#boskone

[tryslora]

Upcoming Appearance: Boskone

I have my Boskone schedule! I’ll be at Boskone February 9-11, and I’ll be on panels, doing an autograph session, and hanging out at the Duck Prints Press table. When everything else is done for the night, I will probably be in the gaming room with my spouse.

My schedule of panels/autographing will be…

Deeper Than Blood: Fictional Found Families - Friday, 8:30pm

Writing the Fight Scene - Saturday, 11:30am

Representation of LGBTQ+ in Pop Culture - Saturday, 2:30pm

Autographing - Saturday, 4pm

Alternative Publishing - Sunday, 10am

I have definite opinions on all of these, and am very much looking forward to this slate!

If you’re planning to be at Boskone, please feel free to poke me on social media to let me know, or come find me at any of these sessions or the DPP table! Paperbacks of the first book of my Twinned trilogy should be available at the DPP table in the dealers’ room.

[duckprintspress]

Upcoming Event: Boskone!

We’re coming up on Duck Prints Press’s next vending appearance – we’ll be back at the Westin Boston Seaport District, this time in the vendors room for Boskone on February 9th through 11th! Boskone is the flagship convention for the New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA), and special guests at this year’s convention include Ben Aaronovitch, Emily Hurst Pritchett, and John Scalzi. There’ll also be over 30 vendors, an author’s alley, an art show, and of course scads of cool panels!

One of the authors we work with, Tris Lawrence, will also be in attendance, participating in panels and signing books. You can check out her schedule here.

We’re really excited to be heading back to Boston again, and hopeful that we’ll see some familiar faces from Arisia and meet some new folks too. If you’re gonna be there, make sure you come and say hi!

[allayedcosplay]

Went to Boskone for the first time as Jessica Jones this weekend! It’s not as much of a cosplay-centric con, so I think one of my more casual cosplays was the right fit. (Shout out to the one person who clocked it! 😅)

There was a panel on uncommon fairy tale creatures that I really enjoyed, and I bought “Anansi Boys” for $3! (Last slide) 👀 My TBR pile keeps growing. 📚

[ejbarnes]

Boskone starts tomorrow! The 61st annual Boskone Science Fiction/Fantasy Convention runs Friday through Sunday, 9--11 February, at the Westin Boston Seaport District Hotel.

I am, once again, showing my art in the Boskone Art Show. The Art Show is in the Galleria on the lower level of the east wing of  the hotel; Art Show sales of original art are by silent auction, with a  separate section for prints. (I'll have items in both sections.)  Art Show hours are Friday 6 PM–Midnight (with a reception at 8 PM),  Saturday 10 AM – 9 PM, Sunday 10 AM – Noon. Quick Sale (purchase of  original art for its designated Quick Sale price, usually higher than  the minimum bid in the silent auction) is Saturday Noon–9 PM, Sunday 10  AM – Noon. Art pickup will be Sunday 1–3 PM.

I won't be on the program, but barring calamity, I will be attending all three days of the convention. Maybe we'll run into each other!

The Westin Boston Seaport District Hotel is at 425 Summer Street, Boston, MA, next to the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. It's a short (but often windy) walk from the World Trade Center stop on the MBTA Silver Line SL1, SL2, SL3, and SLW. MBTA Buses #4 and #7 stop near the BCEC, although the #4 does not run on weekends and the #7  does not run on Sundays. Please be aware of this weekend's MBTA Subway and Bus Service Alerts.

Attachments

[romiesays]

I'll be on a few Boskone panels next weekend (Feb 9-11).

Friday:

5:30 - "Our Air! Our Water!" Space Independence

7:00 - Write My Doctoral Thesis: Science Edition

Saturday:

11:30 - The Magic and Science of Scriptwriting

4:00 - 1,779 Miles to Mordor (hiking advice for fantasy adventurers)

Sunday:

11:30 - Real Estate in Space

Hope to see you there.

