forever) when I was offered a job in Silicon Valley. Over the past twenty-five or so years, I visit the OC at most once a year, unless a family emergency or a business opportunity (e.g. the 2006 L.A. WorldCon in Anaheim) demands my presence otherwise.

² Note to Tim Powers fans: Tim is a doodler! When he sits on a convention panel, and there is a notepad in front of him (typically one provided by the hotel), he will doodle. Page after page of doodles, on as many pages as the notepad has. And best of all, he always leaves the notepad on the table at the end of the panel discussion. So, feel free to snag said notepad once Tim leaves the table. You won't find any doodles as elaborate (or colored) as the one below, but this will give you an idea of what you can expect:

This sketch, entitled "Blackbeard Angry," appears on the half title page of my first edition copy of On Stranger Tides (Ace Books, 1987). Tim did the sketch itself at the 1998 World Fantasy Convention, Halloween weekend, in Monterey, California.  Upon completing the sketch, Tim told me that he would have colored it had he had some colored pencils. So, the following year, at the World Fantasy Con in Providence, Rhode Island, I accommodated Tim by providing him with a set of colored pencils! The colors in this scan, unfortunately, don't appear as bright and bold as they actually are.

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BayCon 2010 Programming Schedule

Baycon touts itself as "the largest science fiction and fantasy convention in the San Francisco Bay Area"; sadly, it is currently the only annual convention in the Bay Area.

In the last 15 or so years, I've only missed a few BayCons. I recall two of those misses in recent years... The convention used to be held at the DoubleTree Hotel (formerly the Red Lion) in San Jose. The first year that the hotel had begun charging for parking, I wasn't scheduled for any panels (my fault: I had changed email addresses in the fall of the previous year, and neglected to contact BayCon with my change of e-address, so they were unable to reach me) -- which turned out to be a very good thing. I arrived at the hotel Saturday morning, and the hotel, in their infinite wisdom, had limited the available parking in their lot; I simply couldn't find a place to park, so, in frustration, I backed the car up (there wasn't even enough open space to drive through/around to the exit), and left; I didn't return to the convention that weekend. Fortunately, the convention site has since changed to the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara (next to the Santa Clara Convention Center) so parking is no longer an issue. I also missed last year's convention due to a serious illness in my extended family that necessitated a trip to Southern California, so even though I was scheduled to participate at BayCon, I unfortunately had to bail a day or two before the con.¹

But this year, assuming all goes well through the remainder of today, as well as tomorrow, I will yet again be participating in BayCon. Here is my schedule for Saturday and Sunday:

4:00 PM Saturday, San Tomas 811:
Publishing Credits: What Matters, What Doesn't, and Why

Not all publishing credits are created equal -- some will boost a career while others will injure it. Which are which and why are they in each category? And how can a career downer become a career booster?

Panelists: Marty Halpern (M), A. Kovacs, Nick Mamatas, Jay Ridler, Scott Sigler, Doug Berry

10:00 AM Sunday, Camino Real 826: Iron Editors

Normally, any "writers’ workshop" is a private, behind-closed-doors affair, inviting rumors on ancient and tribal rites involving Styrofoam, marshmallows, and duct tape. This panel is designed to bring to the public what the process looks and sounds like. Using submissions from the audience members, our panelists will quickly mark up and present a critique. All of our Iron Editors have been published themselves, and have a very good idea of what a story needs to get published. To participate bring up to 2 double-spaced pages of creative writing either to the panel or drop it off in the box at the Info Desk. You must be present to have your submission critiqued! The more -- the merrier!! Also, non-submitting Audience Members are more than welcome.

The Iron Editors: Kent Brewster (M), Marty Halpern, Tom Saidak, Lori White, Doug Berry

2:00 PM Sunday, Alameda 105: Judging a Cover by Its Book

Many book covers are created with little to no information about the story it will be attached to. Can you tell a good book by the cover? And how much of that is the artist's fault? When did an artist’s rendering convince you to buy a book? And how many times did you regret it?

