Get a free story when you subscribe
Life has been busy, busy, busy, but good.
Writing
I’ve finished Rogue Academy: Iron Dawn, polish-edited it, and turned it in. I feel accomplished and actually pretty good about the manuscript. Of course, now I’m in that “I finished a novel, now what?” flail. It’s not that I don’t have stuff to work on. I do. It’s the fact that it feels like I’m doing “procrastination work” – which is what writing flash fiction, editing, and outlining is while I’m novel drafting. I’ll shake my brain out soon enough.
What am I working on now?
What does my brain want to work on? After a call with my agent, a far future oceanic novella that I’ve been noodling over for about a year now. It might become a good Wit’n’Word writing group project.
Conventions
August – I have two major conventions coming up in August: Gen Con and WorldCon. I am a dealer at both and a panelist at WorldCon. I’ll find out this week if I have any panel things to do for Cat Labs at Gen Con. I’ve got my house/cat sitters in place. I’ve started my plans for packing. Gen Con will be more complex than WorldCon, but all of it is doable.
September – I’m participating in the North Coast Redwoods Writers’ Conference. I’ll be reading Friday night, 21 Sep, and teaching two workshops on Saturday, 22 Sep.
Household Stuff
Back patio – Our house is 30+ years old. We’re the second owners. We’re slowly making it look less like a 30+ year old house. The latest project is replacing the back red-brick patio with pretty grey paver stones. The Husband did most of the work. It’s involved and still ongoing. There’ll be a blog post about it soon. It’s not done because it includes replacing the deck stairs on the patio side of things.
Eating from the pantry – Twice a year, the Husband and I do what we call “eating from the pantry.” We don’t eat out. We don’t grocery shop except for fresh veggies and milk. We eat from what we have in the pantry and the deep freeze for the full month as a way of cleaning out the older / soon-to-expire dry goods. It’s also a way to save money. Of course, this means we end up with some strange meals by the end of the month. Bubble-and-Squeak for the win!
Kitties
All four of them are fat and happy. I’m sure you can see that from my Twitter and Instagram. Feel free to join us there.
Adventure! – What happens when Seanan McGuire asks if you want to go on a “little adventure.” I give you: The Dollhouse. Too good not to share.
Announcement – EGM on hiatus. It was a good run but life has a way of turning the corner for you. We don’t know when or how we’ll be back—yet—but we will be back.
Blog – Live Your Art Daily. This is one of those blogs posts I think more authors junior in their careers should read.
Education – Writing Speculative Fiction: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror: Teacher’s Edition. Some of my writing was used as an example in this textbook. I thought the homeschoolers out there might be interested.
Podcasts – I’ve been listening to a lot of serial fiction podcasts lately. Part research, part for the love of serial fiction, part because it’s something to listen do while I’m working on a mindless task. I’d like to recommend these podcasts: The Black Tapes, Alice Isn’t Dead, Slumberland, and Rabbits.
Pharaoh on an adventure!
Crypticon Seattle has come and gone. We did well enough in the sales department. We’ll probably be back next year—timing of the convention and other conventions willing.
It occurs to me that I should probably mark down somewhere all the conventions I’ve been a Guest of Honor at. I no longer remember the years. I mostly remember all the conventions. I should probably look that up now.
30 minutes later, I think I have the list. If you remember one that I don’t remember, please let me know.
• BayCon 2009 – Toastmaster (San Jose, CA)
• GothCon 2013 – Guest of Honor (Gothenburg, Sweden)
• Context 2014 – Featured Presenter (Ohio)
• LepreCon 2015 – Guest of Honor (Phoenix, AZ)
• Gen Con 2015 – Industry Insider Featured Guest (Indianapolis, ID)
• Gamehole Con 2015 – Special Guest (Madison, WI)
• OrcaCon 2016 – Guest of Honor (Everett, WA)
• Radcon 2016 – Guest of Honor (Pasco, WA)
• Capitol Indie Book Con 2016 – Featured Author (Olympia, WA)
• Tracon 2016 – Guest of Honor (Tampere, Finland)
The slow paring down of stuff continues apace. I move stuff to donate out of my overstuffed office and into the cat/exercise room. Currently, there’s a huge mound of stuff. I think once a month, we get out to donate it to Saint Vincent’s.
Thinking of paring down stuff, I’ve come to a realization on some of my knick-knacks. I’m keeping them because someone 10 years ago gave them to me. It’s an obligation. Not a joy. I think I’m going to pull down all the knick-knacks I no longer love, put them on the dining room table, and invite my friends over to pick out what they want. The rest will be donated or sold if our neighborhood ever gets organized enough to do the neighborhood garage sale.
Thinking of the neighborhood. Can I just say that I love that my neighborhood has a close FB page? It allows us to post about rescued pets, lost keys, found items, mention stuff we’ve seen, and warn each other of danger.
