Hourly Comics Day: Feb 1, 2015

After years of saying, "Hey, I should totally do hourly comics some time," I actually did some.  They were fun and reminded me that, yes, I do love drawing.  I posted these through out the day on Twitter, but why not have all these sketchy doodles in one place?

I posted the set I straight-up photographed from my sketchbook on Facebook, but I did a...little bit of clean up on these.  A little.

For more info on the store above, check out The Book Shop.

The Star Lord vs. Captain America Bowl 2015

Dispatches from the Land of Ice and Snow: Boskone 2015

Boskone 2015 Promo Art

Oh look! My Boskone 52 schedule!

25 Things I Learned From SF

Friday 18:00 - 18:50, Harbor III (Westin)

How much of what you know was learned from science fiction? Chromatophores and Kuiper belts, tesseracts and teratogens — what Newton dreamt and how anarchy might work — we've all received numberless info dumps. What are your favorites? Your most exotic? How has science fiction shaped your life, your worldview, and the fancy factoids you spout at parties?
Laurie Mann (M), Walter H. Hunt, Fred Lerner, Steve Davidson, Gillian Daniels

Transformative Fan Fiction
Saturday 10:00 - 10:50, Galleria-Discussion Group (Westin)
Looking for fiction that breaks boundaries across gender, race, and religious roles? What is fan fiction? Moreover, what is transformative fan fiction? Why do people write it? Where did it come from? What needs does it fulfill? And where can you find it?
Julia Rios (M), Gillian Daniels

SF Screen Comedy: Galaxy Quest to Guardians of the Galaxy
Sunday 14:00 - 14:50, Harbor I (Westin)
Anybody order a side of Meatballs? Let's talk about the most successful SF films with a lighter touch. We've seen many SF feature-length cartoons in the last few years aimed primarily at children: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Planet 51, Mr Peabody & Sherman. Which of those are worth seeing? What about live-action comedies aimed at adults? Are there examples the other way around? Which are the "best" big-screen SF comedies, and what sets them apart from the crowd?
Julia Rios (M), Gillian Daniels, Craig Shaw Gardner, Annalisa Schaefer, Stephen P. Kelner

***

My Arisia was a pretty nice one.  Everyone has a different Arisia, being the size and shape of fan convention it is.  N.K. Jemisin was brilliant in person and Mark Oshiro was terribly sweet and has a fantastic memory for faces.  I spent a great deal of it live-tweeting the panels I attended for the #arisia and #arisia2015 tags. That's probably one of the reasons I'm going to skip going in-depth with my description of Arisia this year.

I'll say that, due to its bigness, the con itself has a lot of mixed messages.  It's not uncommon to attend a number of panels regarding race and cultural appropriation in popular entertainment but also run into That Guy Who Wants to Tell You Being Offended by X is Wrong Because He's Not Offended By It.  This is probably due to the fact that 90% of New England's geek population shows up for this con and, really, geeks have never been just one group but a bunch of enthusiasts from all backgrounds and walks of life.  I'm pleased Arisia is here to attempt to unite them all in one place and do so with enthusiasm.

The panels I was on went wonderfully and the reading I had with Adrienne Odasso and Sonya Taaffe was fantastic.  I hope to read with them again.  Our writing styles sit very comfortably with each other.  Also, they're both really cool.

Otherwise, after staying at a con from Friday, 6pm to Monday at 3pm with plenty of parties, I was pretty exhausted.

So of course I'll be at Boskone in February.  If you're in the area, you should stop by and say hello!

Winter: Straeon and Arisia

This past December, M. David Blake's Straeon Quarterly debuted from Stupefying Stories.  In it, along with work by Anna Yeatts and Juliette Wade, is my short story, "The Art Teacher."  If you haven't already, please check it out!

I'm grateful the editors took a chance on the piece.  Very curious to see where the publication goes from here.

***

2014 was a great publishing year.  Looking back, I'm proud and still in shock.  I can only hope 2015 will be even a little bit as fantastic.

For poetry, special thanks to Adrienne Odasso for taking "The Liar's Charm" at Strange Horizons, Elise Matthesen at Apex Magazine for publishing my poem, "Sleep Lives Inside the Bed," and Shweta Narayan and Rose Lemberg at Stone Telling for giving "To the Creature" a lovely home.  To John Benson, thank you for accepting Death Defying Stunts to your wonderful Not One of Us. 

Also, as previously mentioned, I've begun my monthly New and Noteworthy Short Fiction column at Fantastic Stories with Warren Lapine, Jay O'Connell, and Robert Davis.

You all are fabulous to work with.

This year, I want to keep going and keep pushing forward.  You get nowhere without taking risks.

***

Arisia 2015 popped up fairly quickly this year, if feels like!  I've been busy with work and my social life at the holidays tends to become all-consuming.  

Below is my schedule, ending with a killer reading line-up with Sonya Taaffe, Adrienne Odasso (linked above, too), and myself on Sunday. Very exciting!

The Legend of Korra (Fri, 7pm) Marina 1

The third season of “The Legend of Korra” found the show finally starting to live up to its potential and expectations, with mature storylines and character development. It also saw Nickelodeon removing the show from the air and only streaming it online. We’ll discuss the changes on both fronts in this panel about one of the better and more diverse cartoons on the air.

Juliet Kahn, Donna Martinez, Rubi, James A. Wolf (m)

Speculative Fiction: The Year in Review (Fri, 10pm) Marina 2

What books, short stories, and poetry have we read this year? What trends and patterns have emerged in the genre?

Morgan Crooks, Tegan Mannino (I'm moderating!)

