Back from Worldcon

I got back from Worldcon (Renovation in Reno, Nevada) a while ago. It's taken this long to sort of catch up with life, if that makes any sense.

I learned a ton from the few panels I attended. I mainly looked for ways to fill in holes rather than to go to panels where I already knew a lot about the subject. Here are some highlights:

Victorian and pre-Victorian war stuff: I had no idea that you could keep a firearm loaded pretty well indefinitely if you prepared for weather. Some antique weapons still sitting in attics could theoretically fire just fine--so be careful whenever you pick up something firearm-like no matter how ancient, dusty, rusted, dysfunctional, etc. it might appear. I know, duh, but it bears repeating. Your great-great-great-grandfather's flintlock might be loaded and go off. Seriously. Plus, cannonballs traveled really, really far. They just bounced on and on and on for thousands of meters.

Seriously cool. I wrote down some good sources for those hard-to-find non-technical details that describe, for example, that black powder firearms emit a gorgeous, pure white smoke (the lecturer told us it's the purest white he's ever seen.)

Panel about consistency when writing in a series, shared world, etc.: The main good idea I got from this is to write notes and an outline after you finish a chapter in a book or a short story in a world that you may intend to write in again someday. Character details that are revealed (age, that she loves bourbon, etc.) plus a general list of events is all you need. One writer on the panel had to hire someone to read her books and take extensive notes for her to go off of because after several years she needed to start writing in the series again and had forgotten most of those telling details writers keep in their heads with varying degrees of success. Reading those books would have taken too much time out of her writing schedule and would have put her behind on several deadlines.

I'm going to start doing that from now on. Much easier and cheaper than hiring someone ten years from now to read Masks and take notes on it so that I don't mess up someone's mother's age and get hate mail from fans about it. (Wouldn't it be grand to get fan mail and to work with multiple deadlines on projects because I'm such a busy writer? I know, I know, be careful what you wish for ....)

I watched master artists sketching a life model (who was somewhat clothed for propriety's sake as it was in a public area) for quite some time. It made me itch to do art again, which is good because I also studied cover design at the convention, first at the art show and then again at a cover design panel and yet again at a 'what's coming out this year' panel for Orbit. (I missed the one for Tor, darn it!) My brain is now brimming with ideas--the perfect time to start rough design ideas for various book covers before those ideas vanish into mist.

I also talked shop with a Canadian publisher. I hope to send some stuff their way soon.

There's lots more to tell, but I ought to actually, you know, write. Today.

Right now ....

Another INK Victory!

I've sold a story to a great market--more details when I can officially announce them.  The story is "Neighbors"--the expanded version I wrote when I realized that the end couldn't really be the end.

I also sent a story in to the Writers of the Future contest.  With two stories sold in the whole universe so far, as far as the WotF contest is concerned, I can only sell one more story before I become ineligible for the contest.

Which I'm totally fine with on a lot of levels.  I'd of course love to win the contest, but I won't hold back on sending out stories just so that I keep my eligibility, you know?  That would be weird, and not in a good way.

Gee, I'm so calm posting this.  When I got the email, I had so many exclamation points inside me I couldn't stay sitting down!

Oops.  I guess they're still there.  They're probably just tired.  

Honorable Mention for Writers of the Future

Yay!  I got an honorable mention for a story I sent to Writers of the Future.  

Keep sending those stories in to the contest, people!  You can't win if you don't play.

Goals

When I updated my INK goals today I blanched. Boy, setting the bar a little high, y'think? But I'm not going to change it. I can write at that pace. I'll even go so far to say that I can write at that pace easily. Why am I not? Because I'm spending too many of my evenings watching DVDs. Oh, I can curse The Tudors all I want. The blame must fall to me and my choices.

I am getting a new short story out almost every week, though. I think I can do two. That's what I'll aim for by next Monday.

Stayed tuned to see if Kami falls on her butt!

EEEEEEEKKKKK!

[Hiding]

The scariest April Fool's post I've seen so far: Victoria knocks publishing horror out of the park.

Terrifying. Simply terrifying.

[Still hiding]

Another nice rejection

I tell ya, all these kind and helpful rejections are neat, so it's hard to complain.  But three days in a row and one last week--woof!  Between stories I'm revising because I thought of something that might bring them up to the next level, and stories that just came back, half my inventory is at home right now, festering.

