Author Archives: Bob Evans

Surviving, but not pleasantly

So Today was my first full day back from the convention, but sadly it was not as care-free as I would have liked it to be. I injured myself at the convention and that injury has continued to plague me.

On Saturday morning my sweetie-wife and I were walking back from a spot of breakfast before the convnetion when disaster struck.

I sneezed.

Now you are probably expecting at this point something like I tripped while I sneeze and fell hard to the ground. Or that when I sneezed I lost track of where I was walking and walked into danger or some such exciting event.

Nope, I sneezed and noting more. When I sneezed a sharp pain stabbed me in my side. Very much like a cramp from running too far too fast and I thought I had triggered a cramp. The rest of the day it hurt to walk, to get up from sitting or to go down to a sitting position.

The next day, yesterday, I sneezed again and it was clear that I had strained a muscle or muscle-group in my left side. the pain continued throughout the day.

Today I went and saw Toy Story 3, a fine film and a worthy sequel, it was very funny. That turned out to be not the bets of things. It hurt to laugh. When I sneezed twice today, I really put pain into my left side.

There’s no doubt about it I have injured myself with the power of my own sneezes.

One the plus side I have a new idea for a short story; something fairly subversive in my opinion. It’ll be fun writing it when I am through with Cawdor,

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Westercon Update #3

Here it is sunday morning and the last day of the convention. I’ve had a blast and I am exiting the convention energized and motivated.
I started yesterday with a two hour ‘workshop’ with literary agent Ashley Grayson. I put workshop in quote because in the schedule it’s billed as a workshop, but it reality it was Ashley Grayson giving us the benefit of his knowledge about what works and doesn’t work in writing with tips on how to get to what works.
From there I went to a panel on the basics of writing. Nothing there I did not already know, but the panelists were the draw, the room was packed, and it was a lively discussion.
After that my friend Brad and I went to the presentation, ‘riding rockets’ by one of the engineers and flight crew for Xcor’s rocket plane. Very informative and entertaining. By 2013 Xcor hopes to be competing with Virgin Galactic for sub-orbital rides for paying passengers.
The final panel of the day was a bit of a surprise. It was on Global Warming, and while both points of view (Man-made vs unknown causes) were present in the room the discussion did not devolve into bitter verbal fights or political point scoring.)
After the dinner break my sweetie-wife, Brad, and myself played the game “Are you a werewolf’ for the first time. That was a lot of fun, then it was the usual parties and then bed.

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Westercon 63 Update #2

From the lobby of the hotel:
Last night went pretty well. There was an evening panel on remakes and are they needed anymore. The sole panelist had quite a bit to say on the history of remakes in hollywood and how it has changed over the years.
His final answer were that remakes are not required anymore. (There was a time when film copies were routinely destroyed and remakes were seen as the only way to tell the story again. all pre-TV of course.)
After the panel I toured parties had a few good conversations before turning in for the night.
I rose early this morning, I’ve spent about an hour and half editing on Cawdor.
Now it’s time for day three of the convention.

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Westercon 63 Update #1

We do seem to have an internet connection, but it is a bit on the iffy side so I can not be assured of being able to do daily updates.

Today was a pretty good day. Oh the first Panel I went to was a bust. Turned out it was about painting and drawing not writing. I can not paint or draw and new media vs old media in that fight has no meaning to me.
Next I went to “Is Manned Space Travel Gone Forever?” It was a pretty well attended panel, with lively panelists. A panel on the SF movies of 2009 veered wildly off topic — I know, shocking — but still proved to be entertaining. One of the panelists reported that he had interviewed John Frankenhammer director of ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ and that the director totally viewed that classic film as a work of SF.

The best panel of the day was two panelists, Tim Powers and Harry Turtledove, on if history was a help or a hindrance to plotting. These two men riffed together and the room was packed and everyone was entertained.

I saw my first plastered panel at the end of the day. Okay, they weren’t plastered but they both brought scotch to the panel and drank as they discussed horror and taboos.

The day is done, one last panel to attend and then parties.

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Leaving soon

In less than an hour we depart for Westercon in Pasadena. I have all my essentials packed: clothes, toiletries, and manuscripts for editing.

I’ll be driving half the distance and my wife will be driving the other half, If We don;t have access to the internet see you next week.

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An end to the month

Well, I have pretty much recovered from my oral surgery and the fun that it was. I went back to work today, ate pretty much normally, and in general returned to my life.

I have started on Cawdor version 1.5. There will be a few changes and alteration to the manuscript and then I’ll be handing it over to my sweetie wife for copy-editing before it goes to my beat readers. (Gosh, I guess I gotta find some beta readers.)

This ends a perfect month of posting everyday. Go team me!

I may not start of July so strongly. Tomorrow I drive to LA for Westercon and if there is no internet connection I will not be updating over the long holiday weekend.

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Cawdor: Update

First draft is done. Total word count is currently 83000 words, but I have some revision and establishment to do so I might add a couple of thousand more word. I expect that I’ll land around 85,000 to 87,000 words.

I feel pretty good despite the surgery of yesterday. A little worn out, a little flush, but finishing a story is always  high.

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Where do you get your ideas?

From what I can gather this is one of the more common and more frustrating questions p[published writers get from readers. No, I am mostly unpublished so few people ask or I suspect care about the answer to this question as far as it pertains to myself.

I can give a partial answer though. I get my ideas from the treadmill.

It seems that more often than not when I walk power-walking (with bad arthritic knees one does NOT jog) on the treadmill as part of my cardio exercise I have an epiphany . So I have to say that teh treadmill is one place where I get my ideas.

(Today it wad food-chits and prostitution, a real break-through for my novel._

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