I woke up at 6am today with another couple of thousand words to write on my 24 hour story. I basically barricaded myself in my room and wrote like crazy, stopping only for a quick lunch. By 3pm I had churned out what I think was a pretty respectable 3100 word piece called SOCIETY RETURNS THE FAVOUR, involving Nicky, the insane conspiracy theorist who’d chased me down Hollywood Boulevard the previous day.

We returned to Author Services by 5pm with stories in hand and KD disappeared to print them out, selecting through arcane means the three we would workshop the next day (She threw them down a flight of stairs and selected the one that traveled the least. I chose 12pt font for my story, and thus, was spared.)

That night, we attended a BBQ for the arriving judges and got our first chance to meet the illustrators. They knew the titles of the pieces they’d illustrated, but not the authors so it was a great chance for them to get to know us in person, and for us to get to know their artwork. My illustrator Joshua J Stewart (whose name we jokingly shortened to J.J. Stew) was absolutely amazing. His portfolio contained any number of pieces that would make stunning book covers. In my opinion, he was a strong candidate for the gold award (though the level of talent on display among the illustrators was generally stunning).

Tim Powers grabbed Cheryl and I and introduced us to writing luminaries, Jerry Pournelle, which resulted in an awkward moment where he didn’t remember her story, but managed to entertain us with first hand stories about the McCarthy era. Truly a fascinating gentleman.

I tried talking to Sean Williams, but the guest speaker for the awards ceremony, who’d been hovering around the edges of the BBQ until then, chose that moment to dive into conversation. He’d been so quiet until then (and looked a little stunned) so I chose to retreat, figuring I could talk to Sean later.

The food was great, the conversation and atmosphere delightful (though a little dark to check out the illustrators’ work) and generally a Cool Deal. A good time was had by all.

We got copies of the stories we were to critique at 9pm (Don Mead, Heather McDougal, and Schon Zwakman were the lucky “winners”) and we retired to our rooms to do our critiques. I got together with Gra to do mine, but he was just too damn interesting and so I didn’t even get started until 11pm. I was exhausted the next morning.

Tags: Workshop, Writers of the Future

I set my alarm to 7:00am this morning and then also asked for a wake up call. Apparently, I had a very vivid dream about my wake up call, because a few minutes after my alarm woke me up, I got my wake up call from the front desk, and I told him I’d already gotten it. This led to about five minutes of very awkward, confused conversation. Weird.

Tim and Kathy spoke a little about the business of writing, conventions, and how to behave professionally. I ended up taking about five pages of notes (which I will post later). We discussed idea generation for the 24 hour story, which basically consisted of three parts. 1) We were each give a random object. My writing twin (which is the person sitting at the same table as you), Schon Zwakman got a green button that said “Bring Back Misty Dawn” on it, while I got a bowlegged Indian chief who swilved at the hips. Horrible. 2) We we sent down to the library to do research. Literally, we were told to wander the stacks and pick out books that looked interesting. We were told to pick out books >beside< books that looked interesting. We were told to run our fingers down the shelves and stop on a book whose spine felt interesting. You get the point. It was an interesting exercise. 3) I’ll return to this presently.

We were told to be back at the workshop at 1:30, so we left for lunch at 12:15 (plenty of time). We went to this burrito bar on Hollywood boulevard. We told them we were in a rush right away, but by 12:45 our food still hadn’t arrived. We told them to bring the cheques right away so we could settle up, but she only brought half of them and then forgot about it. by 1:00pm I went down to the front desk to cancel our order, but right at that moment, our food started to come up. We ate like fiends, while we were waiting for the rest of our bills to show up, but at 1:15pm they >still< hadn’t come. So we sent Matt and Schon ahead to tell Tim and Kathy we’d be late. We didn’t end up getting back until 2:00pm.

Those of you who know me know that I am almost obsessive compulsive about punctuality. I was chewing the furniture by this time. From now on, we’ll be known at the WotF that was late back from lunch. This is not a good thing.

