guest blog

This weekend, I’ll be at Crypticon in Sea-Tac with Apocalypse Ink Productions and on panels. I’m going to have all of my new releases with me as well as some of the old favorites and my convention only book. If you can’t come see me, I hope you enjoy the weekend.

Article: To Write the Good Fight over on Jimbo’s Awesome SFF Reviews. I like to have a foot in game reality to write a ’Mech Battle. I do it with a little help from my friends.

Interview: +1 to Writing on TripleCrit. All about me as an author and an editor. This fun interview was all about me shifting between the different publishing roles.

Interview: I’ve got a new interview on MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape about my Arkham Horror novella, To Fight the Black Wind. I get to talk about my favorite scene in this one.

Interview with Loren Rhoads: 5 Questions for Jennifer Brozek. All about Arkham Horror: To Fight the Black Wind. This one touches on how my own dreams brought a bit of reality to the novella.

Released: Arkham Horror: To Fight the Black Wind has been released for almost a month now. Read the first chapter for free.

Review: From Jimbo’s Awesome SFF Reviews. It’s safe to say he liked BattleTech: The Nellus Academy Incident.

The authors of Under an Enchanted Skyline box set ($0.99, available only until Dec 31st), participated in an urban fantasy roundtable.

Most Urban Fantasy stories focus on magical creatures and entities. Even so, ordinary people still play important roles within the story line. Do these “normals” have much of an impact in your story…and if so, in what ways?

Erik Scott de Bie: As a superhero adventure, Eye for an Eye is a bit of a black sheep: it features exactly one character with magical abilities—Lady Vengeance. In addition to her high-tech hero opposite, Stardust, the story features a series of mundane characters, including The Raven, who is the tech-based vigilante you’d get if you combined Iron Man and Batman, and Elizabeth Stevens, Stardust’s non-superhero wife, tech company tycoon, and the smartest person in the whole novella.

Phoebe Matthews: Always. It is the normals who have to solve the problems created by magic and by paranormals. Sorry, no superheroes here.

Django Wexler: Yes, definitely. Again, a common UF trope is that the protagonist is in some way special, somewhere between the monsters and the normals so he or she can serve as a guide to the fantastic for the readers. In the John Golden stories, this is literally true, since John’s only real power is to transport himself to the fairy burrows and back again. But since fairy burrows run on real-world computer systems, he has to deal with the “normals” who build and maintain them – system administrators, executives, users, and so on. He’s more or less an exterminator, since fairies are a nuisance!

Janine A. Southard: As the collection’s compiler, I don’t have a story in this boxed set. I have, however, had the chance to read them all. Each author in this bundle blends fantasy characters into the normal world, or vice versa. There couldn’t be a super-natural adventure without a familiar jumping off point. In some cases the protagonists are as magical as magical can be, making their way in our normal world. In others, simply touching the magical world transforms a normal person’s experience.

Cedar Blake: Well, Luke and Chalice provide the impetus for Rachel’s “transition,” and Rachel’s rotten manager Margie supplies the push that gets her going. Her pal Ashli (inspired by a real-life friend of mine back when I lived in the Bay Area) adds an essential (in)sanity check for Rachel, and Kim the Yoga Girl acts as sort of a benevolent archon figure, watching over the point of transition and providing a small yet significant test as the hero steps from one threshold to another. So yeah – Rachel’s story could not exist without these key figures. “Normal” or otherwise, they provide foundations and activities that make everything else possible.

Jennifer Brozek: Absolutely. The mundane people in a story become the “everyman” characters that the Reader can identify with. They are the normal people who have to face extraordinary circumstances. Many characters in my UF series are normal people just trying to get by as they are affected by the supernatural events going on around them. Many times, they show that the normal person can be just as effective as the supernatural creature.

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Other questions and their roundtable answers are with: Phil, Erik, Phoebe, Doug, and Janine. This was a great roundtable. And I hope you all enjoyed it.

Guest Blog: I talk about why Human for a Day is my favorite anthology edited so far.

Interview: Pat Flewwelling (who has the coolest last name) interviewed me for Nine Day Wonder with an editor’s focus.

Interview: Dave Gross interviewed me for his Creative Colleagues blog series. We talked about keeping a schedule and balancing editing versus writing and RPGs.