Unrelatedly, I forgot to mention that a story of mine, "Breath," was in issue #76 of Not One of Us.

It's a short piece about a microbotanist starting to terraform Mars, and is mostly me getting excited about the existence of injectable oxygen (experimentally trialed at Boston Children's Hospital a few years back). Not too late to buy a copy. The old-school way. Through the mail.

[michaelbaileywriter]

Weekly Update - October 31, 2023

Happy Halloween! I’m on vacation (staycation, really) this week, so half my days are dedicated to writing and the other half to doing fun things with my wife and our dogs. On the writing side, I’m plugging away at the third draft of Draconian Measures, the seventh book in The Adventures of Strongarm & Lightfoot series. Additionally, last week I finished the first draft of a new short story that…

[pargery]

One day after the rates went up I look at the flyer and see that Ben Aaronovich is going to be at Boskone.

:-(

[disgusting-little-cuckoo]

Edit: this post was originally about how i thought Harrow was not schizophrenic, and i have since found out that Tamsyn has confirmed that Harrow IS schizophrenic. Here's a post about it: https://sarsaparillaswords.tumblr.com/post/716819452173369344/if-anyone-is-looking-for-the-authors-confirmation

My original post is preserved under the cut because I don't feel good about making things disappear

Original post:

I do not think Harrow is schizophrenic and I hate that we all just accept when people say she is

She experiences psychosis. Psychosis is a catch-all term for paranoid delusions, hallucinations, and feeling a convincing belief that something unreal is actually real. But psychosis can come from a variety of mental illnesses, including Bipolar, borderline personality disorder, and extreme trauma. And you know who has experienced extreme trauma from childhood through adulthood? Harrowhark Nonagesimus.

The NIH even points out that you can experience psychosis without having any other mental health condition

I have friends who are perfectly sane who have experienced psychosis on drugs!

Also, schizophrenia is marked by an inability to recognize one's own insanity, and Harrow clearly knows she is insane.

She is deeply traumatized and experiencing psychosis. She is not schizophrenic.

This is important to me, because i am insane and experience psychosis. I have friends who experience psychosis. I used to have a friend who is schizophrenic. I think it is important to be careful with definitions when talking about mental illness and not just throw words around (i.e., please do not say "oh she's so bipolar" just because someone you know has mood swings)

Thank you for listening. Much love. Harrow please text me back i miss you.

[nkjemisin]

hi! i finished the fifth season yesterday and it was just so, so, so good - i read it in under a day, i couldn’t put it down. i read the city we became a while ago and i had forgotten how much i love the way you write, and the plot and world-building written through fifth season was incredible (and i always adore second person). and the humanity of it! it always breaks my heart just a little to see a character’s ‘maybe this isn’t what we should’ve gotten but it’s the best we’re going to get’ moment, especially when you know that they won’t have it for long, so the last bit of the book was devastating, especially when with how essun’s part begins… so perfectly bittersweet. there were so many things about the book that i liked, but that was the feeling i remember the most about it.

i don’t really know how to talk to real writers so i’m sorry if this seems very awkward but i just wanted to say that i love your books and i can’t wait to read more of them. thank you for writing :)

You know, I've told this story in interviews, but if it helps... I had a chance to meet Octavia Butler once, live and in person, and I blew it. Had my first and only panic attack, ever, because I was so excited to talk to her that I basically went full bluescreen as soon as I spotted her at the autograph table. (This was at Boskone, can't recall the year but obvs before 2006.) I just couldn't think of anything to say, and fled -- and a short while later, I heard she had passed away. Damn shame.

Anyway, THAT is my standard for awkward, lol. You're doing fine. And thank you!