Back to part 3. In the afternoon, we were sent out to meet a stranger. We were not allowed to tell them we were writers, or on an assignment or anything. We were suppose to engage in conversation and find out as much as we could. This was an exercise we all dreaded.

I started in a pharmacy thinking I’d corner a security guard or a shelf stocker or something, but no dice. I was way too busy. Then I stopped at a cafe thinking that it would be full and I would be forced to share a table with someone. It miraculously emptied out right when I got there. Finally, after wandering the streets for a while I got a brainstorm. Call a cab!!! Cab drivers will talk your ear off. So I stopped at a cab stand and asked him to take my to the Hollywood library (the only place I knew down here that was a significant, but not crazy, cab ride away). He was unimpressed. He didn’t want to lose his place in line for a five dollar fare, so he pretended he’d never heard of it (even told me it didn’t exist) and offered to take me to the LA public library which was $25 dollars away (which meant it was $40 either way). So I left in frustration.

I needed a destination that was far enough away that a cab driver would take me, but not far enough that it would bankrupt me. So I went into a convinience store and asked for a destination that was about 10 minutes away by car in any direction. This was a confusing but funny question, but when I explained my reasons he bought into the conspiracy and told me to ask to be taken to Hollywood and Vine. Attempt number 2: I approached a cab driver with this destination. Still not far enough. He wouldn’t take me. The cab idea was a bust.

Idea number four: a city bus! People are always sitting together, relatively trapped until the next station. I’d be that creepy guy who doesn’t get the hint that you don’t want to talk to people on the bus! I found a station and got onto a bus that was going downtown, they sat in the back and tried to start up a conversation with a middle aged Hispanic man. Language barrier. No dice. I got off at the next stop, disappointed.

There was a young African American man sitting at the stop listening to an iPod, so I quite cleverly asked him for directions to the Chinese Theatre (which was across from our hotel), and then started up a conversation that way. Success! Turns out he was a hard right Republican who had a low opinion (bargain basement low) of Obama, ran a magazine that said as much, and hung out with the less rich relatives of famous people. All I had to do was occassionally say “Yeah, no kidding” and he held forth for 45 minutes. I think 10 buses went by, and I kept wondering which one was his. I had to get back to ASI by 4:30pm and by this time I was starting to get nervous, so I excused myself, but then he offered to escort me back to the Chinese Theatre. Thank goodness I’d told him that my destination was somewhere close by! I tried to excuse myself several times, but he walked me all the way back to the theatre. When he began helping me hunt for the “friend” I was supposed to meet, I had to just mumble a goodbye and duck into the crowd that was there for a Sandra Bullock release and disappear. I made it back to ASI just on time.

We were given a few more words of wisdom, and then turned loose to write our story in 24 hours using the object, the research, and our conversation!

That evening the first place winners were interviewed by Shaun Farrell from Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing. I’m a fan of Shaun’s podcast, so this was a real thrill. Despite some technical problems with the phone, eventually we gathered around and Shaun asked us all kinds of questions about our backgrounds and our careers and asked us to sum up our stories. I stumbled over my words once or twice, but I think I handled my newbie jitters reasonably well.

After that, it was pure writing except for a quick break to meet my roommate, Stephen Kotowych, the Grand Prize winner from two years ago. Stephen is a great guy with a lot of thoughts on the contest to share. His primary piece of advice was “write a speech!” If you’ve seen his acceptance video you’ll know why. He’d been told by Jerry Pournelle that he hadn’t won, so he didn’t prepare one, and the award caught him off guard. I intend to write one, even though at this point, it seems like everyone is talking about Emery Huang’s story. I give myself 10% odds. If the winner is determined by the story that no one ever mentions, then I’m a shoo-in.

I had a 1500 word false start, and finished writing for the night at 2am, having set my alarm for 6am. See you tomorrow!

