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Author, Editor, Media Tie-In Writer

Chicon 7 Report

I just got back from Worldcon/Chicon 7 and I had a great time despite some travel excitement and some professional disappointments. As Chuck Wendig mentioned, Worldcon was like real life twitter. Thus, it is impossible to keep up with it all. I’m just going to mention some of the highlights and beg forgiveness of the people I forget to mention.

I finally met some online friends like Chuck Wendig, Stephen Blackmoore, Rose Fox, and Myke Cole that I had not met before. Of course, it always fabulous to meet up with friends I do know: John Scalzi, Patrick Hester, Saladin Ahmed, John Helfers, Kerrie Hughes, David Brin, Ellen Datlow, Todd Gallowglass.

Some highlights of the convention included the following:

* Someone I’ve never even seen before came up to tell me they are a fan, that they loved and miss The Edge of Propinquity, that they nommed both the magazine and me for a Hugo and that they were sad neither made it to the ballot. I was floored. It was so nice.

* Someone coming up to the SFWA table with every anthology I have edited or contributed to and every fiction book I have out from Dark Quest Books asking for my signature on all of it—so many books.

* Meeting Brian Hades of EDGE and signing Rigor Amortis books.

* Having John Scalzi declare me a personal hero in the SFWA meeting for stepping up to the plate and volunteering my services. Despite losing the Western Regional Directorship, the fact that I was willing to make a go out at it made him happy.

* Having David Brin tell me I smelled good. (Odd compliment but still pleasing.)

* Meeting the entire crew from SFSignal. That is a great bunch of guys.

* Doing a “Literary Beer” with Paul Cornell and a koffeeklatch with Saladin Ahmed.

* Having lunch with Matt Forbeck and then wandering around with him.

* Having dinner with Ken Hite, Jed Hartman, and Maryanne Mohanraj.

* Hanging out with Kat Richardson.

* Watching Myke Cole react to seeing my mysterious bruise was fascinating. He grew like a foot taller. (The mysterious bruise is on my arm, is huge, looks like a defensive wound, and I have no idea how I got it.)

* Being mistaken for Kate Baker about four times – I need to pass on a couple of hugs and “congratulations” to her.

There is so much that happens at a convention with so many people you don’t normally get to interact with. It’s like life, condensed and put on fast forward. There was the SFWA suite (fab), parties (crowded), and BarCon (awesome).  So many people, so little sleep, so little memory. The first couple of days after a convention, I run around in a fog and I remember the convention as if it were a particularly fabulous fever dream. The convention itself wasn’t perfect but I don’t regret going.

Here are a couple other perspectives on the convention from:

Chuck Wendig

Stephen Blackmoore

Tobias Buckell

Meet Jennifer Brozek

Jennifer Brozek is a multi-talented, award-winning author, editor, and media tie-in writer. She is the author of Never Let Me Sleep and The Last Days of Salton Academy, both of which were nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. Her YA tie-in novels, BattleTech: The Nellus Academy Incident and Shadowrun: Auditions, have both won Scribe Awards. Her editing work has earned her nominations for the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Hugo Award. She won the Australian Shadows Award for the Grants Pass anthology, co-edited with Amanda Pillar. Jennifer’s short form work has appeared in Apex Publications, Uncanny Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, and in anthologies set in the worlds of Valdemar, Shadowrun, V-Wars, Masters of Orion, Well World, and Predator.

Jennifer has been a full-time freelance author and editor for over seventeen years, and she has never been happier. She keeps a tight schedule on her writing and editing projects and somehow manages to find time to teach writing classes and volunteer for several professional writing organizations such as SFWA, HWA, and IAMTW. She shares her husband, Jeff, with several cats and often uses him as a sounding board for her story ideas. Visit Jennifer’s worlds at jenniferbrozek.com or her social media accounts on LinkTree.

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Copied from Ragnarok Publications. Ragnarok Acquires Brozek Novella March 30, 2015Melanie R. Meadors Press ReleaseFor Immediate Release  DANGER LURKS IN THE SAFEST OF PLACES AFTER A NEW OUTBREAK IN DARK SPECULATIVE FICTION Ragnarok Publications welcomes award-winning Jennifer Brozek to their author list with novella The Last Days of Salton Academy  March 27, 2015—Crestview Hills, KY—Ragnarok Publications announces dark days ahead for readers with their newest acquisition, The Last Days of Salton Academy. Penned by Jennifer Brozek, a much celebrated editor, game designer, and author, The Last Days of Salton Academy focuses on grim and mysterious happenings at one of the last safe havens after an outbreak has ravaged the world. It is a tale of high stakes and dire consequences in a world on the brink of collapse. “This novella began with the image of a zombie dog walking down a school hallway with a heavy chain dragging behind it,”...

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I’m about to run off to a long family reunion / vacation thing. So, me on the internet might be scarce. Though, I always have Twitter and my phone. The cat / house sitter has the usual instructions to text me daily cat pictures and to spoil them rotten. In the meantime, here’s a link round-up: an interview, an announcement, a photo, a release! First up, I was interviewed on Jim Knipp’s blog. Rogue Games has announced my book, Colonial Gothic: The Lost Colony. David Mitchell and his brother did a horror photo based on my In a Gilded Light collection story “Finishing Touches.” And a reminder that my Coins of Chaos anthology is released on Oct 15 while I’m away.

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