Salt City Steamfest 2015

Last year, I attended only Saturday at the Salt City Steamfest. This year my wife and I were able to be there for both days.

We had Victor Chopine take some pictures, which was lots of fun. He has a great eye for poses.

I helped out a bit at a booth full of authors associated with Xchyler Publishing. That's Candace Thomas, Sarah E. Seeley, and Jay Barnson pictured, and we had Scott Taylor and Scott Tarbet there as well.

We even had this cool online poster put together.

I also attended quite a few panels, mostly on writing, pitching your writing (to editors and agents, not into the trash), and storytelling in general. Our friend Julie Barnson told ghost stories, which are her specialty.

One of the panels consisted of these three ladies ( Terra Luft, Christauna Rose Asay and Callie Tolman Stoker), which was great fun.

Scott Tarbet played moderator for their panel.

There was a writing contest hosted by Curiosity Quills Press, where James Wymore was supposed to announce the winner at the conference. Unfortunately, James had a schedule conflict and had Jason King fill in for him. Due to unforeseen complications, the announcement was moved around and rescheduled, so a troop of us were constantly asking Jason if he knew when we would hear about the contest. He was constantly apologizing for delays that were not his fault, and bore up well under our constant barrage. Finally, the announcement was made!

I didn't win.

But the best part of the contest was yet to come. The gal who won had just been in a round table discussion with me and a few other people a few minutes before. Several of us held our own impromptu session talking about how to approach publishers. The speaker had been a no-show, so everyone just shared what they knew about both short story and novel submissions and publishing methods. When I saw her next she was sort of bouncing and floating down the hall, bordering on giddy because she had just received the good news.

That's when Terra, Christauna and Callie started to talk to her. (You know, I should find out her name,but haven't yet.) They invited her to dinner. I'm not sure how many of the three had been beaten by her in this contest, but I heard one of them had been in 2nd place. They were all nearly as excited for her as she was for herself.

The contest winner is second from the right. This picture is from Terra Luft's Facebook page. The struggling new author was taken under the wing of this fine group of writers. It was great to see her adopted into the community, where even those whom she beat out in the contest were not just happy for her, but went out of their way to be inclusive.

I've felt this same thing in how I have been adopted into the Utah writer's scene. I know several local authors now because of conferences and events over the past year, especially after being included in a Xchyler anthology. Some of them even remember my name. :) I really appreciate my new friends, and their willingness to share, support, and help others.

Servant of the Crown give-away

My friend Melissa is giving away a copy of Servant of the Crown on Goodreads from July 6 to July 13, 2015. (Yeah, I like to specify the full date like that in case someone finds this post in the 23rd century, and is bummed out that it happened back in the dark ages.) You can reach the give-away from her web page.

You can also find her Amazon author page here.

I've read several of her books now (including some still in the pipeline), and like both her writing style and her storytelling ability. She also writes fast, so expect lots of cool stuff from her in the future.

Steel & Bone, nine steampunk adventures

Steel & Bone is coming out this Saturday! There is a Rafflecopter giveaway for Steel & Bone. Enter it and win cool stuff!

I was interviewed for the book's blog tour. It will show up over at Nikki Trionfo's blog tomorrow (Friday, June 26). Go take a look.

It not only has nine great stories, it has some illustrations and a forward by James Ng that are pretty cool. I'm really pleased with how the book has turned out, and I'm sure you will enjoy it. Here's a rundown of the stories:

The Clockwork Seer by Katherine Cowley: On an island of oddities, a young clairvoyant struggles for normalcy, but deadly automatons have other plans.  

Sindisiwe by Scott E. Tarbet: A slave girl in Zanzibar escapes a beating when a stranger in the marketplace proves her past is more than just a fairy tale.  

Stand and Deliver by TC Phillips: Neither shackles, slave labor, nor the island’s deadliest inhabitants will prevent these brothers from meting out justice to their father’s murderers.  

Island Walker by C. R. Simper: Kit digs her treasures out of trash heaps, but the theft of her invention leads to discoveries money can’t buy. 

A Mind Prone to Wander by Danielle E. Shipley: Beyond a locked door lies Rowan Charles’ death or his sanity, and the survival or extinction of his people.  

Curio Cay by Sarah E. Seeley: The future of humanity rests in the hands of three time-traveling scientists battling biomechanical creatures in the Jurassic past.  