Review: A starred review in Publishers Weekly – Elementary: All-New Tales of the Elemental Masters – I have a story in this set in the wild west called “The Price of Family.” It’s a dark story.

Recommendation: Broodhollow. A lovely, creepy webcomic by Kris Straub set in the 1930s. You should start at the beginning. It’s got a subtle wrongness to it on top of the outright horror.

The Colony Saga
i.e., Let’s Talk Zombies

Okay, short bit about me (so’s y’all know I’ve got street cred, yo): I’m an indie author.  I write spec-fic: sci-fi, fantasy, horror.

Mostly horror.

I’m a produced screenwriter (two horror movies), member of the Horror Writers of America, and have been one of Amazon’s Most Popular Horror Writers for most of the last year.  I’ve written about ghosts, vampires, serial killers, demons, devils.  If it goes bump in the night, I’m interested.  But one thing I’ve never done is a multi-volume work. 

Until now.  And it’s a zombie story.

Usually when I write, I can tell pretty much how long the book’s going to end up being.  But when I started writing The Colony Saga, I discovered to my chagrin that the first two plot points took over two hundred pages to cover.  And that was because I was trying to do something a bit different with my zombies. 

In most zombie stories, the zombies are essentially interchangeable with a force of nature.  They are an earthquake, or a series of twisters, or a tsunami.  They are there to be dealt with as an additional problem in between the “real” story issues: a marriage on the rocks, a group of plucky survivors who have to deal with the power mad/rapey governor/priest/ex-biker/whatever who lives nearby and wants what they have.  The real questions aren’t about the zombies (“Where did they come from?”  “How do we get rid of them?”), they are about the people.  So the zombies become a stumbling block in service of the author.

Concerned Husband: Honey, let’s sit down and talk about our marital problems.
Spunky Wife: You just haven’t understood me since we lost little Timmy.
Concerned Husband: But I’m here now.  Let’s figure it out.
Spunky Wife: Okay, let’s –
Zombie Horde: Rowrrrr!
Concerned Husband: Oops!  Gotta get outta here!
Spunky Wife: I know!  We’ll figure out our marriage after this brief survival episode!
Zombie Horde: ROWRRRR!
(three weeks later)
Spunky Wife: Good thing we found that abandoned military installation and weapons cache!
Concerned Husband: I know!  Should we talk about our marriage now?
Zombie Horde: Rowrrr!
Spunky Wife: Headshots rule!

I wanted to do something different.  I wanted to create a world where zombies are THE ONLY problem.  Where you don’t have time to really get into a bitch-slap fight with your neighbor, because time is all too precious.  If you argue, you die.  That’s it.  But that meant I had to create a whole different kind of zombie.  A kind of zombie immune to typical “zombie killing” methods.  Headshots won’t work.  Setting ‘em on fire isn’t an option.

And the zombies had to have a reason.  Most zombie stories are, again, about a natural event.  Even the viral zombies that are so in vogue now are at heart a natural event, in the sense that nature has fought back against humanity overstepping its bounds.  So the zombies become a sort of modern wrath of God.  A crucible to burn away the impure – morality plays on a massive scale.  But never really explained beyond that.

I wanted zombies with purpose.  I wanted them so scary that there literally appears to be no way to stop them.  I wanted survivors who were at their cores good people, willing to put aside differences in order to try to save not just themselves, but the human race.

And I wanted to do the one thing that no zombie story has ever really done, to fully address the most horrific aspect of zombies. 

As to what that is… well, I gotta keep some secrets in reserve.  But there are things worse than dying.  Worse than not staying dead.

Zombies are a lot of fun to read, and a lot of fun to write.  Whether I’ve accomplished my mission of creating a completely new kind of zombie is something that I can’t answer – I’ll have to leave that to my readers.  But it’s taught me a lot about horror, about the nature of community, and about the things that are truly worth fearing.

The Colony: Genesis (The Colony, Vol. 1):
Kindle
Paperback

The Colony: Renegades (The Colony, Vol. 2)
Kindle
Paperback

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Michaelbrent Collings is a #1 bestselling novelist and screenwriter. His bestsellers include Strangers, Darkbound, Apparition, The Haunted, The Loon, and the YA fantasy series The Billy Saga (beginning with Billy: Messenger of Powers). He hopes someday to develop superpowers, and maybe get a cool robot arm. Michaelbrent has a wife and several kids, all of whom are much better looking than he is (though he admits that’s a low bar to set), and much MUCH cooler than he is (also a low bar). Michaelbrent also has a Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/MichaelbrentCollings and can be followed on Twitter through his username @mbcollings. Follow him for awesome news, updates, and advance notice of sales. You will also be kept safe when the Glorious Revolution begins!

