WFC, here I come!

I’m driving to Calgary tomorrow for the World Fantasy Convention. I look forward to seeing friends, meeting new people, and enjoying all that the Con has to offer.

Chapter three

I was hoping to finish the second draft of chapter three today, but fell short of that goal. That chapter is much more complex than I anticipated. Well, to begin with, I had to introduce two main characters, establish the rules of the world they’re living in and give enough info about it so everything is clear without being boring, or tedious—and all this while my protagonists are investigating a crime. (Deep breath.) On the bright side, it’s very exciting because most of the pieces of the puzzle (and there are a lot of them) are neatly falling into place. So the only real thing I had trouble with today was punctuation. For some obscure reason, the quote and question marks have suddenly decided to trade places on my keyboard. Needless to say it annoys me to no end.

Second draft

Today, I have begun revising my urban fantasy. I was a tad apprehensive about it, because I haven’t written anything in the last couple weeks and feared I would have a hard time getting back into the groove of things. But to my surprise, it went very well. So much so in fact, I finished chapter one—which is very unusual. Normally my first chapters are always the ones that demand the most work. Not this time though. And although this chapter still need a bit of tweaking, as it stands now, it’s not bad. In all, this was a good day. Tomorrow, I’ll tackle chapter two.

Discovery Channel: I Love the World

Love this song!
It never gets old.

Fall spectacle

This is why autumn is my favorite season.

Fantasy Creatives nights for 2008

SF and Fantasy Creatives
hosted by SF writers Lynda Williams and Nathalie Mallet
Writers and artists of genre fiction in the fantasy, sci-fi realm are invited to share their work with kindred spirits on each of the following dates:
Wednesday Oct 15 7-9 pm
Wednesday Nov 12 7 9pm
Wednesday Dec 10 7-9 pm
The events will be held at Café Voltaire in Books ands Co, 1683 3rd Ave. Prince George. Each evening will feature a mixture of young and old, beginners and professional authors and artists with book prizes and chocolate rewards (yummy) for special features held on some evenings. Hope to see you there!

Election

Yesterday Canadians went to the polls. Result: more of the same.

Review

Epinions has a nice review of The Princes of the Golden Cage: “I was surprised at just how complex and funny this novel was. While I could recognize quite a few of the elements that were taken from the history of our own world -- the Cage system was used in the Ottoman Empire to keep fratricadal wars from breaking out, or forcing a new Sultan to have all of his brothers strangled -- there were enough twists and turns and plot to keep my interest engaged.”

VCON

I’m leaving for VCON (held in Surrey this year) later today. It’s an eight-hour drive to get there, thus the early departure. I’m one of the programming guests invited to the con, so I am slated for several panels.

For those who are coming to the con and would like to see me, here’s my schedule:

Friday, October 3rd
5:00 pm Panel: Martial Arts in Science Fiction
8:00 to 10:00 pm Book Launch (in my case a pre-launch)
Saturday
1:00 pm Panel: Physics of Fantasy
Sunday
3:00 pm Panel: MCSI-Magical Crime Scene Investigation
4:00 pm Panel: Using Myths and Fairy-Tale in Writing

Okay, now if I can just figure out a way to close my suitcase without having to sit on it, I’ll be all set.