Category Archives: Announcements

Hey, there’s something coming up that I want to tell you about!

“How to Write Funny,” this Saturday

This Saturday, May 26th, I’ll be teaching an online workshop called “How to Write Funny.” The focus of the class will be how to refine and improve your written humor using some very intuitive techniques.

Being “born funny” is absolutely not required. It helps a little, but understanding these techniques will make your written humor better. You’ll also be better equipped to troubleshoot jokes that aren’t working, whether they don’t fit the tone of the rest of the piece, or because for some reason they’re just not coming across funny.

We’ll explore these techniques by looking at examples, both good and bad, and by applying the tools to some of these examples to see how things can be improved.

The class is $99, and it’s a class, not a comedy routine. Funny things will certainly be said, but only so we can take them apart and re-assemble them to be funnier than before.

NOTE: we are only recording this workshop for the use of the students at the streamed session, and seating is limited.

 

T-Shirt Kickstarter Ends Tuesday!

We’re in the final days of the Schlock Mercenary t-shirt project. As of this writing we’re 5% shy of being 300% funded, but more importantly we’re only fifty shirt sales away from a free shirt.

It’s a volume discount thing, and it will let us include a fourth shirt for free in the three-shirt bundle. It’s not “the manufacturer likes us, so they sent Howard a free shirt.” That would only be cool for Howard. This stretch goal is cool for everybody¹.


¹ “Everybody” here being defined as “everybody who orders the three-shirt bundle, and who thinks getting a fourth shirt would be cool.”

Schlock Mercenary T-Shirts!

We’re making t-shirts again! We’re using Kickstarter, because it’s worked pretty well for us in the past, and because late last year we promised to do a t-shirt Kickstarter in February of 2018.

I know, I know. It’s not February anymore. But we were totally working on this during February, so depending on your definition of “do” (specifically, for definitions that do not require the word “launch”) we made good on our word.

Want shirts? Click here!

Find Sandra and Also Me at LTUE This Weekend

Sandra and I are participating at LTUE in Provo, Utah this weekend. This is our home town show, and we’re going to have a table in the dealers’ room. New items beneath the Schlock Mercenary shingle at this show include Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries and the Planet Mercenary RPG

Here are our schedules:

SANDRA

Thursday

11:00 am, Cascade A (UVCC¹): Structuring Life to Support Creativity
5:00 pm, Canyon: Collaboration and Coauthors

Friday

1:00pm, Elm: Fashion and Clothing Through the Ages
4:00pm, Maple: Normal Child Development

Saturday

9:00am, Arches: Balancing Platform and Artistry
10:00am, Ampitheater: How to Run a Killer Game Kickstarter²
12:00pm, Canyon: Working With a Freelance Editor

HOWARD

Thursday

2:00 pm, Canyon: Mythical Anatomy 101

Friday

9:00 am, Canyon: Write What You Know (m)
12:00 pm, Elm: Emergent Narrative³

Saturday

9:00 am, Cascade C (UVCC¹): Finding Your Audience
12:00 pm, Birch: Designing Spaceworthy Ships (m)
4:00 pm, Arches: A Serious Look at Comedy⁴

The full version of the LTUE schedule is available either as an interactive, mobile-friendly-I-hope page, or as a giant PDF grid.


¹ Unless otherwise noted by “(UVCC)”, all of the events listed here are being held in the Marriott Hotel’s banquet halls.  The Utah Valley Convention Center is across the street to the north
² Alan Bahr and Sandra Tayler have raised, between the two of them, close to a million dollars on Kickstarter.
³ This will be my first opportunity to be on a panel with Myke Cole. SQUEEE!
 Todd Gallowglas, a professional storyteller with mad crowd-control chops, and who has schooled Howard pretty effectively in past will be moderating. We have it on good authority that Howard has promised to “be good this time.”