Conventions2024-03-27T17:39:22Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/tags/conventions/D. MoonfireCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 InternationalICON 44 Retrospective2019-11-12T06:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2019/11/12/icon-retrospective/Two weeks ago, I went to [ICON](https://iowa-icon.com/) for four days of fun and a lot of panels. Here are my thoughts and a few observations.
<p>Two weeks ago, I went to <a href="https://iowa-icon.com/">ICON</a> for four days of fun and a lot of panels. Here are my thoughts and a few observations.</p>
<h1>Writing Workshop</h1>
<p>Probably the biggest thing was going to be me starting to do a writing workship in the same model that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Zucker_Reichert">Mickey Zucker Reichert</a> used to run for a lot of previous years. She had moved but I had gotten so much feedback that I figured I could continue, at least in spirit.</p>
<p>No one signed up.</p>
<p>I tried to make a few announcements, a number of people said they wanted to come, but I must have made it too difficult to join or it was just at a time that didn't work for anyone else.</p>
<p>I'm going to try next year though. One of my plans is to create a landing page for the program. Also, I talked to some others and they are going to direct writers more suited toward my critique style for the next year.</p>
<p>I also needed to work with communication a little better. I suspect I didn't get enough word out that I was running the program.</p>
<h1>Typewriter Press</h1>
<p>Because of guilt at not publishing a book, I didn't get a table for <a href="https://typewriter.press/">Typewriter Press</a> this year. I felt guilty because it had been three years since I had published a book and two years since anything fantasy or sci-fi had been published.</p>
<p>Next year I'm planning though, but it looks like I'm going to have 2-4 new books to sell.</p>
<h1>Thursday</h1>
<p>On Thursday was the author signing at Barnes and Noble. This was a smaller group this year, only six tables or so with less than a dozen authors. As usually, it looked like everyone was having fun and I saw that there were some sales.</p>
<p>I sold one book, but they didn't ask for it to be signed. I hoped they enjoyed it.</p>
<p>Then I got a chance to go to dinner after the signing. This was the first time I actually did it and I had a lot of fun.</p>
<p>But that is when things started to go wrong. Our original plans were to get a babysitter for the boys so my spouse and I could enjoy the weekend. However, she got sick and our alternatives were enjoying a Girl's Weekend Off, so backups 1-3 were effectively unavailable.</p>
<p>Because I had panels scheduled, it meant that SMWM had to stay at home with the children and I was alone. This put a palor over the entire weekend and required me to cancel my events for the next weekend too.</p>
<h1>Friday</h1>
<p>Because of a lack of baby sitter, I ended up staying at home on Friday.</p>
<h1>Saturday</h1>
<h2>Cassie Leigh Reading</h2>
<p>I love listening to Cassie read and this was one of the first events I could show up for. She's a joy, both as a pin-up, her style, and her romance. If you get a chance, I highly recommend you listen to her.</p>
<p><em>I do publish her books.</em></p>
<h2>Author Meet and Greet</h2>
<p>The Author Meet and Greet is just where the authors all gather in the large room, set up shop, and just talk to anyone who comes by.</p>
<p>I was with <a href="http://weirdauthor.com/">Shannon Ryan</a> and we talked shop between guests. I also published his book and he's my editor for my books. It does sounds like we have some good things coming for both of us.</p>
<p>I actually sold a book there… which was surprising because I had neither the cash or my Square reader, but I lucked out.</p>
<h2>D. Moonfire Reading</h2>
<p>When it comes to reading, I'm always afraid that no one is going to show up. I was lucky, unlike most of the authors it appears,, and friends show up.</p>
<p>I read the first two chapters of <a href="https://fedran.com/may-i-lead-this-dance/">May I Lead This Dance</a> as Shannon's insistence and got to show off my world-building website, <a href="https://fedran.com/">Fedran</a>. Little would I know that the relatively massive cross-linking and details of that website would carry me nicely through the weekend.</p>
<p>Overall, I felt pretty good coming out of this.</p>
<h2>World-Building 101</h2>
<p>Fedran came up in this panel. One of the panelist had much of the same approach as me, coming from physical sciences and building up from there.</p>
<p>I talked about my difficulties in creating “same” cultures (ones that spoke, acted, or operated the same). This has always been a problem for me, not only because I'm worried about stumbling into something insulting because of my colonizer blind spots (I'm white and male-presenting, I have all the racism).</p>
<p>I also have trouble writing straight males who are bigots and racists. So we talked about that complexity and how to get around it.</p>
<h2>Writing Workshop</h2>
<p>So, coming into the convention, I knew no one had signed up. Yet I still wandered into an empty room and sat down. Why? Because life has some of the most interesting occurrences when you just give it a chance.</p>
<p>Cassie joined me and we talked about life and everything going on. She knows about my feelings of failure (she effectively called it “impostor syndrome” but I can't see that) and I like talking.</p>
<p>Then someone else came in, just to see what was going on. So, through random discussions, we started talking about wars: Cassie's character set in WW2, my writing a world war for Fedran, and this new person's experiences.</p>
<p>Then someone else showed up and we all talked about writing and creating and having a grand time.</p>
<h2>Erotic Reading</h2>
<p>As <a href="https://fedran.com/second-hand-dresses/">Second-Hand Dresses</a> has helpfully pointed out, I like my romance on the spicy side. Last year, I was talking about it and I got asked to join the erotic reading.</p>
<p>I found a “choice” selection of a <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Eliza-Raptor-tSade-ebook/dp/B00IM0J0HY">dino porn</a> novel and read the first chapter.</p>
<p>We also heard <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Fifty-Slaves-Grays-Alien-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B00FT9UFMU">Fifty Slaves of Grey</a> about alien abductions and an abridged version of <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Oppressed-Butt-Inclusive-Holiday-Coffee-ebook/dp/B017UW5POQ">Oppressed In The Butt By My Inclusive Holiday Coffee Cups</a> which was amazingly fun to hear.</p>
<p>Apparently my reading was “terrible” but two other people said they had to buy it, so I guess I picked a good one for a fun time.</p>
<p>Unlike the GenCon adult panel, this wasn't creepy at all. There was laughter and fun and a couple rounds of “Cards Against Trek”.</p>
<h1>Sunday</h1>
<h2>Erin Casey Reading</h2>
<p>I meandered in to hear Erin Casey read some of her novel. We also got into talking about writing techniques and it was fun.</p>
<h2>The Value of Romance in SF/F</h2>
<p>This was a panel that I wasn't included on however Cassie's other panelist wasn't able to make it for various reasons. Cassie knows that I'm a life-long romance reader plus I seem to be writing a lot of it on my own (Fedran, of course), so I hopped on.</p>
<p>I had a ball.</p>
<p>I love romance in sci-fi and fantasy and this was a place to talk about some of my favorite tropes, the differences between romance-with-fantasy and fantasy-with-romance and how readers sometimes are looking for one but not the other.</p>
<p>Cassie gave me major props, which made my day.</p>
<h2>Writing Outside Personal Demographics</h2>
<p>This was my last panel and it was a more difficult one. While I'm comfortable writing about different sexualities, different cultures was harder and an area I'm not entirely comfortable with. I leaned heavily on what I learned from <a href="https://writingtheother.com/">Writing the Other</a> which I recommended more than once (and to all my readers).</p>
<p>Most, it came down to:</p>
<ul>
<li>Read tons by different demographics.</li>
<li>Realize there is no such thing as a mono-culture.</li>
<li>Sensitivity readers are not permission.</li>
<li>Be respectful as you can.</li>
<li>You'll make mistakes.</li>
</ul>
<p>I hope I gave some good advice. Sadly, those are the same ones that make me worry about my own writing, but I can only hope that I do the right thing.</p>
<h1>Book Bums</h1>
<p>Usually the week after ICON is the Book Bums down in West Liberty. I've been going to this lovely one-day event but I couldn't. With SMWM having to watch the boys all weekend, plus not being able to spend time with them, I feel that doing it two weeks in a row would have been excessive.</p>
<p>I canceled, which is a bummer. I hope to make it next year.</p>
<h1>Conclusion</h1>
<p>This wasn't my best year. I had fun and I talked a <em>lot</em> about romance and world-building which are two very fun topics. I got to meet with friends, chatted for hours, and had as much fun as I could with SMWM at home with the boys.</p>
<p>Next year will be a much better year.</p>
<p>I hope to see everyone then.</p>
Writing Workshop Deadline Extended to October 152019-09-30T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2019/09/30/icon-writing-workshop/The deadline for submission for the writing workshop at [ICON 44](https://iowa-icon.com/) has been extended to October 15.
<p>The deadline for the <a href="/blog/2019/09/09/icon-writing-workshop/">writing workshop</a> I'm running at <a href="https://iowa-icon.com/">ICON 44</a> has been extended to October 15. If you want to submit your the first 10k words of your novel or novella and have an in-depth discussion and critique, please send an email to <a href="mailto:contact@moonfire.us">contact@moonfire.us</a> with a subject of “ICON 44 Writing Workshop”. Or you can also post a message at <a href="https://facebook.com/dmoonfirefans/">Facebook</a> or send a private message on Facebook or <a href="https://twitter.com/dmoonfire">Twitter</a>.</p>
Writing Workshop at ICON2019-09-09T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2019/09/09/icon-writing-workshop/I will be running a writing workshop at [ICON 44](https://iowa-icon.com/). If you are interested, check out the post.
<p>I will be running a writing workshop at <a href="https://iowa-icon.com/">ICON 44</a>. While there is already <a href="https://mindbridge.org/paradise-icon/">Paradise ICON</a>, this is intended to be a detailed review of four pieces over two hours. I'm modeling this after Mickey's workshops from previous years.</p>
<p>This will be for four writers with two alternates. All six will get written feedback. If any of the first four don't show up, the alternates will take their place during the workshop discussion.</p>
<p>Before the convention, all six participants will submit the first 10k words of their novel (or to the end of the chapter if it goes a little past 10k words) to Dylan who will share it with the other five. Then, everyone will go through each of the other pieces and write up issues, positive and negative observations, and other feedback.</p>
<p>During the convention, we'll spend a half hour discussing each of the four pieces. All of the six who shows up will get the written feedback (or after the convention if they don't show up).</p>
<p>Tentatively, this is scheduled for 8 PM to 10 PM on Saturday, November 2, 2019. Since it takes a while to read and critique pieces, submissions are required by <del>October 2, 2019</del> October 15, 2019. If you have questions, please send an email to <a href="mailto:contact@moonfire.us">contact@moonfire.us</a> with a subject of “ICON 44 Writing Workshop”.</p>
ICON 43 Retrospective2018-10-09T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2018/10/09/icon-retrospective/After a four day weekend of having fun at ICON, my home convention, it's time to focus on other things. The fleeting moments, though, are always good to write down.
<p>Every year I look forward to <a href="http://iowa-icon.com/">ICON</a>. This year was a good year, with some ups and down.</p>
<h1>Previous ICON Retrospectives</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="/blog/2012/11/04/icon-37-followup/">ICON 37</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/2013/11/18/icon-38/">ICON 38</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/2014/11/03/icon39-retrospective/">ICON 39</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/2015/10/18/icon40-followup/">ICON 40</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Apparently I haven't done ICON 41 or 42. Not sure why, but that's life.</p>
<h1>Thursday</h1>
<p>On Thursday, I joined the authors at the Barnes and Nobel signing. That was fun, though a bit smaller this year than the last few ones. I got a chance to chat with a bunch of authors and a few fans.</p>
<p>They didn't have my books due to a remarkable series of shipping difficulties in my life. Even though they ordered with plenty of time, the printer couldn't get them to me in time so I had to do consignment (which was actually a better deal in terms of percentages).</p>
<p>I really talking to people, did you know that? It's going to be a common theme for the entire weekend.</p>
<p>There was a little more drama so I got to play money courier for a day to deliver an envelope with secrets (cash) to another author on Friday.</p>
<h1>Friday</h1>
<p>Friday continued my difficulties with shipping when a counter book stand didn't show up. According to Fedex, it was delivered on Wednesday. I wouldn't find out until today (Tuesday) that our dog was in the driveway so they just abandoned it. So far, Amazon and Fedex still can't find it so there is a “trace” going on. That was a bummer because I really could have used it.</p>
<p>As usual, everyone at work wanted to ask me questions so I almost didn't make it on time. I managed to get everything set up with three minutes to spare (better than being an hour late from the year before). I had a great time chatting with some of the other vendors. I was opposite of <a href="https://www.albanlakepublishing.com/">Alban Lake</a>, next to a couple others.</p>
<p>At the tail end, <a href="https://www.cassieleighauthor.com/">Cassie Leigh</a> showed up in the first of many pinup outfits (check her out and vote for her if you see her in a contest). She had these adorable faux blow-up shoes.</p>
<p>I got to play <em>Portal 2</em> in the gaming room with Cassie's offspring. It was also my first time playing on an Xbox 360 (so tiny controllers). I had a lot of fun, more so since I recognized one of the puzzles from watching a trailer from the <em>first</em> game before it came out and knew exactly how to solve it.</p>
<p>The opening ceremonies were enjoyable as usual.</p>
<p>I managed to lock my keys in the vendor hall. When I went to go home, I couldn't get to them so I started walking home until my spouse picked me up. They were annoyed because my formerly broken ankle, walking for a long distance hurts. Plus it was raining. And I didn't have my coat.</p>
<p>I did remember that I did the same thing last year, so I'm going to tape a “do not put your keys here” on the bottom of my raffle box.</p>
<h1>Saturday</h1>
<p>Saturday was pretty busy. Mostly I was there as a vendor, but I had a chance to wander around a little too.</p>
<p>I was on two panels: <em>Creating Distinctive Characters</em> and <em>RPG Mechanics in Writing</em>. I didn't have a panelist for the latter and my material sputtered out at the forty minute mark. I had ten minute of talking about running RPG games to fill in the space. Overall, not my worst panel but not my best.</p>
<p><a href="http://weirdauthor.com/">Shannon Ryan</a> and their spouse joined us at the table as did my spouse in an <strong>adorable</strong> Harley Quinn outfit. We had fun talking and I got invited to chat with the <a href="https://mindbridge.org/paradise-icon/">Paradise Icon</a> folks. They are a lot of fun to chat with and we went to their two readings after that.</p>
<p>Spouse and I did wander into a thirteen person <em>Cards Against Humanity</em>. That was a lot of fun. Everyone laughed, I didn't know most of them. It was a blast.</p>
<h1>Sunday</h1>
<p>For me, Sundays at ICON starts with the benefactor's brunch. I had a lot of deja vecu through most of it but… that's expected.</p>
<p>After that, a reading with <a href="https://www.alexandrapenn.com/blog/">Alexandra Pen</a>. Both of us have similiar themes in our writing but approach it in very different ways. I read the second chapter of <a href="https://fedran.com/flight-of-the-scions/">Flight of the Scions</a>.</p>
<p>Beyond that, lots of talking, chatting, and having fun. I ended with a long conversation with some friends before I had to head home and rejoin Mundania.</p>
<h1>Vendor</h1>
<p>On the <a href="https://typewriter.press/">Broken Typewriter Press</a> side of the convention, it was a disaster. We didn't have that many new books and this is a convention we've sold for a lot of years. I wished I could have gotten <em>Second-Hand Dresses</em> out but… I couldn't and be responsible. So, not a lot of sales. Overall, I ended up a couple hundred in the hole this year.</p>
<p>Looking around the vendor hall, it looked like there was a general lack of spending. I guess that a lot of people are worried about the economy. I know I was, which meant I couldn't do my usual “author groupie” thing and buying every new book by an author who shows up.</p>
<h1>Post-Conventions</h1>
<p>As an attendee, ICON was a blast because I like interacting with people. The more I talk, the more energy I have. It was also small groups and one-on-ones, which is my comfort zone.</p>
<p>The other aspect of conventions is that review of everything I said where I berate myself for saying stupid things. Most of the time, this weekend was just stress leaking out. I felt “off” most of the convention.</p>
<p>As I've mentioned on this blog before, I try really hard to keep “happy” or only talk about positive things. This weekend, I failed a couple of times and feel really guilty about it. But I didn't seem to bum anyone out, so “win.”</p>
<p>I also had a strange identity crisis, which is <em>really</em> strange since I thought I resolved most of those years ago.</p>
<p>Overall, I always get down after conventions (no more people to interact with). That's expected and plannable.</p>
<h1>Plans</h1>
<p>I'm going to see if I can get into the erotic reading next year. I think <a href="https://fedran.com/second-hand-dresses/">Second-Hand Dresses</a> would be perfect.</p>
<p>I'm also hoping to have a little better planning for the convention so I don't feel off. Getting into more author readings and panels might help but there is also the balance of being a vendor for Typewriter verses attending. Those two are contrary at time but I also feel that I'm representing others.</p>
<p>I'm also hoping that the shelving unit shows up and I have enough books that my master plan will start to be visible.</p>
<p>I have some more plans for <a href="https://fedran.com/patrons/">patrons</a> because this is the fifth year running where I get less than $10/month. For some reason, this really bothered me.</p>
<p>For all the negative, there was far more positive. I can't wait to go back next year.</p>
Fourth Annual Book Bums2017-10-23T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2017/10/23/book-bums-2017/In two weeks on Saturday, November 4, I'll be at the [Fourth Annual Book Bums Writing Workshop](http://www.wlpl.org/node/176308). This is a one-day workshop at the West Liberty Public Library.<p>In two weeks on Saturday, November 4, I'll be at the <a href="http://www.wlpl.org/node/176308">Fourth Annual Book Bums Writing Workshop</a>. This is a one-day workshop at the West Liberty Public Library (not West Branch which I accidentally went to last time).</p>
<p>I have one early morning panel at 09:00 to 10:00 called “Using Setting”.</p>
<p>I'll also be selling my books from 11:00 to 12:00. If you order books from any author at <a href="https://store.typewriter.press/">Broken Typewriter's Store</a>, use the “Convention Pickup” and I'll bring them with.</p>
<p>Otherwise, I'll just be hanging around and chatting while picking up new ideas. I hope to see someone there.</p>
ICON Events2017-09-25T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2017/09/25/icon-events/My "home" convention is [ICON](http://iowa-icon.com/icon42/index.html), Iowa's longest running Science Fiction and Fantasy conventions. This year, the convention is September 29--October 1, 2017; just a few days away.<p>My “home” convention is <a href="http://iowa-icon.com/icon42/index.html">ICON</a>, Iowa's longest running Science Fiction and Fantasy conventions. This year, the convention is September 29–October 1, 2017; just a few days away.</p>
<p>If you see me, stop and chat. I love talking to people, answering questions, or just riffing on life.</p>
<h1>Dealer's Table</h1>
<p>I'll be at the <a href="https://broken.typewriter.press/">Broken Typewriter Press</a> table for most of the convention. This is free to anyone, even if they don't join the rest of the convention. The hours to the public are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Friday: 2 pm to 6 pm (14:00–18:00)</li>
<li>Saturday: 10 am to 6 pm (10:00–18:00)</li>
<li>Sunday: 10 am to 2 pm (10:00–14:00)</li>
</ul>
<p>If you are planning on attending and want to pick up one of our books, you can preorder them at the <a href="https://store.typewriter.press/">store</a> and select “Convention Pickup” as the delivery method. It won't cost you anything to ship and I'll have it ready for you.</p>
<h1>Thursday</h1>
<ul>
<li>6 pm to 8 pm (18:00–20:00) Barnes and Noble: Thursday night, a number of the authors are going to be attending an author signing at the local Barnes and Nobel. This is a good chance to chat and see a lot of authors in a close proximity.</li>
</ul>
<h1>Saturday</h1>
<ul>
<li><p>2 pm (14:00) Rosewood: I'll be at the <em>Author/Artist Meet & Greet</em>.</p>
</li>
<li><p>9 pm (21:00) Boardroom 334: I have a reading with Will Lenzen Jr. I'm thinking about reading from the beginning of <a href="https://fedran.com/sand-and-bone/">Sand and Bone</a>.</p>
</li>
</ul>