Stories fester when they're at home, you know.  They need a wild ride in the mail or through the phosphors and then they like to wait on desks or in editorial hard drives where they can chat with other manuscripts and drink too much and party.  Sometimes, when they've just come back, they're lively and have lots of things to say to the other stories who've been stuck at home, but they quickly grow morose.  Then the festering begins, usually with some discoloration, and then the smell.  If that doesn't get your attention, they can ooze like nobody's business.

It's easier to avoid the whole festering thing and keep them in circulation.  Everyone's happier that way.

Another one for the collection

I have a new rejection slip today, a coveted signed and personalized rejection slip on white paper from a market well known for it's half-page "blue rejection slips of death."  As an avid collector of rejections, it's always fun to get a new kind, especially a hard-to-procure sort.  BTW, those blue form rejections are a neat collector's item in and of themselves, since they're the only ones on colored paper I get.  I've heard a rumor about one for a poetry market that has a poem and is quite lovely to look at.  If I wrote poetry I would totally submit to that market to get one (assuming that I didn't make the cut and get a sale.  Hmm, would I then be so bold as to request that they send me a form rejection with my contract so that I can have a copy?  Hee--I'd love to have those kinds of problems.)  

Anyway, now I have to get these stories back out.  Rejection slips come in waves, I've noticed, so after having nothing to do but write for a long period, I suddenly have to start shoveling things out the door before they pile up.  My marketing muscles atrophy between waves, I suspect, because I don't have a deep enough portfolio of fiction.  That'll change as I write more short stories, but it won't change fast.  Although I think I've improved my craft in the short story department, I'm still a novelist at heart, therefore I spend most of my writing time on novels.  Eventually I may have enough short stories in final form that I'll be sending stuff out all the time.  Hmm.  That may not necessarily be a good thing.

It's hot hot hot today, a good day to stay home and write, especially if you have AC or a nice basement office.  (Mmmm, basement ....)  But first (I guess, *pout*) I will see about sending my stories back out into the world.  Stay cool today, INKers and Friends of INK.

Catching their attention

I got a nice rejection today.  Part of it said: 

The story caught our attention but after consideration we’ve decided it’s not a piece
we can use.

Not too shabby, I say.  

My distractions are piling up, but writing is still happening.  I've been mainly editing novels and frowning at my legless story.  It'll all come together.  The part that's sticky right now is that I've got all of four days to send out an agent query or I'll have failed my goals for the month.  Ackity ack acka ack.  I always procrastinate with those things.  But I haven't been idle.  I've been reading Query Shark, and thinking about what the strongest thread in my novel is so that I don't muddy the synopsis with dumb stuff.  You know, the stuff that everyone, especially me, feels is so critical to the story but everyone with a few synapses firing in their brains and a somewhat-accurate memory of what the novel is about knows is just window dressing?  That stuff, the stuff I want to leave out.  If only it was color coded or something.  

Anyway, I'll get it done soon.  I'd better, or I'll owe the group a buck at a time I really ought to be saving my bucks.  Four days may seem like a lot of time, but it really isn't, especially since I want to try a fresh take on that synopsis.  It's not quite right as it stands.  I can do better.  I will, and I must do better.  

Gee, I haven't even got to the hard part yet, you know, the part where the book is out and I'm trying to build interest while still working on other books.  This is the easy part, y'know, even though it drags on and on.

Fever Blabber

The bombs bursting in the air must have inspired a dark streak in me.  I wrote and shipped off a flash tonight.  Again, it's another one of those will or won't work situations that I don't think I ought to be wasting critique group time with.  Yea or nay can come from an editor.

I'm feverish and snurky.  Stupid cold.  My kids are all better, but I'm just starting to get really sick with the being tired all the time and cough and sneezing and ongoing drainage.  I fell asleep on top of my covers in my clothes last night, woke up at 5am feeling like hash browns that had fallen onto a burner that had just been switched off.  I ended up going back to bed a few hours later, and didn't wake up until 2pm.  Feels like my whole day was wasted, and yet, writing happened.