Clare Bell, Marty Halpern, Wanda Kurtcu (M), Lee Moyer, Doug Berry

So, that's my schedule for this weekend; fortunately not a too-busy one. I do plan on pulling together some information, books, and cover art tomorrow, to use as reference material for the three panels. I will also be at the con hotel for at least the first half of Monday, which allows me to relax a bit and meet up with anyone, should the need arise.

I hope to see you at the convention this weekend. Check out any (or all) of my panels if the subject matter interests you, and be sure to stop by, say hello, and introduce yourself.

By the way, though my co-edited anthology Is Anybody Out There? isn't officially released until June 1, I will have copies available for sale at the con. I'm trying to work out a deal to have them available in the dealers room, but if not -- or regardless -- I will personally have copies available.

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Footnotes:

¹ When I missed last year's BayCon, I also missed my meet up for lunch/dinner with author Kage Baker (and her sister Kathleen Bartholomew), which I wrote about previously in my blog post "In the Company of Kage Baker."

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"Permanent Fatal Errors" by Jay Lake (Part 1 of 4)

Continuing my celebration -- and promotion -- of Is Anybody Out There? (Daw Books) my co-edited anthology with Nick Gevers, to be published on June 1, here is another story from the book.

Though I was already quite familiar with his work, the first time I personally met Jay Lake was at BayCon 2005, May 27-30, in San Jose, California. Jay was the Writer Guest of Honor; I was a lowly panelist. We actually met on Saturday the 28th, at 11:30 a.m., in the Carmel Room of the DoubleTree Hotel, for a panel entitled "Editing an Anthology." Later that day I showed up at another of Jay's panels, this time as a member of the audience, so that I could heckle him from the back of the room (just kidding). That second panel was on "First Novels"; I was still acquiring and editing for Golden Gryphon Press at the time, and thus in the market for first novels.

Just short of a year later, on June 22, 2006, I sent Jay an email to let him know that I would be editing his novel Trial of Flowers (Book 1 in The City Imperishable series) for Night Shade Books. If the "New Weird" subgenre is your cup of tea, so to speak, then you'll find few other books that are more "new weird" than The City Imperishable series. Anyhow, I just did a rough count, and at least 90 emails passed between us from the time I first started working on Jay's manuscript until I turned in the final copyedits for the page proofs and the book cover on September 18. When I first began editing, email was already the standard operating procedure; I don't know how folks did this job in the days before email. Unfortunately, I don't see Jay as often as I would like (I believe the last time, albeit briefly, was the 2009 World Fantasy Convention, again in San Jose), but I look forward to sharing another panel with him in the near future.

Jay's contribution to Is Anybody Out There? is a bit of mystery and a lot of science fiction entitled "Permanent Fatal Errors." About this story, Jay writes: "'Permanent Fatal Errors' is part of the Sunspin cycle, an as-yet-unwritten space opera trilogy I've planned as my next major project after I conclude the Green trilogy. This story explores a critical piece of worldbuilding that is a central plot question in the novels. The story takes place about 1,400 years before the narrative present of the novels, when the lessons learned by Maduabuchi during and after the action of 'Permanent Fatal Errors' have been lost. I remember them, and rediscovering them will be an important aspect of the larger story. It was a pleasure to explore the question of where the aliens have gone as part of Is Anybody Out There?"

Permanent Fatal Errors
by Jay Lake

Maduabuchi St. Macaria had never before traveled with an all-Howard crew. Mostly his kind kept to themselves, even under the empty skies of a planet. Those who did take ship almost always did so in a mixed or all-baseline human crew.

Not here, not aboard the threadneedle starship Inclined Plane. Seven crew including him, captained by a very strange woman who called herself Peridot Smith. All Howard Institute immortals. A new concept in long-range exploration, multi-decade interstellar missions with ageless crew, testbedded in orbit around the brown dwarf Tiede 1. That's what the newsfeeds said, anyway.

His experience was far more akin to a violent soap opera. Howards really weren't meant to be bottled up together. It wasn't in the design templates. Socially well-adjusted people didn't generally self-select to outlive everyone they'd ever known.

Even so, Maduabuchi was impressed by the welcome distraction of Tiede 1. Everyone else was too busy cleaning their weapons and hacking the internal comms and cams to pay attention to their mission objective. Not him.