I’ve never met Matt but I gotta give it to him… I love this book trailer. It’s the kind of book trailer I’d like. Give it a look.-JLB

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The Correct Response is “Whoa”

by Matthew Warner

As in, “Whoa, baby. That looks awesome.” As in, “It looks so awesome, I gotta buy that book right the hell now.”

That’s the reaction I want you to have to my new book trailer about The Seventh Equinox, coming Nov. 6 from Raw Dog Screaming Press. (Hopefully, you’ll remain that enthusiastic after you read it.)

Did you know someone owns the term book trailer? Yep. It’s a service mark, registration #2868140, duly recorded at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. But that doesn’t stop hordes of writers from creating videos about their novels and calling them “book trailers,” as if they’re on par with trailers at the movie theater.

But here’s the rub. Most of them suck. I’m sorry, but they do. They’re text-heavy, too long, and they look like they were made with PowerPoint in less than 15 minutes. But you get what you pay for, and most writers don’t have the dough to hire actors and CG artists. I’m not saying I do, either. Not usually. In fact, I’m certain I blew all my future royalties several times over when I collaborated with Darkstone Entertainment to make the 2.5-minute video linked below. But I’m happy to do it in the interests of recruiting new readers, hopefully ones who will stick with me for life. I have another job to keep me in whiskey, so I don’t mind raking all my writing income back into advertising. My publishers don’t seem to mind, either.

For this trailer, it helped to have a target audience firmly in mind. The Seventh Equinox is set in the fictitious city of Augusta, Virginia, based on my home of Staunton. I didn’t set it in the real Staunton because I wanted some leeway in my descriptions of geography and government, and also to insulate me from potential libel suits. In my book, the sheriff is an alcoholic, bigoted redneck, while the real-life Staunton police chief is anything but.

Anyway, I still want locals to buy my book, because its descriptions otherwise ring with regional flavor. That’s why a Staunton landmark, the Clock Tower, appears on the book cover. And that’s why, when I wrote the trailer script (which you’re welcome to read here), I loaded it with Staunton landmarks, such as Betsy Bell Mountain. During the three-day shoot, I even revised it to include more local landmarks, such as the Gypsy Hill Park band stand and the iconic DeJarnette buildings.

The other thing I did differently with this trailer was to load it with multiple settings and story lines, more like a real movie trailer. My previous three trailers for Blood Born were each confined to one or two locales. That made this one three times as hard to make. Read more about the sausage-making at The Seventh Equinox‘s production blog.

So, what did I learn from all this? New ways to nervously pull my hair out when production problems sometimes cropped up. I also learned I should keep my mouth shut when an actress is working herself into an emotional state at my request. (Major kudos to actress Elle Clark for crying real tears.)

The jury is still out on my main questions, which are: did it help to target a local audience, and was the more cinematic writing style worth the trouble?

Maybe you can help me figure it out. In the meantime, enjoy (book trailer link)!

Matthew Warner‘s new novel, The Seventh Equinox, comes out from Raw Dog Screaming Press on Nov. 6, 2013. Preorders receive $2 off.

Jay Lake’s Process of Writing is officially out! Of course, we, at Apocalypse Ink Productions, need to have a contest for it. Link this page on Facebook, twitter, or your blog between now and September 30th to be entered into a contest to win the last signed and numbered limited JayWake hardback edition of Jay Lake’s Process of Writing, complete with Howard Tayler’s artwork. You will also receive a JayWake pin and a JayWake smooshed penny. This contest is not limited by geography.

If your entry is on Facebook or on your blog, post that link on Twitter directed to @ApocalypseInk or contact us through email at contest@apocalypse-ink.com

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Sample Tweet:
Just released from @ApocalypseInk – @Jay_Lake’s Process of Writing. Win the JayWake edition! http://bit.ly/13fXDMg #contest RT to win.

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Sample Facebook status update:
New from Apocalypse Ink Productions, Jay Lake’s Process of Writing. Now available in physical and e-book formats. Win the JayWake edition! http://bit.ly/13fXDMg

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What will you win? We’re glad you asked. Take a look.

