Worldcon Archives - Annie Bellet

Posts Tagged ‘Worldcon’

Worldcon 2019 Schedule

Coming to Worldcon 2019 in Dublin, Ireland? Me too! I’m happy to talk to peeps and sign things any time so if you see me wandering around, say hi! But I’ll also be on a couple panels and doing a Kaffeeklatsch where you can come ask me whatever and hang out.

Here’s where to find me:

Romancing the undead
Format: Panel
15 Aug 2019, Thursday 11:00 – 11:50, Liffey Room-2 (CCD)

Vampires have long been the undead creatures of choice for paranormal romance, but how about other things that go ‘bump’ in the night? What has led to the popularity of vampires over other undead creatures?

Chelsea Mueller (M), Annie Bellet, Maquel A. Jacob, PRK

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Kaffeeklatsch: Annie Bellet
Format: Kaffeeklatsch
15 Aug 2019, Thursday 15:00 – 15:50, Level 3 Foyer (KK/LB) (CCD)

Annie Bellet

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The Vikings are coming!
Format: Panel
16 Aug 2019, Friday 13:30 – 14:20, Odeon 2 (Point Square Dublin)

Many novels use Viking elements, whether they are retelling myths or basing their society on Norse history. What common tropes appear in Norse fantasy? Is there a conflict between the popular image of the fierce marauder and the historical realities of the period? Does there need to be a factual basis for Viking stories, or are the tropes so strong that historical accuracy would seem somehow ‘less Viking’?

Dr Stephan Grundy, Kari Sperring, Emil Hjörvar Petersen (M), Annie Bellet

Worldcon/Sasquan 2015 Schedule

Hey peeps. You can find me at Worldcon in Spokane this year at the following panels. I’ll also be signing at various times at the Doomed Muse Press booth in the Dealer’s Room (it’ll be hard to miss I think, we have great banners this year), and I might run a pick-me-up session or two of Pathfinder/D20/whatever if I get enough interest.

What Makes an Effective Cover Image?

Thursday 14:00 – 14:45, 302AB (CC)

Of course you can judge a book by its cover. That’s why we have cover artists! They aim to catch our eye amidst the cacophony of other titles on the bookrack, and they can make us step aside and shudder when done oh-so-poorly! But how do they attract our attention and convey the message when the title is ambiguous? When the author is an unknown? When it is a well-known series with recognizable characters? Learn some of the issues and challenges that face our interdisciplinary panelists as they beguile us into opening the book and reading that first sentence…

Mark J. Ferrari (M), Annie Bellet, Stephen Segal, Karen Haber, Lee Moyer

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We Won: How SF, Fantasy and Comics Have Taken Over TV

Thursday 17:00 – 17:45, 300C (CC)

Not very long ago it was hard to find any SF on TV, let alone good SF. But today, every night has multiple shows. Some of the most talked-about shows on TV — Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead — are genre shows, Doctor Who is a worldwide phenomenon, and even shows that started as thriller shows like Person of Interest are clearly SF. Agents of Shield, Grimm, The Flash, Gotham, Orphan Black … the list goes on. And what about the shows that start of promising and collapsed quickly (Twelve Monkeys)? Is the zombie-takeover of TV starting to peter out?

Darlene Marshall (M), David Peterson, Andrea G. Stewart , Annie Bellet

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Kaffee Klatche – Annie Bellet

Friday 14:00 – 14:45, 202A-KK2 (CC)

Join a panelist and up to 9 other fans for a small discussion. Coffee and snacks available for sale on the
2nd floor.

Requires advance sign-up (*my note- there might be swag!)

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Game Mastering 101

Friday 17:00 – 17:45, 303A (CC)

What are the basic tools and approaches for running a game of D&D, or other role-playing game? What are the fun-ruining pitfalls to avoid? And how can practice as a gamemaster help inform writing, reading or other elements of fandom?

Annie Bellet , Brian Campbell , John Welker
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Self-publishing — How to Market Your Work

Saturday 16:00 – 16:45, 303A (CC)

Your manuscript is done, you’ve found your printer, uploaded your files, and your book is done. Now how the heck do get people to buy it? Successful self-published authors share their methods.