[jscalzi]

View From a Hotel Window 2/9/24: Boston

I’m in town for the Boskone science fiction convention, where I will be doing panels, a reading, and a dance. I love that I somehow developed this side gig as a DJ. It’s strange yet wonderful. If you’re at the convention this weekend, be sure to say hello. I will not be difficult to find. — JS

[tryslora]

On Writing Combat and Sex Scenes

Today I want to talk about writing sex and combat (and no, I do not mean combative sex). This post is inspired by a few recent events:

Once, a long time ago, I read a blog post that said “if you can write a combat scene, you can write a sex scene” and that was mind-blowing for me because while I was well-versed in writing erotica, I couldn’t write combat to save my life.

More recently, at Boskone, I participated on a panel about writing combat, and the research involved there-in.

Even more recently, I had someone look at me say, “You’re not a gay guy. How do you write gay sex scenes?”

So. Let’s begin.

I get it—sex and combat aren’t interchangeable. But at their core, they have some strong similarities which can be leveraged while writing. Both are intense, high drama, and can involve a lot of anxiety and quick thought. Both tend to narrow focus down to the moment and the current feeling and action. Both are heightened emotion and physical reaction. Both can involve actions that lie outside the author’s personal experience.

I started writing erotica when I was a freshman in college. I posted it online (does anyone remember rec.arts.erotica?) and was surprised (and pleased) by the compliments I received. Turned out my readers were not expecting the idea of emotion being entangled in their erotica. They were invested emotionally in how the stories went, and how my characters felt. Since I was writing from the point of view that made sense to me at the time, they were het stories from a female perspective, and they were very focused on the emotional connections and how the physical events heightened those emotions.

Male readers were surprised by the intensity of the feelings that these stories gave them (as opposed to pure arousal). It got me thinking about how I wrote, and why I wrote, and I tried to talk about it some at the time. I was eighteen. I was still a new writer. The internet itself was new. I wasn’t entirely certain how to frame it, but I remember getting one comment where a guy was surprised at how struck he’d been by the moment in the scene where everything shuddered to a halt due to an event in the story that interrupted the action, and I replied that that was because I wasn’t writing about the sex. I was writing about the character’s reaction to the sex.

Which has always been how I write. At the time, that was my only tool: put myself in the character’s mind, and write what they feel. If that’s affection and attraction and physical reaction, write that. Tangle it up, and hope the reader feels that entanglement.

Now, fast forward several years, and take a little side trip onto a tangent wherein I learned something very important about writing craft.

I was reading Syne Mitchell’s End in Fire, I think it was, and I kept having panic attacks. Now, I did most of my reading late, often when I woke in the middle of the night due to stress, or just because my brain refused to rest. I was in a rough place in life in general, with a lot of external work stuff going on and very small children. I wasn’t sleeping well. And it took me some time to figure out why I was struggling to read a book which I actually loved (and when I read it later in life, I enjoyed it greatly).

It was the sentence structure.

In order to induce the emotion of the scene, the sentences were short. Sharp. Quick. There was no time for the reader to breathe, much like there was no time for the heroine to do anything but act. The reader was caught up in the rising tension, to the point where my anxious, sleep-deprived brain, caught a panic attack from it.

The technique was brilliant.

Now back to our original timeline, wherein I read a post about how if you can write combat, you can write sex scenes. This post assumed that more people felt comfortable writing violence than sex. I was the reverse. I’d been writing about sex for over a decade when I saw this post, and it made a light bulb go off in my brain.

If writing sex was like writing combat… was the reverse also true? Could I improve my skills at writing battles by analyzing what worked when I wrote erotica?

So I tried doing just that. Back then, I found combat overwhelming. There was so much going on, and I was trying so hard to write good description that I lost all of the intensity. I was focusing on everything that was going on at the same time.

Thinking about how sex scenes were all intense emotion and narrowed focus, I applied that to my combat scenes. I wrote only what the point of view character experienced, and tied everything to their actions and reactions. I thought about how they breathed, how they moved, how they thought. I used those short, sharp sentences as they processed the scene. 

That doesn’t mean I forgot about everything else going on in the scene. That’s impossible. After all, in any story the things the character doesn’t pay attention to might be as important as the things they do focus on. Stuff still happens, and there is still fallout. I needed to know what else was happening so that if the character moved from one place to another, or did something that put them in the path of a different part of the action, I could have them start processing it.

