Shakespeare Squad

Writing from the con floor, where much madness, forklifting and unboxing is taking place. Getting to see the show in set-up mode is a real treat, like watching a magician pull back the curtain on your favorite trick. I love getting to see how things work from the inside.

Right now I'm slated to be at the Udon booth whenever the exhibit hall is open. I'm hoping to make it out to a few panels (Stephanie Meyer! Frank Beddor! Cecil Castellucci!) but it all depends on busy things get. If you're at the con, please stop by and say hi! We're booth #5368, right next to the G entrance to the exhibit hall.

And if you're at the con, you should also check out:
Cecil Castellucci!
Ray Fawkes!
Brian Lee O'Malley!
Udon artists signing schedule!(including my guy, who'll be signing at the Capcom booth on Sat at noon).

While I would never actually spend 9,800 yen on a Hello Kitty Disaster Kit, I am tempted to use it as aesthetic inspiration when I do my next disaster kit refresh.

Cecil Castellucci has posted the winning stories for her JANES IN LOVE Arc Contest! If you dig tales of romantic embarrassment (and let’s be honest, who doesn’t, if only for the reassurance that I’m not the only one), then you should definitely check it out.

One week to San Diego Comic Con. All memberships are now sold out, even the one-day Sunday passes which *never* sell out.

I am afeared.

And fighting the urge to create an entirely new wardrobe before next Tuesday.

(Jim's posted details of the Udon booth location, where I’ll be during the day. If you’re around, please stop by to say hi!)

1. Every reasonable route between my home and office is disrupted by construction. Biking in the city is hazardous enough without adding traffic cones, narrowed lanes and bumpy asphalt to the mix.

2. I'm carrying a sweater everywhere I go to ward off the air conditioning chill.

This morning I had a choice between getting to work on time or finishing the scene I was writing. My coworkers don't seem to have noticed my tardiness.

Yes, yes, seriously neglectful of blog. The primary issue is one of voice: confining the scope to writing alone leaves me with little to discuss from day-to-day, as the day-to-day work of writing is not particularly interesting to anyone but the writer themselves.

This weekend I finished what is hopefully the last major revision on BEARERS OF BAD TIDINGS, and am finally happy with the story flow from start to end. The critique group I joined a few months back has been great about forcing me to challenge the logic of each and every plot point, and the book is stronger for it.

We’re gearing up for the San Diego Comic Con next week, which promises to be a wild ride. I’m heading down with the Udon Entertainment crew and will be working their booth most of the weekend. Jim’s gearing up for the Street Fighter Tribute launch, coinciding with the 4th edition Street Fighter previews happening at the Capcom booth. Press has been really positive so far, and it’s exciting to have watched the whole thing come together from Jim’s initial pitch back in the fall.

Popgun 2, the Image Comics anthology, hits stores this week: Jim and Chris Stevens collaborated on a funny and violent fantasy piece for the book.

Also launching at San Diego is The Apocalipstix, by my pals Ray Fawkes and Cameron Stewart. A 50-page preview is online here and the Toronto Star has an interview with the lads here.

More soon.

I'm a bit concerned about my chances of emerging from this month unscathed, sanity-wise. The next three weeks contain a major work project, Book Expo Canada and a gaggle of mandatory social engagements. I'm moving house, with all the attendent stress, chaos and administrative details. And I'm committed to being out of town the last week of the month, giving me even less time than usual to handle everything.

Note to self: advance planning does not mesh well with the ad-hoc contracting lifestyle.

So there's been quite a roar and rattle among the graphic novel community the past few days over the contract Tokyo Pop is offering new creators in their Rising Stars of Manga line - with good reason, given the contract is both destructive to creator rights and written in the ugliest smarmy lingo I've heard since my days of hanging around indie film producers.

Take a read for yourself (pdf). Like many others, I'm especially fond of the dismissal of moral rights as some "fancy French term".

Ray Fawkes and Lea Hernandez (who's been railing against the TP contracts for ages) both do a lovely job of venting some righteous anger on the subject.