The Mysterious Island of Chester Morrison by Kin Law: Dodging her chaperone, a debutante stumbles into adventure and romance at the World’s Fair.  

Revolutionary by John M. Olsen: A dirigible captain goes down with his ship, and wakes to find himself a captive of a sky-dwelling civilization.  

The Steel Inside by Gail B. Williams: Darkness lurks in Sarah’s forgotten past, kept hidden by those who claim to be her devoted husband and loyal servants. 

If steampunk is your thing, you can get it at Amazon starting Saturday. (Or pre-order it right now!)

CONduit day two report

Day two of CONduit ws fun. There were more people, more costumes, and I spoke at a panel. I ended up missing the first set of panels at 10 due to a schedule conflict, so the first thing I attended was:

11:00
Scott Taylor, Tom Carr, John M Olsen
Geek Parenting

I had one of our attendees snap this picture of Scott, Tom and me. Funny thing, that. My brothers are named Scott and Tom. No relation to the guys in the picture though.

We had a lot of fun talking about the benefits of geek parenting, and good techniques to use. We talked about lots of access to books, art, music, board games, activities together, and general family building. Find the stuff kids are interested in by putting a large menu in front of them. They may surprise you, like Tom's son who is in a redneck pickup truck phase. :)

The most serious bit was when one of our attendees asked about bullying. That's a problem whether it's related to the geek aspect, or any other. You can tell the kids that the bully is just insecure and seeking attention, or that they'll end up in a dead end job at a fast food place while the geek kid becomes CEO of a high tech startup, but that doesn't fix the problem of being bullied NOW.

Here are some shots of our attendees as well. The Star Trek guy was the dad of the long haired Harry Potter fan. Another couple had their under-a-year kid along. The gal in green and the assassin in white were a couple as well.

12:00
Paul Genesse, Jane Lindskold, Aaron Lee Yeager
Frank Herbert's Dune

This was yet another panel with Jane Lindskold. They kept her busy as the guest of honor at the conference.

One thing they mentioned is how for most stories, the world building takes second place to the characters by a good margin. This isn't the case with Dune. It's not that the characters are week, it's that the world building is just that good. The world and environment can be seen as playing the part of a character in the story. This environment character has conflict with the other characters, and has its own story arc over the series.

1:00
Sarah Seeley's Book Reading

Scott Taylor and I stopped by to say hi to Sarah at her book reading. She read from her story coming out in the Steel & Bone steampunk anthology the end of next month (June 2015).

2:00
Jane Lindskold, Julie Bartel, Eddy Roberts
Judging a book by its cover

Sorry, I didn't get a picture at this one. This was a tour of book covers, describing the good, the bad and the ugly. What sells, what doesn't, and why in the world publishers feel the need to add "A Novel" to the cover of novels, as if it is hard to tell what it is. :)

They also talked about cover tropes, like having a female showing her bare back with a tramp stamp tattoo, or having a woman in a big fluffy evening gown. Or how about the woman on the cover with the top half of her face trimmed by the top edge of the cover so it's easier to use the main character as a Mary Sue? Ever seen a cover with a nearly monochrome picture, other than the text which tends to be brighter?

One thing they discussed is that the best covers tend to appeal to different audiences for different reasons. This increases the shelf appeal because it has a broader audience that will take a look to see what's inside.

3:00
Aaron Lee Yeager and Christopher Husberg
Villains

These are the same guys who did the romance panel on day one. Here's the same picture since I didn't bother taking a new one. :)

Give the bad guys a reason to be bad. They need a motivation.

A difference between heroes and villains is not the challenges they face, but their response. Heroes overcome challenges while villains succumb to them.

The less sympathetic your villain is, the more charismatic he needs to be for your reader to care.

There are some triggers which will instantly and eternally mark a guy as a villain. If he kills dogs, cats, or other domestic animals, he's marked by the reader. You can have someone cut a swath through a dozen innocent victims, then kill a cow, and people will be upset about the cow.

Killing monsters is an upbeat thing, but killing a sympathetic bad guy is a downbeat.

CONduit day one report

1:00
Larry Nemecek
Star Trek Voyager

Larry talked about his experience helping with Star Trek, particularly emphasizing Voyager. He's got a lot of fun stories and photos from sets, filming, and stuff like that. This wasn't a heavy notes-taking session since it was mostly Larry showing us cool stuff he's worked on and telling us stories about people.