But it also meant that on the page, out of sight was out of mind. Everything narrowed down to the now. The immediacy. Suddenly my combat scenes snapped into focus.

During the panel at Boskone, all of the panelists had experience with different fighting styles (fencing, street combat, and of course, me with taekwondo). I spoke about how for me, that narrow focus is very real when I spar. I know there are some people who naturally see a move or two ahead while fighting; I don’t. I am stuck in act and react mode. Can I kick them now? Can I attempt a head shot? Oh, no, circle back and away or they’re going to hit me… that’s how my brain works during a sparring match.

It’s not like a total blackout—there should be a vague awareness of things around the character. Sounds in particular, or sometimes flashes of movement. Something distracting can catch the attention of the fighter, but the personal fight will always pull the character back.

Combat feels easy when I’m writing like that.

Of course, there’s still the question of writing about something if I’ve never experienced it. As someone did point out to me: I am not a gay man, so how does that affect writing sex scenes? I’ve also never fought with a sword. Brawled. Fought from horseback. I have, however, held a blade, shot a gun, shot an arrow, rode a horse. I have a vague idea of how these things work, much like I have a working knowledge of sex in general.

So yes, research gets involved. Sometimes research is observational, sometimes it’s reading (there’s so much good stuff out there). I highly recommend video for combat scenes—find things that have the feel that you’re going for, then put yourself in the place of the character you want to write about. Practice. Work through the ideas of how things fit together, and what your character will (and will not!) know during the fight.

If you need to, stand up and block the scene by thinking about how you would experience it. What can you see, and what is out of sight? If someone is coming at you with a blade, what are your options? How do height differences affect you? Yes, I have asked friends and husband to help me block scenes. 

“Stand right there and show me what it looks like if you punch me. Okay, so if I do this then…” Yeah. It’s a thing. But it works.

When doing your research, remember that movie fighting (and hell, movie sex scenes) isn’t realistic. It’s meant to look good. For combat, if you can find re-enactments, or sparring videos, I highly recommend taking a look at those. 

Anyway, the point is: I don’t have to have shot someone, and I don’t have to have had gay sex in order to write about them. What I do need to know is how it feels emotionally to do those things, and I can extrapolate that from what I do know. I need to know enough about the details so I can get it right, and that’s where research will help me. Also, use language to create emotion. Because emotions are where we grab the reader, and how we pull them into the scene.

Combat and sex aren’t so different when it comes to writing, and the personal experience. Now, go forth and write!

[petermorwood]

I used the sausage goulash recipe you recently posted for dinner tonight (alas no photos, as it was consumed with alacrity) and the household is in concurrence that it should be added to the regular rotation of hearty winter meals; thanks for taking the time to write it up!

Thanks for the feedback (heh) and I'm delighted that you and your household enjoyed it. :-D

*****

@dduane suggested I make it for us tomorrow (36th anniversary) as a cosy homey sort of thing. *

I might, and if so, I'm thinking of adding some sausages we bought from our local butcher at the weekend, and which featured in the Ulster Fry photoshoot.

They're a version of Cumberland style, with black and white pepper rather than traditional sage and parsley, and should add a nice additional layer to the paprika / caraway spice of the goulash, while contrasting with the smokiness of the Continental sausages.

Hint: most Irish-British sausages are made with finely-minced meat and are a bit "squishy" in their raw state; a few minutes of frying or grilling makes them firm enough for slicing.

The problem with really good ones like these is having enough restraint that they survive to become an ingredient.

Hint 2: cook a couple of extra sausages for nibbling, so the rest are (hopefully) left alone...

*****

* On the other hand, we might just go to a restaurant and let someone else do all the work - including the washing-up.

Originally we'd intended to get married on St Valentine's Day, but Boskone had programmed DD to teach a writer's workshop.