Marvel Cinematic (and TV) Universe, 2015 (Sat, 7pm) Marina 1

In 2014, we saw Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Captain America: The Winter Soldier deal with global corruption, while Guardians of the Galaxy took on Thanos and Ronan. As this panel takes place, we’ll have Agent Carter on TV, with a Netflix Daredevil show hitting in May. We’ll talk about where this increasingly complex and connected universe goes from here, and how things are looking after the last year.

Kevin Cafferty, Ed Fuqua, Elektra Hammond, Shira Lipkin (m), Heather Urbanski

Poetry Reading: Gillian Daniels, Adrienne Odasso, Sonya Taaffe (Sun, 4pm) Bulfinch (3W)

If you can make it to the con this year, I hope to see you there!

Tell a Stone

In the eleventh issue of Stone Telling, my poem, "To the Creature," is available for consumption. Or, if you prefer, listening. And yes, that's me reading.

Special thanks to Rose Lemberg and Shweta Narayan for publishing an issue of poets not yet featured in their lovely publication. You should read their introduction.

The issue came out on the tail of my second set of reviews for Fantastic Stories. I'm enjoying writing it and hope you've taken a look at the recommendations so far.

November has been nice so far in New England. I decided not to participate in NaNoWriMo but, as one of my writing group friends has dubbed it, ReviYoNoMo (Revise Your Novel Month). Another name: FiYoFuNo (Finish Your Fucking Novel). Which is all to say I'm investing time in editing a longer, more complex work that I hope to one day have ready for widespread reading and poking.

Short Fiction Review Column in Fantastic Stories!

I've started a new column in Warren Lapine's publication, Fantastic Stories, that reviews short fiction I've recently found interesting.  No reprints (mostly; I make the rules), just recently published pieces I think resonate and should be noticed.  This endeavor is a slightly terrifying one to me, but it's a thing I'm strongly invested in. I hope others will check in on it once in a while for recommendations or just to see what's been knocking around my brain.

Anyway, working with Jay O'Connell and Robert Davis has been a lot of fun.  So you see, I've had a super secret vendetta to gab with them more all along.

Readercon 25: A Grand Time

The Messal (1902) John William Waterhouse

This past weekend was my third Readercon. The first year I attended, I elected to commute and felt the full brunt of my decision, the 350 bus running hourly but not reliably between the convention center in Burlington and my home in Somerville. I enjoyed the panels through a haze of sleepiness and annoyance at my own decision.

My second Readercon was a lot better as I grabbed a room with a couple friends.  We enjoyed the panels and wandered each night, haunting the floors for room parties like some very specific ghosts.  The convention was well done but a great deal of tension hung in the air.  In light of the harassment controversy, the entire board had resigned.  This was a new, rebooted con that was wobbly on its legs.

This past Readercon, that new con has solidified.  It has a strong, warm presence without compromising its more academic, literary-driven panels. Rose Fox and Emily Wagner have cultivated a hell of a con.

I met tons of people in real life as opposed to watching them online (ex. Maria Dahvana Headley, an absolute mensch, by the way).  It was also great to talk with friends made at previous conventions and from Clarion, though I regret I didn't have a chance to have in-depth conversations with everyone I wanted to.  I'm told that's kind of how cons like this work.  "There's always next year," is the refrain, but after a long weekend and the resulting crash, that's a source of comfort.

Months That Are Girls' Names

Okay, so March is not technically a name (or at least not a name I'm aware has any popularity outside my imagination), but I'll start there.

Vericon, in size thought not in spirit, is a sliver of a convention.  It's hosted by Harvard University each March.  I heard about it last year but decided to go when I saw the guest list not only had Jo Walton, but also Shira Lipkin, Saladin Ahmed, Greer Gilman, Scott Lynch, Patrick Rothfuss, M.L. Brennan, and one of my writing workshop cohorts, Max Gladstone.  Elizabeth Bear, my third week Clarion teacher and owner of an exquisite mind, was there, too.

I'm sorry, but those are a hell of a lot of heavy-hitters for a con of this size.  The Harvard campus already feels like it's carefully folded into Cambridge, demurely gated on the outside but expansive when you step foot on its grounds.  This convention is like the meeting of a secret society.  Except it really isn't. While not the most tightly run ship to sail the seas of New England conventions, I'm looking forward to going there again.  It was a unique animal.

In April, I took a one-week trip to Paris. It was a supreme delight, the weather staying firmly in the sixties and the rain sort of gentle and pretty even when it fell on you.  It's the best kind of spring there right now, though my friends and I sneezed a bit because every last tree was in bloom.  Also, there were lots of lines.  Everyone in Europe had also realized the weather was fantastic.

We rented a small apartment together about fifteen minutes away from Notre Dame, ate at bistros, drank kir, and saw some amazing parts of the city.  I saw art and ate a lot. It was a diet that mainly consisted of chocolate, bread, cheese, and ice cream.  My original plan was to turn this blog into a travel journal for that period, but I was a bit distracted.

I came home to find my contributors' copy of Not One of Us #51 in the mail.  It's a great issue, with Mat Joiner, Sonya Taaffe, and other talented folks.  I'm really pleased to be a part of it.  You can take a look if you're intrigued.

The story I have in there, Death Defying Stunts, was one I originally wrote during my time at Clarion.  It's about a girl, a personification of death, and Houdini.  I revised it multiple times over the past couple years and re-wrote it.  Then I smashed the first and second version together with a new ending. I'm pleased it found a home with John Benson.

This past week, I celebrated my birthday while Strange Horizons was kind enough to post my poem, "The Liar's Charm."  At six months, I think it might have taken, cumulatively, the least amount of time to edit of my published poetry so far.  So, um, I work slowly.

Special thanks to poetry editor A.J. Odasso for accepting this monster into the SH fold.  I'm so glad to be a part of this publication's legacy.  I definitely recommend reading through the archives.