I keep waiting until the end of my day to write a blog post…
La-di-da, I say to myself, about time to go home, oh, I think I’ll just knock off a quick blog post...
Hours later:
Well, hours later it’s hours later.
Because there I am, tweaking the pics, checking on the links I’m using, looking up cool things, researching that last snappy bit of wisdom, to make sure I don’t make a total idiot of myself as I impart it. (You cannot make a paper airplane hover between two fans. Can Not.)
Let’s see if I can do this in under an hour, shall we?
General news: I got my preliminary schedule for the panels at MidAmeriCon, this year’s Worldcon:
Writing Major Minor Characters
Do you ever read a book and come across a character that is so wonderful you want to know everything about them, yet you know you never will because they aren’t the main character? Such characters add immeasurably to our reading experience and yet they are very hard to write. This session discusses how to do just that.
Time - Wednesday 16.00
Hard Fantasy – Does it Exist?
“I’m going to write about what Tove Jansson called “the lonely and the rum,” the unschoolable and ungroupable, those strange and shaggy literary creatures that have no ilk or kin and that mathematically can be contained in no set smaller than the set of all sets contained in no other sets’.  (Micheal Swanwick). Does Hard Fantasy have a place in fantasy literature, and how should we approach it?
Friday, 19.00. 2206
“Transcending” the Genre
Critics still use the term “transcending the genre,” but what does that really mean? And what does that mean for fandom – have we gone mainstream? Or are we experiencing snobbish reactions rooted in fannish history? What happens to the discourse when Zadie Smith talks about reading Octavia Butler, or Marlon James says his next novel will be “an African Game of Thrones”? At the end of the day, do we really want all the genre walls to disappear? Do we want to completely transcend genre?
Time - Sunday 13.00
Of the above, I think I’ll have the most to say about the Major Minor characters. It’s something I love doing.
In addition to those, I’ll also be on an panel about living with cancer (if you’re just joining us, I spent 2014 and most of 2015 being treated for breast cancer, with great success).  I don’t know yet what time that will take place.
I think I also requested a Kaffeeklatsch, but I can’t recall if I requested a reading! Ack! It would be good to know, as I have to decide what to read!
Although Worldcon itself is over two weeks away, I’ll be traveling or otherwise occupied for much of the run-up to it, so I’m already having little stress-fits about the prep. Well. All will work out, in the end, I’m sure.
Last weekend I spent some time visiting pal and fellow Genrette Laurie J. Marks and her wife Deb Mensinger, in their vintage bungalow, which they are in the process of lovingly restoring to its early-20th-century glory. Deb knows what she’s about, being a professionally trained preservation carpenter.
Ravens figure largely in Laurie’s Elemental Logic series.
Laurie also knows what she’s about, as couple of hours of conversation about our respective current projects resulted in me helping her solve one of her plot problems, and her helping to solve the basic major problem I was wrestling with in Book 5 - so that now I am currently mostly wrapped up in solidifying that central fix, and setting the book onto the path of righteousness, AMEN.   After which will merely remain the writing of it.  Which sounds like the hard part, but trust me, it’s not.
Other news:
Hey, look, Ada Palmer was interviewed by Scientific Amercian about her novel, Too Like the Lightning. Holy smokes.
Meanwhile, I’m in the middle of reading Jo Walton’s, Necessity, which takes some unexpected and rather fun turns.  But I do occasionally want to kick certain gods in their butts. Not namin’ any names, here.
Oh, look, I found some orange roses.
See that guitar? Been practicing.