Why I go to WisCon to be uncomfortable2016-06-13T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2016/06/13/wiscon-discomfort/I go to WisCon for a number of reasons, but probably the biggest one is that I go to be uncomfortable.<p>Yesterday, I posted about <a href="/blog/2016/06/12/trigger-warnings/">trigger warnings</a> in my book. I had some short conversations on both Ello and Facebook. The <a href="https://ello.co/dmoonfire/post/xv53rzganmzuelaiq-hnaa">Ello ones</a> were typically against what I was doing, much in the same vein that <a href="http://www.jimchines.com/2016/04/trigger-warnings-are-censorship/">Jim C. Hines'</a> post brought up there were people against it. The Facebook ones were more personal (e.g., direct friends). <a href="http://weirdauthor.com/">Shannon Ryan</a> pointed out that an author writing a warning was more of a courtesy than censorship because I'm choosing to do it instead of someone warning a reader off. It was an interesting observation and one I agreed with.</p>
<p>The Ello conversation triggered some thoughts, though. This one line in specific called to me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[...] in our generation we think being alive is an invitation to being uncomfortable with ideas that we find disturbing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I do think literature (and whatever I write) should be uncomfortable. I think what I write in <a href="https://fedran.com/sand-and-blood/">Sand and Blood</a> and its sequels are probably uncomfortable for a number of people. There is bigotry, abuse, and personal struggles. They aren't stories of glorious heroes running around saving the world (I break some of that with <a href="https://fedran.com/sand-and-bone/">Sand and Bone</a>). Some of the other stories I want to write will also be uncomfortable for some readers.</p>
<p>I think that is great.</p>
<p>I also don't think that giving a warning in the front of a book diminishes from that. There are readers who will have triggers toward a specific scene, but they can handle it if they are mentally prepared for it. I'll use miscarriage for example. It still haunts the women in my life who had lost unborn children. Some of them will never read <a href="https://fedran.com/sand-and-ash/">Sand and Ash</a> because of it. Others will know it is there, prepare mentally, and read it anyways. Knowing that it is there doesn't mean I'm censoring any more than anyone who struggle with those things will <em>not</em> read it just because they are there. I know at least one rape survivor who read <em>Girl With a Dragon Tattoo</em>, they just skipped chapters.</p>
<p><em>Side note, I haven't found a good way of identifying themes on a chapter basis that wouldn't ruin the plot. That would be the equivalent of “skipping the scene” in a movie, but I don't know a way of doing it smoothly. Plus some of the themes cover many chapters. In <em>Ash</em>, the miscarriage is spread out across three chapters but it influences the character until the end of the book, nine chapters later.</em></p>
<p>I realized that I seek being uncomfortable in more than a few instances in my life. The most recent is my attendance at <a href="https://wiscon.info/">WisCon</a>. As I mentioned in <a href="/blog/2016/06/06/wiscon-retrospective/">an earlier post</a>, I am frequently depressed on the last day of WisCon but I keep coming back.</p>
<p>This discomfort is important. I honestly don't think you can really look into yourself without a mirror. And no physical mirror can really reveal the heart. Instead, the mirror has to be others around you.</p>
<p>Take for example, cultural appropriation. I thought about doing a post about it, mainly because I didn't see why it was a bad thing or even that it was an issue. But in the process of planning that post, I realized the fact I couldn't see “why” was actually a problem with my thinking. It was an issue but my blindness toward it was the problem.</p>
<p>As an apparently cis white male, I'm in the majority for this country. Even though I don't really see myself as having a specific culture, I do. But I couldn't see it any more than most people don't realize that <em>every</em> aisle in the grocery store that isn't “ethic” is the majority culture. We don't label the aisles as “non-ethic” or “everyone else”, but that is there.</p>
<p>Needless to say, I didn't write that post. Instead, I have this uncomfortable spot in my head with a sign that says “you are missing something” but no real answers. I don't have them, I don't know how to fill in that gap. Events like WisCon that at least let me know they exist. Years later, I might figure it out, but it takes a while to first find the hole and then to fill it up.</p>
<p>One way of filling in that gap is simple, listen. For the most part, I go to WisCon to listen to others. To see the world in a different way than I see every other day of the year. To hear things that haven't intruded in my reality for over four decades simply because I wasn't in a position to experience them.</p>
<p>When I hear something that makes me uncomfortable, I fight that initial urge to ask questions or argue against it. It is there, I hate that it is there because there is <em>so much</em> in me that wants to say its wrong, but I know it isn't. I don't want to minimize the experiences and observations of others simply because they are just as true as my own. When someone is aggressively ranting against whites or males, they have have something to say and it is just as important for me to hear without responding as it is for others to listen also. I know it is personal but not at the same time.</p>
<p>When that happens, I focus on remembering <em>what</em> caused me to disagree and set it aside to look at it later. To plan but never write a post about it, to use it as inspiration for a story to help me understand something I have a blank spot for, or simply to learn how to fill in those gaps in my thinking.</p>
<p>The reason I get depressed coming home from WisCon is not because it wasn't fun or because no one loves me, but a simple side effect of listening to others and integrating their views into my own. These are things that aren't figured out in an hour or a day, it takes a long time. Sometimes it takes years to fill in the gaps and see the world outside of my own senses.</p>
<p>Another reason for depression is that I realize I'm doing something wrong. Either one of my unintended microaggressions is revealed or my reasons for doing something may be well-meaning but ultimately insulting. I'm sure including Kanéko in my story will probably insult someone as will the Japanese/French/First Nations influences I used to create the desert culture.</p>
<p>Some of those revelations change my life. I used to greet almost everyone while walking on the sidewalk. I don't because someone showed that some women suffer from being greeted simply because they are female. Since I don't have the ability to say “I like everyone”, they just see yet another guy trying to talk them up. And that's an honest problem, I only did it because I hated the anonymous work crowds in Chicago where everyone desperately pretended not to be surrounded by others. It is a minor thing to me, but it could ruin someone's day.</p>
<p>I honestly would say I'm not an ally, a feminist, or anything else. I'm just fumbling through life, trying to be as open and welcoming as I can be. As such, that requires me to go into the uncomfortable places to learn where I have failed.</p>
<p>I love WisCon because it makes me uncomfortable. I like listening to people talk about their lives and reveal something I can't ever understand. I love when I feel the passion and fire, not only because it scorches my own basis of understanding but because it is a story I haven't heard. I because it makes me uncomfortable, it changes me, and it helps me fill in the gaps to (hopefully) grow into a better person.</p>
WisCon Retrospective2016-06-06T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2016/06/06/wiscon-retrospective/It's been a week since I got back from WisCon, time to talk about it. I should have done it sooner, but I have a few things going on.<p>Two weeks ago, I went to Madison, WI to attend <a href="http://wiscon.info/">WisCon</a>. For those who don't know about it, it is a feminist sci-fi convention which I've been doing to for about five years now.</p>
<p>I love the panels and community there, they show a world that I'm cannot join myself. I like seeing other stories, other people, other views that are so different from mine but also inspire me. This is a panel convention, almost all the events are panels as opposed to activities. That also means that there isn't much to do for the boys or my spouse.</p>
<h1>Relationships and Friendship</h1>
<p>While I go to Madison with my wife and the boys, I don't go with anyone to the convention. This puts me an interesting place where I don't have friends to hang around at the convention. I'm not really great at finding a group of “friends” there, so I end up spending most of the weekend alone between panels.</p>
<p>I did recognized two others there and had brief conversations, but that was about it.</p>
<p>This is probably the most frustrating thing about this convention. I can't really talk to anyone about what I'm listening to or reading. I just get hints and pieces of it despite doing panels. Some years, this makes me feel rather depressed but this year wasn't too bad. I think the reason was that someone was interested in what I said during a panel.</p>
<p>My other convention, <a href="http://iowa-icon.com/icon41/index.html">ICON</a>, is a different story. I have a lot more relationships with people who go there. Yeah, I spend hours just meandering about as they go to their own panel, but there is a <em>chance</em> that I will stumble on one of them and hang around for a little bit.</p>
<h1>Art of Book Reviewers (Friday 14:30)</h1>
<p>The first panel I went to was the <em>Art of Book Reviewers</em>. I like this panel because they talked about the difference of a book review and a critique. Reviews are teasers, critiques are spoilers. In many aspects, I write a bit of both but I think it gave me a framework for having the review part in the beginning and a critique at the end, which will make it easier to separate the two.</p>
<p>I don't review very often, but there were some good advice about the difference between the two. Not to mention adjusting reviews for the target audience.</p>
<h1>Monsters and Mirrors (Saturday 10:00)</h1>
<p>My first panel, a reading. I read the second chapter of <a href="https://fedran.com/flight-of-the-scions/">Flight of the Scions</a>. There was some rough points, but it is a fifth draft so that was okay.</p>
<p><a href="https://tbonecafe.wordpress.com/">LaShawn M. Wanak</a>, who I met earlier checking in, had a fantatsic story about wood-like spores in the shape of people. Exterminators use singing and music to break them down. There is a lot in that story. It had a nice noir feel to it and had a lot of promise. I can't wait to read more.</p>
<p><a href="http://gwynnegarfinkle.com/">Gwynne Garfinkle</a> read a number of poems, almost all of them to older horror monsters. I really love the one about loving the Blob and one about Bride of Frankenstein. She has a nice voice to her poems.</p>
<p><a href="http://alexbledsoe.com/">Alex Bledsoe</a> read a chapter from one of his book series. It was quirky and music-based which really fit the theme for everyone but me. Characters down on their luck always attraction my attention and his story fit that bill nicely.</p>
<h1>Bi-Invisiblity (Saturday 14:30)</h1>
<p>I was late showing up and there was only standing room left. I wanted to go to it, but too many people were interested in the same topic. So I went to…</p>
<h1>Fat Characters in SF&F (Saturday 14:30)</h1>
<p>A very informative panel about fat characters in fiction. I saw different ways of seeing fat, both from labeling (skinny fat verses fat fat) and also how they are presented problems. There was a lot of talk about fan villains, only being fat to present a problem, and talking about how many fictions don't include fat characters as protagonists.</p>
<h1>Writing & Tabletop RPG (Saturday 16:00)</h1>
<p>My second panel. I got to talk about writing and role-playing games, how they fit together and how they don't work. A lot of discussion that I got into was about authors having “one voice” verses RPG where a player will come up with something the author/gamemaster didn't think about it.</p>
<p>I got to talk about how I come up with three events in most NPCs that determine their life and built up as a series of experiences. There were other tricks for creating NPCs.</p>
<p>I got a few laughs, that was good.</p>
<h1>Writing Tools (Sunday 08:30)</h1>
<p>This ended up being my favorite panel. We talked about pens and paper, fancy gadgets that I will never use, and writing processes. I talked a bit about using Git and Markdown, which actually got some people excited (and someone actually wanted me to show it after the panel! *squee*).</p>
<p>This was recorded as a podcast by <a href="http://tempest.fluidartist.com/">K. Tempest Bradford</a>, so I'll post a link when it gets posted. I like her insights into WisCon in general, but also the process she uses for writing (and pen lover), though I probably won't deviate from my own.</p>
<p>I'm thinking about writing up writing using Git and Markdown again, mainly to reflect the changes since my last one.</p>
<h1>Family Visit</h1>
<p>I didn't do anything else on Sunday because I went to see my grandma, aunt, my aunt's husband, and my cousin. We went to McDonalds where the boys had a grand time and I got to talk. It was a relatively positive visit but it is always good too see family.</p>
<h1>SignOut (Monday 11:30)</h1>
<p>While the rest of the family headed back to Iowa, I finished up with SignOut. Overall, that was probably the lowest point of the convention. No one asked for a signature. I had one person scoff at the cover and another compliment it. Mostly, I chatted with my table mate, <a href="http://cathschaffstump.com/">Catherine Schaff-Stump</a> who I shared a table last year. We chatted about writing.</p>
<p>Someone I knew from ICON came by. We chatted for a bit and she pointed out why she didn't like the back of <a href="https://fedran.com/sand-and-blood/">Sand and Blood</a> which eventually led me into hiring someone to write a new blurb for the first three books.</p>
<h1>In the end</h1>
<p>In the end, it was a positive convention. Yeah, it ended on a low note and I felt out of place most of the time, but I still enjoyed myself. I got an idea for a couple of stories in the process, I'll add them to my list and see if they ever happen.</p>
WisCon Schedule2016-05-18T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2016/05/18/wiscon/In just over a week, I'll be at WisCon on a few panels, doing a reading, and generally having fun.<p>On Thursday through Sunday, I'm planning on being in Madison, WI at the <a href="http://wiscon.info/">WisCon</a> convention. This is the first of two conventions I'm planning on going to this year.</p>
<h1>Monsters and Mirrors: a Reading of Speculative Prose and Poetry</h1>
<ul>
<li>Sat, 10:00–11:15 am</li>
<li>University D</li>
</ul>
<p>I'm going to be with three other writing doing a chapter from <a href="https://fedran.com/flight-of-the-scions/">Flight of the Scions</a>. So, if you want to hear me talk about the world and the chapter, please check it out. I'm hoping to double the number of listeners this year, which would make four.</p>
<h1>Writing and Tabletop Role Playing Gaming: Intersections and Divergences</h1>
<ul>
<li>Sat, 4:00–5:15 pm</li>
<li>Conference 4</li>
</ul>
<p>Let's examine the interface between tabletop RPGs and writing. James L. Sutter's piece on tor.com, “What Roleplaying Teaches Writers,” is a good starting place, but it's only the beginning. We will explore what RPGs can and cannot do for writers, what writers do that RPG referees do not, the meeting points and the divergences between playing and writing, the place of rules in both writing and playing, “railroading” versus creative freedom, etc.</p>
<h1>Analog and Digital Writing Tools</h1>
<ul>
<li>Sun, 8:30–9:45 am</li>
<li>Conference 1</li>
</ul>
<p>Writers, bring your favorite writing tools—laptop, tablet, quill, or steam-fueled ideatron—and share the pros and cons of your favored method of writing with others! We'll talk software, hardware, analogware, old-fashioned methods as well as new. If you're willing to share your beloved your writing gear, others may be eager to give them a try.</p>
<h1>The SignOut</h1>
<ul>
<li>Mon, 11:30 am–12:45 pm</li>
<li>Capitol/Wisconsin</li>
</ul>
<p>This is one of the final events of the convention. Please consider picking up my books at the <a href="http://www.roomofonesown.com/">A Room of One's Own</a> table at the convention and I'll be glad to sign it. And talk about it.</p>
<p>Last year, no one came to my table. Please, break the trend?</p>
Followup for ICON 402015-10-18T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2015/10/18/icon40-followup/A followup for the last four days of glorious fun at ICON.<p>This afternoon, I went to my last event of <a href="http://iowa-icon.com/">ICON 40</a> and staggered home. And then promptly took a few hour nap before coming out of a dark pit of exhaustion long enough to help with the boys. Now that they are asleep, I figured it was a good time to think about the last few days and write up what happened.</p>
<h1>Introduction</h1>
<p>ICON is one of my two major conventions of the year. I consider it my “home” convention. Ever since I moved back to Iowa in 2008, I started going back after taking a few years off from the last time I moved in Iowa. I've also been a benefactor since then, mainly to help them but also because I like going here.</p>
<h1>Thursday</h1>
<p>This year was the first year I came to ICON as an author, not just a guest. Last year, I was sitting at <a href="http://adamjwhitlatch.com/">Adam J. Whitlatch's</a> reading and realized that I should have told someone that I could do one myself. It diminished Adam's glorious Russian accent just <em>slightly</em> but it was okay. His War of the Worlds book is pretty good even without the accent.</p>
<p>This convention started with a multiple author signing at Barnes and Noble. This was like the one as WisCon, but with a lot more interaction than before. There were authors like <a href="https://www.facebook.com/krypteiaconspiracy/">Jed Q. Peterson</a> who wandered constantly and pretty much engaged with others. Others sat at their tables and chatted. My table mate from WisCon was only one down from me this time; it's a small world.</p>
<p>It was kind of cool that a lot of people recoganized me. More so is that I actually was able to identify others. For those who know me, the ability remember faces and names is something I've struggled with most of my life. I don't remember people. But, as I've made friends with these authors, I managed to keep them in my head long enough to remember their faces (and usually what they wrote, but not always their names).</p>
<p>I managed to sell four books then, half to friends and the others with people who I've chatted casually with but not at the “giving each other shit” level.</p>
<p>It was a lot of fun, mainly because it was something new and I managed not to utterly humiliate myself.</p>
<p>Sadly, I wasn't able to do the dinner after that. My parental obligations took precedence.</p>
<p><a href="pix001.jpg"><img class="img-responsive post-img-link" src="pix001.jpg" width="120" height="218" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em;"/></a> <a href="pix002.jpg"><img class="img-responsive post-img-link" src="pix002.jpg" width="120" height="180"/></a></p>
<h1>Friday</h1>
<p>I didn't have much time on Friday, but I did have a reading at 23:00. I stopped by at 18:30 long enough to pick me and SMWM's tickets and then head out. The swag bags were okay this year, not that I focus everything on it. The coupon for Half-Price Books was awesome but everything else, unfortunately, didn't really peak my interest since we live only a mile from most of the events and locations referenced in there. I'm also a benefactor for ICON (mainly to help) but the swag for that didn't really appeal to me either. That's okay, I mainly come for the company, not the bags. If they dropped the swag, I'd be okay with that. The only one I got was the ICON 35 t-shirt which had my favorite logo on it.</p>
<p>After the boys went to bed, I headed back in to do my reading. The parking this year had a pretty high sticker shock so I ended up parking on the street and just walking in (sans coat because I didn't want to carry it around).</p>
<p>This was my second reading. The room was entirely empty until <a href="http://weirdauthor.com/">Shannon</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/stephanie.ryan.5437?hc_location=ufi">Stephanie</a> came. That made it a lot more enjoyable, not speaking into an empty room. I know there is a totem pole when it comes to authors (more popular ones are during the day) but that almost midnight one was brutal.</p>
<p>While Shannon has read almost everything I've written, Stephanie had not. At Shannon's advice, I ended up reading <a href="https://journals.fedran.com/issue-00/midlife-crisis/">Midlife Crisis</a> and <a href="/fiction/best-of-enemies/">Best of Enemies</a>. His claims that <em>Midlife Crisis</em> was “humorous”, the grim dark aspects were initially a turn off but she occasionally laughed. She also said that <em>Best of Enemies</em> wasn't as enjoyable… understandable though a bummer.</p>
<p>I was also ashamed to see that I missed a few Oxford commas. And I broke a world law that I had decided on (I don't write rape scenes, but I also decided that there won't be any references to it either but I missed one).</p>
<h1>Saturday</h1>
<p>Oh, Saturday. This was the busiest day of the convention. I had a number of panels and really didn't do much beyond then until the late evening.</p>
<p>I had two panels scheduled at the same time in the morning but one was a two hour event so I was suppose to go to <a href="http://sched.co/49jK">RPG 101</a> first and then head over to the <a href="http://sched.co/48LS">Author Meet and Greet</a>.</p>
