Wednesday, November 1
I'm still tired from Con weekend. Sorry about the delay in updating.

In no particular order, I present to you some moments and tidbits at World Fantasy Con in Corpus Christi Texas:

Warm and humid all weekend. Plus a great view of the bay from the hotel room. Also, the aircraft carrier, USS Lexington was within site.

I got to talk to Joe and Gay Haldeman, Ellen Datlow, Tim and Serena Powers, Carrie Richardson, Ed Bryant, and a few people I have met online. I met Tippi Blevins (NAW Journals) and Vera Nazarian (NAW and Web Rat Journals), but I didn't get to talk to them for very long. Met Julia (of Web Rat fame) and talked with her some, but not enough.

The Black Gate party had an active room. The artwork for Julia's upcoming story in Black Gate was on display. She gets three illustrations! Met editor, David Truesdale, but didn't meet publisher, John O' Neill. Free issue of Black Gate in goody bag! Haven't had a chance to read much of it yet. Looks good though.

I talked to Clarion classmate, Alex Irvine. He has sold a novel to Tor. Good for him. And he was informed over the weekend that Mr. Nielson-Hayden, editor of Starlight 3, will buy story from him. Double good. I'm still waiting on my story (over a year) from Starlight 3!

I had good news to report to people. I told Alex about my sale when he was with Gordon Van Gelder. I told them the story sold to Realms had fourteen rejections. Mr. Van Gelder knew one of those rejections came from F&SF. I told him two came from F&SF because of changing editors. We laughed about that. I assured him there were no hard feelings on my part. This business is about submitting and resubmitting. Gordan Van Gelder understands this.

I talked to Russel Davis, editor of Foggy Windows Books. It seems like eveyone in Eugene is writing novels or short stories for him. I have his card and I'm going to e-mail him. I don't know if anything will come out of it. I'm a new writer.

No big publisher parties.

I learned I need to give the editors something when I talk to them. A sale for example, or perhaps a business card. I learned to watch how an editor works a convention.

I liked last year's Con better. Can't put my finger on the reason why. I know next year I'd like to go with more of a plan and some goals. I came away from the Con this year knowing the work starts at home, everyday, in front of the keyboard. The writing has to be done first. Everything after that is easy, because the hard work has already been done.

Next year World Fantasy is in Montreal. 2002 WFC will be in Minneapolis, Mn.




Sunday, November 26
It has been quiet around here. Right Trey? Yes, I've been part of that quiet masculine portion of the Web Rats. I have no excuses, really. I do, however, feel like hibernating this winter for some strange reason. It's cold this year in Oregon. Maybe that's the reason.

But I digress.

I went to Orycon in Portland last weekend. Editor guest of honor was Gordon Van Gelder. He even spent some time before the con in Eugene to visit Kate and Damon. Jerry Oltion also had him over at his house so the rest of the Wordos could meet him. I had talked to him at WFC, but it was nice to see him again. He says he's not going to make any major changes to F&SF now that he owns in. We'll see what the future may hold.

The workshop is HOT! We've been critiquing four to six stories a week. Hopefully that won't end with the new year.

As for my own writing, I've slipped since the summer. From September and onward my discipline got worse, thus very little writing. I'm been battling inertia all over again.

What happened? You would expect my first professional sale to light a fire under my ass. Perhaps a sale puts even more pressure on my performance. The theory has two parts. One, announcing publicly and to myself that I'll write at least one page a day helped to get over a huge block. Two, one page a day wasn't enough. Each story has an energy and a life of its own. If I don't get it completed in a certain period of time, the drive to write that story dies. I have many story starts at the moment.

So I need to announce here and on my workshop listserver, that "I promise myself to write for two scheduled hours a day."

I'll have more musings on this later.

Get that Clarion application in the mail, Karina, and good luck!