ELLE ANDREWS PATT

Today, I have a Prometheus Saga interview with Parker Francis. Through tomorrow, you can get his fantastic 'The Strange Case of Lord Byron's Lover' for FREE in the Kindle store.


Q: What inspired you to launch / join the Alvarium Experiment?


PF: Ken Pelham contacted me prior to the 2014 FWA Conference to ask if I’d be interested in joining other writers in a what he said was “a cool idea” called The Alvarium Experiment. I’m always open to cool ideas and asked for more details. Ken sent me two working papers I call the Prometheus Bible, an incredibly well thought-out concept with a spec sheet and working arrangement for the consortium of writers. Ken and Charles Cornell had obviously given this a lot of thought, and I was both impressed and intrigued. Though I didn’t write SF, I spent much of my wasted youth reading the masters of SF and fantasy. And when Ken said they were looking for writers of all genres, I jumped aboard the Alvarium bandwagon.

Q: What are some of the benefits and challenges of writing “into” an existing framework for Prometheus as a character? How did that shape your creative process for your story? Is it different from your usual writing process?

PF: The benefits far outweighed the challenges since I became part of a beehive of awesomely talented people and the ideas flowed continuously. Having a framework in place provided some structure, the challenge was how to fit my story—whatever that turned out to be—into the framework, and best utilize the Prometheus character to shed light on my story. I decided early on not to concentrate wholly on Prometheus, or any of the superhuman abilities of the alien probe, but to create a character shaded in mystery, acting in a way to cause my protagonist to question the nature of what he/she observed, and also cause some change in that character’s life. Not surprisingly for a writer who has long-established patterns for writing (go ahead and say it, I’m a creature of habit and set in my ways) but the process turned out to be about the same as how I approach my other writing projects. I came up with a “What if” idea, noodled on it, researched it, sketched out some plot points, and created a rough outline before jumping on my computer—which is done with extreme caution since Duke, my golden tabby and sometime editor, likes to cuddle on the keyboard. 

Q: Tell me more about your other work.

PF: Although I’ve always considered myself a writer, I didn’t complete my first book until after retirement. And since my wife and I had a house full of cats at the time (that’s another story), it seemed only right that my story should be about cats. That’s how the Windrusher trilogy was born. Windrusher, the feline protagonist, starred in each of the three adventure/fantasy novels. There were mystical threads running through the stories, and I found a good audience among younger readers as well as adults. Each of the three books, Windrusher, Windrusher and the Cave of Tho-hoth, and Windrusher and the Trail of Fire, were traditionally published and won at least one award. While writing the second in the series, I had an idea of how to use one of the characters in a separate story. The character was Quint Mitchell, a private detective who played a major role in that book. Since I was reading a lot of mystery/suspense and thriller novels, I decided I’d give it a try. Writing as Parker Francis, I wrote my first Quint Mitchell Mystery, Matanzas Bay. As an unpublished manuscript, the story won the 2007 Josiah W. Bancroft Award, and was named the Book of the Year in the 2009 Royal Palm Literary Awards competition in the pre-published category. I’ve since written the second in the series, Bring Down the Furies, which won the Gold Medal in the Florida Authors & Publishers Association’s President’s Award Competition. As Parker Francis, I’ve also published the novella, Blue Crabs at Midnight featuring Quint as a young teen, and the short story collection, Ghostly Whispers, Secret Voices. And I digitally published two writing booklets based on some of the craft workshops I’ve done.

Q: Tell me more about your short story in the Prometheus Saga. Why did you pick that episode in history?

PF: For some reason, one of my first thoughts about the Prometheus character was the literary monster Frankenstein. I recalled the title of Mary Shelley’s original story was Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. I wasn’t sure how this would work in a short story, and I certainly didn’t want to make the alien humanoid into a Frankenstein monster, but the Frankenstein idea stuck with me, and I began researching Mary Shelley and how she came to write the book. I found a wealth of information online, and couldn’t have asked for a better starting point. The historical truth was as dramatic as any fiction I could make up since Mary and her soon-to-be husband, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, spent a summer holiday with none other than Lord Byron in his rented mansion on Lake Geneva. During their stay, they read ghost stories and decided to write their own. Mary wrote in her journal that she had a vivid dream the night before they were to tell their stories (it was reported the creative process might have been helped by the copious amounts of wine they drank, as well as the use of laudanum), and in the dream she saw her Frankenstein monster being created. This was wonderful stuff, and I turned our Prometheus character into an attractive Greek servant girl who also doubled as Lord Byron’s lover.

