Category Archives: Conventions

General Catchup:

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Posting here of late has been quite sporadic for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, the current novel in progress has consumed most of the creative CPU cycles in my brain. Perhaps the fact that I am ‘pantsing’ the book, that is writing it without a pre-created outline means I need more synapses on station or perhaps because it is my first novel length horror project, or some other reason, it’s been front and center of my brain for weeks. Either way there has been creative output toward the blog and more in the direct of these Family Value Fascist werewolves.

Secondly, we have entered the busy season at my day-job. The non-profit healthcare HMO I work for get very busy from October thru January as this is the yearly ‘open enrollment’ period of member’s with Medicare to enroll, disenroll, or make changed to the Medicare HMO coverage. Overtime becomes plentiful and work takes up loads of hours.

Still, this weekend, after shifting my working on Friday to 7am until 4pm, my sweetie-wife and I sped up to L.A. and enjoyed the weekend with the Los Angeles Area SF Convention, LosCon. This year I did not participate as a panelist, but enjoyed going to panels on writing, movies, and technology. In the evenings there were room parties, lengthy discussion and I ended each night in the lobby with a soda, my laptop, and the final chapter of my horror novel. Which I completed on Saturday night.

The last couple of panels of the convention were of only middling interest to us and so we left about 2:30 pm to get home to San Diego. Once home we settled on simply microwave meals and watched the new Doctor Who special.

All in all it was a good weekend and today I start the corrections and revision to ‘The Wolves of Wallace Point.’

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Well, This Blows

 

I had been scheduled to participate in the programming for this year’s WesterCon, a science fiction convention that moves about the American West from city to city each year.

Yesterday, I got an email from the con committee that the convention has been canceled. It was of course written in a passive voice, so it was impossible to determine what had happened behind the scenes to destroy this year’s event, but WesterCon number 75 is not going to happen.

In addition to the fun of panel pontification this was going to be my chance to see an old friend, Gail Carriger, who had been named the convention’s Guest of Honor, and perhaps even share a panel or two with her.

At least the news came down before I had ordered copies of my novel, Vulcan’s Forge to hand sell at the convention.

Still, this is a bummer.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempt to live by the social standard of 1950s America and the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and he desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

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SPEAK OUT OR COLLABORATE IN SILENCE

Many, if not most, people with some understanding of history are at least familiar with the poem by Pastor Neimoller. A confession and an awareness of where his support for the NAZIs and his apathy for the suffering of others had ultimately led. If you are not, here is the text.

 

First They Came by Pastor Martin Neimoller

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.

‘They’ are coming. Right now, here in the United States of America, they are coming for the Trans Community and most of you are not Trans, maybe you don’t know anyone who is or who has transitioned, but they are coming for them, and you have the choice of speaking out and standing by and saying nothing because it does not harm you. ‘They’ will make all manner of ‘justifications’ for their actions, invoking the ‘children’ as the noble reasons for their actions but these are lies. They know that they are lies, we know that they are lies. If you stay silent you murder the truth for their lies.

Just as the poem progressed, so will their march of suppress and destroy everything that they do not approve of. You may be number on their list, or number two, or number three, but they will eventually reach you.

Do not wait until it is your pain and torment to see their evil. Open your eyes and see it now. They are counting on your apathy for those quite unlike you, prove them wrong.

Conservatism does not equal fascism, but the modern GOP has surrendered to it fascistic elements. Until that cancer is excised from the body politic and burned back into the shadows no member of that party deserves any position of power. Your vote is your voice, use it or be complicit.

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Post-Convention Report

 

As I warned everyone visiting this site posting will be thin during the Medicare Annual Enrollment Period as I work 10-hour days five days a week and half days on Saturdays. Still, the money looks nice every two weeks.

Last week was Thanksgiving and for the first time since November of 2019 I returned to LosCon, the annual Los Angeles area science-fiction convention. They did hold an in-person convention in 2021 but I was not yet feeling secure enough with the pandemic to venture out of my home for crowded rooms. But this year, yes, and it felt so good to mingle again with my people.

After finishing work on Friday my sweetie-wife picked me up and we immediately headed out for Los Angeles. Luckily, the Friday following thanksgiving is light in traffic and we made good time arriving at the hotel just after 6 in the evening. Of course, arriving in the evening and after checking in, getting our convention badges, and having dinner, there were few panels left to attend. Still, there was one on writing effective horror that had small enough attendance that it turned into a pleasant round-table conversation between the pair of panelists and the audience. Exhausted from work and the trip I made it an early night and slept for just over 9 hours.