<p><em>RPG 101</em> was a lot of fun. I happened to have gone up to the consuite first and <a href="http://icon40.sched.org/moderator/AthenaSFX#.ViR8ypfepTA">Athena Foster</a> happened to be in the room. We talked about her plans before we met up with <a href="http://www.mohr-creations.com/">Daniel ‘Stitch’ Mohr</a>. The panel talked a lot about what is gaming, how it affected our lives, and the types of RPG games that we play and how to pick them. There were some good questions and I think everyone was happy with the results.</p>
<p>As soon as that was over, I headed over to the <em>Meet and Greet</em>. Sadly, it was over half over by the time I got there. My assigned position was way in the back but I met up with Shannon and Stephanie and moved over to them. Since I was relatively unknown, no one came to visit me so I decided to imitate Jed a little and wander around. The Ryans were willing to watch my spot.</p>
<p><a href="pix003.jpg" style="text-align: center;"><img class="img-responsive post-img-link" src="pix003.jpg" width="240" height="135"/></a></p>
<p><em>With hindsight, when I knew that I had two panels at the same time, I should have asked if they would do that from the beginning. Also, I need a better phone/tablet to handle the Square credit card reader or a cash box like Adam carries around).</em></p>
<p><em>I also wonder if ICON (or conventions in general) would be able to provide a service like GenCon where authors who can't handle cash/credit cards could use them for a small fee? There were a few authors who could only handle cash or checks, which I appear to have none at the time.</em></p>
<p>To my surprise, <a href="http://mickeyzuckerreichert.com/">Mickey Zucker Reichert</a> called me over. She and I talked briefly at Barnes and Nobel and I would have a panel with her earlier, but she was trying to remember what I submitted to her writing group back in 2010 and 2011 (ish).</p>
<p>One of them was <a href="/tags/flight-of-the-scions/">Flight of the Scions</a>. I remember that because it was on of the things that set me down the <a href="/blog/2014/08/16/r5-d4-plots/">R5-D4 Plots</a>. It was rather specific, “if you have a POV character and want to keep a secret, then find a different POV.”</p>
<p>I couldn't remember the other submission, but she expressed interest in <a href="https://sand-and-blood.fedran.com/">Sand and Blood</a>. When I brought a copy over, she flipped to the back and actually remembered the first chapter: the names of the characters, the events in the first book, and everything else. I was floored (internally, I was squeeing). After chatting, we decided to swap books. She wanted to see what she helped me write; she rarely saw a finished version of the chapters that went through her writing group.</p>
<p>I ended up talking just a tad too long and had to rush over to my next panel, <a href="http://sched.co/4BYG">Guided Improv</a>. I wasn't sure what to expect with this one, but it ended up being a wonderfully complicated, difficulty panel where we did various improvised stories. It was less of the improv of being a game master and just a rapid-fire back-and-forth stories. A lot of enjoyable but exhausting in the end. My co-panelist/story-creator, <a href="reggajjohnn.wix.com/writer-performer">Gregga J. Johnn</a> was awesome: energetic, enthusiastic, and imaginative.</p>
<p><em>I will also have trouble getting the image of someone sucking on a sponge that had food flavoring to make something taste like Taco John's.</em></p>
<p>After <em>Guided Improv</em>, I had a little time to kill. So I headed into the dealers hall, bought too many books from authors I knew, and chatted with some authors.</p>
<p>The folks over at <a href="http://obsolete-press.com/">Obsolete Press</a> had some interesting ideas with their <a href="http://pagefright.com/">Page Fright</a> platform, I might need to pay attention to them. My own press, <a href="http://brokentypewriterpress.com/">Broken Typewriter Press</a>, does similar things with ala carte services, but they have a better branding and marketing support.</p>
<p>I also meet up with Shannon and Stephanie (they were my anchors for this convention) and we talked for a bit before they had to go their separate ways.</p>
<p>My final panel was <a href="http://sched.co/4BYa">Development of a Faith System Within Science Fiction & Fantasy</a> with Mickey and Stitch. This is the one I had to do a fair amount of research for, including work on my fantasy world, <a href="https://fedran.com/">Fedran</a>. This was the only really packed panel I was in but there were some really good questions. I also thought I did a good job of moderating, but there were a <em>lot</em> of questions for this one.</p>
<p>Even though the panel was good, Mickey pointed out that she had been carrying my book around all day in hopes of reading it. This pretty much redoubled the squeeing in my head. I hope she likes what she reads; it's kind of scary knowing that a role-model is going to be reading something I spent years working on.</p>
<p>After that panel, I was done with obligations for the convention. I headed back home to pick up SMWM. I ended up taking a two hour nap before we both headed over to Lone Star for a lovely dinner. Because the consuite is awesome, but sometimes you want a bacon-wrapped filet mignon.</p>
<p>Finally, it was back to the convention where we wandered around for a little while. We met up with <a href="http://jimchines.com/">Jim C. Hines</a> and Stitch and Stitch's wife (I didn't have her name, sorry). Stitch has a wolf puppet, he's adorable. And Jim is always fun to talk to.</p>
<p>Sadly, we were hoping to meet up with Shannon and Stephanie again, but couldn't. We headed up to the party rooms, but nothing really drew our attention. Neither did the first gaming room. But we did stumble in the <a href="http://sched.co/48K2">Mature Gaming</a> and played our first game of <a href="https://cardsagainsthumanity.com/">Cards Against Humanity</a>. That is a seriously <em>fun</em> game. I won, but the game didn't end until a quarter after two in the morning.</p>
<p>On our way home, we had the slowest Taco Bell service in our lives (50 minutes to serve 7 cars).</p>
<h1>Sunday</h1>
<p>Sunday started with only four hours of sleep. I managed to stagger in for the Benefactor's Brunch (which was morning). Had some really fun conversations, mainly with Matt McKeever's daughter who seemed to like me once we talked about Mickey's Club House (remember, a road rally isn't a race, boys and girls) and our favorite Frozen characters. She insisted on holding my hand as we headed back to the elevator after the brunch. It was adorable and her father didn't seem to mind.</p>
<p>I really liked hearing about Matt's effort with <a href="http://www.osfes.org/">OSFest</a>, a similar convention over in Omaha. Sounds like they need writers and more participants for their tracks.</p>
<p>After brunch (which is really breakfast because it ended at 09:00), I finally go to go to panels without participating in them.</p>
<p>The first was a workshop on makeup. I was the only boy there, imagine that, but I loved seeing how the artist created a galaxy/nebula domino mask on her victim/sister. It was also cool to see the techniques of applying and being applied again. That will probably show up in my book.</p>
<p><em>This workshop also gave me an idea for a costume. Maybe I'll create it for next year and actually humiliate myself in public?</em></p>
<p>After that, it was <a href="http://racheleliason.net/">Rachel Eliason</a> for her reading from one of her books and her serialized piece coming out next month. I stumbled on the Ryans there who were about ready to leave, but little did we know… actually, I really don't like writers who say that.</p>
<p>The final panel I attended with the Ryans was the Leatherworking 101. I was interested in this for a few reasons: some day, I want to make a leather-bound book of my writing, there is always time for research, I need a new medium for my next anniversary gift, and leather has always appealed to me. I got a bunch of good ideas and it doesn't look too hard to get started. At least enough for the gift and maybe a few small items with <em>only</em> a few hundred dollars. We'll see, but I think my dad has his old leather working stuff which might help.</p>
<p>And that ended up being my ICON. Once we finished that, it was head home, sleep for four hours, and then dive back into my day-to-day.</p>
<p><a href="pix004.jpg" style="text-align: center;"><img class="img-responsive post-img-link" src="pix004.jpg" width="560" height="336"/></a></p>
<h1>Things that went wrong</h1>
<p><em>Everything above this point is what went right, so I don't have a dedicated section for that.</em></p>
<p>Overall, it was a smooth con but I didn't quite care for the new location. The parking was unplesant but workable, I found a few spots 3-6 blocks away and I don't mind walking. The distance for the overflow hotels I could see would be a detractor; the DoubleTree filled up too fast as did the overflow.</p>
<p>There were things that going to the same location for a few years would hopefully fix. I heard gossip about going back to the Marriott, but until I see something officially, I'm not counting that.</p>
<p>The new location was also spread out. More than once, there were people scattered everywhere looking for groups to gather. There was no good place to spot and troll for conventions, something I like doing, so it felt isolated. It needed a good place for those who are slightly uncomfortable socially to hang out and hope someone will talk to them. The third-floor was <em>almost</em> good enough but didn't get the traffic like the Marriott center floor and benches.</p>
<p>I'm pretty sure that I'll adapt to the new location within a year, so I'm not going to say these are serious problems.</p>
<p>The dance was sad. Part of this is I'm still used to the packed room from the mid-nineties. But this year, it was two couples dancing in a well-light, huge empty room. It was somewhat depressing. Hearing that the DJ quit was a bummer but it was hard to dancing in a big, almost empty room. I think the dance may be on its last legs (which may be a function of the increased average age of the convention goers).</p>
<p>The signs were confusing. For some reason, I really wanted to rotate them about ninety degrees. But when it say “go right”, they mean “go down the hall”. I got lost a few times in the first day.</p>
<h1>Additional suggestions</h1>
<p>As I mentioned before, financial services for authors could be useful. Either someone in the dealer's hall willing to handle credit cards. I liked how there were a few “coop-style” tables (bunch of authors selling stuff) in the hall, but having one in the <em>Meet and Greet</em> would be nice also.</p>
<p>SMWM wished there were more events for non-writers, fans, or convention spouses. Next year, I'm going to suggest panels on photography, self-defense (she loves those), pick-up games, and other things. That is one reason she only went Saturday night.</p>
<p>Day care would be awesome, but probably difficult. <a href="http://wiscon.info/">WisCon</a> provides it and it is easy to get spoiled.</p>
<h1>Overall</h1>
<p>I had a grand time. I met new people, talked to old friends, played new games, and generally enjoyed myself. I also felt more confident in myself and didn't fumble a conversation more than a few times. So, I consider that a win.</p>
<p>If you did happen to go to my (or anyone else's) panel, please send feedback or review it (from the <a href="http://icon40.sched.org/">Sched</a> website). That is the best way to get better and help us. Or you know, buy our books and review them.</p>
<p>Or just review them.</p>
<p>We'll find out.</p>
<p>Next year is going to be awesome.</p>
Family Trip and WisCon 392015-06-01T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2015/06/01/wiscon/A few weeks ago, I went on my big trip for the year which included four days at the family cabin and four days at WisCon, one of my two conventions of the year.<p>For the last five years, I've had a tradition of combining a family trip to the cabin with <a href="http://wiscon.info">WisCon</a>. This is the first year we did the cabin visit first, then went down to WisCon. It was also the first year that I took advantage of WisCon's excellent child care services to give SMWM a break from the boys and let her sleep in. Overall, it was a good trip.</p>
<h1>The Cabin</h1>
<p>I love the family cabin, mainly because of the memories but also because it is a second “home” for me. Having my brother and his family, my dad, and my entire family up there at the same time was just nice to let the four boys play with each other and to catch up on family events.</p>
<p>This year, it was <em>cold</em>. Apparently there was snow on the ground a week before and the nights got a bit chilly. I also got sick in the middle, but only for a day or so.</p>
<p>The first trip of the year is always filled with little things. It was a good winter, so we just spent part of a day blowing out all the leaves, a bit of cleaning, and generally settling in. The dock isn't going out this year, mainly because my father may not be coming up as often until he settles into his new house.</p>
<p>The highlight was the boys playing. This year, my brother's two sons and EDM were all in the playing range. And they turn into some sort of pack so they would spend hours in the “bear cave” (behind the couch), in the “boat” (the leather recliner), or on the back of some hapless parent on the ground.</p>
<p>BAM decided to start walking on the trip up to the cabin (six hours), so we set him down and he started trotting around. Ever since, he's happily giggling as he toddles around and enjoys his new found efficiency in movement.</p>
<h1>Commission</h1>
<p>Somewhere during the cabin, when I had almost no Internet access, I got a commission request. I haven't done them in over a year, but a little money wouldn't hurt to pay for the trip, so I managed to negotiate the deal at one email every hour.</p>
<h1>Traveling</h1>
<p>The decision to take the six hour drive first followed by two days of three hours each was a much nicer one. The boys got anxious first, then we relaxed. As opposed to shorter trips with a massive one at the end.</p>
<h1>WisCon</h1>
<p>This year at WisCon was pretty good. The one person I really knew at the convention didn't come, so I was adrift and lonely as usual. However, I put myself out a bit more and managed to at least interact with strangers.</p>
<h2>Opening Ceremonies</h2>
<p>I actually got to go to the ceremonies. It was pretty fun and I like the sense of humor. I knew some of the “trivia” answers, which is always cool, though I probably would have slammed the “list as many slash pairings as you can think of” and bombed the “list the previous guests of honor.”</p>
<h2>Princess Culture and Race</h2>
<p>This was a very good panel, though late. It mainly focused on Disney princesses in movies and how most of them were white and had long, blonde hair. Seeing someone break down the eras of Disney princesses was pretty cool. I managed to bring up the differences with the shows (<em>Sophia the First</em> comes to mind), but they also countered with tokenism (Sophia is white, her friends are People of Color (POC)). There are no Disney shows with POC princesses as the main character, which kind of sucks.</p>
<p>There was a nod to why Lilo wasn't ever listed as a main Disney female.</p>
<p>One of the common trends brought up is “having someone like me.” There is a lot of that, but I can see it. There isn't a lot of role models, one reason I'm so obsessed with showing girls into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) (and also why the main character in <a href="/tags/flight-of-the-scions/">Flight of the Scions</a> is into engineering).</p>
<h2>Old Heroes</h2>
<p>This is a panel that really interested me, mainly because I want to write a JRPG novel about the game hero's grandfather. The panelists talked about how the older hero frequently is used as a sacrifice for the younger one, but I got some really good notes on older characters as main characters.</p>
<h1>A bit of a break</h1>
<p>Saturday, we went out to visit my grandmother. I only see her (and my aunt and her family) once a year, but it is definitely the highlight. She got to see BAM and EDM, EDM and my aunt's son played games, and generally we talked. There are a lot wounds between the three of us (me, my grandmother, and my aunt), but I think they are healing. It just takes a while.</p>
<h1>Back to WisCon</h1>
<p>On Sunday, I went to two panels. Before them, I had some lovely conversations in the consuite, which really made my day.</p>
<h2>Utopia, Cyborgs, and Dialects</h2>
<p>I didn't realize this was the academic track until I got there. The details were more than I could handle, but it was fun to push my limits.</p>
<h2>Fandom and Creators</h2>
<p>This ended up being a panel focused on fandom in general, something I only brush against at the edge. But it was nice talking about writing, sharing with creators, “breaking the fourth wall,” and various high-profile creators who came from fandom and how they responded differently to fans than those who did not.</p>
<p>I learned a lot, but had nothing to contribute.</p>
<h2>Not Your Typical Cats</h2>
<p>And then we came to my first panel. The panel before with the guest of honor doing a reading. She packed the room and the stories were lovely. But watching the entire room empty out in two minutes for me… kind of disheartening.</p>
<p>In the end, there were three people for the panel, including the other panelist. Frank, the other reader, did a long story, and then I did one chapter of <em>Flight of the Scions</em> and two chapters from <a href="/tags/sand-and-blood/">Sand and Blood</a>. I think it went well, but… hard to tell with only three people.</p>
<p>I was frustrated by my lack of draw, so I just gave all three of them a signed copy of my book.</p>
<p>Throughout the entire reading, a group of college students sat in the corner and had a loud conversation interrupted by louder laughing. They didn't seem to care what we were doing, they looked but then resumed their laughter. It made it hard to hear myself, so there were a few times when I was talking in hopes that others could hear me.</p>
<p>I think I prefer working in the hotel rooms, at least there you don't get interrupted as much.</p>
<p>Intellectually, I knew that a lot of people wouldn't show up. Both <a href="http://weirdauthor.com/">Shannon Ryan</a> and <a href="http://adamjwhitlatch.com/">Adam J. Whitlatch</a> both talked about it, so I knew. My heart doesn't really listen well to my mind, so it was a trifle depressing but I got over it quickly.</p>
<h2>World-Building Through Food</h2>
<p>This was a fun panel. I originally planned on doing to it because <a href="http://www.rebeccagomezfarrell.com/">Rebecca Gomez Farrell</a> talked to me online, but really I like the idea of food as it related to world-building. There were a lot of good examples and it was a nice, solid panel. It also gave me some ideas for the dinner scenes in <em>Flight of the Scions</em>.</p>
<p>I had a chance to chat with Rebecca later, she is nice in person as she is online.</p>
<h2>The SignOut</h2>
<p>The final event for me was the SignOut. This was a nice ninety minutes to sit back and have some really good crackers. I talked to the two authors on either side of me (one I apparently met repeatedly but couldn't remember).</p>
<p>Not a single person looked at my book.</p>
<p>The only signatures I made were for the two people going around the room gathering signatures.</p>
<p>I'm mostly okay with it. I have a baseline. Next time, I'm hoping to have at least two people ask for my book. But, you have to start somewhere.</p>
<h1>A Room of Their Own</h1>
<p>I have to make a shout-out to <a href="http://www.roomofonesown.com/">A Room of One's Own</a>. This is a large independent bookstore a few blocks from the convention. In the few years I've deal with the staff, they have been nothing but friendly.</p>
<p>This year was the first year I came as an author. Fortunately, thanks to a push from <a href="http://www.kseniaanske.com/">Ksenia Anske</a> and others, I had just finished republishing <em>Sand and Blood</em> under Ingram to make it friendlier for stores like this. The first time they looked up <em>Blood</em>, they found the Lulu version with no returns at a 15% discount. I thought I did something wrong, but then they gave me a screenshot of their site and I noticed it had the wrong ISBN. Once I gave them the right one, it dropped down to 40% discount with returns and everything was happier.</p>
<p>Overall, it was fantastic seeing my book on someone's dealers table. I also spotted it in the background of a picture on Facebook made by someone else. Overall, it was great to see my book “in the wild” as it were.</p>
<h1>Conclusion</h1>
<p>Overall, it was a good, enjoyable trip filled with family and books. I was lonely for parts of it, but I still enjoyed myself.</p>
What Is Going On Now?2015-02-25T06:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2015/02/25/what-is-going-on/It's been a few weeks since I last posted. When I work on projects, I have a tendency to go silent because I could either post or I could work on it. But, here is what is going on.<p>As my lovely spouse as mentioned on more than one occasion, I always have a project going on. Usually two or three or even more. Lately, I feel that I'm starting a lot of projects and not actually finishing anything. With some of my recent projects, that may change since I actually see a finishing point on both <a href="/tags/mfgames-culture-cil/">MfGames Culture CIL</a> and <a href="/tags/sand-and-bone/">Sand and Bone</a>.</p>
<h1>MfGames Culture CIL</h1>
<p>On the programming side, I'm working on a C# library called MfGames Culture CIL (all of my .NET libraries end in “CIL”). This is the fantasy calendar system I've <a href="/blog/2015/02/13/mfgames-culture-api-introduction/">mentioned before</a>. The project is somewhat ambitious for me, which makes it scary, but also something I've been thinking about doing for a number of years. I also think it is something I can actually finish and make into a proper library.</p>
<p>I hit a pretty good point with the library. It now handles cultures, multiple calendars, translations, and a combination of a number of cool things. Everything is hard-coded in C# code, which I'm planning on solving with the next few steps. In the end, it should be completely driven off XML or JSON files.</p>