Tags: Workshop, Writers of the Future

Day 2, was really Day 1 of the actual workshop itself, and I woke up not really knowing what to expect (despite reading about a dozen of these workshop blogs by previous winners). I walked a block down Hollywood boulevard to Author Services Inc where our classes would be held, and arrived at 9am sharp.

First on the agenda was a tour of the building. We were taken up to the 4th floor into an absolutely amazing room. It was filled, wall to wall, with books by L. Ron Hubbard. They had a tower of paper nearly my height (and I’m not a small man) which was the original manuscript of Mission Earth. I had no idea the man was so prolific. Someday I want a room like this in my own house. I was in awe.

Next up, was an equally fascinating room, except this one was devoted to the contest. They had a copy of every book written by winners, and even copies of magazines where the winners have been published. Joni showed us a huge wall with pictures of seminal moments in the contest: first award ceremony, first female grand prize winner, pictures of various important events in the history of the contest. I can’t wait for some of my stuff to be in that hallowed company.

The workshop itself was absolutely amazing. Tim Powers and KD Wentworth poured forth their collected wisdom. I took eleven pages of notes, which I will post sometime after the workshop. Unfortunately for you guys, many of the stories are edited out to protect those involved, but Tim was entertaining as hell. Not many people realize that he was one of Philip K Dick’s best friends (even roommates for a while), and he’s been around the sci-fi community for a long time. The man knows everyone. He’s promise to give us a few (unprintable) Phil Dick stories today.

Both judges are incredibly friendly and outgoing with the winners, and I think that’s one of the main reasons they were picked to administer the workshop (that and their venerable publishing history). Tim has this manner of talking to you that makes you feel like you’ve been friends for 10 years, and when you say something he treats it like it’s something you’d only tell a buddy. Kathy has this unassuming manner about her, and then she pops out this quip in a deadpan that has you cracking up. I feel priviledged and honoured to be in their company.

After the workshop, we hung around in the lobby of the hotel where we met former winner Steve Saville. Steve is a young writer who left the contest running. In six years, he’s written 23 books. That’s a crazy pace. He mentioned that Kevin J Anderson once introduced himself as Hack and Steve as Hack Jr. (neither of which is accurate, but funny nonetheless). Steve has tons of wisdom and inside knowledge about how to succeed after the contest, as well as stories of previous disasters at the contest (mostly foolish writers torpedoeing their careers. And no, I can’t share them here–you’ll have to win the contest to hear them. They usually involved idiots dissing Scientology or the contest, or even other contest winners. Hint: Whatever you think about Scientology, these people are amazingly friendly and courteous, and they spend a lot of time and money getting you down here and putting this workshop on. It’s not cool to dis your hosts. And this is someone’s religion. We don’t dis people for the religion they practice in modern society. End of rant.).

You know, this might be a good place to tackle the issue of Scientology. It is my understanding that the staff at Author Services Inc are Scientologists, but they have never brought it up. Not once. I honestly wouldn’t have known that they were if it hadn’t been for the Interwebs. I’ve heard that if you >ask< them about Scientology they’ll hold forth, but it’s like there’s a wall in place between the contest and the religion. None of the judges are Scientologists that I’m aware of, and neither are any of the contest winners, past or present. I have about as the same opinon about Scientology that I have about any other religion at this point, which is respect sprinkled with a healthy does of ambilivalence.

Anyways, I headed to bed around midnight the first night feeling like a wuss, but I was exhausted. Tomorrow is the start of the 24 hour story. I can’t wait.

Tags: Workshop, Writers of the Future

Long commutes and international customs make for an early morning. I woke up at 3:00am so that Alicia could drive me to the airport in time for my 6:27am flight. Luckily made it through security with no hitches. I expected to see Fiona, a fellow winner in the seat ahead of me, but she’d switched and now an older Filipino was sitting there. Spent much of the flight wondering if Fiona could be a man’s name…

I arrived at LAX and somehow managing to bypass our escorts. After rescuing my bags from the carousel, I wandered around the airport for a little while until I spotted Emily and our photographer (both Canadians, yay!). They asked me to pose for pictures, which I did reluctantly, blushing furiously the whole time.