Hardback limited JayWake edition of Jay Lake’s Process of Writing. #47/50 and signed by Jay Lake.

The smooshed JayWake penny gifted by Janna Silverstein.

The JayWake pin designed by Howard Tayler and gifted by Minerva Zimmerman.

12 Ways to Die Badly (Ingloriously)
By Benjamin Kane Ethridge

It has been mentioned that my new novel, BOTTLED ABYSS, contains inventive death scenes. As much as I wear this praise as a badge of honor, conjuring up morbid wonder isn’t something I ever purposely set out to accomplish. To be honest, I’m not much of a gore hound. I do feel, however, that you have to be true to the tale and true to the genre; you can’t and mustn’t hold back. Much of my new novel involves Greek mythology, though it’s broadly redefined and adjusted in terms of lore. Countless examples of gruesome and strange deaths are inked on the pages of Greek history and some make up this list I’ve created below. Twelve deaths made the cut, although you probably could go on and on with this sort of thing (see the TV show 1000 Ways to Die).

Anyway. Enjoy, but put prepare your stomach.
 
1) Being unable to move and then devoured. In 6th century BC Greek wrestler Milo of Croton came upon a tree-trunk split with wedges. Putting his wrestler’s strength to the test, he tried to split it barehanded. The wedges fell and trapped his hands inside the tree. This was embarrassing for a macho man like Milo, but things became much worse when a pack of wolves wandered by and decided to have beefcake for dinner.

2) Scaphism. This Persian form of torture (that ultimately is execution) is probably the most horrendous and humiliating I’ve ever heard of. I need describe little else, for this Wikipedia excerpt says it all: “The intended victim was stripped naked and then firmly fastened within the interior spaces of two narrow rowing boats (or hollowed-out tree trunks), with the head, hands and feet protruding. The condemned was forced to ingest milk and honey to the point of developing severe bowel movement and diarrhea, and more honey would be rubbed on his body to attract insects to the exposed appendages. He would then be left to float on a stagnant pond or be exposed to the sun. The defenseless individual’s feces accumulated within the container, attracting more insects, which would eat and breed within his exposed flesh, which—pursuant to interruption of the blood supply by burrowing insects—became increasingly gangrenous. The feeding would be repeated each day in some cases to prolong the torture, so that dehydration or starvation did not kill him. Death, when it eventually occurred, was probably due to a combination of dehydration, starvation and septic shock. Delirium would typically set in after a few days.” The land of milk and honey is paved in skulls, it turns out.

3) Crucified on an inverted cross. St. Peter decided he wasn’t worthy the same death of Christ, which strikes me as peculiar since you can debate that this sacrifice (on a physical level anyway) is much more terrifying and painful. Being crucified is not something one looks forward to, but being crucified upside down is sort of like asking, “Please may I use hydrochloric acid with my Chinese water torture?”
 
4) Roasted on a BBQ grill. Saint Lawrence of Rome was roasted alive on a giant grill, during the persecution of Valerian. So, yeah, being burned to death would be extremely painful, but that’s ogling the obvious. What about the smell? Cooking baloney. Charred steak. Prime rib of human. These are the smells in your nostrils while your flesh bubbles and crackles and spits—yikes.

5) Poisoning. It goes without saying that symptoms from poisoning are very undesirable, but I’ll take that foaming mouth you see in most movies over what Arius, presbyter of Alexandria, endured. Legend describes that he died of sudden diarrhea followed by bleeding and anal discharge of the intestines while he stumbled across the imperial forum in Constantinople. He may have been poisoned either through chemical or food borne bacteria, so the exact cause is murky. Either way though, holy crap and all that houses it!
 
6) Being Conched to Death. Another great dose of Greek history. Hypatia of Alexandria, a mathematician, philosopher and last librarian of the Library of Alexandria, was murdered by a Christian mob that ripped off her skin with sharp sea-shells. That isn’t the ocean you hear inside the shell, it’s the roar of a thousand screams!

7) Being clubbed with your prosthetic.  Sir Arthur Aston, Royalist commander of the garrison during the Siege of Drogheda, was beaten to death with his own wooden leg, which the Parliamentarian soldiers thought concealed golden coins. This one strikes me as sadder than the others. Aston had to live regretting the loss of his leg and then he had to die regretting the loss of his leg. In a fashion, he never really survived that maiming; it came back to claim him in another form.