<p>I'm tracking my “to do” lists toward a 1.0.0 release over on <a href="https://github.com/dmoonfire/mfgames-culture-cil/issues">Github</a>.</p>
<h1>Sand and Bone</h1>
<p>After a number of deaths I've had to deal with in the last few months, I finally got a chance to go back to my writing group. When I had to take some time off at the end of last year, there was a huge group of submissions. Now, not so much. Which means I had a chance to get <em>Sand and Bone</em> finished.</p>
<p>The last fifteen chapters were still very rough since I wrote almost all of them in a single week. I took the last week to do another round of editing against it, cleaning it up and making it ready for the group.</p>
<p>After this week, I have five more submissions and then it should be done with that round of editing. After that, a pair of rounds of professional editors and it will be ready for being published.</p>
<h1>Sand and Ash</h1>
<p>If I mention <em>Sand and Bone</em>, I probably should talk about <a href="/tags/sand-and-ash/">Sand and Ash</a>. I've gotten a number of beta readers for the sequel to <a href="https://sand-and-blood.fedran.com/">Sand and Blood</a> and it has been pretty positive. I'm excited about getting it done, but…</p>
<h1>WisCon</h1>
<p>I had a choice between getting <em>Sand and Ash</em> out or going to <a href="http://wiscon.info/">WisCon</a>. I choose WisCon because it gives me a chance to visit my grandmother (she lives in town), reduces a long haul for a family trip, and gives me a chance to meet up with some friends.</p>
<p>This year I'm going to try doing a reading. We'll see if I get in, but it will be the first time I've read something I've written since I've done poetry readings in Illinois. I'm thinking about doing a chapter from <a href="/tags/flight-of-the-scions/">Flight of the Scions</a>, mainly because the entire world was inspired by panels from that convention.</p>
<p>I'll find out how to get <em>Sand and Ash</em> out this year, hopefully by <a href="http://iowa-icon.com/">ICON</a>. I'm going to sign up for doing a reading there too, probably because I'm hoping to be a lot more comfortable with reading my novel.</p>
<p>I'm also assuming I can <em>pronounce</em> my character names smoothly by then.</p>
<h1>Coming weeks</h1>
<p>I'm hoping to finish MfGames Culture CIL in a week or so. And then I'm sure I'll move on to another project.</p>
<p>There is always another project.</p>
ICON 39 Retrospective2014-11-03T06:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2014/11/03/icon39-retrospective/This year I was able to go to two days of ICON 39, one of the two conventions that I was planning on going this year. It was a fun two days of writing and talking.<p>I consider <a href="http://www.iowa-icon.com/">ICON Iowa</a> to be my “home” convention when it comes to writing, science fiction, and fantasy. It is close to where I live, actually walking distance though I'm always running too late to actually walk it. I've been going since I moved to Iowa the first time in 1995, but I did take a few years off while living in Illinois. Ever since I moved back in 2008, I've been going steadily and kicking in a bit more than normal (I've done the Benefactor registration since I moved back).</p>
<p>This year, it was on October 31 through November 2. Because of my priorities, I couldn't attend on Friday because I had to go treating with SMWM, EDM, and BAM.</p>
<h1>Should have dones</h1>
<p>Being that I had a <a href="https://sand-and-blood.fedran.com/">book</a> published this year, I really should have contacted them and jumped in on the Thursday author signing and maybe a reading. For some reason, I didn't and I felt like it was a lost opportunity.</p>
<h1>Scheduling software</h1>
<p>This year, ICON went with <a href="http://icon392014.sched.org/">Sched.org</a> for their schedules. This was the first time I've ever used the website and I was pretty impressed. I like having the ability to tick the panels I wanted to attend (I only made about a third as usual) and have it pushed over to Google Calendar for my phone.</p>
<p>It was also a kick to see my name in the panel list.</p>
<h1>“Off with Its Head!”</h1>
<p>Because of some logistics and communication problems, the first panel I went to was the <em>Off with Its Head!</em>. The panel's focus was killing off characters in novels. This is relevant because <a href="/tags/sand-and-bone/">Sand and Bone</a> has some deaths in it and I was curious of other thoughts on the topic.</p>
<p>This was a fun panel, mainly because the panelists talked well with each other but also because they had a wide range of experiences and genres. One of the biggest things I came out was a reinforcement that it isn't okay to kill a dog. I've seen that in a number of books and heard authors talking about their dislike of it.</p>
<p>The other is killing off characters someone loves. An author doesn't always know who resonates with the reader. And, as one of the panelists mention, killing off that character can actually turn off a reader from the series or even an author. Doubly so for young readers who haven't been jaded by literary death as the older ones.</p>
<h1>“Writing Combat”</h1>
<p>I stuck in the room for the second panel, Writing Combat. I went with this panel because I have a very detailed style when it comes to writing and I haven't quite learned the art of abstracting some of it. Most of my fights are short, which is a point that came up a few times, and usually violent. It did point out that my main character, Rutejìmo, is a bit hardier than normal but that is plot relevant, so I don't feel <em>too</em> bad him not showing the effects as much. I was reminded of something I missed in <em>Bone</em> though.</p>
<p>Overall, it was a fun panel. <a href="http://www.melissaannconroy.com/">Melissa Ann Conroy</a> talked about fighting in corsets which gave me an idea for one of the fight scenes in a later book. Not to mention, I actually knew most of what she was talking about Japanese sword fighting though I only did it for about half a year.</p>
<h1>“Adam Witlatch Reading”</h1>
<p>I like to support other readers. I also had to miss <a href="http://adamjwhitlatch.com/">Adam's</a> reading last year because EDM decided to throw a fit. This time, I got to hear the prologue for two of his books, which was cool. And I like his book cards.</p>
<p>He's fun to talk to and listen, a good reading voice with a fun Russian accent for one of his characters. If I ever do a reading, I need to practice “voices” (and not just because the lady who does the Stephanie Plum novels is awesome at it).</p>
<h1>“Running and Creating RPG Games”</h1>
<p>And then we got to the scary one. This was my first of two panels and the only one that I was the <em>only one on</em>. No other panelists to riff on or talk to, just me and what ended up being about two dozen people.</p>
<p>It wasn't done in the normal panel format either. Instead of a table in the middle, it was me at one of three circular tables just… chatting. I talked about the types of games and types of players. I got questions about how to handle long-running RPG games, modifying rules, and rules lawyers. Overall, I thought I did a pretty good job of answering the questions and no one stormed out on me (always a fear).</p>
<p>After the panel, four people thanked me for some of the things I said or ideas I gave them. Which just felt awesome. After the diasterous <a href="http://wiscon.info/">WisCon</a> panel, it was nice to talk about something I knew a lot about but was also very friendly (that was only one of my WisCon panels, the others were a lot smoother).</p>
<h1>“Aaron Bunce Reading”</h1>
<p>I met <a href="https://aaron-bunce.squarespace.com/">Aaron</a> only a few months ago and read his book. Even said, I wanted to hear him to read it. It was a much different experience from Adam's, but I thought there was very enjoyable. He also read one of my favorite parts of the book, which didn't hurt.</p>
<p>I also liked listening to his process and inspirations for his books, something I had only gotten a bit about when talking to him earlier. Lots of fun.</p>
<h1>The inbetweens</h1>
<p>Between a lot of these panels, I wandered around. I talked a fair amount with <a href="http://weirdauthor.com/">Shannon Ryan</a> and his wife, Stephanie. Love doing that, we seem to share similar interests. I also met up with some folks that I've met over the years and just chatted. It was fun.</p>
<p>I did manage to sell two copies of my book in the ConSuite, though I wasn't planning on it. Mainly I was just showing off my pretty cover.</p>
<p>Shannon did invite me to chat with the Paradise ICON folks, but I couldn't get SMWM on the phone to ask her. So, I had to turn down what would have been a fantastic evening of chatting. I have yet to meet someone from the Paradise ICON group that wasn't nice; they are just fun and high enough at writing to have really interesting conversations.</p>
<h1>Dinner and games</h1>
<p>SMWM came in somewhat late, after registration. With her, we ended up having dinner with two ladies (who I should know their names, but I fail). It was a fantastic dinner talking about everything from paganism, survivalists, diabetes, fantasy, and fandom. The service was incredibly slow but we had a lot of fun. I love talking to people from different backgrounds.</p>
<p>After dinner, SMWM and I got pulled into a Starcraft board game. It took about three or four hours before we finished round two. The game would be a <em>lot</em> faster if we knew the rules, but it was one experienced player teaching five players how to play.</p>
<p>That game has some evil ideas from Robo Rally (you have to plan your moves four in advance and in reverse order). It was also slightly above my comprehension level for three in the morning.</p>
<h1>“Benefactors Breakfast”</h1>
<p>I'm a benefactor for ICON because it is my home convention. It also gives me a chance to chat with people I don't know in a place that I don't feel like I'm being too much of fanboi.</p>
<p>This year, they sat me down with <a href="http://www.jimchines.com/">Jim C. Hines</a> and <a href="http://www.scottlynch.us/">Scott Lynch</a>. I had never heard of Scott, but he is a very energetic, snarky person who I was glad I had a chance to meet. He also spoke relatively plainly and didn't gloss over things, which was nice.</p>
<p>I didn't have much to say at the table, which is fine. I spent half of it thinking to myself “don't mention my book, don't mention my book” because neither probably cared about it.</p>
<p>I couldn't stay long because the point I was dreading had come up.</p>
<h1>“Series Verses a World”</h1>
<p>After the diasterous WisCon panel (yeah, it haunts me), I was worried about this one. I reviewed about three dozen series and a couple dozen worlds as research in hopes that I could speak intelligently about it. One of the panelists didn't show up, so it was just <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Cook">Glen Cook</a> and me chatting on a dance floor with others.</p>
<p>There were a couple points I was stupid, but overall, I thought it was a pretty solid panel. We talked about shared worlds (Shannon had an idea for a story in my <a href="https://fedran.com/">Fedran</a> world from this) and long-running series. Game of Thrones only got a brief discussion, but we did cover Power Rangers, Pokemon, Glen's series, my plans for mine, Forgotten Realms, and a bunch of others. Besides Glen's two series, which I have shamefully not read but I do own, I actually knew everything they mentioned.</p>
<p>I didn't come out of it feeling stupid, which is good. The audience was pretty well engaged and I could address almost every question given to us.</p>
<h1>“Beyond SF 101”</h1>
<p>The last panel I went to was with Jim C. Hines and Scott Lynch. Shannon sat with me and it was about mid-level writers. A lot of the questions were right at the point I am with writing, so it was great to hear some of the things to expect in the next few years.</p>
<p>One of the biggest things that I came out is to expect about five to ten years of working at it before things start to build up steam. And that gives me an expectation of time lines, even if they are longer. My current plan of ten years to see if this works seems right on target.</p>
<p>Also, a paraphrased line “write more words and don't be a dick” (Scott) followed my current plans. Well, I try not to be an ass in general, but steadily pumping out the best words I can sounds like the right way to go toward “success.”</p>
<h1>And the end</h1>
<p>After that, I chatted with Shannon for a while, met up with <a href="http://www.lettieprell.com/">Lettie Prell</a> who was a lot of fun to talk to, chatted with <a href="http://www.dawnofsteam.net/">Kate Perkin</a> about the problems of being nearly blind, and briefly chatted with random other people from Paradise ICON; they are so friendly, it makes me want to attend even though I can never find the time. After that, I just wandered off with new ideas and plans for next year.</p>
No Author Intrusion for November (and probably December)2013-12-02T06:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2013/12/02/no-author-intrusion-for-november-and-probably-december/<p>November has been a pretty busy month for me. I spent most of the time doing critiques for the writing group and ICON 38. And then, after the convention, I've spent most of my free time trying to integrate the feedback. I've submitted another two chapters of <a href="http://d.moonfire/blog/tag/sand-and-love">Sand and Love</a> for this week, so I'll have more to integrate next Thursday. I suspect it will take me another month to get through the feedback (it's kind of depressing in one place).</p>
<p>I also, accidentally, did <a href="http://nanowrimo.org/">NaNoWriMo</a>. I mean by accident in that I had no intent of doing it and didn't even start a new project until the 20th. But, then I wanted to write a novel as a gift for a friend and managed to write a short 55k word novel. I hit the 50k word point about three minutes before midnight and finished it up this morning while watching <em>Pacific Rim</em>, <em>Planes</em>, <em>Monsters University</em>, and <em>Dredd</em>.</p>
<p>November and December are historically months where I work long hours and this year was no exception. I did a number of sixty hour weeks which pretty much killed my evenings and weekends. Hopefully, things will lighten up but... patterns are changing at work and I'm both excited and terrified for the next two months to come.</p>
ICON 382013-11-18T06:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2013/11/18/icon-38/<p>This weekend was <a href="http://iowa-icon.com/">ICON 38</a>, one of two conventions I go to with my current lifestyle. It was a fun weekend, though less panels that I thought I'd attend and a lot more socialization than I ever imagined.</p>
<p><!--more--></p>
<h1>Friday</h1>
<p>Friday, SMWM and I came in to register. Both of us are benefactors for the convention, which gets us little things like sitting in the front row of events we never go to, having brunch with the guests of honor (which we do), and the occasional swag bag.</p>
<p>This year, there wasn't a swag bag for benefactors, but there was one for everyone. It was, to say the least, kind of frustrating. Some people got keychains, some got books, <a href="http://weirdauthor.com/">Shannon Ryan's</a> wife got nothing but the coupons that everyone got. It was very random and I heard a few people complaining about that.</p>
<p>I was planning on checking out panels, but we (SMWM and me) ended up chatting with Shannon and his wife for quite a few hours. Random people would show up and join in for a while, which was nice but unexpected by the other three people there. Apparently I radiate a "talk with me" field.</p>
<h1>Saturday</h1>
<p>Saturday was fairly fun, I got to see two panels. One on Research for Writing and the other on Editing Short Stories. I'm not the best short story writer, I like long form too much, but it was nice to hear about the brutal world of short story editing and submissions. And I realize I really should get better at it.</p>
<p>I was going to see Art in an Hour, but they merged it with Body Painting and the art table got filled up in a few seconds. So, I had to wait on the edge, which happened to be the people waiting for the Body Painting. Except they were all overweight men and I felt creepy, so I left because I don't want to be one of them. Body Painting is fun, but not with leering.</p>
<p>I ended up going to the dealer hall instead. This year, the dealers were pretty slim. I bought from almost everyone, as usual, including my customary buying a book from every author who showed up. I got one business card, mainly because I was happily burbling away at my fondness for typesetting, but overall, it was fairly enjoyable.</p>
<p>I ended up teaching Shannon's wife how to play Dominion. Maybe, if she likes it, I can lure her into our board game nights. She likes Dr. Who, which is awesome, and reminded me that I really should... watch something from this century in that series.</p>
<p>We ended up going home at 22:00-ish, watching a bit of IT Crowd, and crashing. SWMW's mother, MC, was watching EDM over the weekend and, apparently, cleaning our house. So, that was nice too though a three year old can destroy a room so fast, it's ruined before he walked in.</p>
<h1>Sunday</h1>
<p>Oh, Sunday. I've been waiting almost a year for Sunday. I signed up for the <a href="http://iowa-icon.com/icon38/WritersWorkshops.html">Writer's Workshop</a> and submitted <a href="http://d.moonfire.us/blog/tag/sand-and-blood">Sand and Blood</a>. I thought it was my best writing, of course, and I was anxious to see what Mickey Zucker Reichert (MZR) thought about it. I like her and I've looked up to her for years.</p>
<p>It was scheduled for four hours. SMWM and MC had a play in Solon at 14:00, so we had an hour between the two for them to drop EDM off and head out.</p>
<p>We got started on my critique at 12:48. I, unfortunately, had to walk out just as MZR got started on my piece. It was heartbreaking (and I think I annoyed her), but I have my priorities. I only got to hear the negative things about my piece and I haven't had a chance to read the positive. So, it kind of bummed me out.</p>
<p>I did, on the other hand, meet some really nice authors. And one, who came completely unprepared and brought friends to stare at everyone. That part made me a bit uncomfortable because it was just two people saying saying and looking bored. Later, a third person (unrelated to one of the writers) came in just to listen. This was the first that that happened and I don't know how I felt about that.</p>
<p>After the panel, I let EDM run around. We stumbled into Shannon and his wife as they were going to a reading. I knew the reader and wanted to listen (and said I'd pick up his book), but then EDM ran out and made a fuss when I tried to reign him in.</p>
<p>Instead of listening to the reading, I ended up chasing three kids around the floor, occasionally playing figures on the floor with them, and overall, had fun being silly. Apparently, I "can't like toys" because I'm "really, really old."</p>
<p>I did pick up the book, eventually, and chatted briefly. I might have had a request to submit to a small press, we'll see.</p>
<h1>On the other hand</h1>
<p>While I was at the Writer's Workshop, SMWM and EDM went to the benefactor's brunch. She was a bit nervous (mainly because she didn't very many people and I'm usually the social icebreaker). She had a chance to sit with <a href="http://jimchines.com/">Jim Hines</a>, which she has met, so at least she wasn't <em>too</em> uncomfortable.</p>
<p>EDM apparently stood and ate, being a monster in her eyes but adorable to everyone else.</p>
<h1>Costumes</h1>
<p>This year actually had a lot of costumes. It was kind of cool to see that getting more popular. A lot of steampunk, which is always fun, but some anime characters and Western comics too.</p>
<h1>In the end</h1>
<p>It was an exhausting weekend that ended on somewhat of a down note. I may have accidentally burned a bridge with the Writer's Workshop and I don't consider myself "neo-pro" for purposes of the Paradise ICON program, so not sure what I'll do next year. If anything, chat up the guests of honor.</p>
End of a relaxing weekend2013-11-04T06:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2013/11/04/end-of-a-relaxing-weekend/<p>This weekend, I didn't work. It doesn't sound like much, but for the previous three, I was putting in 20+ hours over the weekend to keep up with some estimating mistakes I made at work due to imperfect understanding. I dislike making mistakes, which is why I put in the hours to correct it. But, it also meant that death march drive that sucks the life out of you and prevents anything else from going forward.</p>
<p>So, I got a chance to rest, recover, and let go enough that I could dream again and maybe write. So, got some house cleaning done, a bit of shopping and laundry, wrote a 5k word short story, a little bit of programming, and a few hours of raking leaves. I also read a book (<em>gasp</em>), well a third of a book but I only took about an hour over three days while interrupting myself to talk to SMWM.</p>
<p>Normally, my life is organized in sprints. They start on Monday and end on Sunday. I usually know my major focus by then and it seems to give some order and organization. I haven't been able to do that recently, which meant I didn't really get anything done since I was trying to do everything.</p>
<p>This week, I have two goals. The first is to finish critiques. Normally, I have 2-3 submissions for the writing group to go through, but I also have <a href="http://www.iowa-icon.com/">ICON 38</a> coming up and I've submitted the first five chapters of <a href="http://d.moonfire.us/blog/tag/sand-and-blood/">Sand and Blood</a> to the group. It also means I won't go to the benefactor's breakfast (<em>pout</em>) and won't be able to chat up some of my role models, but trying to improve my writing takes precedence.</p>
