Arrant Nonsense

So. Last week's word count was: 21,030

This week's word count: 24,876

So, I wrote 3,846 words this week.

Considering the fact that my putative goal is 250 words a day, making my weekly goal 1,750, I'm going to call this a win. Especially since I didn't get as much written at MountainCon as I usually do at a Con. However, I got some valuable research done (found out that cell phone GPS works exactly the way I need it to for my plot, and had a lovely conversation with the beautiful and talented Penny Johnson Jerald about audition callbacks), and figured out some plot elements and a few other things I need to do.

And now, to writing. Because the last line I wrote last night suuuuuucks beyond the telling of it, but I didn't have time to fix it before I went to bed. Note to self: SHOW, DON'T TELL. This:

Janni took Ben out before he wolfed out and ate them, but it was a near thing and left them all sweating.

is a good summary of what happened, but frak me if it's "good writing."

I figured out last night just how very screwed up not!Harmony is.

See, if not!Harry falls apart on her watch, then she's failed him, and thus failed in life. This gets into your classic "fear of failure" syndrome.

HOWEVER.

If she succeeds in putting him back together again, then he won't need her anymore. Which gives her a fear of success.

So I need to figure out how to break them out of this codependent cycle they're stuck in and give them an actual healthy relationship.

In other news, I've figured out how I'm going to separate not!Harmony from the others so I can have my big confrontation. And fortunately, I have Hollywood actors right here at MountainCon whose brains I can pick about the callback process. Because Google is being...rather useless on that front.

And Doctor Horrible and Captain Hammer are here. I think they might be with Penny, although I can't for the life of me remember what she was wearing.

If I can figure out how the camera phone works, I'll try to get a picture. Because the guy dressed as Captain Hammer bears a frightening resemblance to Nathan, although he's shorter.

Also, today's Get Fuzzy is particularly apropos. I want Rob's shirt...

Yesterday I had one meal and got home at 3am. I decided that was a bad idea, so I've had a couple of donuts for breakfast (healthy, I know), and I'll endeavor to get home earlier tonight. But last night there was a midnight flashfic slam, which of course I had to participate in, and then I got to talking with Brooke and Julia West, who were doing all-night filking...

And then I woke up at 8:15. And now here I am.

*beats Antubis* Get to work, fuzzy-butt.

SCREW YOU to my uterus. *strangles it with my bare hands*

Yeah, my last cycle started on the 25th.

*hates*

Writing? What is this "writing" thing of which you speak? The Muse, apparently in fear of my Mighty PMS, appears to have run away.

Maybe I'll move my business to the front room.

Maybe I should figure out what the hell I'm going to say in my "What you can learn about writing by writing fanfic" panel that I'm doing at MountainCon tomorrow.

And maybe I'll just watch Iron Man or KKBB and eat bonbons. I'm not even going to get into my disturbing behavior last night involving photoshopping screencaps so I can get a better mental visual of what not!Harry's back looks like after my first scene. Yeah, I should probably close that window before the Hubby gets home from work.

I...am not well.

The MountainCon ConComm meeting today. Much discussion of publicity was had. Consider this me, blogging about it. Because I'm going to be there, on panels, and we've got shiny shiny guests as well. Consider:

Kevin Sorbo, of Hercules, Xena, and Andromeda fame.

Brandon Sanderson, aka mistborn, who's been pegged to write the 12th and final "Wheel of Time" novel, since Robert Jordan passed away before he could finish it.

Herb Jefferson, Jr., who played Boomer in the original BSG.

I'll probably be hitting the publicity on this one fairly frequently, because we want it to be awesome, yo. Anyone considering coming totally should. I've got a banner on my userinfo page page now.

In other news, I came home to find an ARC of "The Betrayal: The Lost Life of Jesus (a novel)" in my mailbox today, courtesy of ... someone at TOR. No note or anything, just a book in a bubble envelope. It was kind of surreal. But, hey! Free book! I'm not going to complain.

Unless it's crap. In which case I will, loudly. Because you don't mess with my faith, man.

In other other news, as some of you may have seen this morning, we went and saw "Kung Fu Panda" at the drive-in last night, double-featured with "Prince Caspian." Without spoiling either of them, let me just say that I was kind of disappointed in KFP and loved PC. KFP's characters were pretty paper-thin, and so was the story. The animation, however, is gorgeous, enough so that I kind of wish we'd seen it in a "real" theater rather than the drive-in, because you lose a lot of detail at an outdoor theater. It's just not dark enough. OTOH, I loved PC and hope they make the other five books into movies so I can have a shiny shiny boxed set.

I just visited the MountainCon home page to find out when the next ConComm meeting is. I'm going to pitch a panel on "What you can learn about writing by writing fanfic." Not that I'm bitter.

And what do mine eyes behold?