8) A basketball of lightning to the face. Professor Georg Wilhelm Richmann, became the first recorded person to be killed while performing electrical experiments when he was struck in the face and killed by a globe of lightning. The lesson here is simple: when God passes the ball, be ready.

9) Locomotion. William Huskisson, statesman and financier, was crushed to death by a locomotive (Stephenson’s Rocket), at the opening of the world’s first mechanical passenger railway. You’ve awaited this moment for a long time and the very thing you’ve devoted all your time and energy into is also your undoing. It’s romantic, but doesn’t mask the fact you’re just as dead as the guy who took a ball of lightning to the head.

10) Slowly, sweetly. In the Boston Molasses Disaster, 21 people were killed when a tank containing as much as 2,300,000 gallons of molasses ruptured and released a flow that traveled at approximately 35 mph through part of Boston. Ever been eating something and get to the point where you say, “Eh, this is too sweet,” and you put it down? Imagine you can’t put it down and you keep eating it until you die. Gulp…

11) Chim-chim-ch-rooed. Actress Sirkka Sari died when she fell down a chimney into a heating boiler. She mistook the chimney for a balcony. Upon making a literal slip-up, you’re now in hot water. Very hot water. So watch your step.

12) Stubborn starvation. This is the one I’m afraid will befall my wife (I’m the cook in our house). I hope she takes note because Kurt Gödel, the famous logician, had something of a problem that landed him dead. Gödel died of starvation when his wife was hospitalized. He suffered from extreme paranoia and refused to eat food prepared by anyone else. I hope for my wife’s sake, I live long enough to keep her well nourished. Then again, looking over entries 1-11, there are worse ways to go.

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Benjamin Kane Ethridge is the Bram Stoker Award winning author of the novel BLACK & ORANGE (Bad Moon Books 2010) and BOTTLED ABYSS (Redrum Horror, 2012). For his master’s thesis he wrote, “CAUSES OF UNEASE: The Rhetoric of Horror Fiction and Film.” Available in an ivory tower near you. Benjamin lives in Southern California with his wife and two creatures who possess stunning resemblances to human children. When he isn’t writing, reading, videogaming, Benjamin’s defending California’s waterways and sewers from pollution.

Say hi and drop a line at ben@bkethridge.com

By Lillian Cohen-Moore

The Village by the Sea

There are countless works of fiction we hack and tease apart to bring into the games we play every week. I decided to go into that eyes wide open with the Guide. I want you to play in the Village, using whatever system you’re using.

And I want it to scare the fuck out of you.

The Village by the Sea was established in 1850. The Guide is set in a time that’s equivalent to present day. If you strip off the technology, the Village has changed less than it’s willing to admit since its Founding. The old red light district is still there downtown, when you peel away the glitz of modern bars. The same ghosts never rest and the Founding Families are still as dangerous as That Which Sleeps Beneath.

Synesthetic Detective

When a handful of my friends asked me to write a synesthetic detective, I laughed about it and went back to work. But the request—really a dare—stuck with me. I’m synesthetic, but I never include that in fiction. When I started outlining the Guide, I searched its voice, for the best person to tell the story. I got Ashley Hart. Hart is the way I’ve found to let you borrow my senses, by giving you the observations of the increasingly endangered synesthetic detective.

My synesthesia is something I find it difficult to imagine not having; tasting colours and wincing at the texture of certain sounds, describing moods to the people close to me, who speak the language, in flowers and colours and sounds. Hart isn’t a perfect match to my synesthesia—it wouldn’t be fun if she was—but she shares enough common language for me to stretch my wings and include tastes that aren’t wholly mine, but fellow synesthetes I’m close to have shared. Hart’s past is rooted in why the colour of Saturday is black.

Spectacular Support Team

I couldn’t do the Guide alone, though. It’s a bit bigger than a one-woman show.

Richard Dansky, my editor, has worked in fiction and games before I ever started to stretch my wings as a writer. If I wanted to do something that rolled both up as tightly as possible in one project, I couldn’t think of anyone better to turn to than someone who has been a White Wolf developer, a novelist, and done both sides of fiction, writing and riding herd on writers.

