Just got my copy of Kaleidotrope with my VP story "Please share my umbrella" in it!

Joanie Savage's (VP XI) story is up at Intergalactic Medicine Show. Not to brag or anything but I read this story in draft and it is really really a good read. And the artwork by Nick Greenwood is awesome. (Hope it's okay for me to repro it here...)
www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi

The Giver, by Lois Lowry. A YA that transcends YA. Thank you, bogwitch64 !
The Alchemyst, by Michael Scott; Storm Glass, by Maria V. Snyder. Two more YAs. I enjoyed them, but probably would have appreciated them more when I was YA myself.
Snake Agent, by Liz Williams. (mevennen ) Really fun; I'll be reading more by her.
Lightbreaker, by Mark Teppo. (markteppo ) Not to drop names or anything, but... a fellow VPXIer.

New author: Jade Lee. The author whose books I grab when I just, well, want to read. The Dragon Earl and Tempted Tigress. Historical romances. Lee's characters and story totally tweak stereotypes and the formulaic while falling in romantic genre expectations. I'm now reading Dragonborn, a fantasy romance. My only complaint is that she kills off a character (no spoiler; it happens right at the start) with a name very similar to mine. Lee brings her settings to sensuous (and sensual) life.

And soon! Very soon! I'll be reading The Song and the Sorceress, by Kim Vandervort. (writerknv ) Another VPXIer...

PS Links are to Powells, Nightshade Books and Hadley Rille Books

I read on someone's blog recently that they get their best story ideas at cons. I had a story I'd almost given up on about halfway through, because I didn't know how to end it. Then the ending came to me during one of the panels at Balticon.

Besides inspiration, I also got a nasty cold there. After cons, the blogosphere is always full of sick people. What with the fascination with plagues (at least three panels on them at Balticon), I wonder if someone isn't doing some ad hoc research... A feeble story idea.

I was with one of my Viable Paradise classmates (also a crit group buddy). We didn't attend parties, but we did talk about reading and writing and a zillion other topics until the wee hours.

Hodgepodge notes:

• Starstruck moments: Peter S. Beagle and Naomi Novik.
• Published is published, whether it's on your blog or in a mag. Most mags want first publication, so don't post stuff on your blog that you want to submit. "Peripheral" type stories might be all right, for example, same world, different characters.
• Main functions of body armor, post gunpowder, are concealment, mobility and preventing target lock. However unpiercable body armor might be, the impact will still damage by its punch or whiplash effects.
• Naomi Novik described her books as having a three-act structure, each with its own climax: a battle or whatever.
• Steampunk panel's discussion of Charles Babbidge put "The Difference Engine" by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling on my must-read list.
• Some good resources for publishing freelancers: Freelancer's Union and Freelancer's Association
• The panel on getting published confirmed that it truly is a good idea to have an agent when you're working out a contract. Joshua Bilmes came across as really nice and really knowledgeable, and willing to go to bat for his authors.
  
• Author's Guild is a good resource for pub'd writers.
• It was fun to hear Peter S. Beagle and his fellow panelists spin yarns about screenwriting. Peter Beagle mentioned that fiction writing is his main love, but screenwriting helped tighten up his fiction, in that something always has to be happening in a script. He looked like he was enjoying himself but that he'd be more at home on a motorcycle or the deck of a fishing boat.
  
• Celtx is open source scripting software.
  

I never did post anything on Ravencon, but one thing that stuck in my head:

• Three sentences; three paragraphs, three pages. If your story will hook an editor for that long, your chances of a sale are good.

We've been talking about glass, an issue that was raised at VP. The glass thing exemplifies what we have to deal with in fantasy. It has to be believable to us ("western"-biased) earthlings, but still be fantasy. For some ideas loosely connected with glass windows, shops and homes, please jump ( behind the cut. )

At Viable Paradise one of our assignments was to write a story of 5-8K words, basically using Teresa Hayden's "stupid plot tricks." I thought the assignment sucked and I thought the story would suck. I'm an English Major, Agony Snail regiment. (We don't do fast and breezy.)

Still, I hadn't come all that way to complain. So like a good little soldier, I gave it a go.

It turned out to be a lot more fun than I expected. I didn't fulfill all the criteria of the assignment--for one thing, word count--but that wasn't the point. The way I saw it, the exercise was to unstick us from habitual modes of writing.

The time constraint forced me to go with the flow of the story, trusting some obscure part of my brain to work it all out. About two thirds through, I didn't know how I would get my heroine out of her dilemna. I only knew it would be lame to kill her off, especially since the story was on the light side. Then it worked out. I've even sent the story out. (Wish me luck!)

(PS, I wouldn't try this with a long work.)

Do read mizchalmers 's take on this assignment (and then some!)

Week before last I was at Viable Paradise, a SFF writer's workshop. Jeff and Julia have good write-ups on what was said in the lectures.

I submitted the first two chapters of a novel. Here are some of the main points of the feedback I got, which will hopefully be helpful to other writers.

• A first chapter is a very special thing. You just can't cram too much into it, even though you're dying to explain everything.
• Need to have a "ticking time bomb" right from the start. The chapter takes too long to get into the story.
• Tension is not the same as conflict. The way I read this is: conflict is an overall problem: tension is what your character is experiencing.
• The world-building is thorough, but overwhelming. Too many synthetic words, too many races of people, too many references to geographical places. Basically, there's too much too fast that reader's expected to learn.
• Description needs to be simplified. Fussy and overwrought. People will skim that kind of writing. True; I've done it myself.
• Need "beats," breathing space.
• Sentences need to be more concrete. Don't be afraid of simple sentences.
• The book is a cross-over fantasy and science fiction. I like that. Maybe that means I'm entitled to call it "speculative fiction"? Much more majestic sounding.

The combination of lectures, group critique, one-on-ones with the instructors, Q&A "collegiums" is like rocket-fuel for a writer's brain. Add in a group of extremely (to me) sociable people, and it's both wonderful and overwhelming.

Teresa warned that a midweek meltdown is normal for VPers. I had mine on arrival, when nobody was around. Thought I got off lucky until I got back home and had another. Reading my fellow VPers' blogs and emails helped cheer me up again. Pretty much recovered now.