KEVIN FREAKING SORBO is going to be the media GoH.

Okay, not that I've ever actually watched Herc, Xena, or Andromeda, but I'm totally excited about this. I shall have to hie me to the library and pick up some Andromeda.

KEVIN FREAKING SORBO IN UTAH, y'all. *geeks out*

In other news, the blank fic doc, it doth mock me mightily.

I met fun people! I got signed swag! I got re-energized for my writing!

YAY!

Seriously, y'all, it was a fun con. Tiny, yes, but it's only in its third year, and I'm...unmixy with crowds, so it was good for me. And as small as it was, it gave me a lot of one-on-one time with some absolutely fabulous people, such as:

New people:
Paul Genesse: I swear, that man has enough energy for three people. I saw him at CONduit earlier this year, but didn't get a chance to really "meet" him. He's very encouraging, took me to lunch, and we were on a couple of panels together. His book, "The Golden Cord," (Whee! Dragons!) is coming out in May 2008.

difrancis, Diana Pharaoh Francis: Super-nice lady, fabulous author, writer of the "Path" series (soulbonded animals! What's not to love?). Her first novel in a new series, "Cipher," is coming out in November. She read some excerpts from it, and it's really good. And I have a signed ARC!

Patrick Tracy: A friend of Paul's, runs a website called "Nasty, Brutish, and Short," which is a home for dark flashfic. Go check it out!

Jake Black: Comic book writer who wrote the comic book adaptation of Orson Scott Card's "Wyrms," which I picked up the first two issues of. He also works on "Smallville" and wrote the comic book adaptation for the new TMNT movie. He's a very busy fellow.

Renewing old acquaintances:
kenrand: I was so glad to see Ken make it to the Con. He's a hell of a nice guy who enjoys mentoring new writers, and he's written LOTS of stuff. He tends toward fantasy western, such as "Fairy Brew-ha-ha at the Lucky Nickel Saloon" and "The Golems of Laramie County," which are brilliant. He's won Writers of the Future too, and his life's work "Port Chicago Isn't There Anymore (But We Still Call It Home)" is coming out soon.

ericjamesstone: Writers of the Future winner, getting short stories published all over the place, notably in Analog and the Intergalactic Medicine Show. He's been a huge encouragement to me and solidified my notion that my next WotF sub should be the longer story rather than the shorter one.

Dan Willis: He writes books for Dragonlance's YA division. He kept me company when I went to eat on Saturday and is taking a look at the CatFeet and A&tS stories for me. Hopefully he can tell me what's wrong with the A&tS story before the end of the week when I'm shipping it off to Writers of the Future.

howardtayler: Writer and artist of Schlock Mercenary, a brilliant online comic. This guy quit a six-figure job at Novell to to cartooning full time, and has never regretted it. He has one of the few self-publishing success stories out there, and his third book "Tub of Happiness," is coming out in November or December. This one takes us all the way back to the beginning of the strip. You can pre-order a sketch edition (where you can get the character of your choice drawn on the last page, left blank for the purpose) up until tonight at 9pm. The quality of these books is fabulous, they're in full color, you get tons of extras...

Er. I'm gushing, aren't I?

Anyway. I had a fantastic time, I'm looking forward to seeing all these folks at LTUE in February, and a bunch of us discussed getting together as "Utah Authors" once a month to eat and shoot the breeze about our latest things. Yay, I get to be social.

Oh, and I heard the actors were really nice too. I...didn't actually interact with any of them.

Whee! Tomorrow! I'm on three panels this time:

Friday: Unseen Firefly--Which of the three unaired Firefly eps was the best one? (4pm)

Saturday: The Writing Life--How do you make time for it? Any special tricks? (7pm)

Sunday: How to Get Published--Tips & tricks. Er, I know I've only sold one story, but there's basic stuff that everyone should know. (10am)

We've got the sitter situation arranged for Da Boy (I think), since the Hubby has his last race on Saturday, and neither one of us can really take him where we're going. Fortunately, that's the only scheduling conflict we have this weekend.

And I'm going to be able to catch up with some old acquaintances as well. kenrand should be there, as well as ericjamesstone, mistborn, and howardtayler. I'm hoping Bob Defendi will be there too, so I can thank him personally for his help with the CatFeet fic, although I may have to wait for LTUE to do so.

*adjusts pimp hat* Speaking of howardtayler, he's putting out a new Schlock Mercenary book and taking pre-orders for it right now. This book compiles the first 500 strips of the comic, along with a bonus all-new adventure. And trust me, it will be well worth your money. /pimp

In a manner of speaking. I think I finally got to sleep somewhere around 6:30, and then the alarm woke me up a little before 10. I'm not any closer to deciding which story to send to Writers of the Future, but I tend toward the A&tS story because it's longer. I'm poking through that one again anyway to see if there's anything egregiously bad about it--something still bugs me about it, although I can't put my finger on it. *sigh* I'm going to give the Abducted!Werewolf story to my Writing Buddy this week.

