Worldcon

Today started off with me writing about my daughter nearly breaking her ankle. There's a long story in there, but she'll be fine. Her foot is a lovely shade of purple right now.

Not pictured: her embarrassment for missing school

For the last day or so, I've been volunteering at Worldcon, the Worlds annual science fiction convention. Every year it's held in a different city, which reminds me, next year it will be in London.

Hey, Matt: Start saving now

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 First off, the convention center is nearly empty. Come on, it's Thursday for crying out loud. Have you ever read a sci-fi book cover that says; 'Hugo and Nebula award winner.'? This is where they decide that.
During the day, there are panels and autograph sessions and of course merchandise to be sold. The dealers room was closed, so I didn't get pictures of that... but I will.
The first few days are the nuts and bolts of the convention. Members voting, workshops attended. Stuff that the average sci-fi fan couldn't care about. It's the PTA meeting of the geek and nerd set.
But never fear: the Labor day weekend is upon us. and this place will be packed with yours truly volunteering and gophering his heinie off.
Just to  give you an idea of what will be going on, I'll post a few pics.

Part of the Dr. Who exhibit

 

Next project found

 

This should be interesting

Rube Goldberg eat your heart out

 

Wouldn't want to sit there

I would want to sit there

I'll send regular updates throughout the weekend. This should be good.
 

What was forgotten

It has been said that I'm impatient. If one person says it, that's one opinion. If several people whom I look up to point this out... Well then, it's time to look at yourself and try to figure out what made them say what they did.
Last October, I submitted Travelers Road to Harper Collins. Either I read it somewhere or I arbitrarily set the date: if I hadn't heard from Harper by January, then it's best to move on. January came and went... so I moved on. No hard feelings.
Yesterday I got an e-mail from Stephen Lapierre, an editor at Harper Collins. He very kindly thanked me for thinking of them, but felt that my book wasn't the right fit for Harper Collins. All in all, a nice rejection letter. It didn't change anything for me. Hanging on to it for 10 months tells me a lot though.
One: it wasn't dismissed right out of hand. TR must have made it to a second or third round before being eliminated.
There's no reason to feel down about that.
So my question is: how long do you wait before you move on? When your wife tells you she'll be, 'five more minutes', it will never be five more minutes. The same way the last minute of a ball game is never one minute.
There are times when I actually feel justified losing my temper. Not all the time, mind you. But when a person is being purposely belligerent.
Harper Collins wasn't being mean spirited. They were being slow as molasses in winter.
No one sets out to be stupid, but to a lot of people it comes naturally.  

Calm before the storm

Another weekend drawing to a close. Finished my press kit for Travelers Road. Now I'm having second guess jitters. Anxious, nervous, impatient and so want this to happen. After writing this I'm going to jot down names and dates on a 3 X 5 card. Name of the assistant editor I sent my original query and the date I sent it. The name of the agent I want to meet. Perhaps a fact or two about his agency. Hours spent researching and borderline stalking of this guy online, and for what? Volunteering at the con seemed like a great idea. Confession time: I'm not sure where I'm going to park or if I'm carpooling with someone. Okay; take a deep breath and try to relax. I've prepared for this, now I have to let things unfold and be there when the opportunity comes.

 Worrying about something doesn't make it better. All it does is raise your blood pressure. So, let's think about something else.

There's a new spaceport in town on Wallops Island in Virginia. From what I'm reading here in the article they're going to have a night launch that will be visible to part of the eastern seaboard, if the weather cooperates.
Important fact #1: This mission is an important step in getting back to the moon. Not only that but what we learn from this will also apply to an eventual Mars mission.
Interesting factoid: The minotaur V rocket is a repurposed Peacekeeper ICBM from the Cold War days.  The irony just keeps rolling doesn't it?

The Mars colonization effort looks to be proceeding. This is a private effort led by Mars One co-founder Bas Lansdorp. The goal is to put volunteer astronauts on Mars by 2023, followed by a second round of volunteers in 2025. What makes this different? They won't be coming back. Brave souls one and all. That sums up my feelings about the plan, this one way mission to Mars. My inner voice is saying; 'about damn time.' Is it foolhardy? Safe? It is definitely not safe nor is it the comfortable thing to do. What I do know is it will be the right thing to do. Those brave souls who go first will most likely die trying, but that's not what we humans are about. Yes, they'll go down in the annuls of history as the pioneers of space. Enshrined in glory. Their names will go alongside Aldrin and Armstrong.  First among firsts.
We humans thrive on this sort of challenge. The reward is the journey, not the destination. Okay, I've channelled Carl Sagan enough. I'm going to cast my lot in with David Brin. Find your spine America. Nut up or shut up. Cowboy up and claim what is humankind's manifest destiny.
Gentlemen, I salute you.
 

