Category Archives: Announcements

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

Announcements

LTUE 2015: My Busy Schedule

I’ll be at LTUE this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in the Provo Marriott.  I’m doing quite a bit of programming, and I’ll also have a table there. It’s not a huge event, though (between 1500 and 2,000 attendees), so I should be pretty easy to find. That said, here’s my schedule:

Thursday
  • 10am: Writing and Mental Health: Howard Tayler, David Powers King
  • 12pm:  Comic Books: Writing vs Art: Maxwell Drake, Brittany Heiner, Howard Tayler, James A. Owen, Jess Smart Smiley
  • 3pm: Living with mental illness: James A. Owen, Bryan Beus, Bobbie Berendson W., Jennifer Wardell, Howard Tayler
  • 5pm: The Artistic Road to Fame: Bill Galvan, Bryan Beus, Jessica Douglas, Aneeka Richins, Howard Tayler
Friday
  • 9am: Good Omens by Gaiman and Pratchett– Making Fun of the Apocalypse: Howard Tayler, Jenniffer Wardell, Candace Thomas, Mikki Kells, Daniel Coleman
  • 11am: Rules for Writing Magic: Michaelbrent Collings, L.E. Modesitt Jr., Eric James Stone, Howard Tayler Eric Swedin
  • 12pm: Martian ‘r’ Us: Howard Tayler, Aaron Johnston, Derrick Dalton, Renee Collins, David Baxter
  • 5pm: The Culture of Immortality: Howard Tayler, Tracy Hickman, Virginia Baker, Paul Genesse
Saturday
  • 9am: Practice Trumps Talent: Howard Tayler
  • 12pm: Schlock Mercenary: RPG Creation: Howard Tayler, Alan Bahr, Steven Diamond, Alicia McIntire
  • 3pm: Putting Technology Ramifications into your World Building: L.E. Modesitt Jr., Howard Tayler, Dan Wells, Roger White, W. Daniel Willis
  • 5pm: Character Redesign: Keliana Tayler, Jess Smart Smiley, Bill Galvan, Howard Tayler
Announcements, Journal

February’s Projects

I’ve got a full plate this month. Aside from wrapping up the climactic bits of Schlock Mercenary: Delegates and Delegation (the current story online) I need to tackle the bonus story, the cover, and the marginalia for Force Multiplication so that we can send it to print.

Then there’s the substantial task list for the upcoming Schlock Mercenary role-playing game, designed by Alan Bahr, with lots of input from me. The core game stuff is done, and once we’ve got some art to show off we’ll start building a Kickstarter page. That campaign will likely go live sometime in mid-March, and will support the production of a very nice, fully-illustrated rule book, and some odds and ends that will make some of our peculiar (maybe even unique) game mechanics fast, intuitive, and hilarious.

I say “we” with regard to the art. I’ll be doing a few, goofy comic-type things in the book, but most of the artwork will be the sort of thing that you’d expect to see in a wonder-invoking, far-future, science-fiction RPG book. Full-color, fully rendered characters, weapons that look like they’d actually work, and vehicles that are more interesting than the things I dash off with a straight-edge and a circle template.  Think of it this way: Schlock Mercenary, the comic strip, is the canonical story, but the comic’s artwork is mere caricature. The RPG book will show you that universe more clearly, and give you and your players much better starting points for your flights of fanciful shared storytelling.

Back to the task list: I’m also featured pretty heavily in the programming of LTUE, the SF&F symposium here in Utah on February 12th, 13th, and 14th (Thurs-Sat.) and at the end of February I’m flying to Chicago to record more Writing Excuses Master Class sessions.

You might get a movie review or two this month. I’ve seen Strange Magic and Into The Woods, and I’ll be seeing Jupiter Ascending, but the real time sink is actually writing them up.

And speaking of writing, I’ve got a bunch of prose fiction on my plate as well, so I should finish writing this, and start in on some actual work.

Announcements

Last Chance to Register to Nominate for the Hugos

If you’re not already registered for WorldCon, and you want to participate in the Hugo Award nomination and voting process, you must register by Saturday, January 31st. That’s coming right up.

If you’re interested in nominating projects of mine for the ballot, here’s a list of what I did in 2014, and the categories in which those projects are eligible for nomination:

Graphic Story
Short Story
Novelette
Related Work

Whether or not you think any of these are worthy of nomination, the nomination process is something you can be involved in. If you love genre fiction, and want to see honor done by your favorite things, get registered and fill out your ballot!

The registration deadline is January 31st. The nominations close on March 10th, 2015. The final ballot should appear by the end of April, and the voting on that ballot will likely close at the end of July. Winners and full results will be announced at WorldCon in Spokane Washington, on August 22nd of 2015. More information is available at http://www.thehugoawards.org/.

 

Announcements, Journal

Over Budget and Overbooked

I just put together my project budget for 2015. It’s a big spreadsheet that describes how I’ll spend my time during the year. It includes things like the events I’m attending (each of which chews up a bunch of work time, just like actual work would) and “steady-state” stuff like making 52 weeks of comics (except I need to make 54, because the buffer’s a little thin.)

Good news! I know how to budget! Bad news… I’m 9 weeks over budget. So I guess I’ll just have to shoehorn an additional nine work- weeks into 2015, because obviously I’m not going to stop doing any of these cool things we’ve got planned.