Here’s the story description for “The Strange Case of Lord Byron’s Lover:” Writing in her journal, Mary Shelley recounts a series of perplexing events during her visit with Lord Byron—a visit that resulted in the creation of her famous Frankenstein novel, but also uncovered a remarkable mystery.

Q: What are your writing plans for 2015? What does the new year hold in store for you?

PF: I’m in the final stages of preparing Hurricane Island, the third Quint Mitchell Mystery, for publication. Once it’s published I’ll do a lot of marketing for the book. I also had Matanzas Bay made into an audio book that will be sold through Audible.com. More marketing. If it sells, I’ll convert the other two books in the series. I’m also doing some minor tweaking of the second and third Windrusher books. My publisher and I parted ways after he changed his business model to nonfiction environmental books, and I got my rights back. I’ve already revised the first book and republished it under my own imprint, Windrusher Hall Press, and will do the same with the other two. I’ve also been plotting a collection of themed short stories I’d like to work on, as well as a trilogy of short novels set in the near future.

For more from Parker Francis, check out his website at parkerfrancis.com.
For more info on the Alvarium Experiment and links to all the Prometheus Saga stories, go HERE. 

Get Doug Dandridge's Prometheus Saga story, 'Marathon', for free today at the Kindle store!

Q: What inspired you to launch / join the Alvarium Experiment?

DD: I was asked to join by one of the other authors, whom I had met at a writer’s conference in my home town. I’m always looking for new ways to promote, and had just recently put a short story in an anthology by Kevin J Anderson, so, as this seemed interesting, I jumped at the invitation. I still don’t know what the result will be of participation, part of what makes it an experiment, but it was a lot of fun writing the story.

Q: What are some of the benefits and challenges of writing “into” an existing framework for Prometheus as a character? How did that shape your creative process for your story story. Is it different from your usual writing process?

DD: Well, to start off, I had to discard some of the ideas I had for the character, as they didn’t fit in with the ground rules. Things like making Prometheus a veritable demigod, giving him advanced technology, etc. I also had to write in a real historical world, something I want to do in the future with alternate history, but really didn’t have a lot of experience with on entry into this project. I had to work with real settings, in this case, the Plains of Marathon in Greece, and people who really existed. Of course, what we know about the people is cursory at most, so they could be fleshed out as I thought best. I’m also more of a novelist, and am used to writing sweeping tales that lend themselves to long descriptions. With the ten thousand word limit to the stories, I was forced to cut back on the description and just focus on the action. As I’m planning on doing more short works in the future, this was useful to my development as a writer.

Q: Tell me more about your other work(s).

DD: There are really a lot of them, so I’ll have to be brief. I have quite a few standalone works that came from the years I was submitting to publishers. Most came back with good rejections, so I thought I should self-publish them. These books include The Hunger (an urban fantasy), The Scorpion (a scifi technothriller), Doppelganger (high fantasy), The Deep Dark Well (far future scifi) among others. I also have some standalones I wrote for self-publication, We Are Death, Come For You (military scifi), Aura (high fantasy), Afterlife (near future scifi). I eventually wrote two more novels as sequels to The Deep Dark Well, To Well and Back and Deeper and Darker, and may do a second trilogy added on to that Universe. In 2010 I wrote two very long novels, Exodus and Refuge. I thought that 200,000+ word books might be a little long for self-pub, so I turned both of them into two books, and released both in the Fall of 2012.

I really thought that Refuge, a genre crossing technothriller/fantasy, would be the breakout series. It was the more imaginative of the two series, and had characters from our time and space, which I thought would be more interesting to readers. While the first two books did fairly well, 9,000 sales across two books, it never took off like I hoped. There are now four books in the series, which I continue to write for the fans who love the series. Exodus was retitled Exodus: Empires at War, because I did not want people buying the book, thinking it had a Biblical theme, and hating it. There are now seven books in the main series, Empires at War, with over 80,000 sales. Books 3 through 7 all hit number one in multiple categories on Amazon.UK, and went up to the top ten on Amazon.US, book 3 rising to number 3. Exodus: Tales of the Empire, a line that journeys off the main storyline, got to number two in Space Exploration at Amazon.UK, and number nine in the same category at Amazon.US. This series is what allowed me to become a full time writer, and will be the focus of my time in the foreseeable future.