In marketing news, Brain Harvest is putting on a little contest.  Check out the specs at the Brain Harvest Mega Challenge page.  Jeff VanderMeer will be the guest judge.  It doesn't get much more awesome than that, and yet, there's the possibility of winning a hand-knitted mustache in addition to the cash and accolades.  I'd like to see some INKers and Friends of INK use this contest as an excuse for writing a story based on a prompt (or several prompts.)  Who will take the challenge?  Kami wants to know.  The contest runs from July 15-August 31, so there's plenty of time and therefore no excuses.  Embrace (or eat) the Nike ad.

Flash Bang

Last night I got the most hilarious, inspiring rejection evah.  The awesomeness cannot be described without going into long descriptions of the story combined with evasive language in relation to the contents of the letter.  Alas, I don't think it would be a good idea to post the rejection here even though it probably wouldn't cause problems in the highly unlikely event that this got back to the editor.  But I think the greeting says it all.  Not hi, not dear ms, but argh!  Complete with exclamation point.  

I love my job.  Heh.

Near misses, no matter how kewl or how close, are still misses, so the little flash got sent out again to an actual print magazine.  I had a wonderful, grinchy idea in regard to this story, so if it misses again, I may have to do evil unto it.  I like the story the way it is, so I'm reluctant to play with it, but at the same time I think the idea is sound, so another rejection will be my excuse to open up that file and open up new scenes.  Sadly, once that happens, it will never be a flash again.    

Kami's State of the Writing

Lately I've been having trouble with ideas.  Oh, I have lots of ideas.  I even have some frozen embryonic stories that I can take out and ... okay, ew factor just set in.

But lately I've been dissatisfied with my ideas in general.  I don't want just any story idea.  I want one with that special something, you know?  It doesn't have to be unique, or pretty, or smart.  It does have to resonate.  I have to feel it in my guts, get that special tingly thrill, and when I work on it, have unnoticed hours go by before I look up from the page.  

Long walks and hot baths are in order.  In the meantime, I've got my novels.  I can live there happily for a very long time.  Still, it would be nice to have a short story come grab me by the throat before Tuesday's write-in with my writing pals.  I'll be looking at contests, prompts and anthologies in an attempt to spark something in time for that.  If none of that does the trick, I'll just have to work with what I've got.  

I want to produce, which means that I must produce.  Letting vague feelings of dissatisfaction get in the way of writing might lead to a habit of waiting until I 'feel right' to write, which might eventually grow into full-blown short story block.  I love writing shorts, and I don't want to go a really long time without writing one.  It's incredibly satisfying to write something and have it done in a month (sometimes even in a day!) and a great way to break a pattern of rhythm in a rut that can sometimes form when I'm working on novels, or worse, a single novel, every day all day.  As fun as it is to be immersed in a novel, there's a constant danger of complacency.  When I'm complacent, I'm more forgiving and apt to overlook things.  It's much more fun to work on a short story for a while and come back to the novel than to do the only other thing I've found to break the highway hypnosis, and that's to work from the back of the book forward.  I can do it, but I'm not real fond of it.

So that's where I'm at with writing these days.  That and trying to ditch this cold.  Oh, and I have a couple of short stories that are 'overdue.'  I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Go J.D. Salinger!

Snagged from Gurnery Journey, a blog focused on art written by the wonderful creator of Dinotopia.

Want to write a derivative work?  Seriously, think twice.  Do your own stuff.  Someone writing under the pseudonym J.D. California wrote a sequel to "Catcher in the Rye," perhaps not knowing that J.D. Salinger not only is alive and kicking, but litigious.  So now there's a lawsuit.  Even if J.D. Salinger wasn't so inclined, really, do you want to hazard the chance of something like this happening to you?

I wonder if pseudo-California has ever heard of the term fanfic.

Maybe you're lucky enough that you feel your heart and soul is inspired by a work that happens to be in the public domain.  Good.  And yet, wouldn't it be better to rename the characters, twist the setting in a direction that resonates with your plot (or do some research and deepen the setting in a way the original author didn't explore) and let the characters grow with the challenges you place before them ... in short, writing an original work inspired by the book?  You'll have something that's completely your own, and by the time you finish revising and restructuring and hammering out the details of your world, I doubt anyone will recognize what you've done.  Plus, people may notice the tone or themes or characterization and nicely note that the work "is reminiscent of the works of J.D. Salinger, but with a present-day edge informed by the politics of 21st century Sweden."

I wish Mr. Salinger well.  