Thinking of danger… I’m getting better at the “not panicking, planning” thing. One of my projects dropped a bombshell on me and it was a doozy. However, as one of the other people involved said, “We can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” with this. I was in “fix it” mode for most of yesterday. It’s a good thing I have the ability to know who might have an answer if I don’t have it.
Thinking of fixing things, I have a 5.5 lb cat insisting it is time to play and that is the only answer she cares about. Have a cat picture. Leeloo and Pharaoh were very glad I was home from the convention.
A lot of people—including me—are experiencing a wide variety of distressing emotions in regards to what’s going to on right now in the world. Sometimes, it’s hard to create when the world feels like it’s on the brink of a disaster there’s no turning back from. What good is a short story or a piece of art in the face of that?
Everything. Absolutely everything.
In-between the real life horror of politics, protests, cruel laws, crueler enforcement of those edicts, and numerous other terrible things, those who fight need a space to go to recharge, a respite, a safe fictional place or a piece of beauty to remind them what they are fighting for.
Still, it’s hard to reach for the life-saving, life-affirming creative work. This is why self care for the creative is so important. Here are a couple of suggestions to add into your daily life.
UNPLUG
Daily or at least weekly, schedule time to get away from the 24/7 news. Unplug from the internet. Whatever is happening will still be happening when you get back. I choose at least 2 hours away every other day. Being online is part of my job, but I don’t need to be connected all the time. If it is an emergency, those who need it have my phone number.
COMFORT ACTIVITY
Enjoy an activity you know you like. Watch reruns of a favorite TV show or movie. Listen to music. Listen to an audiobook. Crochet or knit. Read comfort books and comics. Cook a grand meal for one or many. Meditate. Do something you know you enjoy. Let yourself get lost in it. Forget about the world and its troubles as much as you can for as long as you can. It will be there with you get back. Dedicate this time to you. Bob Ross and I are becoming very good friends again.
MOVE
I’m not telling you to exercise—though exercise is a good thing to do. But walk away from your desk, your computer, your phone (turn your phone off if you can’t stand to leave it behind). Window shop at the mall or the bookstore. Go to the lake and watch the waves for a while. Visit that nearby museum that tourists always go to, but you’ve never visited. Get out of the physical space you are usually in. This helps your mindset. Even if it’s just a walk around the block or to pace the stairwells in your office building. For me, I play Ingress and PokemonGO.
These are all coping mechanisms that I use. Creatives have deadlines and decisions to make that don’t go away. Writing, painting, carving… creating… while in the midst of turbulent times can be the hardest thing to do, but that is when the world needs us most.
Finally, after you have taken some time to care for yourself, you can ENGAGE with the world again. Volunteer. Protest. Call your representatives. Donate to the cause. Do as much or as little as you are able to. Remember, your creative work may be the thing that recharges another so that they may also create while working towards their political and social goals.
Cat pictures always help.
I’m working on revisions for the Sekrit Project Alex extras and the final tie-in story for 2016. They both have fiddly bits to get correct. So, here’s a Bubble & Squeek for you.
All I want for my Birthday (and Christmas for that matter). Please consider buying one of my books for yourself or as a gift for someone else. It helps keep my cats in kibble and me working on the fiction you know and love.
Article: On the Qwillery – The Perfect Line in the Sand on why zombies are the perfect kind of monster and why we used them so much.
ebook Release: The kindle version of THE LAST DAYS OF SALTON ACADEMY is live! Here is the Barnes and Noble link.
Interview: On Wag the Fox focused around THE LAST DAYS OF SALTON ACADEMY and YA fiction.
Interview: On Ginger Nuts of Horror. This was one long, meaty interview filled with intriguing questions I’ve never had to answer before.
Release: TEMPEST, All-New Tales of Valdemar. I’ve got my second story of Hadara and Kitha in here. This is the fourth Valdemar anthology I’ve written for. I’m still pinching myself at how lucky I am I get to play in Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar world.
Review: Ginger Nuts of Horror reviewed THE LAST DAYS OF SALTON ACADEMY – It doesn’t look like the reviewer liked it very much. But they are correct in saying the book was written for a different age group. (I much prefer these kinds of reviews. 🙂 )
And a picture of Mena being oh-so-dignified. I love this picture of her.
Still elbow deep in the current novel. About 2/3rds of the way through. So, here’s a Bubble & Squeek for you. Plus a cat picture. Hope all is well with you.
Release: Pre-order The Last Days of Salton Academy – According to Amazon and IPG’s schedule, the book will be out on 25 Oct 2016. Yes, there will be an ebook version, too. I will be reading with Mira Grant from this book on November 17th at the university bookstore. It will be an evening of zombie goodness!
Review: New review of Chicks Dig Gaming – I’m pretty happy with this review. It’s a good one.
Review: Praise for the Karen Wilson Chronicles – It’s always good to hear when someone likes the books you’ve written. They take so much time to write and to get right. 🙂
SFWA: SFWA Speakers Bureau – If you’re looking for a speaker on something in your local area, the SFWA Speaker’s Bureau is a good place to start. Here’s my profile.