Saturday started early with breakfast and then the first panel which I was on and moderated, Everything You Need to Know About Editing. I had a pair of ladies, Jessica Brawner and Rebecca Inch-Partridge and I think we had a pretty good discussion.

I followed that up with a presentation on space imagery from a couple of JPL scientists.

Towards the end of the panels, I moderated another one, this time the subject was Finding Your Own Voice in Writing. I had a great full panel of writers with loads of good advice. Voice is particularly hard to define and that is doubly so when looking at your own writing.

That evening I rolled the dice and toured the parties. Unusually sociable I had a nice time talking with people I hadn’t seen in years and a few who enjoyed some of my panels.

Sunday, I had a more economical breakfast at a fast-food spot and enjoyed another day of panels including two more that I sat on, How to Write For a Specific Genre and What the Publishing Landscape Looks Like Today.

Once I finished the final panel my sweetie-wife and piled into my Kia and headed back to San Diego. Stopping only for our Sunday shopping trip, we made it home with enough time for us to watch the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special and then it was bedtime to get up early for another 10-hour day at my job.

It was a good weekend.

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I am Participating on Panels For LosCon

 

LosCon is the Los Angeles area science-fiction convention held over Thanksgiving weekend. (This year November 25th thru the 27th.) Finally, after two years of COVID I am returning to Loscon one of my beloved conventions and this year I will be participating on 4 panel discussions.

I will be moderating Everything You Need to Know About Editing Saturday at 10:00 am.

I will be a panelist on Finding Your Own Voice in Writing. Also Saturday at 5:30 PM

Sunday at 11:30 am I will moderate How to Write for a Specific Genre

And I will conclude my panel discussions moderating What the Publishing Landscape Looks Like Today 2:30 on Sunday.

If you are in the L.A. area, I urge you to attend. LosCon is fun and I have missed it terribly.

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Anticipation

This year there has been precious little to look forward to. It started well with the release of my book in March and my first in-person author event at the tremendous Mysterious Galaxy but the pandemic swept the globe, shuttering society, collapsing the economy, and leaving a terrible toll of death in its wake. In the face of cataclysmic events my little novel and its release seemed such a small thing. Still, I am grateful to everyone who has been ordering on-line and those who have left such positive reviews. Honest, I did not pay them for that.

Normally science-fiction conventions are events that help moderate my mood but naturally those have been canceled or moved to purely on-line gatherings.

Luckily the pandemic has not stolen from me entirely one of the year’s most enjoyable and anticipated events the Horrible Imaginings Horror Film Festival.

The festival was founded in 2009 by my pal Miguel Rodriguez and year after year has grown. Due to scheduling and other real-life issues I was never able to attend until 2015 but each year after that this has been one of my go to jams for good times, good people, and great discoveries.

Naturally this year there is no in-person festival but there will be an on-line celebration and exhibition. This is not as fun as a few hundred attendees jamming into the terrific Freda Cinema in Orange County for big screen presentations of short and feature length horror films from around the globe but there still will be new and exciting cinema to discover. I have already experienced the on-line presentation with Miguel’s quarterly mini-festival Campfire Tales and the process works well and while it is no substitute for a proper theater screen my 55” 4K television is passable for experiencing new and exciting film.

I have already purchased my all access pass for the festival and the next year’s worth of Campfire Tales so September should have a least a few moments of horrifying escapism to make life more bearable.

 

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Comic Con Online

I won’t have a lot to say about this as I have never been a regular attendee of San Diego’s famous Comic-Con. My interest in the Comic industry has always been light, never a collector myself but during the 80s reading the issues purchased by my collector friends. That said I am not putting down the Comic-Con. It’s a tremendous event that now puts a global spotlight on things geeky and nerdy and I am thrilled that so many of my friends have such a good time most years.

The pandemic, just as it has with some many other fun events, canceled in person Comic-Con but the organizers have thrown together a virtual convention with panel discussions and presentations now available on YouTube. Yesterday my sweetie-wife and I watched a pair of these, first a cast discussion for What We Do in the Shadows, FX’s hit vampire comedy and this was quite enjoyable and then an interview discussion with Charlize Theron about her evolution in an action star and general all around badass on-screen.

The online presentation is a poor substitute for the crowded chaos that is Comic-Con and I dearly hope that my friends can soon return to in person geekery.

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Just a Few Thoughts

I don’t have a lot of time and there is prose writing to be done but I have a few thoughts to share.