This has turned out for the best on many occasions - a snap decision to go restauranting (if it wasn't a word before, it is now) without a reservation on St Val's is likely to end in disappointment, while the day after...? No problems!

[whateveradjunct]

View From a Hotel Window 2/9/24: Boston

I’m in town for the Boskone science fiction convention, where I will be doing panels, a reading, and a dance. I love that I somehow developed this side gig as a DJ. It’s strange yet wonderful. If you’re at the convention this weekend, be sure to say hello. I will not be difficult to find. — JS

[ejbarnes]

I'll be at Boskone (in the Art Show)

This weekend is Boskone, the older of Boston's two science-fiction/fantasy conventions (this year is the 61st, hence "Boskone 61"). I am, once again, showing my art in the Boskone Art Show,  and I've decided for certain to attend the con all three days despite  not being on the program. The con runs this Friday through Sunday, 9--11  February 2024. The Boskone Art Show is in the Galleria on the lower level of the east  wing of the hotel; Art Show sales of original art are by silent auction,  with a separate section for prints. (I'll have items in both sections.)   Art Show hours are Friday 6 PM–Midnight (with a  reception at 8 PM), Saturday 10 AM – 9 PM, Sunday 10 AM – Noon. Quick  Sale (purchase of original art for its designated Quick Sale price,  usually higher than the minimum bid in the silent auction) is Saturday  Noon–9 PM, Sunday 10 AM – Noon. Art pickup will be Sunday 1–3 PM. Boskone returns to the Westin Boston Seaport District Hotel at 425 Summer Street, Boston, MA, which is next to the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. It's a short (but often windy) walk from the World Trade Center stop on the MBTA Silver Line SL1, SL2, SL3, and SLW. MBTA Buses #4 and #7 stop near the BCEC, although the #4 does not run on weekends and  the #7 does not run on Sundays. Please be aware of this weekend's MBTA Subway and Bus Service Alerts.

[romiesays]

Micro-podcasting is Swell

Week one-and-a-bit of the Romiesays micro-podcast includes the following one-to-five-minute episodes:

Closet before lunch - closets as spaces for transformation, with references to lizards and Sailor Moon.

Not my house, not my cat - pet-sitting, homemade pies, and gift economies between friends

Conventioneering: clothing considerations and hotel buffets - figuring out what makes a good outfit for a day where I’m talking on stage about being a filmmaker and talking about being nonbinary, plus tips to make sure you get a piece of the good cake

The Thing about electronic music - the differences in how sci fi and fantasy films use electronic anecdotes with a focus on Ennio Morricone’s score for John Carpenter’s The Thing, plus a part two about how “Tubular Bells” wound up in The Exorcist

Poem: People Yelling In German - a reading of a poem published by the now-defunct magazine Punchnel’s in 2009, about a conversation I overheard while living in a hostel in downtown London

Dreams within objects - embodiments of the past-future, including stovetop espresso, steampunk, theremins, turntabling, and finally discarding an outdated save-the-date magnet

Recipe: Bootlegger Beans - a cheap and easy campfire meal that lets you pretend you’re a rum runner during Prohibition

Machiavelli, wordplay, snow on the ground - why Machiavelli is my dream dinner guest, and whether it is or isn’t better to be feared than loved

If you get proactive and browse the main link to find my conversations with other people, you can also find me discoursing on the similarities between the food cultures of Texas and Louisiana, very early experiences of mid-90s internet chatrooms, and how the Three Musketeers resemble the Golden Girls. I also read an unpublished poem of yearning from a couple decades ago, “Subpoeta.”

[michaelbaileywriter]

Weekly Update - January 30, 2023

I’m dropping the weekly blog post a day early to remind you that the Superhero Fiction Writers “first book in the series” promo begins today! All these titles will be available for free on January 30, and you can go here to browse the titles and then jump to their respective retailer to get them. You’ll notice that Action Figures – Issue One: Secret Origins is on the list. If you’re already a…