Inclined Plane boasted an observation lounge. The hatch was coded "Observatory," but everything of scientific significance actually happened within the instrumentation woven into the ship's hull and the diaphanous energy fields stretching for kilometers beyond. The lounge was a folly of naval architecture, a translucent bubble fitted to the hull, consisting of roughly a third of a sphere of optically corrected artificial diamond grown to nanometer symmetry and smoothness in microgravity. Chances were good that in a catastrophe the rest of the ship would be shredded before the bubble would so much as be scratched.

There had been long, heated arguments in the galley, with math and footnotes and thumb breaking, over that exact question.

Maduabuchi liked to sit in the smartgel bodpods and let the ship perform a three-sixty massage while he watched the universe. The rest of the crew were like cats in a sack, too busy stalking the passageways and each other to care what might be outside the window. Here in the lounge one could see creation, witness the birth of stars, observe the death of planets, or listen to the quiet, empty cold of hard vacuum. The silence held a glorious music that echoed inside his head.

Maduabuchi wasn't a complete idiot -- he'd rigged his own cabin with self-powered screamer circuits and an ultrahigh voltage capacitor. That ought to slow down anyone with delusions of traps.

Tiede 1 loomed outside. It seemed to shimmer as he watched, as if a starquake were propagating. The little star belied the ancient label of "brown dwarf." Stepped down by filtering nano that coated the diamond bubble, the surface glowed a dull reddish orange; a coal left too long in a campfire, or a jewel in the velvet setting of night. Only 300,000 kilometers in diameter, and about five percent of a solar mass, it fell in that class of objects ambiguously distributed between planets and stars.

It could be anything, he thought. Anything.

A speck of green tugged at Maduabuchi's eye, straight from the heart of the star.

Green? There were no green emitters in nature.

"Amplification," he whispered. The nano filters living on the outside of the diamond shell obligingly began to self-assemble a lens. He controlled the aiming and focus with eye movements, trying to find whatever it was he had seen. Another ship? Reflection from a piece of rock or debris?

Excitement chilled Maduabuchi despite his best intentions to remain calm. What if this were evidence of the long-rumored but never-located alien civilizations that should have abounded in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way?

He scanned for twenty minutes, quartering Tiede 1's face as minutely as he could without direct access to the instrumentation and sensors carried by Inclined Plane. The ship's AI was friendly and helpful, but outside its narrow and critical competencies in managing the threadneedle drive and localspace navigation, no more intelligent than your average dog, and so essentially useless for such work. He'd need to go to the Survey Suite to do more.

Maduabuchi finally stopped staring at the star and called up a deck schematic. "Ship, plot all weapons discharges or unscheduled energy expenditures within the pressurized cubage."

The schematic winked twice, but nothing was highlighted. Maybe Captain Smith had finally gotten them all to stand down. None of Maduabuchi's screamers had gone off, either, though everyone else had long since realized he didn't play their games.

Trusting that no one had hacked the entire tracking system, he cycled the lock and stepped into the passageway beyond. Glancing back at Tiede 1 as the lock irised shut, Maduabuchi saw another green flash.

He fought back a surge of irritation. The star was not mocking him.

* * *

Is Anybody Out There? -- First Review

From the April 25 edition of the UK's Sunday Times Online: "The aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out" -- or so says Stephen Hawking, a British theoretical physicist, who, in 2009, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. More from the Times: "[Hawking] has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist -- but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all that it can to avoid any contact." These "suggestions" are from Stephen Hawking's Universe, his new documentary series on the Discovery Channel, which began its broadcast run earlier this month. Hawking goes on to say that making contact with extraterrestrials is "a little too risky. If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans."

So, whereas we're all hoping that our first contact with alien races goes something like E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Hawking portends a scenario that is more on the order of Independence Day. As he says elsewhere in this Times article: "We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach."

Sort of gives you those warm fuzzies all over, don't it? But, until such time as we actually experience (if ever) that first contact with an alien life form, we can only use the tools available to us to extrapolate (or, best case, guess) as to what that encounter may be like.