I have four and a half hours of school per day to do with Da Boy. I need to go grocery shopping, for lo, we are nearly out of food. And I'm on three panels at MountainCon this weekend and am scrambling a bit for funds to attend the thing. I think I have the entrance fee covered, but gas to and fro and feeding myself may be...problematic. Whether I'm financially comfy at this thing is rather contingent on getting paid for...something. Hopefully the check is in the mail. *crosses fingers*

I also need to figure out what the next thing I'm writing is. I like to have one in progress and one in the editing stages, and the Abducted!Werewolf story is in editing, so it's time to start a new story.

In other news, I just poked around the Renard's Menagerie site and found out that the DragonFic is going to be in the October issue. Whee!

Only half.

So. Wednesday, we leave home to pick up the Ariel Ambulance in Vegas, a small matter of an 800-mile round trip. Get to Vegas all right, check in to the Excalibur, eat (the buffet was meh; I liked it okay, but the Hubby didn't--and the weird thing is that he's not as picky as I am), wander around, find the Shark Bay at Mandalay Bay (which is WELL worth the price), yadda yadda. Not too bad coming down. We did have to stop in St. George and get the tires on the Willys balanced, because something happened and the poor thing was wobbling all over the place. Hubby wonders if the tires are out of round. He may be right.

Also, rain. Not in Vegas, but during the trip. Rain is BAD for driving the Willys in. The wiper on the driver's side is *cough* unreliable, and the defroster sucks. Also, the windshield leaks.

Next morning, we head over to Cameron's house to pick up the Ambulance and only get lost once. Naturally, it wasn't ready to go when we got there, and we futzed around for about an hour and a half getting the tail section loaded and stuff. Vegas apparently has a dearth of dedicated Browncoats, and only one other person was there to help. Cameron threw his back out, poor guy, but managed to be all right by the time we left.

He wasn't planning on coming down with the Ambulance because of money issues, but we offered him our spare bedroom, and he eagerly accepted. He would follow us later that night. In his Delorean. How cool is that???

On our way out of Vegas, we got stopped in a massive traffic jam. Ten miles ahead of where we stopped, there was a fatal accident in which an eighteen-wheeler burned to the ground. This delayed us another hour-and-a-half, possibly two hours. Dude.

The Ambulance actually hauls pretty well. It's aerodynamic enough, and the Willys was actually quieter coming up to Salt Lake than going down to Vegas because of the better airflow. However, by the time we got into mid-Utah, it was getting dark and starting to rain. Yeah, remember what I said about driving the Willys in the rain? It's worse in the dark. The air shocks are kind of iffy anymore, so when we're hauling a load, the headlights point UP instead of at the road. We decided that discretion was the better part of valor and stopped in Payson for the night.

We got on the road at sunup the next morning. Cameron had managed to find us at the hotel and was parked behind the Ambulance when we got up; he followed us into town. In the rain. Yayness.

The Con, there at the start, was extremely disorganized. Apparently, they had several last-minute cancellations, and so they had to re-do the entire schedule. My panel was still scheduled for noon (one of the first ones of the day, whee!), and it went well. I did actually manage to get through my entire presentation--and I met a couple of people who want to put together a local writer's group.

I also got to meet a couple of local authors, really nice guys, who can actually write. One of them, Ken Rand, writes fantasy westerns(!) that are really awesome, and the other Eric James Stone, has actually won a Writers of the Future ... thing. Yeah. He read us a short story about time-travel where he had two competing timelines--one of which was a timeline where Lincoln didn't get assassinated. Cool stuff.

Oh, there were celebs, too. Richard Hatch, Walter Koenig, and Craig Richard Nelson were all there. I didn't really interact with any of them except to smile and say hi, except for Walter, who came over to the author's table and talked dogs with us for a bit. *grin* He has a Puli.

There were the requisite people in costumes. Star Trek, Star Wars, and BSG, for the most part, but there was also a family in "Incredibles" regalia, which the mom in the family made herself. THAT was made of awesome. Cameron had a Ghostbusters outfit made by the actual guy who designed the costumes for the movie.

I sat at the Ambulance table most of the time, chatting with people about Firefly and the Ambulance, but I also got to chat with Ken quite a bit, and I scored some swag. After a rough beginning, I felt that the Con went pretty well. Cameron went back to Vegas, and the Ambulance is sitting in my driveway; we're going to (probably, weather permitting) take it back on Thursday.

I also finished (well, almost finished; I still have to incorporate some of the Hubby's suggestions) the friend_fic. It even has a title.

And, since I know everyone's dying to see what the Ambulance looks like behind the Willys, there's a pic: ( behind the cut... )