I recently placed a 15,000 word novelette set in the Exodus Universe in Kevin J Anderson’s Five By Five military science fiction anthology. I consider that another breakthrough, into the world of traditional publishing through Kevin’s Wordfire Press. Hopefully that will lead to more anthologies. I have also written six short stories for Dean Wesley Smith and Kristin Cathryn Rusch’s Writers of the Coast Anthology Workshop, coming in March. There is a chance that any or all of those stories will be published

Q: Tell me more about your short story in the Prometheus Saga. Why did you pick that episode in history?

DD: I am a military fiction writer, both science fiction and fantasy, so a martial themed story was a natural. I was trying to think of a good story from antiquity, since most of the other tales in the saga seemed to be in more modern times. Leonidas and the 300 has been done to death, and the Roman conquests did not have the right feel to them. Marathon, though, was an outnumbered army of Athenians standing against the Persian army for their democracy. Not really a democracy as we think of one today, but still quite a departure from the kingdoms and empires of the day. I thought Socrates had fought in the battle, but found in my research that he hadn’t been born yet, which emphasizes the importance of good research. But, even better, I found out that the playwright Aeschylus, the father of modern theater, was at the battle, and he wrote a famous play called Prometheus Unbound. The connection was perfect.

Q: What are your writing plans for 2015? What does the new year hold in store for you?

DD: I am currently working on the second book of the Tales of the Empire imprint, this time a novel, which should be out at the beginning of March. I have the basic plots for the next three Empires at War books, and plan to get them out early summer, late summer and mid fall. And I am working on a Renaissance era fantasy for submission to publishers, to be followed up by a near future science fiction novel set on Mars, also to be sent out on the traditional path. If both or either don’t land, I still win, because there’s always self-publishing. The dream is becoming a true hybrid author, making most of my income on my indie efforts, while both bringing my reader base to traditionally published works, and expanding my reader base for my indie series, especially Exodus.

To read more about Doug Dandridge, visit him at dougdandridge.com.For links to all the Prometheus Saga stories, go here.

Today, I have another author interview from The Alvarium Experiment's Prometheus Saga.  Bria Burton is the author of "On Both Sides", which is available in the Kindle store for free download through tomorrow.

I had the honor of second edit on this story and, as always, it was privilege to be allowed into a writer's process at an early stage of writing. It's so interesting to watch a story progress into a finished product. Bria is open-minded and gracious as a writer and thorough and patient as an editor, as I found out when she turned around and edited my Prometheus Saga novelette, "Manteo", for me.

Q:  Tell us, what inspired you to launch / join the Alvarium Experiment?

BB: At the FWA Conference in 2014, Charles and Ken approached me about the idea, and I absolutely loved it. The author collaboration, the story premise, and the new way of reaching readership really drew me in. Not to mention I love science fiction.

Q: What are some of the benefits and challenges of writing “into” an existing framework for Prometheus as a character? How did that shape your creative process for your story? Is it different from your usual writing process?

BB: For me, this story began with Point of View. Typically, I begin with a plot idea or a character, but I wanted to know where I would be coming from in the framework given. According to the guidelines, no one was to write in Prometheus’s first person perspective, but limited third POV was permitted. The reason: there would be too many discrepancies in the stories regarding the character. I wanted to focus on an outside character observing Prometheus, and so my story is told from that outsider’s perspective (two, in fact). The difficulty was making sure I didn’t step out of the parameters. The benefit was that the parameters allowed for a great deal of creativity and freedom.

Q: Tell me more about your other work.

BB: I have several speculative fiction pieces published. Most recently, “In Line at the DMYV,” science fiction, appeared in the Welcome to the Future anthology. “The Darkness Below,” science fiction, appeared in The Colored Lens Autumn 2014 issue. Also in 2014, “Switching,” fantasy, aired on the Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine and “Ligeia,” science fiction, aired on the Journey Into… podcast. Both of these podcasts use voice actors, sound effects and music, and the episodes are free, so that was really fun to hear my stories in that medium. “The Mute Girl,” fantasy, appeared in eFantasy (now New Realm) in 2013. My epic fantasy manuscript, Livinity, won a First Place RPLA in 2011.