Sarina Dorie, Doug Farren, Kameron Hurley, Annie Bellet

What am I Doing?

I’ve been posting very sporadically, I know. And that will probably continue. I have too many things to write now that I’m feeling better and writing again.

I’m going to add a new feature to the blog though, probably as a new page in the side bar, which will list out what I have planned. I’ll cross things off the list as I finish them (probably with a strike-through). These are novels, stories, or novellas that I have outlines and/or cover art for already.

Right now the list looks like this:

Under Fountain (GPC #4)

Dead of Knight (GPC #5)

A Cold and Silent Dawn (GPC #6)

The Gryphonpike Companions (GPC #7)

A Debt of Sorcery (GPC #8)

Shelter from the Storm (GPC #9)

To Steal the Crown (GPC #10)

Casimir Hypogean (Lorian Archives #1)

Beyond Casimir (Lorian Archives #2)

Casimir Rising (Lorian Archives #3)

The Raven King (Chwedl Duology Book 2)

Avarice (Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division #1)

Wrath (Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division #2)

Hunger (Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division #3)

Vainglory (Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division #4)

Fresh Blood (The Hidden War #1)

Pure Blood (The Hidden War #2)

Ancient Blood (The Hidden War #3)

Heart’s Blood (The Hidden War #4)

The City is Still Hungry (Remy Pigeon #1)

Slow Beat Down (Remy Pigeon #2)

Unnamed Steampunk/Circus novella (have cover art)

12-17 Fantasy/SF stories (have cover art for awesome collection and 3 stories already for it)

That’s the “hopefully in the next year and a half or so” list of things to write. See why I’m busy? and that’s just under this pen name. I have other projects under three other names on my list here at home.

Meanwhile, I’ll be at Worldcon this weekend. I’m easy to spot, what with the blue/purple mohawk and all, so if you are there, come say hi or track me down after one of my panels.

Now, back to finishing things. ALL the things.

Worldcon Panel Schedule

To the best of my knowledge, this is my panel schedule:

Sat Sep 1 1:30:pm	Sat Sep 1 3:00:pm	Effective Habits For Aspiring Authors
Columbus CD		A nuts-and-bolts panel discussing work habits for the aspiring professional author. How to organize, prioritize, set goals, avoid distractions, and make valuable networking connections in the industry. The panel will also discuss mistakes to avoid.
Annie Bellet Brad Aiken Brad R. Torgersen David McDonald Lillian Cauldwell

Sat Sep 1 4:30:pm	Sat Sep 1 6:00:pm	Creating Formidable Women Protagonists
Buckingham		How do you portray a formidable women in fiction. How do you make sure she’s still a woman and not just a guy with different plumbing?
Annie Bellet Brenda Cooper Joan Slonczewski Karen Haber Tina Jens

Slog Slog Slog (rant ahead)

I think this is one of the parts of kick-starting a writing career that *isn’t* fun. The novel is grinding along, and the rejections are pouring in for my short work. Everywhere I turn it seems I hear “this was good but…” which as all the how-to books and advice out there will tell you is a very good thing ™ and a sign of progress ™.

What they don’t tell you is that almost good enough starts to get really really depressing after the first couple of near-misses. Yay, my writing is improving. Yay editors are clearly reading the entirety of my stories before they dash off the rejection note. Yay, progress! Head down, keep going. Right? Well, sure. Not much else I can do. But it’s frustrating (and I doubt any established writer would tell me that it wasn’t frustrating for them in the beginning either, or even still is on occasion). And who knows how many years of near-missing I’ll have to muddle through? At Worldcon I met a woman who’s been getting those nice rejections for 11 years without a single sale. Now, I suppose she could have been lying about the nature of the rejections, and to be fair she only sends out five or six stories a year, but still. 11 years. Frankly, I just don’t know if I have that kind of fortitude. I joke about 500 rejections, but can I really hang on without a single sale through 479 more of these? My spreadsheet that tracks what is out where is starting to look like a mess of black and the word Rejected covers the screen.

