Yearly Archives: 2013

GenCon Schedule

My GenCon schedule is now finalized, complete with the times I’ll be joining the friendly folks at the Paizo booth in the Great Hall.

I know I’ve said this in public before, but it bears repeating. GenCon itself is great fun and the Writer’s Symposium is one of its best kept secrets. There are hours and hours worth of panels on great topics that should be of interest to writers (and readers), with guests that range from talented semi-professionals to seasoned and famous industry leaders, like Lou Anders, Patrick Rothfuss, Mary Robinette Kowal, Scott Lynch, Brandon Sanderson… I could go on and on. To top it all off, things are well-run and organized. Last year was my first year to be involved with the symposium and I had such a fine time that I’ve enthusiastically recommended it to many friends, and decided to attend GenCon for all all four days so that I could participate more fully.

If you’re in the neighborhood, I hope you’ll stop by, and if you’re already coming, I hope you’ll swing by the rooms in the convention center where the symposium is under swing.

Here’s my schedule. Some of the names on the panels below may change depending upon the schedules of the other participants, but I think this is mostly accurate.

Link Day

I need to hit the ground running today, so I’m going to hook you up with some nifty and eclectic links.

First, a post from my talented writer friend Alex Bledsoe that ought to be of interest to any fan of heroic fantasy fiction. This one’s all about a more and more dated term: “Heroine.” Drop by and take a look.

Then there’s a pretty neat essay on what pretty much amounts to a thieve’s guild of ancient Baghdad and the peculiar tools they used to work their crimes, including a tortoise!

Have you heard about the new concept super fast train that could get you from New York to LA in under an hour? We have the technology now to make it work! Check it out, here.

Lastly, I ran across some really excellent writing advice from another writer friend, Harry Connolly. All you writers out there ought to drop by and give it a read — it’s good stuff.

 

Weekend Trek

It was a busy weekend. The family drove to St. Louis Friday night so I could wake up Saturday morning and fly to Minnesota to hear my son’s performance at a music composition camp, then fly back with him to St. Louis and drive home. My son’s composition was brilliant (and so too were those of many of his fellow camp members).

I had a lot of down time, but I also had a lot of really bad sleep. I’m still pretty exhausted, actually. I did have a few observations, though.

1. The security personnel at the Minneapolis airport were some of the best humored I have ever dealt with. Two thumbs up for them for being professional, courteous, and good spirited. The bonhomie actually seemed to permeate the entire staff. (And here’s a mildly curious aside — as my son and I were lining up for the security check I passed a gentleman getting in line to check his bags, and danged if I didn’t do a double-take. He wasn’t some guy who vaguely resembled Al Franken… he was Senator Al Franken. I suppose that it’s not at all remarkable that Al Franken should ride planes, or that he should be in Minneapolis, seeing as how he’s a senator from Minnesota, so perhaps it’s not actually that interesting an aside…)

Trek Week, Part 5

This week, the week of my birthday, I’ve been indulging myself by sharing all my thoughts about how I’d approach my dream job, being story editor on a reboot of the original Star Trek series. Yesterday I wrote about how I’d update the principal characters. Today I’ll talk about the rest of the characters and wrap things up.

Mr. Scott

I think the writing of Mr. Scott is pretty straight forward in some ways. There’s not as much nuance necessary as there is with the principal characters. I love that line from the series bible about Scotty thinking of the ship as his and Kirk as merely the driver. He’s a gifted engineer and is constantly tasked with pulling off the impossible. I like the suggestion I’ve seen in various fan literature that he was there when the ship was being refitted, and that he might have served on the ship under a previous captain as well.

Trek Week, Part 4

As threatened earlier this week, I’m going to keep imagining what I’d do given the chance to fulfill an old dream: reboot the original Star Trek show as a TV series.

Today I’ll be talking about the main characters, but before I get into depth about any of them I want to address two things.

