ALA conference–wonderful!

ByJohn Brown

Holy cow, ALA was simply wonderful. The summary is below. You can find my speech here: http://johndbrown.com/2009/07/gateway-drugs-and-fiction/

Got to go to dinner, ride in cabs, and chat at length with:

  1. A bunch of librarians who were complete characters. One guy named Milton Wolf who has written a lot on SFF and has been known to ski cross-country naked. Another gal named Diana Herald who had over 40 foster kids (official and non), and lives in a tire house. Then another named Edith Helbert, with whom I literally shared my meal (she had a fab pork burger, I had bbq beef brisket: I got half of her burger, she got half of my bbq). She is also in the Society of Creative Anacronism and was telling me about some war between two kingdoms she attended where the archers shot tennis ball/tube arrows at each other. Finally, Christy Donaldson introduced me in the meeting. Later she and I talked and I found out that not only is she a librarian in Happy Valley, but she loves the Sundance film festival. I’ve never gone, thinking it was probably going to be too artsy-fartsy for me, Mr. beef and bologna man. But she said I had to go and offered to go with me. So Nellie and I will probably be watching a Sundance documentary in the near future.
  2. Kathleen Doherty (One of Tom’s daughters) who runs the children’s division. Very smart. But the thing that stood out most was how warm and personable she was. She showed great affection for her librarian friends. Respects her dad immensley. Forgives new authors their fau paux. And is, among other things, a true blue capitalist. She made an argument for capitalism I hadn’t heard before, but rang true the moment she said it–there will always be corruption, but capitalism is the only structure that allows you to mitigate it because it spreads the power around. There was more, but I found it compelling.
  3. Jim Frenkel, editor who did Goodkind etc. He’s a total crack up. And seems to always get caught speeding by the cops. He threatened to tweet on me when I ordered a Shirley Temple to drink.
  4. David and Joelle Lubar, very nice folks. David tried to lead us on a goose chase, but was ultimately prevented.
  5. Ken Scholes. We love Ken.
  6. Robert Charles Wilson. Very, very nice guy. Humble. And so freaking accomplished. He’s won just about every award out there. I loved his Darwinia. Need to read his latest.
  7. Margaret Weis. Here’s someone who has written so much. It was interesting hearing about how she and Tracy go about their projects.
  8. A cabbie from Haiti who told me all sorts of nifty things about how it used to be down there. Like how cell phones are like chocolate because land lines were so bad and rare that you’d often have to call a phone station (where the phones were), have someone run down to your house and tell your family you’d call back. Then they’d have to come back on time and hopefully be there for your appointed call. Then sit in a phone box with no AC and sweat, sweat, sweat.

Saw Alethea Kontis briefly, which is always a lovely thing.

Then I got to be one of five speakers to a huge crowd. There were 300 seats, people were sitting and standing in the back. There was a lot of energy in that group and I just ate it up.

Tor made up 200 bags with a book from each author and handed them out. Of course, we ran out. And, no, I had no book, but Tor printed up ARCs. And so SERVANT OF A DARK GOD was in there with all the grown up books.

Then I got to sign. Now, I’m just a new guy. A few people had read my stuff, but most hadn’t. Nevertheless, it was simply wonderful to be inbetween Ken and Margaret putting the old John Handcock on books for a line that queued up from the table at the front of the large room to the doors in the back.

This was my first signing. How sweet was that? Being the clueless man that I am, I didn’t bring a pen. I thought they would be provided. So one of the organizers found one. It was pink. It’s going in my book of remembrance.

I should have brought all the nifty bookmarks I have printed up and am sending to various cons. Next time.

What a great experience.

Oh, and we were in this Omni hotel (on Michigan ave). I totally lucked out and got a sweet room in the 17 floor in a corner. So my bedroom had two windows out of which I could gaze at the lake, two blocks away, and all the fabulous architecture. I’ve never really spent any time in downtown Chicago. What a fantastic place.

People everywhere. Brown people, black people, white people–so many interesting people. I’m telling you, after living with a huge population of cattle, it’s nice to see a variety of homo sapiens.

And I found a blue Eddie Bauer shirt for 20 bucks.

Like I said–fabulous.