Which brings me to the fifteen stories -- from seventeen authors -- included in my forthcoming anthology Is Anybody Out There? (co-edited with Nick Gevers) from Daw Books. The official publication date is June 1, but I hope to have copies available at BayCon, to be held Memorial Day Weekend. And please excuse this shameless self-promotion: If you click on the Is Anybody Out There? book icon on the left, you will be painlessly transported to the realm of amazon.com, where you may purchase a copy of said book, if you so choose. [End shameless self-promotion.]

In 1950, Enrico Fermi postulated a contradiction (aka paradox): If there are uncountable galaxies within our universe, each containing uncountable planets, and some percentage of those planets are habitable (by our human definition of "habitable"), then why is there no evidence -- at least none that we have found and understood so far -- of alien civilizations? And it is those eleven words that I have set off by em-dashes and placed in italics that are the key to this paradox. The evidence may be out there, but our scientists and researchers simply do not understand it¹. The stories in this anthology attempt to answer the Fermi Paradox. Some of these stories utilize current science; others bend and twist that science; and more than one story is pure SWAG².

In previous blog posts I have waxed poetic on the genesis of this anthology; on the contents of this anthology; and on the cover and back cover text. And in this blog post I would like to take this opportunity to share with you the first review of Is Anybody Out There?

The review -- by the inestimable Gardner Dozois -- appears in the May 2010 issue of Locus Magazine. Just on the extremely rare chance that you are not familiar with Mr. Dozois, let me quote a few lines from his entry in Wikipedia: "...best known as an editor, winning a record 15 Hugo Awards for Best Professional Editor (having won nearly every year between 1988 and his retirement from Asimov's in 2004)....[and] the editor of the anthology series The Year's Best Science Fiction, published annually since 1984."

The Perfect Sentence

For twenty-seven years, BayCon has been the mainstay of Bay Area (that's the San Francisco Bay Area for those not familiar with the area) Fandom. I had hoped to post here my BayCon guest participation schedule, and then follow that up with some form of convention report. But, alas, family responsibilities have necessitated my cancelling out of BayCon, renting a car (my own car is nearly sixteen years old, and I don't like to push my luck), and making the nearly 400-mile trip to Southern Cal. A helluva trip when it's only for a total of three days! And with no net access during those three days, it will feel like a cosmic return to the age of stone knives and bear claws!

Regardless, my sincere apologies to BayCon for having to bail with only two days notice. But I did check the programming schedule, and the panels to which I had been assigned will still be well-represented. And, I suspect, I will not really be missed. Though I will miss seeing author Kage Baker (and sister Kathleen), with whom I always meet, for lunch or dinner, whenever we attend the same convention. Kage and I go back a handful of years: I sent her an email on May 5, 2001, in which I introduced myself, sharing with her some of the books I had worked on for Golden Gryphon Press, and then expressed my enthusiasm for a collection of her Company stories. Much to my delight, that collection, Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers, was published in hardcover in the fall of 2002. The book sold out its first print run of 3,000 copies in one month -- that's right, four weeks! -- had a second print run that same year, and was then released in a trade paperback edition in 2004. Working on this book was a pure joy, and I couldn't have asked for a more gracious, more knowledgeable author to work with. Thank you, Kage!

But none of this is really the purpose of this particular blog entry. What I want to do is share with you some articles I had written, but to do so requires a bit of history. (Those familiar with my previous blog posts/essays know that you're always going to get a "bit of history" -- but not a history lesson! -- in my blog entries.)

In early 2004, when I realized that I would most likely be freelancing for the foreseeable future, I began investigating additional resources and opportunities. This is when I learned about the California Writers Club ("The nation's oldest professional club for writers"), and discovered that the organization had a chapter in my area: South Bay Writers. I began attending the monthly meetings beginning in March 2004. The group met once a month at Harry's Hofbrau in San Jose. The club actually had a nice setup: the meetings were held in a large auditorium-like room at the rear of the restaurant. You checked in, paid your fee, and the registration person handed you a chit good for a set amount in the restaurant. Harry's is buffet style, so you would move through the food line, selecting your items, which would be served by a restaurant staff person; at the cash register, you turned in your chit and paid any difference (typically not more than two or three dollars, and that's only if you were a big eater and selected a dessert).