Back in the Saddle

Alright, so I'm back in the proverbial saddle again.  Got a real-life jolt that put things into perspective, which is always a good thing.

Blood Stone is going to be edited and needs a lot of work, but that's fine.  It's already written (as the beginning of a trilogy).

I am reading two really good books (at the suggestion of author Randy Henderson):  'Book Life' by Jeff Vandermeer and 'Story Engineering' by Larry Brooks.  In retrospect, I wish I would have read those before writing Blood Stone, but meh, if wishes were horses, right?

Anyroad, I've decided to use some of my new found knowledge (from those books) to write some short fiction.  I just finished a short work entitled 'Gravedigger' and will have it hopefully revised by the end of next week so that I can start trying my hand at Query Letters and Submissions (you can tell they're important... I used capital letters).  :)

Monday nights are still going strong, though the crowd has thinned due to work or school commitments.  Still, my hetero life-mate Evil Dennis and I are pushing through the drop in attendance.

So, that's it for an update, more next week!

As always, thanks for reading and thanks for your support!

~Stephan (aka Baldbeasty)

Chicon 7 WOW

Hey all,

    I know, it's been like a month since I made a blog entry.

Sooo... how have you all been?  Good, good.

Anyroad, I just got back from Chicon and wow.  It was pretty amazing.  I was able to attend a panel which had a great array of authors as well as had coffee with another awesome author (Randy Henderson), who gave me a LOT of info and pointers.

I also sent my application in to join Barfleet.  Fingers crossed. :)

Last I heard there were at least 6200 attendees, so, you know, lots and lots of people.

We only had one issue and that was when we were put on a party floor (which did not sit well with any of the residents of our room, particularly the guy with the migraine aka me, or the Benvolio, who took an hour and a half to put down that night).  So, we had to change rooms in the middle of our night on Friday, but still, it worked out pretty good.

What was awesome was seeing a lot of the authors I'd met earlier, like Matt Forbeck and Jim Hines.  Congrats Jim, for winning a Hugo!

I also got to meet and chat with one of my favorite author/bloggers:  Chuck Wendig.  He signed (again) a copy of his book for me and personalized it for me.  How he does that is by predicting how you're going to die.  Me, I'm going to get chewed up by an artificially intelligent lawn mower.  Awesome.  It was great to meet him.

I also saw the line for the George R.R. Martin autograph session.  I saw him as well.

So that was about it.  I found more motivation (behind the curtain in our room) and have renewed my focus. I know now that I need to be either reading about how to be a better writer, or writing.  When I'm not working on my family or my health or Eggplant.    :)

So, that's an update, probably will be more next week when I talk about my short fiction project, 'Gravedigger'.

Thanks for reading and thanks for your support!  :)

~Stephan