Q: Tell me more about your short story in The Prometheus Saga. Why did you pick that episode in history?

BB: Here’s the story description: When a mysterious woman vanishes during the American Revolution, young Robby Freeman searches for answers from a cryptic sharpshooter who deserted Washington’s Continental Army.

I chose the American Revolution because American History has always been one of my favorite subjects. The opportunity to select any period in history was daunting at first—so many choices!—but as soon as it occurred to me, I knew I wanted to write about that time period.

Q: What are your writing plans for 2015? What does the new year hold in store for you?

BB: I’m waiting on a beta reader to give me feedback for Book One of Livinity. Once I receive notes and do some more editing, I’ll be following the traditional publishing route of submissions to agents/publishers. That can be a long process of waiting and resubmitting. I’d like to get several more short stories written this year and continue submitting to literary magazines. Like I do every year, I plan to attend the Florida Writers Conference in October.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bria Burton's short stories have appeared in anthologies such as Welcome to the Future and speculative fiction magazines such as The Colored Lens. Her novella, "Little Angel Helper", was written for her sisters, one of whom has special needs like a character in the story. She also has a collection of family-friendly pet stories called Lance & Ringo Tails. Her epic fantasy manuscript, Livinity, won First Place in the RPLA Unpublished Fantasy Novel category in 2011.

At St. Pete Running Company, she works as a blogger and customer service manager. Find out more about her upcoming and past publications by visiting her at briaburton.com

ABOUT THE PROMETHEUS SAGA

The Prometheus Saga is the premier project of the Alvarium Experiment, a consortium of accomplished and award-winning authors. Links to all the Prometheus Saga stories are HERE.

In October, I was asked to join the Alvarium Experiment. The Alvarium, Latin for "hive", became a group of thirteen writers with the common goal to experiment with fiction projects that would improve our craft, provide inspiration, and support our publishing efforts as individuals. Charles A. Cornell and Ken Pelham conceived the Alvarium Experiment, invited the writers to join, and wrote the premise and guidelines for our first project, the Prometheus Saga. 

The Prometheus Saga consists of thirteen science fiction stories ranging from 5,000-12,000 words. Each story includes 'Prometheus', an alien probe that is, for all intents and purposes, completely human, except for its quantum computer brain which holds all its memories and a complete database of knowledge. Its only mission is to observe human kind, but as its AI develops, with its human body subject to all its own human biochemistry, Prometheus also sometimes acts. The only limit on time period is 'within current human history' so we ended up with a very wide range of settings from 40,000 years ago to modern day. 

For the Prometheus saga, I wrote a novelette, 'Manteo', which you can read about here. 

I'd like to welcome M.J. Carlson to my blog today! I served as an early editor for his Prometheus Saga fic, 'Ever After' and M.J. and I have been developing our writing skills together for about eight years now.

Q: What inspired you to join the Alvarium Experiment?

M.J: When my friend, Ken Pelham contacted me prior to the 2014 FWA Conference and asked if I was interested in joining a dozen other writers in “something never done before,” I was intrigued. Since we hear so much about publishing being in a flux right now, I decided to meet with Ken and Charles A. Cornell, the co-conspirators, as it were, behind the Alvarium Experiment. In preparation for that initial meeting, Ken sent me two papers describing the concept. One was the guidelines for the character and story premise behind the saga, the other was the publishing paradigm outline – the Experiment itself. The more I read both, the more interested I became, especially since I not only write science fiction, but have also written a couple of time travel stories that explore our history. Meeting with Ken and Charles and some of the other talented authors they had approached I signed on.

Q: What are some of the benefits and challenges of writing “into” an existing framework for Prometheus as a character? How did that shape your creative process for your story story. Is it different from your usual writing process?

M.J.: Writing into a framework wasn’t a challenge for me. My writing style involves a lot of preliminary planning, often a twenty or thirty page outline, before I ever start a novel. In this case, having a framework in place provided structure similar to how I usually begin anyway. The challenge was how to best utilize the Prometheus character in my story. I decided early on to separate the protagonist and main characters, so I could use Prometheus to move the story, but allowing the reader to enter the story through other characters. This is a well-known technique in fiction which has worked well for authors from Harper Lee to Arthur Conan Doyle. It allows the reader an emotional entry point into the story while keeping the protagonist (Prometheus) shrouded in mystery. This also allowed me to tell the story without giving any of Prometheus’ internal mental workings away that might conflict with the other stories.