Everything is going to be alright

With all the tough things going on this week, I had to remind myself that things will work themselves out. My wife didn't get the teaching position at the high school, but they interviewed her for another teaching position in a middle school. When I asked her how it went, she replied "I've never felt more positive about an interview." That's perhaps the best thing I heard all day.
A long time ago, I helped a kickstarter campaign. A little selfish of me, but I've been following Phil Foglio's webcomic, Girl Genius. I wanted the latest book to go alongside the others. Occasionally I get updates that the book will be sent out by the end of August. If the fates are kind, I'll try and get the artist himself to autograph it. That would be too awesome for words.
I cut out of work a little early today. We had to sign minion #3 up for seventh grade. We're beginning to catch up on our bills. By this time next week we will have caught up on more. Stuff like this comes and goes, but hopefully this time around things will stick around just a little while longer.
School starts Monday around here. Summer is nearly spent. It's been said by others wiser than me, but the kids grow up so damn fast.
At the moment Lowe's is gearing up for the Labor day weekend. Almost right after that, practically overnight, we will be setting up for Christmas. Yes, there will be trees and stockings up in September. Doesn't that take some of the meaning out of the holiday? I've said it before, retail is where souls go to die. In a previous post I was bitching about time slipping through my fingers. Spending five years trying to accomplish a task that you wanted to only spend one year on. If I had to guess, mortality was weighing on my mind.
Is it so bad that I want to get the most out of my years? Pointing to any given problem doesn't solve them. Instead we have to make the most of what we have with what we got. In other words: Deal with it.
 

Brainstorming

This is either going to be very short, or I'll continue it in the morning and post it later in the day, perhaps the later.
Work on my press kit continues. All the material is present, now I need to put it in a decent style and format. Knowing what to do is different than knowing how to do what needs to be done.
A friend came over and we brainstormed a guest list for next years con. The theme is superheroes so I sent out e-mails to performers and artists. Next week is the World con and I'll be volunteering for that in hopes of meeting some agents that will be there, hence the press kit. There are some people I want to talk to while I'm there, perhaps they would like to visit our slightly smaller con.
One of our friends had a sudden and fatal heart attack this morning. My wife and I spent the afternoon playing text message tag. Not all the details are known, but we want to be there to support our friends at this time. Our thoughts and prayers are with them tonight. 
8-21
After a nights sleep things are a bit more in perspective. Funny how that happens.
My friend that passed away certainly lived a good life. I knew he didn't smoke or have any bad habits. The times we had lunch together gave me the impression he ate pretty healthy. To see him with his kids and family, he really didn't miss out on much. Things happen to good people and bad people alike. More to the point: they happen for no good reason. Which should tell us one fact: Life is too short. This precious resource is being squandered before it's too late.
When my wife and I married, our first apartment in Texas wasn't great, not by a long shot, but it was the best we could afford. The quickest way for me to make money was waiting tables. Going into that situation, you tell yourself; It's not forever... it's for now. I only wanted to do it for a year or two until things improved. Suddenly 5 years of my life goes by. So we set a goal to get out of El Paso. Slowly and surely we achieved it. Fast forward to 2004. I start at Lowe's. I'm going to do this until something better comes along. In what seems like the blink of an eye, nine years go by. My oldest is in her senior year and thinking about joining the military. A few years back I set a goal of becoming a published author I'd like to see that become a reality in the near future, before it's too late.

 

Mythos

Today, a few technical bugs got worked out in my story. The hero gets a katana and an apprentice... sort of.
Naturally a Japanese mercantile figures into the story owned by a man hailing from the city of Edo.
The bad guy, for lack of a better term, shows up. He's this reptilian assassin who holds a grudge against our hero. For more information about the first encounter with Daniel you'd have to read my first book, Travelers Road.