On the somewhat plus side, I’m nearly done with the novel. It’s slow going, my normal cruising speed has been down to a third because I’m having to carefully pull together two storylines and three POV characters. And here I thought the ending would be a cakewalk to write. Nothing is predictable about this process, is it? Technically I gave myself the deadline of the end of the month, but I’ve got about 15k words left I think. So it’s not going to be done tomorrow. By the weekend though, hopefully. Then I can put it aside and worry about something else for a while. (And maybe, by the time I’m done I’ll know about my WotF entry? Maybe… though I suppose at this stage no news could be good news.)

Don’t worry. I haven’t been rejected to death yet. I promised myself ten novels and ten years. Will I be a ranting crazy person or a catatonic ball by the end? Perhaps. Or I might be a selling writer.

Only one way to be the latter: Finish this damn novel.

Writing Progress Report and Lists!

Because we know how much the internet loves lists. Sorry, no bullets.

First, got another nice rejection. I entered into my tracking sheet and then for fun counted up the number of rejections and looked at how many are form and how many came with a note. I have 15 rejections so far for short stories. 6 are form letter, 1 is a negative comment, and 8 are ‘positive’ rejections (good writing, well received, send more, that sort of comment). So the positive rejections out number the negative or form letter ones. Apparently this is a good thing and a sign of tremendous progress. I’m just keeping my head down and figuring out where to send what next. 15 down, 485 rejections left to go!

On to the lists!

Things in progress:

Chwedl: 61,000 words so far, but I’ve hit a snag since I realized I needed to go back and add an entire thread of motivation to make the actions of my main char in the events ahead far more plausible. I aim to have the draft of this done by mid September.

Casimir Hypogean: rewrite is sitting at about 9k I think. This is what I’ll get to before the end of this year. I aim to write the two sequels next year as soon as I’m done with the rewrite. I thought long and hard about bothering to write sequels to an unsold book (conventional wisdom says don’t!), but I think I’m going to ignore that wisdom this time. I’m unpublished, which means I don’t exactly have deadlines on other things at the moment, plus given an optimistic publishing time-frame, say this book was picked up for publication and then they wanted the sequels written. It could be anywhere from 3-6 years from finishing the first before I’d even begin a sequel. That’s too long for me, right now. I have the story and world firmly in mind and while the first book works fine as a stand-alone, the second two are definitely tied together and I want them to work well as a unit. Even if I spend another year writing these three books, I’ll still have learned something about writing (and writing a series) whether they sell or not. So that’s my justification.

Steampunk detective novel: started doing some research for the setting of the first one. It’ll likely be a year before I start writing it, but I do love me some research.

Romance novel that has hijacked my brains: I might start this just to see where it goes. Series romance is only 70k words generally, so maybe I can tinker with it in my “spare” writing time. I certainly love to read romances, so maybe I’ll try writing one. This one involves a girl with a beautiful singing voice and a violent past and of course a handsome composer/violinist, an opera house, and dark secrets. (No masked men living underneath the opera house, sorry…)

Werewolves in Space: now a novella! I had the idea at Worldcon to turn this into a novella sort of prequel to a later novel. I’ve actually cut the werewolf and love story from the plot. I wasn’t sure this novel ever had enough plot to really sustain 100k words, so I think this will be a good compromise. Now I just have to keep it under 17k words.

Short stories: I have so many percolating in my brains at the moment, I’m going to have to write one a week just to clear my plate. I’m hoping I can revive Monday Short Story Day starting next Monday. Sampling of stories includes: Rusalka story, ‘glitter kitten’, ‘shrub daughter’, ‘I, vermin’, jellyfish in space, ‘sparks’, time traveling thief, ‘Tesla’s Daughter’, world as we know it ends (telemarketer) story, ‘The insanity of Mr Leads’, ‘Maskmaker’, and Bloodgood’s cat origin mystery story. My notes make more sense than this list, somewhat.

On the plus side, I now have 9 short stories out making the rounds, which isn’t bad considering back in Feb when I started I only had two.