Now I'm curious to see how the whole Potato Day (Stephanie Meyer fanfic Fail that I won't link to so that it reduces traffic) thing is doing.  Hmm ... looks like she altered her page to be in Español.  Does she think this will save her?  I thought she would fade away after being met with lawyerly threats, but it seems she persists.  I think she wants to get sued for $100,000 and spend time in jail.  Weee!  She's got to be one of those people who believe that if nothing bad has happened yet, it won't.  Wow.  The fail, it burns!

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

My short fantasy, "Thistles and Barley," is up on Beneath Ceaseless Skies #18 (June 2009.)  I'm very pleased to be in the same issue as Renee Stern, a Seattle-ish author and member of the very kewl Fairwood Writers.  

I met Renee at CascadiaCon, the same event where I met Jay Lake for the first time.  Quibblers may say something about 'met for the first time' as being redundant, but at conventions, people meet over and over again until finally they actually recognize each other.  For quite a few years I played a fun game with one wonderful author in particular, where I would introduce myself to him and, without any cues like "we met at OryCon," see if he recognized me at all--didn't have to be my name.  A double-take, "didn't I see you somewhere before?" or even a ruffled brow would have counted, at which point I would 'fess up.  He was particularly bad with names and faces, and so I was able to enjoy meeting him as if for the first time for quite a few years before he did finally recognize me.

But I digress.  Renee has been very kind to me.  She works hard to create opportunities for new writers to meet other writers and workshop their manuscripts.  If you're planning to go a Seattle convention, be sure to look for the opportunities Fairwood Writers creates.  Remember, deadlines for things like writers workshops come long before the convention begins, so don't dilly-dally before searching for information about writer-oriented events.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies is a free magazine.  If you like reading fantasy shorts, please subscribe, and spread the word.  It's getting good reviews.  By the way, there's a review of each issue in the Internet Review of Science Fiction by Lois Tilton in her short fiction review column.  It appears that next month (July 2009) it'll be my turn.  Gulp.  If Ms. Tilton's tastes align with your own, the column could be a great resource as a what-to-read guide.

The Craft, She is Huge!

I sent out four new submissions recently, and I'm looking at sending out my very first non-fiction proposals.  I also went to the Lucky Labs meeting yesterday (it seems like forever since I've been!) and had a pint.

I felt like the meeting went well, but then I didn't get my story piled on.  It can get tough when there's a consensus, and the consensus is, 'this didn't work for me,' followed by an explanation of everything that went wrong.

Which brings me to abandonment.  The thing about writing is, like every other skill, it requires practice.  That includes practice of every aspect of writing.  I'm sure I'll miss some, but these are basic areas of writing that need lots of practice:

* Spelling and grammar

* Starting a project effectively

* Finishing a first draft

* Managing a first edit

* Receiving/understanding feedback

* Employing feedback

* Deep revision (where no element is held sacred)

* Polishing (also known as line editing)

* Tightening, or loosening (most people need to tighten)

* Establishing voice for a piece

* Establishing authorial style

* Character development

* Enrichment of setting

* Developing a satisfactory middle (muddle)

* Creating a satisfying ending

* Creating scenes with character and plot archs

* Transitioning

* Research/life experience development

* Learning about tropes, cliche's, and norms for a given genre

* Developing a narrative flow or rhythm

* Nurturing a critical eye for your own prose

* Nurturing an analytical eye when reading in your genre

* Nurturing and honoring the creation process

These are all difficult skills.  None of them are straightforward.  For example, spelling and grammar.  You'd think that would be straightforward, but it's not.  The rules are made to be broken, but they have to be broken in a way that makes reading more, not less, of a pleasure.  What about nurturing and honoring the creation process?   That's just care and feeding of the muse, right?  Not really.  Honoring includes respecting your own writing time--daily writing.  Nurturing means you have to learn how to create, and then practice creating.  Learn about outlines, try different brainstorming techniques, take lots of baths or showers (there's something about hot water and creativity--I'm not the only one who's noticed this!)

Lots of people come out of high school thinking they can write.  On the one hand, yes they can.  On another ... there's a whole lot more to learn out there, way more than even four years of dedicated college can teach you.  The good news is that you can sell your experiments when you reach a certain stage of writing, and that certain stage might be right out of high school.  The other good news is, writing never gets boring if you're a writer at heart.  There's always something more to learn.  There's always another hill to climb.