Q: Tell me more about your other works.

M.J.: I use main characters who are generally average people in extraordinary circumstances. Often, these characters are academically oriented, but they always lack the borderline superhuman traits so common in much of today’s fiction and they are never “the chosen one,” except in that they are the ones who will not give up. My first novel was a story about a biochemist who accidentally discovers a compound that gives him limited, temporary, extrasensory perception, allowing him to establish contact with an individual from the future, sent back to help him develop his compound. My second novel (also still unpublished) is about an alien entomologist whose space ship is shot down, dropping him into the life of a young Air Force widow, told from the point of view of the alien.

Changed, my first published novel, tells the story of a twenty-six year old janitor in 2132, the unsuspecting subject of an experiment, who discovers computer processors have been wired into his nervous system without his knowledge – using technology that isn’t supposed to exist. Natural Selection, to be released this year, explores what happens when a molecular biologist who runs a small DNA testing laboratory in 2047 is given a DNA sample for testing. He discovers the gene for psychopathy in the sample, which happens to belong to a presidential candidate running on a mandatory genetic testing platform.

Q: Tell me more about your short story in the Prometheus Saga. Why did you pick that episode in history?

M.J.: As it turned out, I had written most of the story a few years ago with no plan for what to do with it, and in the process, did quite a bit of research into the story’s history. I rewrote it in several versions, including one setting the story on Mars 200,000 years ago with Earth as the main character’s destination, but nothing felt “right” until I met with Ken and Charles. The story jelled for me at that point, and it was a simple matter to move the Prometheus character into place, telling essentially the same tale to different authors over several centuries in various parts of the world and monitoring how each local culture changes the story in its retelling, revealing that culture’s true heart and soul.

I chose the Grimm Brothers because next to the Disney version it’s the one we’re most familiar with. Many people are also familiar with how very different the two versions are, further making the premise of the story (that the tale originates with one teller and is changed by each culture where it’s introduced) more believable. My other bookend, Giambattista Basile, is the first known Western author to write down and publish Cinderella (although it was actually published after his death by his sister). The story also references much earlier versions of Cinderella that the careful reader should easily pick out. As a caution, though, I would remind readers that while the main characters (Giambattista Basile and Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm) actually existed, this is not a historical essay on the differences in their versions of Cinderella, but a work of historical fiction to be enjoyed for its own sake.

Q: What are your writing plans for 2015? What does the new year hold in store for you?

M.J.: I plan to use the attention gained by The Prometheus Saga and Ever After to help market my current novel, Changed. I’m in the final stages of preparing my next novel, Natural Selection. Once it’s published, I have the first three books in a series I’ve been working on for a couple of years I’d like to bring to market this year. I also continue to submit short stories to various venues, and there are one or two contests I’ve had my eye on.

Q: Is there any special significance to the title 'Ever After'?

M.J.: Actually, yes. All my stories have titles with at least two meanings which apply to the story. In this instance, “Ever After” is the obvious nod to the traditional fairy tale ending, but it also literally means “until they died,” which relates to the same story being told, century after century, by a nearly immortal alien intelligence to the authors who, each in turn, grow old and die. On a deeper level, it refers to the timeless nature of myth. Or, it just pokes fun at fairy tales. I did grow up watching “Fractured Fairy Tales” on the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.

About M. J. Carlson: One of M.J.’s early short stories and an early, unpublished novel were finalists in their respective categories in the Florida Writers Association RPLA contest, and two other short stories have received honorable mentions in the international Writers of the Future contest for science fiction and fantasy.

M.J. is a frequent speaker at writer’s conferences and local writing groups on the subjects of writing believable injuries in fiction from the character’s point of view, choosing the best software for various aspects of writing, and how to successfully separate the protagonist and the main character, with references from famous historical stories.

You can find out more about M.J. Carlson at his website. 

'Ever After' and my own Prometheus Saga story, 'Manteo', can be purchased for .99 cents at Amazon, just click the story titles or covers. Check out all the Prometheus Saga stories and the authors at the Alvarium Experiment. Ken Pelham's 'First World War' can still be downloaded for free through Friday Feb. 13, 2015

 In mid-October, I finally hit critical mass and decided to actually build that website I’d been thinking of for a while, this blog’s home. Fresh off a new anthology publication, and buoyed by the feedback of my critique group on my in-progress novella, I pulled my confidence up by the bootstraps and started practice pitching the freshly completed Billie Mae in preparation for agent interviews at the FWA conference.