And, as promised… kitties!
Believe it or not, I’ve kinda laid low this past week… so more Bubble & Squeek. A lot of reading for Speculate! getting caught up on that. Blog posts. Mostly convention prep for Worldcon and Tracon. Still, it’s been exciting. I officially signed the contract for Sekrit Project Alex (complete with NDA, thus the name), and had agent Cherry Weiner accept one of my novels for representation. Right now, I’m trying not to freak out over all the forthcoming travel. We’ve got everything in place, including house/cat sitter, neighbors warned, etc… And then, after Worldcon, I’m going to see two countries I’ve never seen before. It’s going to be awesome.
Anthology: Maximum Velocity: The Best of the Full-Throttle Space Tales. A project I had going on in the background. Kinda of excited about this one. I like WordFire Press.
Article: Here is my Shadowrun tarot card, The Shadows, for the Shadowrun anthology Drawing Destiny, and how I used it.
Article: Why Writers Make Incredible Friends. A fun article I just had to share.
Article: I was the author spotlight on MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape. It was unexpected and cool.
SFWA: In the second SFWA Chat Hour I participated it, I talk about how to hand sell your books to convention attendees. That all said, there is more to this. There are some attendees who do not want to talk to you. Watch their body language. If they won’t make eye contact, leave them be or ask them if they’d like to hear about their books.
WorldCon: I will be at Worldcon/MidAmeriCon II. Come say hello. There is a no-shyness zone around me. I’m happy to chat with you. Here’s my schedule:
The largest news is that I am now represented by Cherry Weiner. It’s been an exciting couple of weeks.
Blogging while writing a novel is boring from the outside. My head is filled with the wonderful and horrible things I’ve done, am doing, plan to do to my character. It’s also filled with the myriad of things I need to figure out or research to get the novel done. All I can show for it is “Wrote 1400 words today. Feel good about them.” Or “Got 600 words in today. It was like pulling teeth.”
No matter what I’m doing, half my mind is with my novel. My husband and close friends are used to me tangenting in a question that is related to my novel or breaking off to talk about something that’s just happened in the novel or talking about some research I just did and discovered something new that affects the novel.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, I don’t have anything to talk about except… I’m writing NEVER LET ME DIE and I’m feeling pretty good about it now. I guess my advice is to not even try to be interesting.
Here. Have some kitty pictures.
Or how I became a six cat household on Christmas Eve.
For the last seven weeks, I’ve been keeping an eye on a pair of singapuras put up on RescueMe.org. A pair of girls had been willed to a doctor who already had pets. They tried for seven weeks to integrate the kitties and it didn’t work. All the back and forth ended up with an email yesterday that came down to, “it’s not working, will you come get them tonight?”
I emailed Jeff and asked if he was willing. He was. (My hero!) And suddenly, we had Operation Rescue Singas, the cutest escort mission ever. We drove 540 miles roundtrip in about 11.5 hours (holiday traffic) to pick these little loves up. The story got a little weirder. (IE: The deceased woman’s husband is still alive. He didn’t even know the kitties names. I need to contact him for any information on the breeder, shots, paperwork, etc… HIS contact info is forthcoming.)
So, currently, Talia and Lyta are temporarily housed in the cat room in full airlock mode—much to the disgruntlement of the current four living here. And they such little lovebugs. Talia is super friendly and loving and outgoing. Lyta is very shy but does cuddle and purr.
Now, this six cat household is not a permanent thing…unless it is. There is a couple in Korea from the Singapura list that will be adopting them. We are in contact and they are working out a courier arrangement to get them to Korea. I hope it works out. If it doesn’t, Plan B—you know me, I’m a planner—involves a couple of other people on the Singapura FB list. Plan C is that Jeff and I keep them. We both know that’s a possibility and are prepared for it.
Today they went to the vet. No feline leukemia or feline aids. Yay! No fleas. Yay! No microchips. Boo! Talia has a watery eye but it’s healthy. Yay! Vet bill we didn’t expect. Boo! Generous donations from the Singapura FB list covers a lot of it. Yay!
So, the kitties are happily ensconced in the cat room. My cats are pissed. But all is well in the world. Merry Cat Christmas to one and all.
This is what the singas traveled in. Plus a furry bed. No tight carriers for this escort mission.
Lyta on the left. Talia on the right.
Even shy Lyta can’t resist the cuddles of the Husband.
Talia refuses to stay still except for cuddles…briefly.
The Cat Airlock and only one of the four cats eyeing it. Yes. Pharaoh is in a cone. He keeps scratching at his eye.
“Okay. That was fun. You guys enjoy game night. I need to get back to work if I want to play Pathfinder on Sunday.” -Me, 8:30pm on a Friday night
Have some kitties.
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 multiple Hugo Awards. 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.
