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This year I went to my second-ever Worldcon, taking place in Kansas City, Missouri. In general, I'm coming to realize that conventions for science fiction and fantasy fans tend to be more my speed than gaming conventions. If nothing else, the attendance tends to be much, much smaller, meaning it doesn't feel quite so crowded and full. The convention center itself was gigantic - I'm pretty sure it was at least a city block long, and may have been a block wide as well. This was good and bad - good, in that there were plenty of wide hallways and areas for people to sit and recharge (either themselves or their phones) without feeling like they're block traffic; bad in that everything was a decent distance away from everything else. On a good day, this isn't a problem; however, I was using my cane the entire convention, and I was feeling the extra distance every time I walked around. The panels themselves were, by and large, fantastic. I went to a couple of readings ...

A quick post to let y'all know about a deal going on (that ends today) from Self-Publishing Roundtable -  free eBooks! The deal is that these are available on Amazon, and they're book 1 on various series or serials. Full disclosure - I was given this link by my friend  Crissy Moss , who wrote  Witch's Sacrifice , which is part of the above deal. So go forth! Find new authors and new series! And have a lovely weekend - with luck, I'll be back with more content next week.

Apparently, in the Kansas City (MO) airport, you can either get soda or candy, but not both at the same store. It's a little odd, but have me the chance to walk a bit. I hope to have better, more thinky thoughts on the convention when I'm home and properly be-kittied, which will be tonight, partially. The elder statescats are being boated, as they need daily medication and no one likes us enough to try to medicate them (nor do I blame them). We get in too late tonight to spring them, but they'll be home tomorrow. Meanwhile, Daisy will be over the moon to have people again. She doesn't take being left alone well.

I'm at WorldCon in Kansas City, MO this weekend, and it's been an adventure thus far. I'm realizing that I've grown complacent in my convention attendance - I'm used to going to conventions where I know a decent number of people, so I'm likely to run into familiar faces who will stop and chat, even for a moment between panels. That is not so much the case here. The panels themselves have been wonderful, and I've been glad to go to all of the ones I've been to thus far, but between sessions has been more difficult than I had anticipated. I find myself feeling down, and it makes it harder to convince myself to stick around, rather than going back to the hotel room to mope. I've been fighting the urge, but it's not easy. However, I will give Kansas City this - they throw one heck of a thunderstorm. Currently, I'm hearing thunder and seeing flashes of lightning fairly regularly from the hotel room, and can hear the rain coming down against th...

Except when it comes to books. I freely admit that the majority of my reading these days happens on an ereader, but I will never get over the desire for paper books. One of the earliest memories I have of every house I ever lived in was having walls of bookshelves, and it's something I've continued in my home. Every room in our house has books, up to and including the bathroom, and the standing rule of our home is that if you see something you want to borrow, feel free - just tell us so we know where it went. It makes it easier for friends who are also People of the Book who found something that catches their eye to get their hands on it. As much as I enjoy my ereader (and not just because it provides me with my day job), the ability to lend books out both willy and nilly is still best suited by physical books. And frankly, nothing will ever be more soothing to my soul than seeing a wall of books, just waiting for me to start reading.

I've been spending some time getting caught up on Writing Excuses, and one episode  on polytheism  brought up an interesting question. A couple of the panelists said that when they are first thinking of a new religion, they start by wondering what their characters would swear by. That got me thinking in a different direction about character development - how do they swear? Last year I read a  book  about the history of swearing in English, and the book broke things into two categories - the profane and the obscene (or rather, the holy and the shit of the book's title), and charted how these two categories rose and fell in terms of how "bad" they're considered by society. Its says a lot about a person's beliefs with how they treat these two categories - I have family members that will take God's name in vain, but would rather be mute than reference any bodily function or fluid. On the other side, I've worked with people who had no problem dropping f...

I freely admit that the majority of my word count over the years has come during things. like Nanowrimo, where the goal is to get the words on the page and silencing your inner editor. I'm currently plugging away at the gap (or Gap, at this point - it's earned the capital letter) in Paranormal Investigations, and part of me really, really wants to go back and edit everything I have before continuing into the breach. Here's the problem with that approach: I know myself. If I allow myself to go into the Land of the Editor, I may never leave. It will be exceptionally difficult for me to switch back to writing if I try to edit everything first, so I'm forcing myself to keep writing and reminding myself that I can fix it in post. I'm very grateful for the college education that I had, if for no other reason that that it taught me that if I'm given the chance, I will pick my work to death before moving on with new work. I literally had to have parts of my thesis t...

It's been a while since I've done a book review, so a quick perusal of my Goodreads shelf and I found one of my comfort books -  The Night Circus  by Erin Morgenstern. The book follows the basic idea that magic is real, and two magicians have taken apprentices - one a boy, the other a girl - from an early age. It follows the apprentices as they grow up and learn about the different kinds of magic, not knowing that they are in a competition with each other. Throughout, there's also a description of a carnival known as the Night Circus that travels around the world. No one knows when it will appear until it does, and it only opens at sundown. The different exhibits and tents are unlike anything anyone's ever seen, and they develop a following of people who create their own kind of family as they bond over the circus. One of the beautiful things about the book is the way the storylines are woven together. You're introduced to the circus before you meet the main cha...

So Camp Nanowrimo this last month was a bust for me, but at least I was able to keep writing. I have a good idea of where things are going for the rest of the story. I've also been using  My Write Club  to set smaller, shorter goals for myself - I've been setting things for a week at a time, and that's been helping me keep my motivation going. This may be the longest period of continuous writing that I've done in ages, and it makes me feel more like things are in hand. With luck, my blog posts going forward won't just be about how I'm trying to write, really and for true! In the meantime, I'll be here, trying to figure out why my villain is making evil coffee.