<p>The other is <a href="http://code.google.com/p/prpltwtr/">prpltwtr</a>. Some months ago, I realized that I really dislike Trillian's interface (again, for the fourth time) and I wanted my Pidgin back. But, no one appears to have stepped up and switched over either <a href="http://code.google.com/p/microblog-purple/">microblog-purple</a> or prpltwtr to Twitter's new JSON API. So, I decided to <a href="https://github.com/dmoonfire/prpltwtr">take a shot at it</a>.</p>
<p>Working in code designed by someone else is never easy. Working on a plugin for an API I don't entirely understand makes it hard. Not having anyone to ask questions is even harder. I'm mostly taking pot shots in the dark, slowly getting success, but I need to really dive into it to figure out the last of the bugs I have left. The nested callback system is brutal for debugging and I'm not entirely sure where anything goes. But, I got the basics working over the last month so I just think a week (or two) will get me toward the finish line.</p>
<p><a href="http://mfgames.com/author-intrusion">Author Intrusion</a> is on the back burner until after ICON, though if I finish the critiques, I'll probably jump over there since I have no Internet connectivity in the lunch room (and working on a Twitter client kind of requires connectivity).</p>
<p>Other than that, SMWM has a doctor's visit on Friday that I've been requested/begged to go to and the usual work, family, sleep that happily consumes 80% of my days.</p>
Panels at WisCon 372013-06-01T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2013/06/01/panels-at-wiscon-37/<p>So, I went to a lot of panels at <a href="http://wiscon.info/">WisCon 37</a>. I picked most of them based on my own needs for writing, world-building, or character development. Some made me uncomfortable (but I suspected it would happen) and I learned a lot of things.</p>
<p><!--more--></p>
<h1>Intergenerational GLBT Dialogue</h1>
<p>This was a really interesting panel talking about, effectively, labels. Labels that were used in one generation of the QUILTBAG community and have different meanings in another. Something that was insulting for one group (queer for example) has been reclaimed by another and is considered a positive thing.</p>
<p>Language is a hard thing, mainly because people give strength to labels. Unfortunately, as a programmer, a label for me is just a handle to use and has very little meaning other than a grouping function.</p>
<p>I had a lot more on this panel, but then I realize that I need to think about it a lot more. It's one of those topics I'm afraid of insulting people because I'm finding that my mind is getting slower to adapt to changes. The very nature of labels, and what this panel was about, is that what makes it hard for me to describe my opinions. So, maybe in a later post, I'll write about it if I can figure out how.</p>
<h1>The Female Soldier in Science Fiction and Fantasy</h1>
<p>This was my first panel. Four weeks of preparation of watching movies and reading books. A lot of worrying. I thought I was in good shape when I walked in the door.</p>
<p>I wasn't.</p>
<p>Actually, it was a completely humiliating experience for me. Mostly because I focused on the wrong things and the points I could bring up ended up feeling like "I have to say something" besides really contributing to the panel.</p>
<p>The main reason is that I didn't read the <em>right</em> books. I knew a lot about what I had, but the audience was looking for discussions on integrated (e.g., 50-50 male-female mix) militaries and related topics. It was frustrating, to say the least, but I did the best I could.</p>
<p>I pride myself on being a huge repository of useless knowledge, but this was one of those cases where I was lost. And it didn't help that I had only three hours of sleep and it was after midnight.</p>
<h1>Strong Female Characters vs. Kickass Babes</h1>
<p>This was a fun panel about the differences of a kickass babe verses a strong female character. There were some really good points about how the kickass babe is mostly about their ability to fight (Buffy Summers for example) and they are identified by their martial prowess. I never heard the time "pixies with hammers" to describe characters who violate physics in their fighting (huge hammers, most of the girls from Sucker Punch, etc).</p>
<p>There was some commentaries that we have a dozen Superman movies but no Wonder Woman, which has much of the same powers as Superman. I completely agree with this one since I really want to see a strong, super-powered female character movie instead of the current Marvel movie universe leads.</p>
<p>Strong females are harder to describe because they aren't always obvious. It has more to deal with their struggles and what they experience more than punching someone's lights out. I got a lot of really good ideas out of that panel (and two pages of notes).</p>
<p>This is the panel I got an idea for <em>C</em>, but it's going to be a long time before I can get to it.</p>
<p>Someone also mentioned that I didn't suck that hard at the Military panel, so that helped a little.</p>
<h1>AppDev Lunch</h1>
<p>This was a little lunch to talk about the software behind WisCon's interface. I was surprised to find out it was a Perl-based system, but I can see that. I gave a little feedback on what bothered me:</p>
<ul>
<li>Lack of iCalendar support (which I may be providing at some point)</li>
<li>Right-clicking on event items</li>
</ul>
<p>The one thing I wanted to mention was the confusion I had with the panel selection. Sadly, it didn't come up and I felt like I was speaking too much already.</p>
<p>Since I've dealt with iCalendar before, I may be looking into the code to get it working properly. While most people are switching over to the Android/iOS applet, I don't.</p>
<p>I was surprised to see that they decided to have two completely different code bases for the iOS and Android versions. It also seemed pretty obvious that a lot of people weren't fond that the Android version trailed behind the iOS significantly. For me, it seems like it would be a lot of duplication of code and harder to maintain, but the lady in charge insisted that it was the best way to do it (and started to list her pedigree in mobile development). I disagree, but since I'm not writing it and probably won't use it, I'm not going to harp on it.</p>
<p>There was a discussion about creating an API (RESTful maybe) to the system to allow people to get what they want without having everything funneled through a single developer.</p>
<h1>Crafting, Making, and the Intersection of Gender and Creationism</h1>
<p>I'm interested in the Maker movement in general, though I don't actually seem to interact with people in those communities. This panel talked about a bunch of things that interested me, mostly in the different arts that people were interested in.</p>
<p>There really wasn't much that I got out of it, except for a few historical facts about crafting (usually the trend that if it made money, men probably did it).</p>
<p>There was a lady with a hat with large feathers in the middle front, which made it really hard to see anyone until I moved. Minor thing, but it was frustrating because they were blocking everything.</p>
<h1>Realistic and Unrealistic Sex in Fiction</h1>
<p>This was a really fun panel. Mostly talking about reality verses fiction portrayal of sex. There weren't a lot of examples, but a lot of discussions of why realistic sex appeals to some people and why unrealistic appeals to more people.</p>
<p>There were some uncomfortable moments for me, mainly because this is where people started really talking about how "white males" can't understand anyone because they're on top. Nothing I could say, but it is interesting to be on the edge of a conversation when I'm being described as basically the villain. Now, part of this is expected at WisCon, it is a feminist convention, but still was discomforting.</p>
<p>Some of the panelist's opinions were interesting. My interpretation of one statement was that the mainstream's interest in vampires and werewolves (in specific about sexuality) was a sign of deep-seated destructive and psychological issues, but somehow aliens were perfectly fine.</p>
<h1>The Glitch Memorial Panel</h1>
<p>This was the second panel I was on and I was very nervous after the horror of the first one. I ended up bringing my laptop (just in case), which was good since I ended up bringing up things as people talked.</p>
<p>Throughout the panels, we brought up everyone's avatar on <a href="http://glitch.com/">Glitch</a> and talked about what we liked and didn't like about the game.</p>
<p>One of the biggest questions was an alternative to the game. There was a lot of options, but no really big ones. For such a whimsy and amusing game, there is very little that hits that exact market. Sad, but I can also see what Glitch failed.</p>
<p>Interestingly, I couldn't project at the panels. Normally, I'm not bad about speaking up, but my voice refused to carry into the room properly. I'll have to practice more next time (or be slightly less shy).</p>
<p>Because I was a lot more comfortable with the topic, it went well. I contributed a fair amount but didn't feel like I was trying to dominate the conversation. I met a lot of neat people and generally had a ball.</p>
<h1>Class Markers: The Obvious and the Subtle</h1>
<p>This was a really cool panel talking about classes in society. It started off with a definition about the different classes (the panelist use Capitalist, Middle, Working, and Poor) along with talking about class movement. There was someone from the UK who help contrast the US verses UK differences in classes.</p>
<p>The latter half of the panel talked about the markers themselves. Things like body language, outfits and dress, expected behavior, and the like. It was interesting to see what things people (audience and panelist) mentioned as class markers.</p>
<p>I got a lot of really good notes for my own world-building on this one.</p>
<h1>Fear and Masculinity in SF/F</h1>
<p>This was a panel that talked about fear in stories. It was an interesting topics, but I got turned off by the "men can't ever understand females" discussions near the beginning and then I just kind of zoned out. I wish I didn't, but... I think I was tired.</p>
<h1>Build a World</h1>
<p>This was the final panel I was on, and it was a ball. We created realistic world based on a mobius strip (instead of the gas giant/pizza world from two years ago). There were some really fun discussions of technology, magic, and continental drift. The world was similar to the one in Dragon Hunters.</p>
<p>I got two short story ideas out of it and there are some other people who said they'll try to write a story in the world. If there are enough, we might have a reading on the stories next WisCon.</p>
<h1>Fight Scenes for Women</h1>
<p>On Monday, I only went to two panels. The first was fight scenes for women. This is relevant to me because in <em>Sand and Blood</em> there are quite a few of them and I liked the tips about describing the differences based on physical form.</p>
<p>I also remembered most of the panelists from two years before. I got a lot of really good advice then and in this one when it comes to making more realistic fights.</p>
<h1>Rules of Magic</h1>
<p>The last panel I went to was the rules of magic. This talked about the different aspects of magic in fiction. It included rules on the source of power, how it changed the rules. And, my personal favorite, how would society change if magic was universally available.</p>
<p>I got a lot of really good notes on this one for my own world.</p></p>
Writing at WisCon 372013-05-31T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2013/05/31/writing-as-wiscon-37/<p>I mainly went to <a href="http://wiscon.info/">WisCon 37</a> for the writing. It could be going to panels and getting ideas, interacting with people who don't have the same ideals as myself (as a white male, I don't always feel like I'm welcomed at this convention), and networking with others. I also got a chance to fanboi a little bit, which is always fun.</p>
<p><!--more--></p>
<h1>The writing workshop</h1>
<p>First thing on Friday morning was the writing workshop. This is where (in theory) four of us submit 10k word pieces of our current novels and then critique them before a professional gives their opinions. I did this at ICON once, before they switched over to the Paradise Workshop which I'm not allowed to join because I don't have enough published, and it was fantastic.</p>
<p>The theory is because one of the four didn't show up. At ICON, two didn't show up of the five.</p>
<p>I submitted the first five chapters of <em>Sand and Love</em>, the sequel to <em>Sand and Blood</em>. Overall, I got some very positive feedback on the chapters, including a couple suggestions that I really liked. Mostly places to trim it down.</p>
<p>The biggest one, which is the same with <em>Sand and Blood</em>, is that I purposefully added a slow introduction to get readers used to the names of the world. While I'm at the point where I can easily read "Shimusogo Rutejìmo," I found that it takes just a little longer to get used to the naming conventions. They all agreed about the slow beginning, but they also said that after the third chapter (when things really picked up), they stopped struggling.</p>
<p>I got one written feedback on the piece and the other two are going to be retroactively delivered via email. Within a week or so, I should be deep in edits for that.</p>
<p>The other two pieces were really fun to read. One was specifically a QUILTBAG novel and the other was a fairy tale. I liked reading both of them and I hope I gave useful feedback, both verbally and in written form.</p>
<p>Another big piece from the workshop came networking. The professional, <a href="http://www.joselle-vanderhooft.com">JoSelle Vanderhooft</a>, is working on being a full-time editor. While I've been waiting for another editor to have an opening in May, I suspect I've been dropped by them. I sent an email a half week ago asking for an update.</p>
<p>If I have been dropped (it happens a lot), I'll probably use JoSelle instead. She and I appear to work well together, at least in the five hours we were together.</p>
<h1>Spontaneous writing contest</h1>
<p>This wasn't really spontaneous since I had to pre-register, but it was in the Spontaneous Programming room. Basically, the first eight people who showed up got to join in. The contest consisted of five lines of dialog and I had an hour to write a story around those five lines.</p>
<p>I almost didn't make it, but I wrote a quick little story called <a href="http://d.moonfire.us/fiction/figurines">Figurines</a>. It's very rough, but there is only so much I can do in an hour.</p>
<p>To my surprise, I won third place. Even more surprisingly was the cash prize and a ribbon. So, that pretty much made my day.</p>
<h1>Lectures</h1>
<p>I think it was Saturday evening when I finally got to the Con Suite. I needed a little bit of food and SMWM wasn't eating anything satisfying (mainly for health and baby purposes), so I decided to grab a hot dog.</p>
<p>Somewhere during that time, I got into a conversation with a lovely lady about my writing. She was also a writer. I'm not sure about the specifics, but I was telling her about my plans for <em>Flight of the Scions</em>, the three <em>Sand</em> novels, and everything else. I also mentioned I was about finished writing a weekly serial after two years.</p>
<p>I also mentioned how I want to create the font and cover for the picture.</p>
<p>Well, I'm not going to quite list all the swears she used (I loved listening to her talk), but she basically pointed out that if I'm a writing, I shouldn't wait to publish <em>Sand and Blood</em> just because I want to learn two new skills.</p>
<p>I'd actually say she berated me for doing it, but it sounds nice. But, it was a nice berating, peppered with constant swearing. It was like listening to Mioráshi, Kanéko's mother from <em>Flight of the Scions</em>.</p>
<p>And, she's probably right.</p>
<p>I can always redo the cover and inside later. This way, I don't have the pressure to excel at two new skills just to publish <em>Sand and Blood</em>. In that case, I only have two last steps for <em>Blood</em>, including editing.</p>
<p>It isn't a pie in the sky goal, but I think finishing something is more important than making it perfect the first time.</p>
<h1>Novel ideas</h1>
<p>During one of the panels, I got an idea for a novel. It will buttress up against <em>Flight of the Scions</em>, but not directly. I think it will be a fun story, but I'll wait until after I finish the three <em>Sand</em> novels.</p>
<h1>Networking</h1>
<p>Even though I feel guilty, I'm occasionally a loyal fan of certain authors. Mostly I feel guilty because I'm thinking I wasting their time, but I <em>like</em> them as both people and their writing. In this case, one of the highlights was meeting up with <a href="http://www.talesofthepack.com/">Allison Moon</a> who wrote two novels that I enjoyed greatly. We chatted for a while about all different topics. We have a lot in common when it comes to interests, but she's a lot more... brilliant in person. Hard to explain, but she has charisma and its fun to just watch her talk.</p>
<p>Her writing occasionally makes me jealous too.</p>
<p>I also random met up with a writer named Kat (never focused long enough to read her last name). It was one of those instances where we kept bumping into each other and, eventually, sitting near each other during panels. It was a lot of fun to just chat between the sessions.</p>
<p>There were other authors I got signatures from (five books signed), but I... can't remember them. I didn't have long enough to chat with them to get a fix. I know they were with <a href="http://www.broaduniverse.org/">Broad Universe</a> and I have their books (including one that is fun to pet), but I can't picture them anymore. Which is bummer because they were really nice.</p>
<h1>Depression</h1>
<p>Happily, I wasn't depressed during the panels. I got about ten pages of notes and a couple really good ideas for tweaking some scenes in <em>Sand and Blood</em>, but it really did help knowing that I'm going to get <em>Blood</em> out this year.</p>
<p>I guess I'm just going to have to put out a book a year to keep the dark thoughts away.</p>
WisCon 372013-05-30T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2013/05/30/wiscon-37/<p>So, <a href="http://wiscon.info/">WisCon 37</a> is now behind me. Since I'm fond of retrospectives in general (but now I have a fancy name for them because of work), I figured a few short blog posts about the experience would be fun to write. Of course, I wrote most of this on the last day of WisCon before we wound up in the emergency room, but it still remains true even if the trip ended on a sour note.</p>
<p><!--more--></p>
<h1>Traveling with family</h1>
<p>This is actually one of the biggest things. SMWM is not a writer nor does she really read sci-fi/fantasy anymore. She is, on the other hand, a major fan of hotel rooms. And Madison is the halfway point between our place and the cabin, so it gives us a nice place to sit down for four days, let the travel jitters relax, before moving on for a few days up at the cabin (theoretically).</p>
<p>We brought EDM with us, which did put a lot of load on her because handling a two year-old can be a challenge even on the best of days. It also means that I can't burn myself out on panels since I needed to arrange to have 3-4 hour blocks every once in a while to play parental unit.</p>
<p>Except for the first day, it was actually easy to find a large amount of time. The first day, which is also the rawest, had the largest number of interesting thing so I didn't have much time. I also had the writing group which was four hours alone.</p>
<p>This ended up with a slightly frustrating tone in the first day. I only do two conventions a year since I stopped going to the Iowa Code Camp. I'm insular and stay home almost all the time, but I end up feeling guilty for being completely unavailable for a day and she's stressed from the travel and new locations.</p>
<p>Not sure how to handle this, but I'm hoping I'll figure it out for next year.</p>
<h1>Hotel</h1>
<p>The hotel... was horrible. Normally, I like Best Western hotels and Inn on the Park is normally a great place, but it ended up being rather unpleasant in general.</p>
<p>The first year, I had this fantastic room and SMWM loved it. The next year (last year), I reserved the same thing and got a room that was far from the first year's. It was tiny and cramped. This year, I did the same thing but went to the best room I could find and somehow managed to get a room that felt even worse.</p>
<p>Since SMWM was looking forward to having a fantastic hotel room, this pretty much set her in a bad mood for the first day or so (neither of us like surprises after a three hour drive).</p>
<p>When I went down to the front desk to ask what was going on, I found out a few things. One, that amazingly fantastic room is not available on the website. I was bumped that first year because of overbooking. And, the only way to get it, is to call in person and reserve a room specifically on that floor.</p>
<p>Fair enough, just wish I knew that this year.</p>
<p>They also put in a new television system this year. EDM ended up watching way too much TV in general (a later post), but the middle audio channel was out on Nickelodeon, so they spent most of the four days only listening to the background music for shows or long periods of silence.</p>
<p>It also wasn't until the last day that we found out that the channel marked "SoapNet" was actually Disney Kids, his favorite television crack (and far more appropriate shows for him).</p>
<p>Finally, in the last year, they tore out the hot tub. This is probably the least favorite surprise for us since we like to swim for an hour and then enjoy a little time in the hot tub to warm back up.</p>
<h1>Random happenstance</h1>
<p>On the last night, we were swimming in the pool and met two women and a little boy. The boy was being... a child just like EDM was and screaming for mostly silly reasons. We got to chatting and letting the two boys wave at each other make eyes.</p>
<p>And then his mother starts to encourage him to say hi. He kept shaking his head and saying nothing until suddenly he looks at me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Boy: I will cut you!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His mother was mortified and I was laughing. I know I shouldn't, but his sister (I presume) was laughing also at that.</p>