First, it’s true that Kirk and Spock are best friends. A lot of writers seem to think that’s where it ends. They miss something crucial, and that’s McCoy — they don’t seem to know what to do with him aside from having him snark at Spock.

Here’s the thing. All three form a greater hero.

Trek Week, Part 3

I was so inspired by Star Trek Continues that I decided to dedicate the week of my birthday to talking about my first great fictional love, the original Star Trek. Today I’ll start rambling about all the things I’ve always wanted to do if I got to be the executive story editor of a rebooted Star Trek TV show. Yeah, I know, it’s pretty self indulgent, and I’m ashamed to say I’ve spent way too much time over the years thinking about this. But my birthday’s coming up, so you’ll forgive me, right?

Trek Week, Part 2

Trek week continues on Jones central for the whole week of my birthday. Regularly scheduled posts will resume next week. Be warned: if you’re not a fan of the original show, your eyes may glaze over.

I’ve spilled any number of kilobytes of data about how much I’ve been influenced by writers like Leigh Brackett, Harold Lamb, Robert E. Howard, Roger Zelazny, Fritz Leiber, C.S. Forrester, Saki… the list could go on. Yet I’ve seldom discussed the influence of my first great fictional love, the original Star Trek.

Star Trek Continues

I’d like to buy Vic Mignogna a drink.

I’m not a drinking man myself, and for all I know, he might not be either. But he deserves that drink, be it scotch or root beer. Not just because Mignogna brought to life my favorite anime character (Edward Elric, from Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood –for which Mignogna received a best actor award) but because he got Kirk right.

If you’re not a fan of the original Star Trek series you can probably stop reading here.

Mignogna didn’t just get Captain Kirk right, he was one of the executive producers, not to mention the director, of an excellent fan produced Star Trek episode, Pilgrim of Eternity, written by  Steve Fratt and Jack Trevino. (Everyone involved deserves a round of drinks.) He also was responsible for scoring some additional music for the episode.

Of Blackhearts, Laptops, and Turkeys

First, a link I thought a lot of my visitors might find of interest. My friend Nathan Long, vastly underappreciated master of sword-and-sorcery adventure, penned a really neat look at the underdog in sword-and-sorcery over at his own site. If you haven’t already, you should swing by and take a look. Here’s the link.

Nathan’s written some fabulous s&s stuff, but if you’re not a reader of Warhammer novels you probably haven’t heard of him. Whatever you might think of tie-in work, you must realize that with so much of it out there some is head and shoulders above the others. And some towers not just above its peers, but stands with the truly great giants of sword-and-sorcery. (Yes, I think that highly of Nathan’s stuff.) Nathan’s Long Blackhearts books (along with C.L. Werner’s Brunner stories, some of William King’s Gotrek & Felix novels, and more work by Long) should really be widely read and praised by any lovers of adventure fantasy.

Man At Work

All morning I’ve been transferring files from my Asus laptop to my brand new MacBook Pro.

The old one isn’t dead and had served me well except for the partly broken hinge and the annoying way that lightly brushing against the touch pad sets the cursor jumping around. The main reason I updated was so that my son, now in high school, would have a computer he could primarily call his own. More and more often I was having to loan it out to him to work on school projects or, this summer, to work on the music composition program Finale.

I wasn’t actually planning on a Mac. I’d sold off several hundred dollars worth of old books and games and the like in preparation for picking up a new PC. Then I became a little overwhelmed with reviews of various PC laptops — perhaps you know the routine. One site would say great things about a particular model, another wouldn’t, and, not being a regular browser of PC computer reviews I always wondered if the review site was legit, or secretly a commercial for one of the brands.

On top of that, after I’d get my list of laptops  I was most interested  in together, I’d discover the local stores didn’t have those models. Meanwhile, my wife was using her MacBook Pro, as she’s been doing for some years now, and as she was doing on another Mac for years prior. And suddenly it dawned on me that maybe the extra money would be worth the sense that A. I would be getting something good B. It would last for a very long time.

So here I am.