Category Archives: Announcements

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

Announcements

Life, The Universe, and ConFusion this weekend

This weekend I’ll be attending the 42nd annual ConFusion science fiction and fantasy convention, aptly dubbed “Life, The Universe, and ConFusion.”

I’m not on any panels, because I didn’t want to be on any panels. I’m not selling anything, because I didn’t want to be stuck in the dealers’ room. I’ll have a badge, but I’m not really *at* the convention as anything other than as an attendee who is taking a vacation this weekend.

PlanetMercenaryLogo-250pxExcept, of course, for the bit where I’m running a Planet Mercenary RPG session on Saturday morning with several of the convention’s notable guests as players. That’s a little bit like work, and it’s something that fans can come and watch. When it’s done, I will hide in my room and edit a bunch of the Planet Mercenary stuff, focusing on the bits my party of fine storytellers and wordsmiths ran roughshod over.

If you want me to sign something, or sketch in a book, I will do that for you, provided you don’t try to get me to do it during the RPG session, or while I’m eating.

If you want to talk to me, hey, that’s cool, assuming you choose to do this in a setting where approaching people for conversation is appropriate. If I’m not feeling approachable, I’ll probably hide in my room and write.

Announcements

On Boundaries…

The current storyline has some people wondering if I’m “taking a page from Mass Effect,” or perhaps [insert popular SF here.]

schlock20160111

For the record, I’ve played about 60 minutes of Mass Effect, and didn’t love it. I moved on to other games.

I am, however, familiar with Fermi’s Paradox, and have extensively explored the solution sets, none of which are particularly optimistic. Those sets look quite a bit different if they are constrained by the canon of the Schlockiverse, but not so different as to be internally inconsistent.

What this means is that yes, among a hundred thousand readers, somebody will definitely be able to correctly guess key plot points. Science has been grinding on this stuff for decades.

But I’m not borrowing from anybody else’s fiction for this. I’m going whole cloth from the science. What THIS means is that despite the likelihood that 100,000 Schlock Mercenary readers can generate a speculation set that contains actual plot, I’m still going to surprise you.

But only if I shut up now.

So, you know, speculate among one another, but not here (comments are closed,) and for the love of hull integrity, please show some respect for a different boundary, and do NOT ask ME about this stuff.

Announcements

From the Department of Finally He Gets Around To It

Last year I commissioned a bonus story for Force Multiplication. The story was written by Sandra Tayler, and illustrated by Natalie Barahona, and it was supposed to be lettered by me.

Well, now it’s finally getting lettered by me.

FM-Bonus-P1-LetteredSAMPLE

This is a story from Bristlecone’s past. You’re looking at about 1/3rd of the 2nd of ten pages, so one thirtieth of the whole thing.

The story will appear in the print version of Schlock Mercenary Book 12: Force Multiplication, which will go into print as soon as somebody finishes lettering this stuff, and then makes a cover, and then does a bunch of other little things. So… gimme a bit, yeah?

Announcements

Spent The Weekend Making a Website

I spent the New Year’s first weekend making the new Writing Excuses website. It was fun, and challenging, and not at all part of my regular suite of work activities.

The byline? Yeah, it's a haiku.
Logo by Isaac Stewart, banner by Howard Tayler

You can see it at writingexcuses.com, where you can also listen to me, Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Dan Wells talk about writing. This year we’re boldly staking out new territory by coining the term “Elemental Genre” in order to avoid arguments.

It’ll be interesting to see how that works out for us.