<p>After that, it got a little bitter. Nice family, though the conversation pretty much halted when the subject of the convention came up. I mentioned I went to WisCon, they said there was some people buying from the convention but they were from Iowa.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Me: Which part of Iowa?</p>
<p>Girl: Cedar Rapids.</p>
<p>Me: Cool. Me too. We live off (name of street).</p>
<p>Girl: (pales) We do too...</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And that was the end of the conversation. I think we got a little too close to home and they got uncomfortable. They left soon after that without another word, but I can understand that. Finding someone who (may) live only a few blocks away from you hundreds of miles from home can be startling and I can understand it. It changes it from a friendly conversation from people you will never meet to something else.</p>
<p>That is normal for me. I've met my landlord two hundred miles from my home once and a number of people who I apparently went to junior high school with twenty years before. It's the normal ebb and flow of a small world that I enjoy.</p>
<p>But, I can understand why not everyone would like that.</p>
<h1>The other posts</h1>
<p>There are a couple other topics that I thought were appropriate for separate posts:</p>
<ul>
<li>Writing: A lot went on with writing at the convention</li>
<li>Panels: I went to a number of panels and tried to write up notes on them</li>
</ul>
<h1>In the end</h1>
<p>It is hard to say I had a good time or bad time, mainly because when you break it down to the individual events, the last few are the ones that really set the tone to the memories. In this case, it was the news at the end that shaded the memories, but I think I had a lot of fun up to that point.</p>
ICON 37 Followup2012-11-04T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2012/11/04/icon-37-followup/<p>Today was the last day of <a href="http://iowa-icon.com/">ICON 37</a>, one of the few conventions that I've been going to. The other is <a href="http://wiscon.info/">WisCon</a>. Conventions are complicated for me. I look forward to them since I learn so much, I get a chance to socialize, and generally meet up with friends. It is also a checkpoint on my goals for writing, so I usually come away feeling that I haven't accomplish anything at all. Remarkably, this time, that wasn't true. I feel pretty encouraged by what went on this year, despite missing one of the three days.</p>
<p><!--more--></p>
<h2>Panels</h2>
<p>Panels are fun, depending on the panelists and the audience. It is always a mix but this year was mostly good, which is nice.</p>
<p><em>Martial Artists for Writers</em>: A fun panel with Gabe Hamilton, Adam J. Whitlatch, and Jim C. Hines. They talked about Hollywood martial arts verses "reality". Much of it I heard with other panels over the years, but it was nice to talk about close verses far, weapons, and everything else.</p>
<p><em>New Author Bootcamp</em>: This had Steven Erikson, John Jackson Miller, and Sarah Prineas. This panel, I didn't get much out of. There was some minor things, but mostly it was "find your own path" and "just keep swimming."</p>
<p><em>LGBT Motifs in Speculative Fiction</em>: Doug Brenner, John Johnson, and Todd DeGraff. I find these panels pretty interesting. Much of it was trying to talk about the acceptance of gays in novels, but also the other aspects of QUILTBAG in writing. Remarkably, the audience had a lot of trouble with anything besides gay and lesbian, but it gave me some ideas for how my world and cultures would handle it.</p>
<p><em>... It's How You Use It</em>: Steve Erikson, Jim C. Hines, and Lars Pearson. This panel talked about series verses stand-alone novels. It is interesting the discussions about stand-alone verses ten book series (Steve wrote a 10 book series) verses every other combination. I found this one interesting, because I do plan on having a series for BAM and FOTS.</p>
<p><em>Military Fiction</em>: Glen Cook and Steve Erikson. I do like military fiction, mostly in fantasy and sci-fi. There is a certain mentality that I haven't been able to write. This panel was a lot of fun and gave me some ideas (for more stories of course) but also where to find some gaps that I'm missing.</p>
<p><em>Beyond Monogamy</em>: Denny Lynch and Tom Webber. This was the first time they had this panel at ICON and there was a pretty good attendance (40+ people). I went because of the premise (if they allowed gays to marriage, poly would happen next). Many of the questions were legal discussions (our laws can handle two members in a marriage a lot better than multiples), but also how to handle such groupings legally. There were a couple outbursts and one lady talked up a lot (despite the fact everyone else was holding up their hands and waiting their turns). Overall, a pretty good panel about the legal ramifications of various poly relationships.</p>
<h2>Games</h2>
<p>I got a chance to play a number of card games too. I taught two teenagers how to play <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_%28card_game%29">Dominion</a> and also played one of the later expansions with some good friends from when I used to live in Iowa. I realize I don't enjoy the expansions, mainly because they went from simple rules on the cards to ones that require a lot of thinking or "yet another stack of cards". In many ways, Dominion is going the route of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_Bunnies_and_the_Quest_for_the_Magic_Carrot">Killer Bunnies</a>, so I'm going to pointedly avoid getting the expansions. We lost all joy for Killer Bunnies after the expansions because it was just too many rules layered on top of each other.</p>
<p>I did play a round of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elder_Sign_%28card_game%29">Elder Sign</a> with a group of players who knew how to play. I had a lot of fun and this is a game that I need to pick up for the gaming night we have bi-monthly. The fact it is a cooperative game makes it even more enjoyable since I always prefer games were teams win over individuals.</p>
<p>Finally, I learned how to play <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Dragon_Ante">Three Dragon Ante</a>. I lost both rounds, but there is enough strategy in this game that I really got into it.</p>
<h2>Social</h2>
<p>Every time I go to conventions, I'm afraid I'm going to be an idiot. When I get nervous, I have a tendency to babble (also known "pay attention to me!"). I think this year, I managed to avoid it, but there were two really good reasons. One, two of the panels had someone doing the very thing, including interrupting everyone or interjecting themselves into everything. That reminded me that I had to work on that. I caught myself doing it once and stopped, but I think I managed to not make an ass of myself for once.</p>
<p>I did see <a href="http://weirdauthor.com/">Shannon Ryan</a> having dinner with <a href="http://www.jimchines.com/">Jim C. Hines</a>. I'm a fan of both of them. Though, I did get a brief impression that Jim was the master and Shannon was the apprentice, which was understandable given their outfits. I also thought it was awesome because I like both of them.</p>
<p>I got a chance to talk to Jim during the Benefactor's breakfast (I have to bribe my way to talk to my idols). We had just some fun, general discussion about a whole range of things from Russia, writing, the end of the world, <a href="http://www.antonstrout.com/">Anton Strout</a> and diabetes. I was squeeing inside most of the time. I like Jim, he's fun to talk to. And if you have a chance to read his Muppet story, don't hesitate to ask.</p>
<p>He also signed my book, which was just awesome too.</p>
<h2>Writing</h2>
<p>Normally, I come out of conventions depressed (happens a lot). But, in this case, I didn't. Part of it is my talking with Jim and Tyree Campbell, but mostly just because I felt like I'm almost there as a writer. Or, more importantly, I have a chance.</p>
<p>There is something about being encouraged and I feel pretty good.</p>
#wiscon Day 2 and 32011-05-30T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2011/05/30/wiscon-day-2-and-3-2/<p>So, here I am on day 3 of <a href="http://wiscon.info/">WisCon</a>. Tomorrow is the last day, but I'm learning a bunch of new things during the panels. Plus, I got to see my grandmother who I haven't seen in over a decade.</p>
<p><!--more-->On the second day, I went to the following:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://wiscon.piglet.org/program/detail?idItems=1277">One Thousand Ways to Die</a> was a very cool panel about killing off characters and the drawbacks of knocking someone out or the recovery of a serious injury. I got an idea for <em>Flight of the Scions</em> out of it, mainly to remove a subplot I didn't want anymore, but also that I need to scale back a bit of the damage. Wonderful panel.</li>
<li><a href="http://wiscon.piglet.org/program/detail?idItems=1070">Princess Boys: Is Male Femininity the Last Wave of Feminism? </a> ended up being the second panel I went to. There were some pretty awesome panellists in this one and it got into really good discussions about allowing boys do what they want as they are growing up (re: the boy who wanted to dress as Daphne and painting boy's toenails). Overall, something that will probably color how I raise EDM.</li>
<li><a href="http://wiscon.piglet.org/program/detail?idItems=1160">Postcolonial Steampunk: A Global Perspective</a>: <em>Flight</em> is inspired by steampunk, but I still question if it really is steampunk. However, this panel gave me some ideas about the current society behind the steampunk movement, how the "feminists" (WisCon being a feminist sci-fi convention) view it, and also some of the things that peek up in the cultures. The information in the panel was pretty good, but I liked the meta conversations a bit more.</li>
<li><a href="http://wiscon.piglet.org/program/detail?idItems=1255">The Future's Here, It's Just Not Evenly Distributed</a> was not the panel I was planning on going. However, in the elevator, one of the panellists for the belief session was in there (which I planned on going) and some of the things she said made me uncomfortable, so I went there. This panel was actually pretty good, talking about phones in Africa but no power, and dystopia in general. I cut out five minutes early to get a signed book.</li>
<li><a href="http://wiscon.piglet.org/program/detail?idItems=1037">How To Describe Nonwhite Characters Sans Fail</a>: This was a panel I really wanted to go to because my main character in <em>Flight</em> is non-white. They talked about much of the same difficulties I had, including not wanting to describe skin color in terms of food/coffee/liquor. Though, the comment about cannibalism (food descriptions) with descriptions got a laugh. This panel was excellent, but also the panellists were amazing together.</li>
</ul>
<p>On Sunday, things were a bit more suppressed, mainly because I needed to spend time with Fluffy and EDM. I ended up skipping two sessions just to go swimming and have a nap with them. Time worth it.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://wiscon.piglet.org/program/detail?idItems=1223">World-Building as a Spectator Sport</a> was a cooperative world-building. There were some interesting techniques, but it quickly turned into strangeness with erotic-based astrophysics and lust-based quantum physics.</li>
<li><a href="http://wiscon.piglet.org/program/detail?idItems=1126">Night in a Lit-Up World</a>: This interested me because I have a world that is an always lit-city, though I don't write much in it. The start came off really well, but then it kind of petered out in the latter half. I heard an interesting thing though, since the moderator felt that "since this is WisCon, we have to talk about race and night". I... didn't care for it but I wasn't annoyed enough to leave. So I worked on some plot ideas and listed to the few things I did enjoy.</li>
<li><a href="http://wiscon.piglet.org/program/detail?idItems=1113">I'd Object, If I Weren't Invisible</a> was probably one of the best panels I was to (tied with the erotica) for sheer energy of the people talking, the depth and breadth of knowledge, and also the understanding. It mostly talked about bisexuality in the various LGBT communities and touched on trans, two things I happen to have an interest in. I found out a lot about the communities and how people are "out" about those parts of their lives. It was cool thinking about an "outness" scale based on how out someone it.</li>
</ul>
<p>(If someone wants more details on a panel, or my opinion, please ask and I'll expand on them. I took copious notes on everything but the World-Building panel.)</p>
<p>After I got out, I had a call from my grandmother. I haven't seen her in years, over a decade actually, and she just got back from a trip to Alaska. When I suggested going over to her place (Madison, WI is <em>not</em> that big), she asked us to come over and we spent a good three hours chatting, talking. There were some curious points, as she circled around asking if I hated her (I don't) mainly because I don't try to keep in touch. I'm going to do better at that. Apparently, EDM is adorable and incredible, mainly because he handled new people and places so well and didn't cry once. However, as we were heading back to the hotel, he started bawling. I think he kept it bottled up to give the impression he's awesome. :) Of course, he is usually quiet so it probably was the incredible desire not to be in the car seat for another 3-4 hours.</p>
<p>I'm still pretty much alone at the convention, but not quite as uncomfortable about it. I had a lot of fun and did chat with a number of people, some of them I'll be adding to my RSS/Atom feed as soon as I get home.</p>
Blocks of time2009-07-31T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2009/07/31/blocks-of-time/<div style="padding: 2px;float: right">
<div style="border: 1px solid #cccccc;width: 20em;margin: 2px 5px 2px 0;padding: 1px;clear: left;float: left;background: white;height: 18px">
<div style="font-family: Tahoma, sans;float: left;margin-left: 2px">Weight Loss (6.4 of 14.7 kg)</div>
<div style="font-size: 10px;background-color: #d8e4a8;height: 18px;width: 43.5%"></div>
</div>
<div style="border: 1px solid #CCCCCC;width: 20em;margin: 2px 5px 2px 0;padding: 1px;clear: left;float: left;background: white;height: 18px">
<div style="font-family: Tahoma, sans;float: left;margin-left: 2px">Commission (4,227 of 15,000 words)</div>
<div style="font-size: 10px;background-color: #e3d1a8;height: 18px;width: 28.1%"></div>
</div>
<div style="border: 1px solid #CCCCCC;width: 20em;margin: 2px 5px 2px 0;padding: 1px;clear: left;float: left;background: white;height: 18px">
<div style="font-family: Tahoma, sans;float: left;margin-left: 2px"><a href="http://tracker.mfgames.com/roadmap_page.php">MfGames.Tools</a></div>
<div style="font-size: 10px;background-color: #bae3a8;height: 18px;width: 0%"></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>Been a busy week this week, mainly because of a self-inflicted need to do better at work. I hate putting in estimates for 100+ hours on a single task when everyone else is putting in 8, 12, even 40. But, having the only one over 50 and having it so much higher gives me a tiny little lurch in my stomach. More so when I'm justifying to the VP of Development. It doesn't matter that it is an honest estimate, and probably a bit low, it still sucks when I have to do it. True, the 100+ hours is broken into a rather impressive WBS, but still.</p>
<p>I like breaking things into smaller blocks. Most of my personal projects are done that way. The MfGames.Tools is just one step toward my current programming goal of having a new version of CuteGod out. I just need to get the command line tools, unit performance, updater, BooGame, and a ton of other things. I decided I need to really focus on a single programming project, so the "main goal" is getting CuteGod polished. Then I'll play with Tablet of Words (WordPlay, my other "official" game), Ceimaha and other ideas.</p>
<p>I don't expect any of those to be done before GenCon, which I'm seriously looking forward to. I think the next week or so is going to be dedicated to working on homework and finishing up the petition which I promised by Auguest 9. I'm thinking about also stopping doing book reviews from GenCon this year, or at least just doing it when I feel like doing reviews. I don't know if they are helpful in general, but I feel bad since I don't give glowing reviews... ever. I don't even give glowing reviews to my own book. Like the review my brother did of MG (rated 4 out of 5 stars), I really try to be brutally honest but I hate the imagined conflict I get when I do them.</p>
<p>While I'm not entirely sure <em>why</em> I did it, I finally joined Twitter. Amazingly, my account is the same almost everywhere else: <a href="http://twitter.com/dmoonfire">dmoonfire</a>. No clue how long I'll use it, it seems to be as unfocused as everything else in my life. But, that is who I am. I don't focus on one thing in general and I kind of like it that way.</p>
Moving month2009-04-22T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2009/04/22/moving-month/<div>
<div style="border: 1px solid #CCCCCC;width: 200px;margin: 5px 5px 2px 0;padding: 1px;clear: left;float: left;background: white">
<div style="font-family: Tahoma, sans;float: left;margin-left: 2px">Weight Loss: 14.7 kg (32.4 lbs)</div>
<div style="font-size: 10px;background-color: #D8E4A8;height: 17px;width: 10.9%"></div>
</div>
<div style="border: 1px solid #CCCCCC;width: 200px;margin: 5px 5px 2px 0;padding: 1px;clear: left;float: left;background: white">
<div style="font-family: Tahoma, sans;float: left;margin-left: 2px">College Petitions (1 of 5)</div>
<div style="font-size: 10px;background-color: #D8E4A8;height: 17px;width: 20%"></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>It's amazing. We packed and moved the entire house in Illinois in a matter of a weekend, but to move from a small apartment takes four weeks of effort. Today, I finally handed over the keys to the apartment after Fluffy and I got through our final cleaning last night.</p>
<p>Now, Fluffy did break her back to pack the house six months ago, but the loading of the truck, moving, and unloading still eclipsed the sheer amount of effort and took less time.</p>
<p>Oh well, I'm down to two residential addresses again. And this is a good thing.</p>
<p>I haven't found my rut yet, but remarkably, I'm still happy. I did decide to hold off on finding a gaming group though. Unless I fall into one, I need to focus on everything else going on and it is something that I miss but can set aside for a few months or years. I'll get my fix at GenCon this year and maybe actually be a bit less pathetic about enjoying writers.</p>
<p>If I can remember to pre-register for stuff.</p>
<p>And to finish the reviews I promised.</p>
Convention advice2009-03-20T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2009/03/20/convention-advice/<p>Convention time is coming up for me, including the main one in my year: <a href="http://gencon.com/">GenCon Indy</a>. I'm also planning on going to <a href="http://www.iowa-icon.com/">ICON</a> this year, now that I'm back in that territory. And living only eight blocks away, though I'll still stay at the hotel on principle.</p>
<p>While talking to a friend last year at GenCon, I was reminded of some of the "mistakes" I made at the first GenCon. I saw the same mistakes being made by the other married couples in our gaming group and I decided to put them down so hopefully the random <a href="http://www.google.com/">Google</a> search will bring it up and save someone a long drive home in angry silence.</p>
<p><!--more-->... not that it happened to me.</p>
<p>Fluffy got me a week later.</p>
<p>I actually listened to this a year or so after that.</p>
<p>So, imagine back a few years for me. My first "big" gaming convention and the first time I went to GenCon. It was long before I met all those lovely authors on my friends list and decided I could have a chance of being a writer. Fluffy decided to come with me, despite not really being a gamer for a long time. I suspect it was because of the week at a nice hotel. And maybe some LARP's. We had plans to enjoy dinner together, but otherwise I pretty much had games and writing workshops from 08:00 to 19:00.</p>
<p>Yes, the exquisite joy of gaming for eleven hours solid. It would be just like Saturdays but all week. To explain, I was running twelve hour <a href="http://www.white-wolf.com/exalted/">Exalted</a> sessions every Saturday at the time. We dropped to every other Saturday a few months, then only ten hour sessions, but you get the idea.</p>
<p>Needless to say, Fluffy ended up getting bored. And unhappy. I abandoned her in the process of seeking out the gaming nirvana. I also managed to burn out somewhere at the 35 hour mark of solid gaming.</p>
<p>The next year, I preregistered to get more games I wanted and gave it a bit more space. An hour here, a half hour there. So, only nine hours of solid gaming every day. And, once again, Fluffy came with. She registered for more, but still ended up getting bored and frustrated because I gamed all the time.</p>
<p>Same thing happened when I ran Exalted, including the midnight game. Same thing when I camped out in the writer sessions.</p>
<p>You probably get the pattern.</p>
<p>Last year, I think I finally figured it out. We started picking games to play together. Not every one, but one or two games that we both enjoyed. And I gave it a lot more space between the games, not only to prevent burnout but also to give her a chance to request for attention if she is feeling frustrated. I stuck with 4-6 hours worth of planned time, a handful of pick-me-up tickets, and planned out which ones I'd be willing to triage if something came up. Fluffy played more games last year--actually she played more than me for once--but we were also a lot happier.</p>