About this same time, my twenty-year old daughter began experiencing calf soreness and mild headaches. By early November, I was sending my manuscript out for review, outlining my fic for the Prometheus Saga, and my daughter had progressed to migraines, serious leg pain, and stiff ankles. At Thanksgiving, I’d sent my novel off to a couple of agents, started the sequel, and it became obvious my daughter was in serious trouble. I published my novelette, 'Manteo', the same day my daughter was unexpectedly hospitalized a second time. At the end of January, an agent requested my full manuscript at the same time we learned my daughter would be receiving her first chemo infusion the next day.

Are these things related? No. But they complicate each other. Everyone’s lives are complicated in respect to the tangles formed between their work life and personal life. The boundaries for anyone who works from home blur even more. It’s a given that our schedules, in general, are more flexible, even more so when you are your own boss.

After years and years of writing and networking, my effort is shifting into publishing. I get paid on occasion, but I’m not making a living at it, yet, so it’s harder to justify the time I spend doing it. I’m very fortunate in that my hubby runs the business that gives us income while I stepped back to unschool the kids and then followed them into their later schools and sports as a volunteer. He’s provided for us and for the horses I have remaining from my successful barn business and the ones we currently have for the girls. The girls and the horses and writing have formed the purpose of my days for years now. As the girls have transitioned into their more independent lives, I’ve turned that freed-up time to my writing and it’s beginning to pay off.

But just as that shift is happening, my oldest has come home. She has an autoimmune vasculitis which has affected the blood supply to many of the small nerves in her body. We have been reassured that with treatment, she will regain the use of her hands and feet and ankles and wrists, but right now she requires full-time care. I have a new understanding of just what that means, full-time care. I have completely relied on friends to see to the horses. I spent two weeks out of town in December to see my daughter through the end of her semester at university. She’s been hospitalized out of town 17 days since Dec. 28. While we have managed to retain her university attendance with online classes, her schedule has become my priority at the exact same time my writing needs to be my priority in order to take advantage of my momentum.

There have been benefits to the situation. I have found a depth of emotional strength which I was unaware I possessed. I know this time with my daughter at this point of time in her life, and the things we have shared, has deepened our relationship in ways that will resonate for the rest of our lives. And I have realized that at some point there in mid-October, I truly committed myself to my writing. Despite everything during the last twelve weeks, despite the exhaustion of a medically oriented life, the grief and heartbreak of my daughter being so severely compromised at the height of exploding into being, into her adult self, into her purpose, despite time away from my own full life, I continue to write. With the help of new and old friends, I’ve met my deadlines and continue to reach out to readers and writers alike.

Part of that effort is to get back to establishing my blog. I’ve decided it won’t be a blog for writers in particular, though I intend to write about writing. It won’t be a blog for my readers, per se, though I’ll write about my work and others’ work and what I enjoy reading. It will be a blog about STORY. All kinds of stories. My story. Your stories. The stories of the people I meet everyday. The stories about people who used to be and will someday be. The stories of people who live in the real world and the stories of those who live only our heads.

My daughter is currently studying contemporary human communication. Since I’m her fingers right now, I’ve learned a lot of new terms. You, the reader, and I, the writer, are sharing the same field of experience right now. We both recognize and assign meaning to all these symbolic marks on a page. By sharing these symbols in public, I hope to learn about both your social reality and mine.

The conference was again well attended this year. Peeps were turned away from the Saturday night Royal Palm Literary Awards banquet due to lack of space. Next October, the con will move to larger digs at the Hilton in Altamonte Springs. It is a laid-back con, with a good balance of networking build into the day between panels. Ice cream and ice fruit bars on Friday afternoon FTW! I came down with severe laryngitis Thursday afternoon, so I didn't end up networking much, but I did croak at people and hand over my business cards. I need to re-do the cards, the type ended up too small and the red text color didn't pop like I was told it would, lol. Luckily, they didn't cost much. I'm going to do two-sided cards on the next attempt. 