 

It is abundantly clear that in the nation we have a police brutality problem. Far too often they act as occupiers with the rest of the population subjugated.

It is also abundantly clear that systemic racism amplifies this brutality and black and brown people suffer disproportionately because of it.

The president in the words of a conservative podcaster ‘fetishizes brutality,’ and his most devoted followers fetishize his illusionary strength.

That which cannot be endured will not be. All people, individually and collectively, have their breaking points and when those are reach chaos predictably follows.

People who so confidently asserted that the GOP 94 victory averted a ‘civil war’ will remain blind to the causes of the current unrest.

And finally;

This is all far from over.

 

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Convention Report: Kingdom-Con 10

Kingdom-Con is San Diego gaming convention and sadly this year, the tenth, is the final year as the organizer has decided to cease operation while he still loves doing it. Held in a hotel in Mission Valley Kingdom-Con.

While the convention boasts nearly every style of gaming available my sweetie-wife and Is tuck to the board game room where you can check out games from their library and play with other attendees, of which I am told there were in total about 1300.

Here’s a quick run down of the games we played.

Epic Roll:This game was terrible. The theme is adventurers in a D&D setting racing to the top level. It supports only three players, doesn’t understand its theme, (really Skeletons are a tougher monster than Mummies?) and the outcome is entirely luck driven.

Elder Sign:A game of adventurers desperately attempting to stop the rise of a great old god. It’s a dice game but with much more strategy than Epic Roll however I did not quite understand the rules when my Sweetie-wife and I tried it so the game was not a success. I’d like to give it another go with a better understanding of the mechanics.

 

Invader Zim: Doomsday Dice Game:My sweetie-wife and I played this just the two of us and while I enjoyed it she did not. Based upon the popular cartoon players either are working as Zim and Gir trying to destroy the Earth with an outlandish devise or the players are either Dib or Agent Darkbootie trying construct an equally outlandish device to shield the Earth.

 

Betrayal At The House on the Hill/Baldur’s Gate: Two variants of the same game mechanic but with different themes. Collectively players explore either an old Mansion or a fantasy town and its catacombs encountering events, gathering item, and uncovering Omens. Eventually enough omens trigger a ‘haunt’ and one player becomes the monster or villain and has their own victory condition while the other players as, a team, win by stopping the villain. This was decently fun.

Lords of WaterDeep: A worker placement game that takes place in a D&D setting with the players battling to become the power behind the secretive factions controlling the city of Waterdeep. My sweetie-wife and I played two games and I player a late night game with another attendee. I thoroughly enjoyed this game and find that the worker placement mechanic is quite fun.

Hogworts Battles:This is a massive game with seven sub-games. Set, obviously, in the Harry Potter books and movies, the players are the
young heroes cooperatively battling to stop the forces of evil from taking over the magical school Hogworts. Each sub-game is a year at Hogworts and gets progressively more difficult. We played 5 of the seven games, losing to the forces of darkness in year five. This was quite fun but the 5 years took about six hours to play out and had we won years 6 and 7 would have had to have been played the next day.

And finally

Thanos Rising:A cooperative dice game thematically set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Each player leads one of four super hero teams, Avengers, The Guardians of the Galaxy, Wakanda, or Earth’s Sorcerers as they attempt to prevent the mad Titan Thanos from collecting all six Infinity Stones and killing half of all life in the Universe. A game with a simple mechanic Thanos Rising is a surprising tough game with a fair amount of tactical thought required. I lost about half the games I played in with the wins being mostly down to the wire affairs.

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Comic-Fest 2019

Last weekend my sweetie-wife and I attended our first Comic-Fest here in San Diego. Now, this is not the world famous and massively attended Hollywood trade show that is known as Comic-Con, but rather a much smaller convention that was founded by the original Comic-Con founders. The first few Comic-Fest passed by without me attending as they were much more focused on Comics and that art form is not my passion. Last year it looked to be much more generalized in its mediums along with a growing a science track of programming but it sadly conflicted with Kingdom-Con a local gaming convention, so I missed that year as well. Now that I have been to a Comic Fest what do I think?

It was a blast.

The science was very robust with lectures and presentations on the on going search for dark matter, galactic formation, imaging the moon, and even about two competing missions from NASA that look amazing. (Both un-crewed one a sample return from a comet the other an autonomous flying drone for Titan.) The media programing was sharp, with histories on the Twilight Zone and personal recollections from 40 years in the industry. The convention was rounded out by some decent SF programing and of interesting panels, presentations, and discussion on the comics industry.

 

 

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