<p>I originally used the excuse, "it is only a week, I'll pay attention to you next week" but that really was selfish of me. Things go wrong, games get canceled, life gets in the way. When you have a spouse (or even just friends), keeping connected during the frenzy of a convention is important. Eating dinner together, finding some quiet time, or even insulting the people mocking furries. It makes it much more enjoyable than when everyone scatters to the five winds and you only find out afterwords that someone spent half the convention sitting on a bench, no clue what to do and feeling utterly lonely.</p>
<p>Given that, this is the advice I'm using for myself.</p>
<ul>
<li>Plan to have at least one meal together every day. Do not miss it because there just happened to be a new game starting.</li>
<li>If you preregister, first pick out things you can do together. Fluffy isn't really into RPG'ing and I don't like LARP's that much. But, we do enjoy silly board games. Doesn't have to be the entire convention, but at least a few. Ideally, try to space them out evenly throughout the convention and not everything on Sunday. We also include wandering through the dealer's area and mocking the people who don't shower as part of our time together.</li>
<li>Make sure you take a break. And, from my first year mistake, sleep is not a sufficient break.</li>
<li>Pick out the rest of your games. But, when you finish, figure out which ones you really want and which ones you could skip in an emergency. If 80% of your list is "must not miss", then follow a simple rule. For every game you have to go to, pick one you can skip. In my opinion, put more of the "can skip" games in the back half but still scatter them around.</li>
<li>Let your spouse or friends know which ones you'd be willing to skip. Tell them you'll whine and whimper, but if they really, really need you, you'll skip it. With only a few dramatics and maybe only two serious attempts to escape via smoke bombs. Hide the rope, just in case. Hint that bribes would make the whining go away. I'm sure you have a bribe system already, don't you? Mine occasionally involves LEGO blocks.</li>
</ul>
<p>If they do ask for you to skip a game, then just do it. Call it brownie points or whatever, but sometimes someone can have a seriously bad convention. And, in the heat of the excitement, sometimes it gets hard to listen to what they are saying. And when you are about to go into the play-testing of Exalted Autocthon or some other once-in-a-lifetime thing, the last thing you want to hear is "skip it, please? I need you." Setting up rules ahead of time makes it easier to ask for help (or attention) and also to keep you from going overboard.</p>
<p>My other advice is to any person going to a convention like GenCon: pack a cooler. Food is expensive and sometimes, it is better to just have a couple PB&J sandwiches and some chips instead of shelling out $20 for lunch.</p>
Travel Time is Over2008-08-20T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2008/08/20/travel-time-is-over/<p>Well, finally got back to my apartment in Iowa last night. Long, long drive and I kind of got sick from the heat, but things are back to normal. 35 important emails at work, no Internet at home, yeah, pretty much exactly what I expected.</p>
<p>One thing that came up, besides an incredible desire to write (novels and games), was business cards. For two years, I had little hand-printed business cards. And I never used them. This year, I thought they looked a bit ratty and tossed them. Naturally, I had a bunch of people asking for them this year. Note to self, bring cards next year.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, and produce at least one thing to justify the "Moonfire Games" on my badge. :)</p>
<p>GenCon was a blast. Fluffy got a reward for having the "single most destructive act at the con" in Killer Bunnies and I got to talk nearly constantly. Not to mention a ton of books to read, which I'll start up next month after Lethe's Yarn obsession dies off.</p>
<p>Speaking of Lethe's Yarn, I did just a little bit of work on it last night. Mainly getting the console working for the user. I only implemented the <code>tgm</code> (god mode) and <code>tcl</code> (collisions) for debugging, but it was on my list of things to do. Then, I managed to burn two hours working on reorganizing my MfGames utility libraries (again) and writing a little SWF front end for the settings editor. Tonight, I'm hoping to get a bit better user display for the world (depending on Internet for downloads of course) and working on the editor (which is choking on the files). I also found a way of doing in-place file updates for zip archives so I can maybe get rid of the 2000+ files I'm creating and consolidate them down to reasonable levels (i.e. 1).</p>
GenCon, Day One and Two2008-08-15T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2008/08/15/gencon-day-one-and-two/<p>I love my job. I really do. It isn't that it has anything to do with this convention, but has everything to do with the fact I'm relaxed so quickly and enjoying myself so fast that I have to attribute to getting paid on time, enjoying the work and challenge, and basically being proud of myself.</p>
<p>I managed to blow through my entire budget in about three hours by starting at one end of the Author's Alley and going to the other. And pretty much picking up every single book I didn't already have. Amazingly, a lot of authors actually remembered my face long before they realized I was 'dmoonfire' or 'Dylan Moonfire' which is just neat. And, one of the authors gave me a free copy of their book so I could review it.</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>Okay, that floored me. You can get free books for doing reviews? Well, that was even more impressive. I also managed to throw a wrench in some of the author's actions since three (including dear <a href="http://antonstrout.livejournal.com/">Anton</a>) didn't know they were suppose to fill out little slips of paper. So, they got educated on how to fill it out, then I brought up my neatly filled paper... and the cashier refused to handle it. Going back, I just handed them cash and got my books. Sometimes, I'm not sure if Anton likes me or doesn't like me because of the review, but I <em>think</em> he does and I'll probably give his sequel, which I'm looking forward to, the same quality. But, still, I want to smooze the authors not upset them. :)</p>
<p>I also have a 0.6 m high pile of new books to read. *squee*</p>
<p>I also had another wrench since I looked for <a href="http://amsaph.livejournal.com/">Ms. Nilles</a>. I knew she was going to have an empty table, and I noticed her name on the cash register. After circling the authors like a shark, and the artists, I asked.</p>
<p>"There is no one by that name."<br />
"Yes, you have it on the register."<br />
"No, we don't."<br />
"Row five, eight from the left."<br />
"No, I swear we... don't... oh, there she is."</p>
<p>Sadly, Melanie decided to make it a challenge to find her, but I'm a persistent little bugger. :) Any other GenCon goers who want to meet?</p>
<p>As for games. I've had one no-show (Facehuggers and Chestbursters) which I managed to get into a playtest, out of the playtest, and into a game as other gamers went to the first playtest. Then played a 1930's ghostbuster--as a cockney thief who was assigned to the lord in charge of the ghost hunters. I also did Runequest, but I didn't like it as much and the mechanics were <em>really</em> stupid about facing. Did you know humans need to circle around 3 <em>meters</em> to turn around? Or, they need to spend one entire action to make a 30 degree turn. And another to pull the sword out. I think they need two for chewing gum and walking, but I'm not sure.</p>
<p>Traveler was awesome, in the first two rounds of character creation, I managed to destroy a ship and start a war. After that, every round I kept picking up medic, so we decided that my character was the reason that everyone on the ship kept needing medic. I also stole something from <a href="http://theglen.livejournal.com/">Mr. Walsh</a> and started making up "100 Things Derelict (my character) Cannot Do". #17 - "Is not allowed to take off the warning sticker from the explosive decompression handle next to the brake." #34 - "Is not allowed on any space station with glass windows." #81 - "Is not to be left in a room with anything that does 'Do Not Touch'." #87 - "Is not allowed to drink while docking." Great inspiration, Glen, and it had everyone rolling in the aisle.</p>
<p>And then I did "Introduction to DragonStorm." Which consisted of 3 old players with the equiv of 20th, 18th, and 15th level with 3 1st level players. Guess who did all the fighting, telepathy, magic, tanking, killing, and exploring? *sigh* Crappy room, okay DM, lousy party balance.</p>
<p>Overall, having a fairly good time. Most of my games were 1-2 hours short, one was 2 hours long, and I got in about an hour of swimming.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, and the writing panels where I think I did everything absolutely wrong. :)</p>
Packed up, ready to go2008-08-12T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2008/08/12/packed-up-ready-to-go/<p>If it wasn't for this damn work thing, I'd already be on my way. Got six days worth of clothes in my back, probably forgot something important, my laptop in my <em>brand new</em> backpack, no gaming books (why bother?), and a bag full of dice. I even went through and removed the dice I didn't like anymore.</p>
<p>As soon as I get out of work, I'm heading to visit some kitties, change some kitty litter, and then to Illinois for a night of MythTV repair and Wife Cuddle Updates (WCU). And probably then some doggy visits, and wandering out somewhere near noon on Wednesday for the convention; can't check in until 15:00 anyways (though they'll probably let us in early).</p>
<p>I also made a pretty schedule of everything that I might be going to, mostly of the friends who posted their schedules, such as the very busy <a href="http://antonstrout.livejournal.com/">Anton</a> and slightly less busy <a href="http://eyezofwolf.livejournal.com/">Dylan</a>. If I do everything (I won't), then I'll be solid every day. As such, I'll probably be browsing at least a little bit and maybe picking up some new game books to read. And novels, oh, I'll probably get one of everything again this year; that was fun.</p>
<p><!--more-->Being my fourth year at GenCon, I'm curious to see if I'll come up with a fourth dice game to play while being bored (i.e. waiting for something). I really liked the tactical dice game we came up with two years ago, that was a lot of fun. Last years? Not quite as much fun.</p>
<p>My Internet went out last night, so I couldn't do my homework like I should. Instead, I worked on the game. Yeah, it was really hard to choose what to do. I did finish Dragon Prophecy last night, so I was at least good about meeting my self-imposed deadlines. I got the beginning of a HTML renderer for the game so it shows pretty displays for the help screens and also for the "terminal"--running messages that pretty much identifies a Bard Tale style game.</p>
<p><a href="http://brokentypewriterpress.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/lethes-yarn-001.jpg"><img src="/assets/lethes-yarn-001-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-719" /></a> <a href="http://brokentypewriterpress.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/lethes-yarn-002.jpg"><img src="/assets/lethes-yarn-002-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-720" /></a></p>
<p>The right screen shows the beginning of the 3D field for the game, you can see a couple hundred game meters which looks pretty neat. I need to add a sky box to make it look better, but it is really cool to see something moving forward and looking more like a game every day.</p>
<p>Yeah, I'm going to be busy as all hell when I get back.</p>
After 33 birthdays, I get LEGO's!2008-08-11T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2008/08/11/after-33-birthdays-i-get-legos/<p>Have a very nice little birthday. Fluffy was there, didn't leave the apartment. Got to program alone, watch movies with her, and cuddle. And she got me a 700 piece box of LEGO bricks to play with. *squee* Soon, I'll get a much larger collection (I hope) and I'm already planning what I can do with them. At the moment, I want to try making a Warhammer Quest board with it, then maybe running my own game because all things Warhammer are depressing (3 in 6 chance you lose everything while leaving the dungeon, per week, for 1d6 weeks). Though, the idea of making my own board games and trying them out sounds like a lot of fun. I have a couple of ideas and it would be neat to have little LEGO minifigs running around something I created.</p>
<p><!--more-->Worked on <em>Lethe's Yarn</em> quite a bit this weekend. Ended up learning how to do a wood-style background in Gimp/Photoshop, so I tried to make a steampunk-inspired frame for the game. It wasn't... exactly perfect, I probably should do it in Blender or another 3D modeling program, but it is much nicer than the stone thing I had before. Despite "wasting" a day working on that, I got the main menu up and running, lots of code to move around, and even the character display complete with "100/100" style health bar. It is actually looking like a game finally.</p>
<p><a href="http://brokentypewriterpress.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/game.png"><img src="/assets/game-150x150.png" alt="" width="150" height="150" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-717" /></a></p>
<p>My dad and brother both tried to call me on Saturday, but I managed to get a hold of them later. Stupid cell phone, I turned off the ringer because it gives me a low battery beep for <em>three solid days</em>. Then, I sometimes forget to turn it back on, so I miss calls. One serious reason for having a land line.</p>
<p>In other words, I'm pretty much getting ready for GenCon. Finishing up the things I need to do here, putting my apartment to sleep (i.e. clean up, do dishes, make sure the food is put away), and then seven days of excitement. I have absolutely no idea how its going to turn out, of course, but isn't that the fun part?</p>
GenCon Trepidations2008-08-08T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2008/08/08/gencon-trepidations/<p>Things are beginning to finally settle down. Still obsessing, but at least last night I got six hours of sleep instead of three that I've been suffering with the last few days. Being sick doesn't help, but I should be nice and healthy for GenCon this year.</p>
<p>GenCon. Wow, its amazing that its getting so close. I'm actually feeling strange about it. I've only been there three times now, which I've enjoyed very much. But, the idea of two days of travel to get there, plus I don't really have anything... writerly to do this year. I could shop around a novel that isn't finished (<em>Flight of the Scions</em>), but as far as I know, the only publisher I know there is Five Star Books and they already rejected it. Of course, <a href="http://antonstrout.livejournal.com/">Anton Strout</a> is there, but except for poking him with a stick, I don't have much. I know that <a href="http://starlet97.livejournal.com/">Melanie Nilles</a> is also going to be there, that will be cool to meet up with someone new...even if I need to finish those last 30 pages of her novel and write about it. So many distractions and self-imposed deadlines. Naturally, <a href="http://eyezofwolf.livejournal.com/">the other Dylan</a> is going to be there, but I want his books so hard. :)</p>
<p>Despite that, I feel... not a writer. I haven't really finished anything except MG, which isn't really publishable at GenCon for many reasons. I have a couple short stories, but nothing done. I feel like I lost two good months of writing because of the flood and my inability to adapt to a new environment; mainly because I didn't want to adapt because it would be that much harder to move back out. In hindsight, it was probably what needed to happen, but that was two months I was going to finish <em>Flight</em> or at least the first draft.</p>
<p>Looking at GenCon as a check point, I realize I've done many things in the last twelve months, but very few of them were proper writing projects and nothing to really to stand up and talk about. Those people I look up to, they <em>did things</em> and when I compare myself to them, I haven't gotten as far.</p>
<p>But I could have, or at least gotten a lot further.</p>
<p>And that actually makes me rather frustrated.</p>
<p>And sad, actually.</p>
Three Weeks!?2008-07-22T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2008/07/22/three-weeks/<p>Do you realize it is three weeks until <a href="http://www.gencon.com/2008/indy/default.aspx">GenCon Indy</a>? Frustratingly, I still have about 10-20 pounds I wanted to lose before then. And lots of stories to write and things to juggle before I get there. Oh yeah, and two novels I <strong>must</strong> read (including Dragon Prophecy) before then.</p>
<p>And I'm not actually do anything besides being a writing groupie, window shopping (less shopping money this year), and chatting with authors. And... that's about it. I don't have any new novel ideas to try shopping around, mostly working on ones I already started, so for the first time, I really don't have any goals for this convention.</p>
Weaving my life2008-02-09T06:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2008/02/09/weaving-my-life/<p>This week, I got my first non-Mono package into Debian: <a href="http://www.asceai.net/meritous/">Meritous</a>. Its a little arcade game that I found on <a href="http://playthisthing.com/">Play This Thing</a>, noticed it was written with SDL, and sent an email to the author to see if I could package it. Twenty-three days later, it was uploaded and sitting in the NEW queue, waiting for some minor changes. Its kind of nice, doing something small, though it adds to my list of Things I Must Do for the next couple of years.</p>
<p>I saw that <a href="http://steampunkmagazine.com/">Steampunk Magazine</a> has their submission guidelines for issue #5. I didn't submit anything to #4, two rejections in a row kind of depressed me, but I have a good idea for #5 so I'm probably going to do it.</p>
<p>I'm going to <a href="http://gencon.com/">GenCon 2008</a> this year. Already got my badge and my hotel room reserved. Even if I do get another job (*hope*), I should be able to explain this as a pre-existing commitment, which it is. I'm not going to run a game though, not enough time and I felt... well, I felt that it wasn't really worth it to run games at the convention. I might run a pick-up game, though, depending on my mood. And probably lust after the Impossibly Cute Twenty-Something Gamers along with <a href="http://darkfluffy.livejournal.com/">Fluffy</a>.</p>
<p>Frustrated with coding, college, and career. Though, I managed to develop this very sweet numerical system for the Complete Clothier that can handle a couple thousand values all being changed in real time and dynamically cascade the changes out to the same thousand values. All while updating the screen. Very cool. This version is also about two orders of magnitude faster than the other one, which is even more of of a bonus.</p>
<p>I'm breaking though. I've put in 10-12 hour days this week, on top of college, and my foolish attempts to maintain the various projects I've been working on. I've bounced through a couple communities to distract me slightly, but I'm feeling like I'm beginning to strip gears a bit. This weekend, I hope to get a bit of coding down, maybe a short story or two, and play some video games. Fluffy is sick and we don't have gaming, so its going to be a quiet weekend.</p>
<p>Also thinking about stripping out the huge number of tags I use.</p>
Boiling Pots2008-02-03T06:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2008/02/03/boiling-pots/<p>Woke up yesterday thinking about Itrifore, Fedora, both of my unpublished novels, and everything else in the world. Stress is a really crappy thing, you know?</p>
<p><!--more-->I need to work on some resumes, mainly to create variants that won't scare the hell out of people seeing exactly how many different things I've done in my life. It's a lot, I've been a very busy beaver these last twenty years. Tomorrow, I should have a pair of development resumes (C# and web in general). And then to poke the recruiters.</p>
<p>This is coupled with work itself. My boss is demanding I work overtime to get something done. This is not something I'm looking forward to. One, because I'm afraid I'll burn out with 2-3 weeks of 60-80 hour work weeks to get something done. And it is the project that I feel is a complete waste of money for the last three years and killing everyone to get it done in three weeks won't change that fact. It's important to her, and from my impression, it is more important than anything else in the world right now, including paying her employees on time.</p>
<p>As she announced to the company:</p>
<blockquote><p>"If you want to get paid on time, you are in the wrong company."</p></blockquote>
<p>But, I have college to work on and I won't have the energy or time to write my papers if I'm working every damn moment of the night.</p>
<p>I'm getting a hankering to write again. <em>Ponies Among Us</em> isn't going to make it. If I'm looking and 2-3 more weeks of overtime, which means I have no creativity left to write or program, I lost any and all chance to actually complete the game on time.</p>
<p>This. Royally. Sucks.</p>
<p>Yeah, I might have no made it, but I would be willing to do overtime to try getting it at least minimally working. This is what happened last year, maybe I'm not ready to make a game yet. Well, I've been thinking about <a>CuteGod</a> as well. I'm going to try really hard not to get any new projects and just work on things for a while. Give up on 4E6, I mean really give up the hope and just work on little things to get them done.</p>
<p>I'm not going to drop Ponies though. I love the idea too much. I'll just let it get in the boiling pot of ideas and interests. That is related to Itrifore. I like the HERO system and the more I use it, the more comfortable I'm with it. And I really want to write up <a href="http://fightertype.livejournal.com/">Fightertype</a> world in the system; if only to make her play the game again.</p>