Share

Similar Posts

  • John’s appearance at American Fork writing conference cancelled

    ByJohn Brown

    Folks, just wanted to update any who might be planning on attending my sessions at the American Fork Arts Council writing conference. I’ve had to cancel. There’s been a death in the family. My brother-in-law’s three week old son died yesterday. His name was Landry. I’ll be at the funeral up in Cokeville, Wyoming on Saturday. What a very, very hard thing for them. I was so looking forward to participating in the conference, but these folks need solace and support. I’m sure you understand. I hope to attend next year. And I will be presenting at CONduit in May, although the organizers haven’t gotten back yet with details. I’m sure you’ll still have a great time–there are so many other interesting presenters coming. Happiness.

    Share

  • Servant of a Dark God galley edit finished

    ByJohn Brown

    I just mailed my galley edits off to Stacy. My baby is now out on her own. And whether she sinks, swims, or squishes is largely out of my control. I’m excited and anxious. Here we come September 15th!!

    I’m wishing I could do one last story edit. But I suppose that’s just par for the course. I’d be doing story edits until the fulness of times. I’ll just have to take what I have and will learn from this one as it plays with audiences and roll it into the next. I’m going to be very interested to see how this plays.

    I also just saw the map. It’s very nice. Love the style. I’ll see if I can’t post it here.

    And I got an estimated publication date–September 15th. I found out there are two dates, actually. A shipping or release date when the books start leaving the warehouses. And then the date (publication date) when they estimate (a few weeks later) the book will be in stores. The book should be in stores on the 15th.

    I expect the cover to be out soon as well. I told my agent I’d try to work in a big-bosomed blond into the series just in case. Not because she’s particularly fond of well-endowed ladies, but because she told me about another author’s book about a Hispanic woman with an initial cover that depicted this Hispanic woman as a blond with mucho clevage, toting a big sword (just to be clear, it was the blond toting the sword, not the clevage). Hey, miscommunications happen. I don’t know which publisher it was with, and to the departement’s credit, they were able to revise. Still, I thought I’d be ready.

    And now back to book 2 in the series.

    Share

  • Curse update: April 12, 2014

    ByJohn Brown

    CurseV2FinalV1I have finished the rewrite of act 3.

    In my last update, I said that I’d written almost 50k words, but Word was counting everything in the document I was working in. I really only had 36k words at that time. The material now totals 50,000 words.  A pretty hefty chunk that I’ve broken into eleven chapters.

    If you recall my process, I’m basically at the end of step 7. Next week I will start my line edits. The week after that I hope to make the copy edits. I know I’ll do those more quickly than I did it the last time because Geoffery Kidd wrote me back in December and shared a wonderful way to quickly find typos and unclosed quotes that should help speed the process this time. His tips won’t take care of everything, of course, but every bit counts. Once I complete the copy edits, we’ll be almost to the finish line.

    Share

  • SERVANT in Raley’s grocery in California

    ByJohn Brown

    It’s official. SERVANT is in grocery stores outside of Utah. Saber2gecko saw and purchased a copy in a Raley’s grocery in the San Francisco Bay area then very thoughtfully posted that fact here. That chain has 144 stores. So not only is that great news for the book, but it also just plain rocks. I lived in that area for a few years.  I love it down there. To know my book is circulating in the stores I used to shop is cool. Welcome to the Grove, California.

    Share

  • SODG Story Edits Finished

    ByJohn Brown

    Click to see edits

    Wahooooooo!

    I just turned in my final story edits to Stacy and David. The due date was November 1. The 3rd actually. The book clocks in around 177,000 words.

    Wow. This last set of story edits led to some great changes. Not huge ones, but nice touches. I had to rewrite part of this battle scene, and man, oh, man I’m totally geeking out about it. We’ll see how it plays with readers.

    What’s been interesting is seeing the types of things Stacy and David have commented on in the text. It’s as if they went through asking simple logic questions. Did they have enough time actually to do this? It makes no sense that person y wasn’t there. This thing isn’t fully explained.

    And sure enough, the logic gaps were there.

    So it wasn’t the interest level of the story they seemed to be editing for as much as the details that lead to clarity and belief. Of course, that those two things must be present for the interest to come. And this is not to say they didn’t focus on parts where interest flagged. There was one comment that forced me to cut my favorite dawg scene, a whole chapter’s worth. But the bulk of the comments were focused on the “logic” of the story.

    Anyway, as of next Monday I think I’m officially into production. And back to book 2, which I’m 25,000 words into.

    Share