Lisa Grabenstetter, my artist, is fucking phenomenal. I’ve worked on projects where I helped monitor contracts with artists, getting them what they needed and communication flowing between all concerned parties. I’ve licensed art on projects. But I’d never done original art with an artist before. I told Lisa what I needed, sent the reference photos, and communication was instant. Examples went back and forth, sketches were merged, and the Seal of the Village was born. I’ve never been so happy to pay for art in my life. That’s why I asked Lisa to stay attached to the Guide and do a number of interior illustrations if we fund.

Sarah Troedson, who is the best GIS Analyst I’ve met, has been there to hold my hand as I tried to describe the Village boundaries, merging ideas and half-formed notions. She’s also kept me from executing geographically impossible ideas or violating the laws of nature. We’re still finalizing some last few details, but I can’t wait to show you the first roadworthy version of the map. The taste of beautiful and isolated is there, and maybe the razor red edge of the threat the Village truly is.

The Village by the Sea is lonely without you, and I’d love to show you around.

We Can’t Stop. This is Book Country.

I met Jennifer in 2007. We were vampires at the time. It’s a perfectly reversible condition: we were playing in a live-action role-playing games.

First impressions! There was a reason for the spikes.

As many LARP friendships start with a chance meeting at an event and grow while bitching in the sign-in line, so did ours. By 2010, Jennifer was a friend of mine. She was also—and still is—someone I looked up to for setting her sights on her goals and taking every difficult step to get to them.

In 2010, she put out an all-call for editorial interns, I applied. She turned me down, which I took in stride. Then she said she had a different position she wanted to talk to me about, I bit my nails and dithered and generally annoyed my roommates.

It turned out that she wanted to offer me a job as her assistant. Two years ago today, I said yes. I did not, as she told me to, take the weekend to think about it. I said yes on a Sunday.

Jenn had me selling books and working a booth at a convention before the end of the month.

Crypticon, 2010. Our zombies are cute!

I met Keffy Kehrli and Nick Mamatas at that con. I was blessed by a serene wandering voodoo lady and met a tiny zombie girl. I met a ton of editors and writers. I sold a lot of books. I introduced Jenn to Lemoncello. She kicked Keffy and Nick and I out of the room at midnight so she could sleep, but told me to keep hanging out. She said it was okay to hang out.

That’s something Jenn does a lot of: tell me things are okay.

I’d work NWC with her at the Apex table in 2011, selling books by day and following her to publishing parties at night.

The fiercest of book sellers!

I’d work a booth with her at GenCon. I’d get teary as I heard her sharp intake of breath and exclamation of joy when she won an ENnie. I’d spend part of the pre-show flitting between my date and trying to get Jenn to breathe. I spent the entirety of GenCon high on caffeine because she’d feed me nixie stix daily to make up for early mornings working the booth.

The student continues to learn from the master. And eat nixie stix.

But what else have I been doing the past two years?

I’ve gone on latte runs. I’ve done data entry. I’ve sat side by side with her in meetings that would result in book deals. I have gleefully used neon pens to address her correspondence. I’m forever imprinted by the FedEx guy as the chick addicted to stationary supplies. I know her drinks and coffee orders. I’ve helped decorate at her surprise birthday party. I’ve taken copious notes and done “in person days” where I’ve sat up my laptop, and played with her cats while sorting paperwork. We’ve had more meals together than I can count, derailed tabletop games by talking about work, and could deforest a small continent if I printed all our e-mails.

When I said I wanted to do slush reading or editing or learn something about publishing, she’d either teach me or find me a mentor. When I found mentors on my own, she encouraged me to learn from those people. In two years, I can trace back so many of my decisions and gains to working for her. I Know My Shit, or so I am told, and Jenn taught me a lot of those lessons.

I could write a book, just off the past few years. I have never been so happy about saying yes to a job offer, and I’m hoping I have twice as many ridiculous stories and photos in another few years. Jenn spoils the crap out of me, and the gifts she’s given me go far beyond stationary. Jenn gave me the surprise birthday party I’d never had, the mentorship I needed, and an introduction to the man I love.

If you have met in journalism, editing, games or writing, since June 6th of 2010, thank Jennifer Brozek. If you met me on twitter? Thank Jenn for convincing me to use and unlock my account.

Thank you, Jenn, for the past two years. I’m excited for the years to come.