Which wraps back around to abandonment.  You might think that a story that was (almost) universally tromped ought to just be put out of its misery.  That depends.  Has the author learned everything s/he can from the work?  In this case I think the answer is clearly no.  I felt that this author hadn't learned how to fix problem manuscripts yet.  He hadn't learned how to take and consolidate the feedback, use that to re-examine the manuscript with his own critical eye (the feedback is, after all, a set of observations and suggestions, not a job order) and, if he couldn't figure out how to fix it on his own, start reading and researching like crazy in an effort to find out how other authors have solved those problems.  

Think about it.  If a story doesn't work and you abandon it every time, yes, you might eventually learn what does work when you line up all the stories you've written that receive positive feedback and write stories just like that every time.  But there's a danger of pigeonholing yourself.  Maybe all your successful stories are about a young female abuse victim who gets the upper hand over her former abuser and is instrumental in sending him to jail forever.  Some writers make a good wage repeating the same sort of story over and over again.  I'm not going to denigrate that.  But if you can't find that niche and make a career out of that, you'll be a one hit wonder.  If that's your goal, great.  But if you really want to learn the craft, you have to learn as many items on this list as you can, and some things that are not on this list.

I invite INKers and Friends of INK to think, and even blog about, some of these elements of writing.  Each one deserves a post all by its lonely.  Or, just file it away, and get to writing.  We're wasting daylight, people!

[This article is also posted on the INK faq]

Professional Editing

This seems obvious to me, but I haven't heard anyone talking about it at conventions or read it online from someone who is an authority until now at the Query Shark blog.  There are all manners of writers, agents and editors in the world, so the usual caveats apply, but this makes sense to me:

I really don't like to hear that your book has been professionally edited.  For me, it's not the persuasive piece of information you think it is.  You think it says "my book is polished and ready to go."

What I infer is "your book was polished by someone else and god help us when we get to the edit letter from the editor, and you don't know how to do this stuff"

Freelance editors tell you a book needs to be edited before agents will look at it.  What they are doing is selling their services.  Only one of my clients employed an editor and that was for non-fiction.

All my novelists write, revise, and edit their own books.

I've seen professional editing work out for people.  The way I've seen it work is via a teacher-student relationship with easy access to those services (aka not so many clients that the freelance editor doesn't have time for your project) and with money available to go over the work again if necessary.  

Ideally the freelance editor should include notes on (generally) what was done and why.  Even better is if there's an ongoing discussion so that the writer learns how to do the editing themselves.  Then, if there's a sale and a call for further editing (and I can almost guarantee there will be a call for more editing in the case of a novel!) the writer has access to this same freelance editor (for stylistic continuity since that style in part is what sold the book--see how this becomes really important to have and be able to afford an ongoing relationship?) and they can work together (the freelance editor continuing to teach as they go) to get those changes sent back promptly to the purchasing editor.  

Being on deadline in this situation would be incredibly stressful for me.  I would be at the mercy of the freelance editor's schedule.  Ack, I say, ack!

But wait, there's more.  This freelance editor/writer relationship isn't a trivial thing.  The freelance editor needs to have some sort of motivation to teach the writer to not need them anymore.  So in comes the deeper reason for why I feel it's ideal to hire a writing teacher who does editing on the side--because the reputation for the teaching services will help bring new clients in the form of students, counter-balancing the fact that eventually the freelance editor's services won't be needed anymore if s/he is doing their teaching job right.  If there's no motivation to teach clients to fly, there's every reason for a freelance editor to keep clients dependent.

I don't think it's wise to become dependent on a freelance editor unless you're the sort of person who relies on a kind of ghost-writer relationship in the first place: basically your primary marketing angle is that you're a celebrity or expert and the writing is just a means of delivering something of interest to an existing audience.  That's why the mention of the non-fiction sale makes so much sense to me.  If you're a novelist, it really is best to learn the craft.  If you have the money, get lots of quality instruction and make that the priority over freelance editing.  With high-quality instruction you can accelerate the learning process all writers go through, and maybe even avoid some classic writing errors in the process.  

Don't expect that if you get a freelance editor to do a once-over that suddenly your manuscript will be sellable, and even if it is, that the sale is followed by a happily ever after.  It can turn out to be just the opposite.  If you get a multi-book deal, only of which the first book has been written, and you leaned heavily on professional editing, you can expect that part of your advance will be spent on purchasing ongoing services.  Considering the cost per page of editing and the state of advances, this may eat your entire advance.