The most interesting panel to me was 'Let's Talk About Sex' on Friday night. The writers/editor on hand spoke about their genres and then after a brief (unplanned, I'm pretty sure) foray into personal sexual upbringings and some defining of sexual terms (BDSM) and relationships (F/F, M/M, M/F/M vs F/M/F vs M/M/F, ect), the panelists settled into the philosophy and history of sex in books and its relation to feminism over time. I think a large portion of the room turned out hoping for the mechanics of writing better sex, but it was still interesting. 

The most engaging speaker, imo, was Tof Eklund who spoke on writing LGBTQIA characters. He's a very thoughtful and careful speaker, spoke honestly, and was well-organized. 

The first of two 'most practical' panels I attended was Red Sofa Literary's Jennie Goloboy speaking about how to write a good query letter. She brought examples that had caught her eye and critiqued samples from the audience. She gave me good tips on mine for Billie Mae, and said that including my Honorable Mention from Writers Of The Future was a good idea. If you've won awards, definitely include them on your queries. Include the fact that you're in a writer's group or have attended workshops as well. The second 'most practical' was the panel on Social Media by Sarah Nicolas, who writes as Aria Kane. Just do it, was her advice. Once your platform is set up and you familiarize yourself with it, it doesn't really take more than a half-hour a day to maintain it.

And I have to say that Arliss Ryan was very entertaining and totally killed her Mastering The Metaphor presentation. Vic DiGenti also fell under the heading of being wonderfully entertaining in his to-the-point, example-filled talk on building suspense into your thriller or mystery novel. 

Check my twitter feed @LAndrewsPatt for my con tweets. Here's the list of websites that were rec'ced over the weekend that passed my down and dirty this-might-be useful-to-me scrutiny :-)

AbsoluteWrite - ask any writing question or just tal;k writing with writers - I'd run across this site before, but haven't tried it
FundsForWriters - grants, contests, fellowships, markets
AgentQuery - Agent bios and wants, info on agencies
QueryTracker - Kind of Duotrope (which I love) for queries :-)
Triberr -  Blogging across platforms by group. That's the actual useful link for understanding Triberr :-) There's also a guide of sorts.
giphy - for adding blog content
99Designs - for help designing anything, I think, but especially video marketing materials

I wish I were going to the Writer's UnBoxed Con. They still have a few openings for attendants available if anyone wants to jump onboard!

And an ANNOUNCEMENT! My short, 'Karl's Last Night' placed first in the Published Short Fiction category and won a lovely Royal Palm Literary Award :-) That's two in a row for me! To put Giphy into use, here's a celebration dance:

Thanks for dropping in today!

So, the first thing that I'd love to write down here is that I wrote today, but that'd be a lie. Mostly I medicated and rehabbed my daughters' horses, who managed to mangle themselves just before summer, the riding high season for girls of a certain age, started.  I did manage to give my sound and currently whole riding horse, Tallahassee, a rub and a 'good girl'. In between barn trips, I did the business of writing. I checked on submissions and decided where to submit the idle shorts. I re-worked my business card. I tweaked this spanking new site. I rehearsed speaking about my first novel, Billie Mae, in preparation for interviewing agents at the Florida Writers Association Conference this coming weekend. But I didn't like, actually write.

My friend, Rachel Caine, NY Times best-selling author of the Morganville Vampires and Weather Wardens books, has been developing Morganville as a webseries by way of a successful Kickstarter fundraiser. She's developing her new craft of scriptwriting while jumping into the deep end of learning to produce for film. Talk about a challenge! But the results have been fantastic. Check out this trailer for Morganville: The Series. The first episode airs on October 27th on Geek and Sundry. I read Glass Houses, the first Morganville book, in first draft. I am thrilled that the story has resonated with so many readers and taken Ms. Caine to fantastic new levels of art!

Another friend, science fiction writer M.J. Carlson, self-published his debut novel this month. I've been reading M.J.'s work for years now and while Changed is well worth anyone's time and small change, I can tell you that the best is yet to come. Changed features an interesting concept and engaging characters. The descriptions of a future, climate-change affected Jacksonville, FL, are worth the read alone. Combine that with a solid action-oriented story with a hard science core and about halfway in, you have a page-turner. M.J. has extensive medical and computer science experience and it shows in his work. Go read Changed now so that you can say that you were in at the beginning later. 

Thanks for spending a few minutes with me today!!!