CONtraFlow III and More General Updatery

I am just returned from CONtraFlow in New Orleans, where I was part of a panel titled Frontier Law. I recorded it, but need some time to get it chopped up and remember how to make them available to everyone here.

The con itself was a bit of a blur: between arriving at 4 in the evening on Friday and departing at the same time on Sunday, I felt as if I spent as much time traveling to and from the con as at the con.

Mark Van Name was the Toastmaster, and laid the groundwork for our panel during Friday's opening ceremonies, despite my failure to make it to the ceremonies. He asked the gathered crowd what they would like to learn during the Frontier Law panel and adjusted his moderator's questions and discussion points accordingly.

Note to new authors: don't make the mistake of forgetting that you need to seize every opportunity to promote. It's more of a mental adjustment than it seems, this leap from loner writer to author with a few readers and even more potential readers. At least, more than I expected. I may just be stupid.

Despite Mark Van Name's busy schedule, Alistair, Chuck, and I managed to have a fun meal with Mark and Jennie, with our usual base humor predominating.

I attended several 1632 MiniCon panels, where I learned new things and enjoyed the company of Eric Flint, Rick Boatright, Paula Goodlett, Walter Hunt, Walt Boyes,  Chuck Gannon, and many others. Eric puts on a Snerking The Plot panel, where he reveals the current drive of the series and the state of all works-in-progress. This time, he included my work on The Mughal Mission, which I had a few minutes to present to the gathered writers. As I was last to go, it was difficult to gauge the enthusiasm of my fellow writers.

Dinners were exceptional, as Eric took many of the above 1632 authors to a local seafood joint Friday night. Much fun was had and fine food eaten!

Saturday night was the Baen Dinner, hosted by Toni Weisskopf. Mark Van Name was kind enough to secure an invite for me. The meal was at Restaurant Cypress, and included great company: Eric Flint and his lovely wife, Chuck Gannon, Mark Van Name, Alistair Kimble, Walter Hunt, John Picacio, Jennie Faeries, and Tara Smith. Some of the discussion included favorite films and subcategories thereof, such as guilty-pleasure movies: I'm afraid I gave away the entire plot of Lifeforce with my blathering squee about boobies, space vampires, boobies, zombies, boobies, and mass extinction events.

Despite my carrying on, both nights were very fun and fine eats.

I roomed with Chuck Gannon (AKA The Rainmaker AKA, No Charlie Strauss) who despite being much smarter than I, was willing to engage in lengthy discussion on varied subjects, illuminating some of the darker corners of my mind with enthusiasm.

Speaking of which, I need to get some fiction writing done, tonight and soon.

But first, I was very busy with all the flying, etc, but I wasn't as busy as Brigant, who did more awesome audiobook versions of the serial installments of A Separate Law. They are available, in order, here:

Such An Ego Stroke!

So, I was checking in on my story up at the Star Citizen site, and stumbled across this little bit of awesome by a fan of Star Citizen and my story, A SEPARATE LAW:

Thoughts on A SEPARATE LAW

So, my serialized novella, A SEPARATE LAW, has its final episode up at the Spectrum Dispatch site. I think it turned out well. There were certainly a lot of kind comments on each episode, and even more within moments of the posting of the tale's conclusion.

It was my first experience of such immediate feedback. It was an interesting experience. I used to think some authors were a bit obsessive about reading reviews of their work on Amazon, Goodreads, etc.  Now I know how hard it is to resist hitting that refresh button every five minutes. That in mind, I'll stop keeping my nose in the air like I'm somehow immune to the writer's urge to stand up in public and moan loudly, "LOVE ME!" while stroking our tender ego parts.

Nuts and bolts wise:

The writing of this story was fairly easy, as I found it flowed very quickly out onto the page. This is not my normal experience of writing. I agonize, normally. I fail to complete.

At about 19,ooo words, it was nice to stretch a bit without the massive obligation of a door-stop novel.

I don't normally work from an outline, but one was required for this, and it helped immensely. Beyond the immediate help with the story, I was also outlining 1636: THE MUGHAL MISSION, so the experience proved very useful. Needless to say, outlining has become my new fetish.

David Ladyman, the editor for the project, was aces, working with me when I needed assistance and, more importantly, telling me the whys and wheres of the things that did not work in the initial drafts (And there were multiple drafts for each episode: sometimes the game designers required a change, but more often it was just because the writing simply wasn't as smooth as it needed to be.).  David was extremely easy to work with, and was very enthusiastic about the story throughout.

All in all, a very good learning experience for me. One I am sure will be of use for the rest of my career.

Oh, and I got paid quite well and promptly, which is always to be desired, and seldom experienced with short fiction.

A SEPARATE LAW begins its serial run on Spectrum Dispatch!

So, a few months ago I got in touch with the folks at Cloud Imperium Games via Chuck Gannon, rainmaker extraordinaire. They read some of my previous work, liked it, and asked that I submit some story ideas, etc. I did one they liked.

We got a contract going, and I wrote A SEPARATE LAW.

Today, part one of that story is up on the Spectrum Dispatch. I very much love the title banner. I hope you enjoy it, and the story.

What I've Been Doing This Summer

Work has been the same, meaning there have been moments where I wanted to unleash my inner gorilla, but, in general, proceeding in as efficient a manner as possible. I have a long (15000 words, more or less) short story entitled A Separate Law I am under contract to produce. I am writing it in 1500-word stretches for placement on a web magazine supporting a computer game. I'm nearly done with it, finishing up the eighth bit right now. When I am, I will resume working on 1636: The Mughal Mission, with Eric Flint. I might think about something more with the games company, but I really, really want to get my novels out there, and working with Flint is a godsend as far as graduating from apprentice to journeyman writing. He's highly skilled at getting the best out of writers he works with, and I hope to learn a great deal.