Fiona has also missed our escort, but had left a detailed description of herself that was simplicity itself: she looked like Ellen Degeneres. Apparently, this is not as specific a description as one might think. I asked about twenty women if they were Fiona before we finally found her.

Then it was off to the hotel, where we met Joni Lebacqui and Peter, the WotF Forum admin. Joni showed us around and gushed about the book trailer (I can’t wait!). The awards ceremony is being held in the room where they had the very first Academy Awards (Tim Powers informed us that “Wings” won Best Picture). I didn’t realize that Joni had “snuck” us in, so I tried to sneak in Don and Gary and was stopped by security, but when I told him we were winners and I was just showing them the room, he backed right off. All of the hotel staff have been so welcoming, I’m in very real danger of being spoiled for all future hotel stays.

I had dinner with Fiona, and invited her to Spec24, our local writing group. We talked a lot about writing in general, and though she doesn’t really have a speculative fiction background, we had a great talk about genre and writing in general. I can’t wait to read her story!

Our welcome meeting was at 7pm. Joni and John Goodwin, President of Galaxy Press spoke to us a little about the kind of support we can expect to receive, and they made it clear that they are available to help in whatever capacity we might need. They’re going to book radio and TV interviews, as well as book signings and setting up press releases. Later, Tim Powers said that this was probably the biggest release any of our books would ever get. I don’t think he was joking.

Next up were Tim and KD Wentworth and they talked a lot about craft which was golden, but they didn’t want to overwhelm us, so we quickly broke for dinner… and then I brought THING to WotF! That’s right, we played a game of Thing. We all had a great time, and promised to play it again later when we all knew each other a little better.

Anyways, I’m signing off for the night. If you guys have anything you’d like me to ask, or any questions, just leave them in the comments and I’ll be sure to respond!

Tags: Workshop, Writers of the Future

Well, just turned in my horror short story, THE SHAKEN LEAF, complete at 5300 words. The title is taken from this very mangled biblical quote from Leviticus “and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth“.

The premise is an interesting one, one I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years, and is my attempt to generate a completely original monster not based on tropes from any established mythology. I got tired of reading about zombies and vampires (even in pro mags like ChiZine), and wondered why there weren’t more original monsters in modern storytelling. Usually, when I ask myself, “Why doesn’t X exist?” that’s a cue for me to write one. Thus, “The Shaken Leaf” was born, though I’m thinking of retitling it “As From the Sword” since that has a better ring to it.

This piece gave me a lot of hassles, and I have to admit that I’m not entirely satisified with it. At one point, I found myself writing a “power up” point for my fleeing hereos, complete with medkits. It is not good to find yourself slipping into video game tropes. Ended up scrapping that scene completely and tightening the chase, so I suppose it may work now, but it’s far from my best work. What’s worse is that I don’t think it will sell. It’s an action horror, not a psychological one (though I hope it works on that level as well), and magazines seldom buy these pieces. Their reasoning? “Why isn’t this a movie?”. And I think they’re right too. I wrote this piece, in part, so try and develop the idea for eventual script treatment. Only time will tell there.

Next week I’m going back to what I hope is my strong suit: character-driven urban fantasy with a tasty sci-fi dressing. Structually, it’s a huge experiment, but I guess I’m thinking of it as a Hail Mary. If it works, I expect it to work big. If it doesn’t, well, I still like the idea, so maybe I’ll tackle it again with a more traditional format.

Nalo’s been great so far and I’m looking forward to my private interview with her on Thursday. For tonight, I might try and rent True Romance for the CW crew, or perhaps just outline my newest piece with the horrible, horrible working title of “Pruning the Tree”. No, it is not about landscaping.

Thanks to everyone who’s been commenting. I haven’t had time to answer a lot of you, but I appreciate you guys. This is much easier with a cheering section!

Tags: Clarion West, Workshop