Our Japanese merchant spots the lizardman, believing it is a creature out of Japanese myth. He calls it out by a given name.
Here is where my problems begin.
When doing research for my story, I have a one hour rule: If I can't find it in an hour through Google or what have you, then neither can anyone else. That's actually a useful guideline when storytelling.
The problem: I didn't find any reptilian creature in Japanese mythos that fit the description. There was also problem with surnames and miso soup, a Japanese dish.
Confusing, no?
So there was a little backtracking. The merchant now hails from Hong Kong and has a Chinese surname. He also recognises the lizardman and calls it Au Guong, the Dragon King of the East Sea.
But how does Daniel come into possession of a katana and where does the miso soup come in? Those two items have to be in the story, they're practically punchlines. So after a little digging I come to find out Kuang Kiato, the merchant, has a Japanese wife. In classic Romeo and Juliet style, the two love birds fled the Orient and an arranged marriage. Disowned from their families, they have a thriving business in Dallas.
Daniel and Charlotte are going to cut the honeymoon short and run for their lives. Where are they going to hide from this lethal killer? Why, the Chicken Ranch, of course!
Telling this tale is as much work as it is fun. I'm blending actual elements of history and plausibly explaining why things happened the way they did with a supernatural bent.
Another reason I'm telling you all part of the storyline is because I want to assure you guys that I am working on the next book. 
'But don't tell us the spoilers!'
Have no fear... what I'm revealing is the tip of the iceberg. A whole lot of stuff is going on at the same time. Before I decided to type all this up, I ran it by my biggest critics, my kids, while we sat at the dinner table.
Ever the wit, Minion #2 remarked: 'But Dad, Godzilla is a reptile in Japanese myth.' before taking a sip of water. This brought to mind an old classic and I chanted it out. "Oh, no... they say he's got to go..."
She recognized the song and nearly spit her drink across the table. Proud I can make my daughter laugh and chagrined at her discomfort isn't the worst way to go. She's all right. They get the twisted sense of humor from me.
 

Almost

This morning on my way to work, I nearly hit a person who was riding a ten speed bike. At 6:25 this morning, I pulled out of my subdivision. Time to make the doughnuts and all that. The sun hadn't even come up yet. The only light came from my headlights and some approaching cars, but they were at least two blocks away. A perfect time to join the throng of drivers doing the morning commute. In the middle of turning on to the main street, my peripheral vision kicked in. Movement just outside my passenger window. A blurred object that didn't even register as a color. Only after completing the turn and looking in my rear view mirror did I put two and two together. A silhouette of a man riding a bike. The oncoming headlights illuminating him. I did a quick recap. Nothing hit my truck. No sound of warning or injury. A quick look at his posture on the bike told me he wasn't injured or in trouble.
So why the hell was he riding around with no lights or reflectors? He might have had to swerve, we were that close. Inside my second circle: the brace for impact perimeter.
Now I can understand having to ride a bike in order to get from point A to B. In a perfect world, I'd be the one pedalling to work, if my place of employment were closer and my balance weren't so shitty.
What was he doing out before dawn without any gear to alert other drivers? Face it, I got lucky... and so did he.

Many years ago, I did hit a pedestrian. Going to community college part time and taking a morning class is sometimes what it takes. Like all community colleges, parking is a pain in the ass. So here I was, winding my way through near downtown city streets, angling for a parking spot.
Suddenly a dark shape leaps out from between two cars into the street right in front of my vehicle. There was barely enough time to slam on the brakes. A thump and a dark skinned bare butt and thigh rolled over my windshield.
Several things registered all at once while my instinct to do the right thing over rode my caution.
'That was one hairy leg that took off my wiper.'
'Oh my God, I hit a person. There wasn't time to stop.'
'Is he all right? Is he bleeding? Did I just kill him?'
Leaping out of my car, I ran around the back. The man had one hand on the trunk, the other hidden by the angle of my car.
Mr. caution spoke up and I became aware of two facts:
I had just gotten out of my car in a bad section of town while it was still technically night.
The man I'd just hit was naked as a jaybird.
If he had a gun or knife in his hand, I was so dead.
Instead, he picked up his Frank Sinatra style fedora hat, put it on his head, and said, "Man I'm outta here." He took off running down San Pedro Avenue in his birthday suit. Not the sidewalk... directly down the median.
At that moment, I saw a flash of light over my left shoulder, a police car.
Relief beyond measure flooded me. Never in my entire life was I so happy to see the cops.
"Officer, officer. I just hit a naked black man! He took off down the street."
"Is he armed?"
"No, just a hat."
Two more police cars came out of nowhere and quickly caught the streaking jogger before he got too far.
Answering the questions as best I could, I told the police everything.
"We've been chasing him most of the night. He must have forgotten to take his medication or whatever," The officer said.
Part of me knew it wasn't my fault, but I wanted to be clear. "I hit the man," I said. "Am I going to be charged or arrested?"
The officer shook his head. "He wasn't wearing anything reflective. You had no warning. Hell, you slowed him down for us."
This did make me late for class however.
"I hope you have a valid excuse for being late," the teacher said as I entered the classroom.
Without missing a beat, I slapped the police report on his desk. "Actually, yes, I do."
My hands were shaking so badly from the shock and adrenaline, I had a tough time finishing up the day. The story was good enough to get some beers from my friends who wanted details.
My life is never dull.