Not the way I would hope to spend an advance, should I be offered one.  But that just may be me.

State of the Writing

I got a form rejection today, so that means sending out a story today.  I also finished the first draft of a story a couple days ago.  Writing the first drafts has been easy for me lately.  Finding time to edit has been less easy.  I've also been feeling voice-poor lately.  Not sure if that's rational, but something to keep an eye on.  There's a lot of flat writing out there, mainly because people don't let the character emote naturally.  

Once again art and writing parallel.  Gotta relax and not be so tight with that narrative.  Controlling too much kills the kewl.

I'm looking forward to the INK meeting tonight!

State of the Submissions

I have stuff out to the following places:  Wet Ink, Writers of the Future, Brain Harvest, F&SF, and Byzarium.   Oddly, four of the five are flash fiction subs, and the fifth is one of my shorter short stories, though not quite a flash.  Considering that flash is the form I find the most difficult to write, this is rather kewl and strange and funny.  It also means that I really need to work on those longer length short stories, and I really need to get some agent subs out there.  Right now I have no queries out.  None.  

After an edit I sent out a short, the one that INK looked at recently, to Lucky Labs.  Now C.S. can, if she likes, pick apart my editing style.  

I keep meaning to work on T.E.P. (aka the weird bird story) but it's a daunting project. I didn't mean for it to have parallel plots of equal weight that dovetail at the end into a (not quite there) uneasy ending.  It's so much easier to edit on Masks or one of the other novels.  That's telling to my level of (un)skill with short stories--I can dive into a novel and play for hours and the time seems to zip by, but when I approach a short story I feel like I'm handling a cactus and I don't have gloves on.  The minutes crawl by.  The only thing that's easy about editing a short story is that I can scan through the thing in just a few minutes and get a good sense of the overall pace.  That's a handy thing to be able to do.  I suppose it would be possible to do with a novel, skimming over the chapters almost as fast as a flip book, relying on intimate memory to get a sense of the overall feel.  It's something that would require practice, I think, and it wouldn't take a trivial amount of time.

I've mailed my deposit for Dean Smith's Master's Class coming up this fall.  Amazing how not that long ago it seemed that the class had been put off until the distant future, a future that now appears to be racing up on me.  I've started reading the required books for the class.  The first one is a pleasant surprise--definitely not one I would have picked up on my own.  I'm glad Dean recommended that we start with ones we're least likely to read.

So that's the state of Kami's writing.  I hope we'll meet this Friday on schedule.  See some or none of you then!

INK meeting a success

We had a lot of bureaucratic stuff to do, and we got most of it completed.  Yay!  Dues are back in force after a short hiatus, we have some updates, some goals, some definitions, and we're exploring a change in web presence.  We'll keep y'all posted.

We've decided to donate part of our funds to a literary charitable cause.  Hopefully we didn't miss some sort of deadline.  Even if we did, I like the idea of paying our dues back into the writing community, so we'll find another one we're excited about if the one we chose doesn't pan out.

I paid a penalty for not making one of my December goals.  D'oh!  I knew that skimping out on editing Masks would bite me on the butt.  That'll learn me.

Good observations at Flights of Fantasy on some of the strange attitudes that appear with the sense of entitlement some authors have in regard to being published.  It got me thinking, so I blogged about an additional thought on that subject.

Free Financial Book

Yay! It's free it's free it's free it's free it's free!  I've enjoyed Suze Orman's books and radio shows and all that over the years.  Don't miss this chance to get a free .pdf of Suze Orman's 2009 Action Plan, available on Oprah's website.  It won't be available forever, though.  I believe it's only going to be available there until the 15th.  Don't wait!

Because we don't want to be starving artists.  That's just so cliche'!

See some of you at the INK meeting tonight.  I hope the Friends of INK have gotten a great start to the writing year, and wish you the best luck, focus and skill for 2009.

INK meeting tomorrow!

There's an INK meeting tomorrow at the sekrit cat cave!  I can't wait!  There's lots to talk about.  Conventions, regress reports, dues, goals, events, and the ever-popular socializing and yammering about our projects.

Also, don't forget the Washougal writing meeting is on the 24rth, and Radcon is coming up fast.

See y'all soon!