Category Archives: Journal

This is me rambling about me, mostly. Current stuff: home, family, my head’s on fire… that kind of thing. This also includes everything imported from LiveJournal.

Essays, Journal

Sasquan Report

I haven’t attended a WorldCon without exhibiting since 2009 in Montreal. Sasquan, held in Spokane, Washington, would have been a fine show at which to exhibit, but I didn’t really want to spend the whole weekend working. That’s really haaaard.

So I only spent part of the weekend working. I wrote about 3600 Planet Mercenary words, and inked a week of comics. I recorded three episodes of Writing Excuses with Brandon and Dan, and I “networked” with dozens of peers in the genre fiction community.

That last bit doesn’t really feel like work. All I was really doing was talking to people about stuff I would have talked about anyway, and introducing friends, new and old, to each other.

The greatest unpleasantness was the smoke from the disastrous forest fires in western and central Washington. I inhaled enough smoke on Friday that I got sick and had to lie down, and the newfound shallow-ness of my lungs stayed with me even after the air cleared a bit on Saturday and Sunday. Walking and talking at the same time usually left me short of breath, sometimes to the point that my head would hurt and my vision would begin to narrow.

And then there was the Hugo Award thing.

The Hugo Awards, whose concomitant controversy was something I was pleased to not be sitting on stage for, have been better discussed by other writers. I watched the awards from the lobby of the Davenport Grand with friends new and old, former Hugo winners among us. I was pleased with the results, but like every year it was bittersweet.

My heart goes out to those who did not win awards this year, especially those whose work missed being on the ballot because of the hijacked slate. Their work will stand independently of this, however, and needs neither my pity nor the validation of the short-list. As a former Hugo loser, I know that it stings, but I also know that you’ve got to keep making stuff regardless of what happens with awards. I kept making Schlock Mercenary for five years after it started not winning Hugo awards. It still hasn’t won, and I’m still making it today.

Just as awards shouldn’t validate your decision to create art, they shouldn’t have any bearing on how you feel about the art you consume. Reading in particular is a deeply personal, intimate act. An award on a book is like a sticker on a banana: it might help you pick the banana, but if you eat the sticker you’re doing it wrong.

Journal, Reviews

Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation

MissionImpossible5I was at Gen Con Indy last weekend, so I didn’t make it to Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation until the Tuesday after it opened. I really liked it. The action was taken to super-spy levels of unbelievable from the opening scene, and the intrigue and heist elements were both spot on and satisfying.

Which is to say that the movie is full of all the ridiculous things you expect from the Mission: Impossible franchise, including punchy uses of the theme in all the right places. Joe Kraemer’s soundtrack is lots of fun, and will make good music for me to write and draw to.MissionImpossible5OST

I was pleased to find that the trailers did not spoil the film’s key scenes—a kindness on the part of the marketing department, I suppose, though it’s possible that they had explicit instructions from filmmakers who wanted to preserve some of the intrigue.

Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation clears my Threshold of Awesome and enters my 2015 list at #10.

 

 

Journal

I’ll Be Talking About Kickstarter Stuff

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This Saturday I’ll be at the Salt Lake Public Library at the invitation of Utah Sequential Artists and Illustrators.

IMG_0009

Alan Gardner, newshound-in-chief at The Daily Cartoonist, and a founding member of USAI*, did the poster above, and I love the caricature.

Here are the details again, because copying and pasting text from an image is tedious:

July 11, 2015
10:00 AM @ Salt Lake City Public Library
Conference Room A

I’ll have slides, I’ll answer questions, and the whole thing will run for about 60 minutes. Seating is limited, and the event is open to the public. A few seats will be reserved for USAI members.

 

Essays, Faith, Funnies, Journal

“No, This is Not an Oregon Trail LARP”

From Tuesday through Friday my family and I are participating in “Trek,” which, in the local dialect of Mormon-speak, is interpreted to mean “hiking and camping with handcarts, hymns, and harmonicas.” Just like our pioneer ancestors. I joked that this event was a cross between a Mormon Pioneer cosplay and an Oregon Trail LARP, but I’ve been told that this is not the case, and no, I’m not allowed to pretend to have died of dysentery so I can go home.

If it sounds like I’m making light of it, that’s because I make light of pretty much everything. Especially things of which I’m frightened. Camping in general has lost its appeal for me. Hiking? Sounds suspiciously like work. Doing them together, so that after a long hike you get a crap bed and food you carried and zero long soaks in a hot bath? Let’s just say it’s not Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup math.

I am not, however, a heartless, spineless fool who cannot see the benefit in these things. Sandra and I have been given the opportunity to walk the trail our ancestors walked one-point-six centuries ago, and we get to do so with all four of our children. The window of opportunity for this activity is pretty much this year, or never. Our kids are growing up and growing out. If we want to be miserable, all six of us, together in Wyoming, this is the time to do it.

Am I making light again? Perhaps.

We won’t have “electronic devices” with us, which is Trek-speak for “no phones, no music-players, no movies, no laptops, no getting any work done Howard, and if you want to take pictures the camera must only be a camera, not a smart-something.” If I want to tweet anything I’ll have to write it by hand in my journal, and carefully count the characters on my fingers to make sure I don’t use too many.

I am issuing an electronics exemption for my Fitbit, which I will be wearing for the whole trip. I have it on good authority that the pioneers had 1) odometers, and 2) timepieces. Besides, this is the damaged one (the replacement from the manufacturer is still in the packaging) and the repair scars I’ve inflicted upon it exemplify the old saw about thrift:

Use it up, wear it out. Make it do, or do without.

PioneerFitBit

That particular aphorism probably dates from after the time period in question, but only because during the time period in question you didn’t need to say such a thing, because it was what everybody did without some pithy rhyme as a reminder.

In this spirit, everything I’m wearing, carrying, or packing is newly acquired for this trip EXCEPT for the anachronometer on my wrist. Especially the shoes, which I have already broken in and stress-tested on a 22,000-step day. If my ancestors had crossed the plains in boots like these they really would have sang as they walked.

The point is that I’m going dark for four days. We’ll be back on Saturday, and I’ll be refreshed and ready for my presentation at the Salt Lake Public Library.

DiedOfDysentery