Intersecting with this lovely mess is the news that Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition, due to be released in a couple of weeks, is already being pirated - in pristine printer's proof PDF format, no less. Just like the real thing, only without paying for it!

I can't help but see a correlation between these two happenings. After all, if the audience doesn't care about paying the creator, why should the publisher?

For all the protest I hear from fans of pirated media about the Evil Corporations (TM), there seems to be little recognition that screwing over those companies doesn't do much to help out the creator either. Diminished sales can mean the difference between a solid mid-list career and a two-book sputter. It's cash in pocket, it's trackable recognition of a demand for that creator's work, it's that terrible fear that really, actually, your work sucks.

Yes, the Tokyo Pop contract sucks dead rats, but let's be honest: they wouldn't be doing it if they didn't think they could get away with it. And they probably got that impression not from the creator community, but from the audience.

[a portion of this rant brought to you by several weeks of watching my partner work his hiney off on artwork appearing in the 4th ed D&D Monster Manual, soon to be downloading at a computer near you]

Is a four-leaf clover more or less lucky if it's found in a graveyard?

Having smashed a rather sizeable mirror over the weekend, I'm seriously hoping for the former. No sign of the Sight yet, but I'll keep you posted.

This might look like a blog post, but it's actually just filler. Guilty, guilty filler.

Tagged by megancrewe, a list of six random things about myself:

1. My feet have perilously high arches, which was great for ballet but bad for finding boots that fit right.

2. I can touch the tip of my nose with my tongue.

3. Like Megan, I am not a natural red-head.

4. My favorite item of clothing is something I almost never wear: my grandfather's silk top hat, stored in a brown leather hatbox with red velvet lining. Poppy was a working-class man who built houses with round corners in rural Newfoundland; his Edwardian gentleman's accoutrement was salvaged from the trash.

5. I once toilet-papered a police officer. After asking for - and obtaining - the officer's permission to do so.

6. I can recite John Clare's "I Am" and Edward Gorey's "The Gashleycrumb Tinies" off by heart - but not T.S Eliot's "The Wasteland", despite repeated attempts to memorize the darned thing.

Peter V. Brett explains how he wrote a novel on his cellphone. I'm totally bringing this up the next time someone feeds me the old "but I don't have *time* to write" excuse.

(link found via Deanna Hoak)

Speaking of no excuses, I finish this rewrite by Sunday or else. I haven't quite determined what the "or else" will be, of course, although I suspect it involves the money I'd earmarked for little new-job shopping indulgence. Alternately, I may hunt down an audio recording of Uncle Harlan* bellowing my favorite writing advice and set my iPod on repeat until I finish the task.

The difference between a writer and a loser is finished work.
- Harlan Ellison

* - note: I am not actually related to Harlan Ellison. I was briefly, vaguely related to Guy Maddin, one of my favorite film directors, but that's a whole other story.

This weekend was lovely catch-up time, complete with a solid chunk of writing and some quality boyfriend-time. Con season has begun and he's off this coming weekend (New York Comic Con) and the next (Calgary Comic Expo), which is a pretty fair taste of the next five months. I'm taking solace in the thought of weekend-long writing binges.

On Thursday I have a doctor's appointment to discuss my insomnia. It's been a few years, so I'm hoping to qualify for a sleep study to pinpoint what's causing the initial sleeplessness. Right now, my weekly pattern goes like this:

- Have trouble getting to sleep early in work week
- Drink extra coffee the next day to compensate
- Disrupted sleep from muscle spasms caused by too much caffiene
- Even more tired, so drink more coffee
- More muscle spams, even less sleep
- Repeat until Saturday
- Reset sleep over weekend

It would be less frustrating if a lack of sleep didn't translate into massive grumpiness and reduced brain functionality.

Saturday was my Dad's birthday. I think he was in Singapore, on a stop-over between Cambodia and the Phillipines. There's something vaguely hilarious in having to check his blog to figure out where in the world (literally) they are this week. The photos on his flickr account are pretty amazing.