Just a quick update on the writing front.
Last Saturday, I did a World Building Workshop for the Manitoba Writers Guild. Thousands of words of sample world building, tons of reference materials, books, youtube videos, TV-tropes, etc. We got a half dozen attendees, and it went really well, a hard core, pedal to the metal introduction to an interesting area of writing.
This Weekend, I’m doing panels at Keycon. This year, due to the Coronaclypse, Keycon is an online convention. I’m not sure about my panels. So far, I think I’m on, or going to be on….
- Pantsing, Plotting and Quilting – different approaches to writing a novel. There’s a whole bunch of us – Chadwick Gunther, Ron Hore, Susan Forest, Reed Alexander, going an hour and a half from 5:30 to 7:00 on Saturday.
- Creating Deep Characters – pretty self explanatory, I hope. Me and Casia Schreyer so far, one hour, 11:00 to 12:00 on Sunday.
- Worldbuilding – again, with Catherine Fitzimmons, I’m going to sneak onto that one. One hour, 7:00 to 8:00 on Sunday
By the way, go see Keycon’s Website at …. http://www.keycon.org/38/#sched They’d love to have you drop by. Membership is free!
One of the nice things about doing convention panels is the chance to meet and kick back with other writers, talk about writing and share the space. Less pressure, more engagement. And if you’ve got someone on a panel with you, that guarantees there will be at least one other person attending. 😉
Apart from that, following up on the book covers for Aliens and Elves and Axis of Andes. I’ve submitted a raft of short stories to Analog, Asimov’s and Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine.
And I’m working on a query letter and synopsis for my next stab to searching for an Agent. Last year, I sent out 30 queries for one book, and 10 for second. No joy in mudville. This year, I’m going to try and break 100 and 50.
And geez, I need to sign up for When Words Collide, and maybe try and get on some panels. Get ready for the World Fantasy Convention in Montreal in August. Oh and there’s more workshops for the Manitoba Writers Guild. Apart from that, I still have to work on learning marketing and promotions, there’s books to edit and release.
I dunno. Shouldn’t being a writer involve actually writing something. All this other stuff is starting to feel like work. 😉