2:00
Aaron Lee Yeager, Chris Husburg
Shot Through the Heart (Writing Romance)

I'm not a romance writer, but quite a few stories have some significant element that depends upon romance. With this being a Friday afternoon session, we started with only 4 attendees, and may have ended up around 6 or 8 at the end so it was lots of fun to have a back-and-forth conversation with Aaron and Chris.

They talked about how you can use friendship, loyalty or passion as lead-ins to a budding romance. They also discussed how to make a reader want them to be together, and how to make them complimentary characters who, when taken together, make a cohesive whole.

You also need to make those characters funny, sympathetic, or otherwise appealing, or readers just won't care what happens to them.

It's helpful to have characters who want one thing, and need another. This plays well into the relationship issues characters face.

3:00
Brook West, Ann Sharp, Aaron Lee Yeager
New Ways to Learn Everything Under the Sun

You hear the saying "Write what you know" a lot. This isn't meant to limit you, so long as you're willing to do your research. That way you know more, and can write about it. Just don't consider yourself an expert after five wiki pages.

There are ivy league schools and others with courses online. Brandon Sanderson's got a course he taught at BYU online, available for free. There are consultants ready, willing and able to help if you just take the time to ask. That way, you can get the finer details right, and not ruin a story for those who happen to have the expertise that gets faked when you write.

The trick it to use real, vetted experts. Don't use self-proclaimed experts or entry-level hobbyists because it will be clear that you took shortcuts to those who know better.

Aaron told us that he's got some stuff in the Amazon Kindle store free this weekend in honor of CONduit. I picked up "Heart of a Traitor" to see how I like his writing.

4:00
Jane Lindskold and the crew from HMS Jonas Adcock
Worlds of David Weber

There's a local costuming group for the Royal Navy of Manticore, and several of them showed up. Jane is a co-author and good friend of David Weber. Between them they talked a lot about what the draw is to the works they talked about. For some it is the military. For others it's politics. Some like the long-game machinations, or how characters interact with family. In some books, it's neat how David Weber thinks through to the possible conclusions of particular technologies.

Jane Lindskold handed out swag, and I picked up a copy of "A Call to Duty" by David Weber and Tmothy Zahn, which is book 1 of the Manticore Ascendant series.

5:00
Jane Lindskold, Jo Schneider, Jonny Worthen, Holli Anderson, Callie Stoker
YA Fantasy - We're Still 14 at Heart

This was a wide-ranging view of not just YA writing, but some of the things that differentiate various age targets, For mid-grade, you typically want the young kids to ahve some adult to turn to who can be their mentor. The early Harry Potter books show this mentor effect. For YA, the older kids have to fix their own problems. This is what the later Harry Potter books do.

Jane Lindskold referenced Diana Wynne Jones' book The Tough Guide to Fantasyland: The Essential Guide to Fantasy Travel as a fun resource on some of the tropes involved with YA fantasy, and how fantasy in general is sometimes poorly written.

7:00
Ice Cream Social

I spent a while talking with Jane Lindskold, and with David Doering, which was fun. Sorry, I forgot to get pics at the social.

Hugo Reading Assignment

I just got the email for downloading my Hugo voting packet. I've already been through the ballot and set my votes on about half of the items since I've read through a bunch of the shorter works. I've also perused pages of stuff related to editors, authors, artists, bloggers, e-zines, and all that fun stuff.

I've found some really good stuff so far. I've also found some disappointing stuff, but most of that isn't directly on the ballot, but is important because of the site it's on, it's on or who edited it.

As with all contests of opinion and taste, I don't expect what I like to match up exactly with what anyone else likes. That's why I'm not going to bother posting what I vote for. But I'm perfectly willing to tell everyone that I vote, and that my votes will reflect how I feel about the works based on their categories.

So for everyone else getting email from Sasquan, it's time to do your homework. :)

Steel and Bone

Here's a sneak peek written by Scott E. Tarbot for the anthology my story "Revolutionary" will be appearing in soon.

Steel and Bone Teaser

Publicity for it is in prep mode now, so you may start to see things firing up soon. We still have a few weeks to release, and I'm looking forward to having a print copy in my hands.