<p>This is a year of transition for me. I'm planning on it. I'm planning on quitting my job and finding a new one in efforts to be happier with my bankroll and myself. I don't want to be upset at my boss, I don't want to be this personally involved with the company and be so utterly helpless at the same time.</p>
Black Holes of Writing2007-08-24T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2007/08/24/black-holes-of-writing/<p><img src="/assets/172" alt="" /> CuteGod Development: (44 / 172 requirements)<br />
<img src="/assets/6+months" alt="" /> <em>Wind, Bear, and Moon</em> Proposal<br />
<img src="/assets/400" alt="" /> Summer Biking: (203.5 / 400.0 km)</p>
<p>You ever get the impression that what you do or what you write basically is falling into the Pit of Oblivion instead of being read, appreciated, and inspiring someone to say "damn, that's cool" or "I see a problem..."?</p>
<p>I know that that is the nature of the Internet, but I keep getting this feeling that I'm doing something wrong. A good example, I did <a href="http://mfgames.com/comics/glorious-saber/004">Glorious Saber #004</a> two weeks ago. On the <a href="http://thefreedomstone.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=4774">The Freedom Stone forum</a>, I posted it. After two weeks and sixty views, no comments. The last two stories I wrote were the same way, 80 views, no comments. On the other hand, others get comments every 20 or so views, which is what I consider a popular post. So, there is something different about my stuff and theirs. There is skill and talent, of course, but I don't get a "you did this wrong" type of stuff. That's happened to me a lot. I get comments that I'm a great writer (and apparently have a reputation in some non-marketable fields) but then the comments just... stop. No more comments, no more complaints. There is something about my writing that just inspires people not to respond. And this is in comparison to hundreds of other postings in the same forum.</p>
<p><!--more-->A good example is the Freedom Stone forum. I've posted about ten stories there. I've gotten comments about chat that I'm in the top ten writers on the forum, yet no comments. People say they love my writing, it is truly wonderful, but then no one actually tells me in a public manner, just private messages and chat. The absolutely same thing happens for the last five forums I've moved to. Lots of stories get posted that get comments up the wazoo, but I get only feedback in private never public.</p>
<p>So, I have to try figuring it out why the hard way. Kind of like my novels. Both <em>Wind, Bear, and Moon</em> and <em>Muddy Reflections</em> have gotten negative pointers (i.e. things that I did wrong and the best type of feedback for me at this point) from <a href="http://scienceprincess.livejournal.com/">scienceprinces</a> and <a href="http://eyezofwolf.livejournal.com/">eyezofwolf</a> respectively. Beyond that, <em>neither</em> story has ever gotten constructive criticism. In years. My rejections are, "lovely story, not our (thing|genre|market|style)" but never anything specific. Mr. Helfers (a publisher I met at GenCon), when asked, basically said WBM was a good story but they don't do Young Adult. Ditto with <em>Muddy Reflections</em>. Fair enough, but doesn't point out what I need to improve it. I've send them out to dozens of friends, family, and complete strangers. None of them came back with anything other than love and affection.</p>
<p>So, what scienceprincess said made a lot of sense. And she is absolutely right about what she mentioned. Kind of frustrating since I feel that I should have figured it out before, or that I haven't adjusted for when I went through those same experiences (rejection of parents, the emotional states, struggling with boyfriend/girlfriend) was much earlier than what her students went through. I wrote based on my life.</p>
<p>I also never realized that the sentence structure had something to do with it. But, what she mentioned before made a lot of sense. I have a very formal style of writing and occasionally use archaic constructs (like myrid of.. just to annoy <a href="http://fightertype.livejournal.com">fightertype</a>). When I got my first novel edited (we don't talk about this one), the editor said I had a "fascinating voice that was unusual." I suspect that comment, though vague, is probably related to what scienceprincess said, just she stated it in terms that I understand. The fact she couldn't get into the first forty pages of WBM also points out that I need to change something.</p>
<p>But, given that people can't tell me what I've done wrong, it really points out that I have to figure it out. I have to tear apart my writing and try to figure out what is not interesting, while looking from the inside of the bubble. One of the hardest things in the world to do, in my opinion, since the worse judge of a person is themselves.</p>
<p>I think that is why I offered reviews for the authors at GenCon (and did them for Kaywall and eyezofwolf). I am giving them something that I struggle for myself. Yeah, it isn't perfect, but I want that honesty, I want to know what I'm doing wrong since I can't see it by myself. Baring getting it myself, I feel that I should offer it to others since I'm giving what I want myself.</p>
<p>In other news, I lost all the food in the refrigerator but didn't lose the refrigerator itself. It recovered after eight hours of thawing. The entire back end was a solid block of ice instead of healthy hoarfrost. I also finished <a href="http://mfgames.com/comics/glorious-saber/005">Glorious Saber #005</a> last night.</p>
Running Exalted at GenCon2007-08-22T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2007/08/22/running-exalted-at-gencon/<p><img src="/assets/172" alt="" /> CuteGod Development: (44 / 172 requirements)<br />
<img src="/assets/6+months" alt="" /> <em>Wind, Bear, and Moon</em> Proposal<br />
<img src="/assets/400" alt="" /> Summer Biking: (203.5 / 400.0 km)</p>
<p>You know, I should get off my ass and get some of that bike riding done this year. I really should. But, not today. Actually, I wanted to mention about my two games at GenCon. Both of them were related to each other, the 29th Tepet Legion invading the Two Firs area to hunt down a single lone Anathema. Yeah, right. It ended up being five Solars and one Lunar involved, or would have been if I scaled the adventure correctly.</p>
<p><a href="http://brokentypewriterpress.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/overland.png" title="overland.png"><img src="/assets/overland.thumbnail.png" alt="overland.png" /></a></p>
<p><!--more-->Probably the first mistake I made was options. The adventure was set up how I would run a normal adventure. Set up the seed, figure out all the characters involved, and basically let the players take over from there. That... didn't work out so well since they spent the first couple hours learning the game and basically figuring out how to come into the map. Next time, I'll go with more of a railroaded plot to handle the four hour session a bit better. Imagine that, me restricting players. But, it was a really important lesson learned.</p>
<p>The second was related to the first. I created tokens for each and every character that could have been involved. I created character sheets (learned about the Anathema DB typo as I was stuffing them) and spent a lot of hours creating characters for them.</p>
<p><a href="http://brokentypewriterpress.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/characters.png" title="characters.png"><img src="/assets/characters.thumbnail.png" alt="characters.png" /></a> <a href="http://brokentypewriterpress.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/named.png" title="named.png"><img src="/assets/named.thumbnail.png" alt="named.png" /></a></p>
<p>Basically, I spent two days making characters (that I could use in the comic no doubt), cutting them out, and gluing them to washers. All in all, I used... twelve of the forty plus tokens I made. So, less options will mean less miniatures made. On the other hand, they were a hit that I made customized miniature tokens.</p>
<p>I thought I might have made a mistake with one thing. At the convention, I got magnetic bases for the washers. With yellow, orange, red, and black for -1, -2, -4, and Incapacitated respectively. Despite my best judgment, I used them for the second game for the first time, but it worked out pretty well. Of course, I only had one player but that just meant he got a four hour solo game and he seemed to have enjoyed it.</p>
<p>That led to mistake three: don't run a game during Saturday night. As in, when everyone is out drinking, dancing, and hitting on people. Makes for very quiet games. Even with the ICTSG* showing up three hours too late, it led to a very small game. Admittedly, if I yelled out over the hotel that I needed players, I could have gotten more, but I don't like yelling that loud.</p>
<p>I really should have gotten charm cards. Being that I have charm cards I can make, I should have gotten it done. It would have simplified things greatly. It just inspired me to make more and in two different formats. Uteck uses a wide format (4 to a page) instead of the more narrow ones that came out of <a href="http://white-wolf.com">White Wolf</a>. They would have been pretty nice for this.</p>
<p>The first game ran two hours over the four hour block. They were having fun, I was having fun, so that was a good sign. The other was almost exactly four hours, but my player had to carpool out the next day. Oh, mistake four: bring a watch next time.</p>
<p>So, that was my experience of running a game at a convention. I really enjoyed it so I'll probably do it again next year, though I'll limit the options a lot more. There was a lot of interest in Exalted and, frankly, I was really glad I could try helping White Wolf sell just a few more, or at least tried to help them sell a few more.</p>
Back from GenCon2007-08-20T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2007/08/20/back-from-gencon-2/<p><img src="/assets/172" alt="" /> CuteGod Development: (44 / 172 requirements)<br />
<img src="/assets/6+months" alt="" /> <em>Wind, Bear, and Moon</em> Proposal<br />
<img src="/assets/400" alt="" /> Summer Biking: (203.5 / 400.0 km)</p>
<p>Apparently, unlike some of you, I don't use my computer during my vacations or during GenCon. :) So, after six days of enjoying myself, I'm finally back from another wonderful trip. I left on Wednesday morning and came back a few hours ago, here on Monday. This was the first time I've ever run a game at GenCon (Exalted of course) and I had some really cool news from the end of it.</p>
<p><!--more-->Actually, the first one was wandering over to the <a href="http://white-wolf.com/">White Wolf</a> booth and talking to a random person who ended up being one of the Exalted developers. I did the first thing that came to mind and thanked him for creating a great game. We got to chatting and apparently he knew of my comic (whee), my online map (squee), and actually heard of me (bouncebouncybounce). I kept running into him the next three times I went to the booth, mainly to pick up Monte Cook's World of Darkness, Sidereals, Changeling, and something else. If anything else, the ego boost along floated me along through the trip.</p>
<p>Fluffy had a great time, though she encountered something new at GenCon: the <em>Impossibly Cute Twenty-Something Gamer Boy</em> (ICTSGB). In packs, hordes. One of them was playing her husband in a LARP and she got flustered. And she kept talking about them, but I can't disagree. There were a <em>lot</em> of good-looking twenty-somethings in there, including a set that wanted to join my game but it was in the last hour. I'm including the ICTSGG also, though I appreciate both sets.</p>
<p>Speaking of looking good, I got a chance to chat with <a href="http://eyezofwolf.livejournal.com">The Original Dylan</a>. He wasn't classified in the ICTSGB group (sorry), but he was placed in the Improbably Cute group by a few members of my group. :) Good thing I don't seem to be capable of being jealous, otherwise I could have been. Looking forward to seeing his next novel, plus he liked my idea for <em>Case of the Morning Zombies</em> (more squee). Dylan also told me some things about <em>Muddy Reflections</em> that I need to work on, and I'm really anxiously waiting for his and <a href="http://scienceprincess.livejournal.com/">scienceprincess'</a> reviews of my novels so I can try improving my writing and finally get published properly.</p>
<p>I also got to chat with <a href="http://www.greyrealm.com/">Charles Embrey Jr.</a> who wrote the <a href="http://brokentypewriterpress.com/blog/2006/09/10/the-lost-keep-of-kaywall-by-charles-embrey-jr/">Lost Keep of Kaywall</a>. Given the fact I didn't write what I felt was the most positive review, apparently he was really appreciative that I did and apparently was telling people about my review of his book. I was completely and utterly surprised about that, mainly because it was an honest review (as I want others to give me) and I would have loved it, I was surprised he did. He told me about the sequel, which actually sounded like a good story (and I'll be picking it up as soon as I can). So, it was really nice to find out that he didn't hate me and actually appreciated what I did.</p>
<p>I did end up doing the rest of the Author's Alley. I'm apparently a very chatty person and everyone seemed to enjoy talking to me. I asked them if they minded if I read the book and did a review like I did for Dylan's and Charles' book and everyone thought it was a grand idea. I mean, I'm going to read them anyways. So, I've added the following to my reading stack:</p>
<ul>
<li>Sails and Sorcery edited by W. H. Horner</li>
<li>Elfhunter by C. S. Marks</li>
<li>Sharamitaro by Jonathan M. Rudder</li>
<li>Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Bad Guy edited by W. H. Horner</li>
<li>Shadow Over Shandahar by T. R. Chowdhury and T. M. Crim</li>
<li>A Prisoner's Welcome by <a href="http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=105102125">Shane Moore</a></li>
<li>Into the Reach by <a href="http://alanajoli.livejournal.com/">Alana Abbott</a></li>
</ul>
<p>So, I'm going to be reading for a while. Which is okay. With the Wizard call for submissions September 1-Jan something, I'm going to write Morning Zombies for <a href="http://www.nanowrimo.org/">NaNoWriMo</a> and submit that. So, I got a 1.5 months to working on polishing up my Exalted stuff, cleaning up some rules, finishing CuteGod and charm cards before going at Zombies. So, my next three months are nicely planned.</p>
<p>Speaking of updating rules, I talked to someone at <a href="http://www.wizkidsgames.com/wk_home.asp">WizKids</a> about my house rules for using their Pirates minatures with Exalted and they loved it. They even gave me their business card to send them an email about it.</p>
<p>I appear to have lost the card.</p>
<p>I tore apart the hotel room three times trying to find it. So, this is a very important lesson. When an industry insider gives you a card, treat it as treasure? k? Like platinum, not copper.</p>
<p>In the lessons arena, I learned a bunch about how to run a con game. And how to run Exalted in a con. First one: <em>CHARM CARDS!</em> I must get my charm cards cleaned up because I lost an hour of my four hour game just getting everyone up to speed. Also, 1-2 battles is pretty much the max for mass combat and never, ever give the players too many options. On the other hand, it was a 3 hour planning session that everyone liked. The second one was must better planned, but only one person showed up. Another lesson: don't run a game during a massive party at a con, no one shows up.</p>
<p>Overall, I had a wonderful time. Got a lot of stuff to work on in the next, lots of reading and saving up money (blew a bit more than I wanted to), and basically relaxing for a few months. </p>
Low-Hanging Fruit Week2007-07-18T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2007/07/18/low-hanging-fruit-week/<p><img src="/assets/172" alt="" /> CuteGod Development: (44 / 172 requirements)<br />
<img src="/assets/6+months" alt="" /> <em>Wind, Bear, and Moon</em> Proposal<br />
<img src="/assets/6+months" alt="" /> <em>Muddy Reflections</em> Reading<br />
<img src="/assets/400" alt="" /> Summer Biking: (183.8 / 400.0 km)</p>
<p>Today, I'm rode my bike into work again. Just as yesterday and I am very, very exhausted. I know that my body will adapt to doing 20 km two days in a row (had to walk almost three meters though yesterday), but it isn't fun until the rest of me adapts. As my dad says, my struggle comes from the extra weight I'm carrying (i.e. a polite way of saying I'm fat). I can consistently average about 38 minutes to go 10 km, including both ways. Which is pretty good, given that the way home is uphill most of the way.</p>
<p>The ride in was pretty good, mainly because I was excited that I finally got something off my chest. There was some work with <em>dh_creatclipolicy</em> that has been hanging over me for the last couple of months, my obligations to the Open Source community, and I've been stalling. Last night, I finally got off my ass and made it work. It just needs some cosmetic changes, maybe a bug fix or three, and I should finally be able to say it is done.</p>
<p>I have no energy for <a href="http://lostgarden.com/2007/05/cutegod-prototyping-challenge.html">CuteGod</a>, as I knew I wouldn't. I found a good (free) installer maker, so I'll be able to offer an installer program the next round. I also was made one of the project developers for <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/boogame">BooGame</a> since I'm going to be adding some features to it. And, to my surprise, I was made one of the project leadertypes for <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/dnpb">prebuild</a>. Again, that is because I'm going to scratch an itch I have and make it a bit better to use. One thing I like about the OSS community, sometimes you can just send in changes and sometimes you just step forward to help everyone. Admitedly, I haven't done much with CeGui# or SDL.NET, both of which I'm developers for, though I have submitted code to both (a Irrlicht.NET backend and the "Moonfire Demos" which have since been removed, respectively).</p>
<p>I think this week is "get rid of small things" week. Trying to knock off a couple of things that have been haunting me. Depending on my mood, I might try to write a short story or two. I have a (hopefully better) story for <a href="http://steampunkmagazine.com/">Steam Punk Magazine</a> which I want to write. Plus, getting read to tile my living room (I have 54 boxes of tile on my sun porch which thankfully has a concrete floor to handle the weight) and GenCon and my vacation next week. Oh, and gaming this Saturday.</p>
<p>It's going to be a busy set of weeks coming up.</p>
Back from GenCon!2006-08-16T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2006/08/16/back-from-gencon/<p>Well, made it back safely from GenCon and had a ball of a time. I got to see a lot of really cool vendors, met an author with my same name who writes a good story and everything else. There were a couple of things out there that I wanted to give my opinions or review, including the two novelist, so I'm going to do one post per concept over the next couple of days.</p>
Stupidity of Convention Events2006-07-26T05:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2006/07/26/stupidity-of-convention-events/<p>I got a mass emailing from GenCon about events for gamer's widows (read: Fluffy). They had a lot of fun things: karate, belly dancing, yoga, jewelery making. So, Fluffy and I tried to register. Except for one of them, every single event was filled up<i>before</i> they sent out the email. Every single one. Why did they even bother?</p>
<p>Fluffy isn't sure if she wants to go, mainly because she isn't really into gaming at all. She might be in a LARP, but she doesn't know. I was planning on doing the writing circuit again, though that makes me a wanna-be. On the other hand, one of the ladies from work read my story (WBM) and she really liked it. Said it had interesting characters and a good plot. So, that was promising.</p>
Packages in the Mail2006-03-08T06:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2006/03/08/packages-in-the-mail/<p>This weekend, I got a notice that I had an oversized package waiting for me. Naturally, I checked the mail less than an hour after the place closed, so I couldn't actually find out what the item was. My first thought was Wind, Bear, and Moon since it is about nine weeks since I was suppose to be getting feedback. From there, I basically had three options: a rejection latter, an acceptance letter, or a send-back-and-edit package. So, I spent two days wondering if they sent it back as not good enough, but good enough to pay attention to. It made me very nervous because I really want to succeed.</p>
<p>In the end, it wasn't anything for WBM or even anything I was expecting. It was a wonderful portfolio of various game illustrators and renders for the Game Developers Conference (GDC). I paged through it and I realized that those people are "skilled" at what they do, probably more so than I am at writing and programming. Kind of scary, but wonderful, wonderful artwork.</p>
<p>It also reminded me that I started the artist stuff too early for Balance. I mean, I haven't even finished the game and I was looking. So, I pulled down the artist search stuff until I finished the game (not yet) and then I'll look.</p>
GenCon2006-02-06T06:00:00Zhttps://d.moonfire.us/blog/2006/02/06/gencon/<p>Well, I just got me and my mate registered to <a href="http://www.gencon.com/">GenCon</a>. This will be the second year that I will be going, but I had a lot of fun the last time. In fact, I got a publisher interested in <em>Wind, Bear, and Moon</em> there, so I'm really excited. Of course, this year, I'm not planning on getting a book published, but I still will probably doing the writing seminar circuit.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Moonfire Games (Balance specifically) won't be ready for GenCon this year. If I do have something, it will be a pick-up game more than anything else. However, I found the pick-up games to be really group-based, like people just moved their gaming group to GenCon for the weekend.</p>
<p>If people are interested in seeing Balance in play, or just meeting, just comment and I'll find a place to show up.</p>