Just a reminder. Larry and I will be in the Phoenix area this week on book tour. If you’re available, we’d love to see you Thursday night at the Poisoned Pen or earlier that day at the informal Barnes & Noble meet-n-greet!
Thursday,
November 19
3 pm – 5 pm
Meet public, discuss book, signing. This is informal, just chatting in the cafe–Brown & Correia
Mesa, AZ
Barnes & Noble
Dana Park Village Square
1758 South Val Vista Drive
Mesa, AZ 85204
(480) 545-8507
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.
Carrie Hinkel-Gill at Moonlight, Lace and Mayhem has been interviewing me. It’s been thought-provoking and fun. Here are the last two installments. Check it out:
Then you want to be in Provo, Utah this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, February 11-13th, and attend Life, The Universe & Everything, the annual science fiction and fantasy writing conference. (I think students get in free.)
If you live within a reasonable driving distance (I’m 2.5 hours away and consider that reasonable), then you should do everything you can to get down there. It’s going to be a blast. It and LDStorymakers are THE best conferences for writing that I know of in Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arizona. And if you’re into SFF, then it’s the one. I mean, just check out the list of guests.
I’ll be on the Role of Magic in Your Story and Distributing Your Novel panels. Look at the schedule and check out the guests who will be on those panels with me. Yeah. Awesome.
And then I’ll be presenting Vivid and Clear by myself and Succeeding as a Writer with L.L. Muir, which is going to reveal some things that will surprise a lot of people.
BTW, L.L. Muir is the best kept secret success story in Utah at the moment. She’s selling thousands of books, pleasing thousands of readers, and making, well, you’ll have to come to that presentation find out how much money she’s making. And what the secrets to her success are.
The recording of the session with Larry Correia at LTUE is up on YouTube. I really enjoyed this session, and it’s always fun to work with Larry. A few additonal points.
First, you might think, well, heck, they didn’t finish a story idea. No, we didn’t. The purpose wasn’t to wow the audience. It was to show them the process of generating ideas. But . . . that doesn’t mean we weren’t close.
The big thing we’re missing from the story at the end is the situation, the problem. So if you want to extend this, ask yourself a question to help you identify that story core. For example, you might say, let’s narrow this down by genre. What genres could we use? Romance, political thriller, crime, horror, humor, scifi, western, paranormal, etc. If we select paranormal thriller, we limit our options (a good thing), and can start to generate ideas around a question like, what’s going on, what’s the problem? Potential answers:
There’s some gateway to the spirit world in Wyoming
Maybe there’s an oilrigger roughneck involved
Maybe something with the drilling disturbed something
Maybe a crime has been committed (I know, I know, but what did I say in the video about crap, cliche?)
Maybe that Japanese tourist has a way to capture the spirits and use them in some magic. Is he a wizard? Is he there to trap the spirits of the dead to fuel his magic? Did he get a nagging ghost that drives him nuts?
Did someone call him in?
Or is he possessed? An innocent bystander?
Is there some ghost there that knows something about a political figure, some information?
Maybe someone who can project her spirit, has some power, has been kidnapped and is being held in Wyoming. Or tries to make her escape when her kidnappers stop in Rock Springs. And the guy to help her is the Japanese Tourist.
Maybe these aren’t ghosts, but some kind of alien symbiote? There was a crash somewhere and the locals were infected?
Or should I ask: what could go wrong with ghosts? Or what is the nature of ghost magic?
Do you see? If we had more time, we’d have delved more into the situation with creative Q&A. Sooner or later as we generated ideas around character, setting, and problem a story idea would have come to life.