Time to prioritize and write like a madwoman. It’s funny, before Worldcon I never considered myself that prolific, but I think I’m right in the middle as far as I can tell from the sampling I got there about other people’s work habits. The last six weeks have been a total momentum killer, however. Between Worldcon, Flu, Alaska, and moving, I’ve gotten almost nothing done (1 short story written, 2 revised, only about half a chapter on Chwedl). Time to get back in the habit of the everyday and get some projects finished. I’m giving myself a mini-deadline on the Werewolves in Space novella because I’d like to have it done in time for this quarter of WoTF contest.

So that’s the report for August 2009. We’ll see where I’m at in December or there abouts.

Worldcon Report (of a sort)

and then I’m getting back to writing about writing, I swear *grin*

I got home from Worldcon with the flu, so I’ve been medicated out of my head and curled up with a fever and racking cough this whole last week. It has especially sucked because one of the good things to come out of Worldcon was that I came home with ideas leaping out of everywhere for all of my current projects and some totally new ones. I feel like I just lost a week of my life, thanks flu!

One of the things I meant to do right when I got home was give a more in-depth report on Worldcon. But there are con reports out there and it’s been a week anyway, so I’m just going to mention a few thoughts and highlights.

The workshop was well-run and while I won’t say it was a bucket of fun, I found it informative and helpful. This was the third time I’ve workshopped Space Bones (and the third form the story has been in), and this workshop liked it the least over all, though I’ve read through comments on the drafts that were handed to me and there are some nice comments that no one bothered to say aloud in the workshop, which is ok but did give the impression that it was universally panned when it wasn’t exactly. However, I think that this story has reached the point where I need to shelve it or rip its guts out and try something a little different. I know the story I’m trying to tell. I read over the comments and my notes and I see that the story I want to tell is getting lost somewhere in this version. I like this story too much to give up on it, and besides, it got a very near miss with one editor, so it can’t be that far off something *someone* would like to read. I have some ideas on how to change/fix it, so we’ll see if I can make it work better. I found the level of crit in the workshop on par with Baen’s, blunt but understandable/helpful on a whole. Plus it was good to get to talk to people and meet them without having to introduce myself to strangers. Context is a good thing.

Another highlight of the con was meeting a bunch of local Portland writers. A bit funny that I haven’t met a single local writer until I went thousands of miles away, but oh well, I’d have to probably leave my house and put up with that whole introducing myself to strangers thing more often. I have new blogs to follow and hopefully a few local connections for people to chat about writing (or whatever) with. I also connected with some of the not-local to me writers whose blogs I follow, though that involved a fair bit of stranger talking to, but I held it together, mostly (I think a couple people caught me on the zomg 1am oversocialized talky edge of things, heh…sorry).

Some of the most fun panels I went to were the Odyssey, Clarion, and Anti-workshop panels. I mention them here because in some ways I’m glad I didn’t get into CW this year (sniff). I’m much better informed now about what the different workshops entail and what might be the best fit for me. The Odyssey grads were especially helpful in this, and I think it’s moved to the top of my list for next year (pending what the instructor list for Clarion SD looks like, of course…). Not that I won’t apply to all three, but I’m thinking of seeing if I can get early acceptance to Odyssey since they do that. Of course, after my sound rejection from CW, who knows if I’ll get into anything next year, but I’ve been working my ass off to try to improve and getting the “almosts” to prove it. Hope and Spring and all that. Oh, funny thing about the Anti-workshop panel and the Clarions panel, they almost ended up being opposites. The Clarion grads all admonished people to be sure they knew what they were getting themselves into, while the anti-workshop (really, the hey you can do it without a workshop panel) ended up agreeing that it can be really helpful. Go figure.

This leads up to the strongest message I took away from Worldcon after listening to countless professional writers and editors. Everyone gets there on their own path. No ones methods look the same, no one followed some careful formula for success (well, other than work hard and write a good story), no path to publication or agent or finished drafts look the same. Which was comforting, because sometimes I feel like I’m diving in face first and hoping thats water down there.

Over all, I’m glad I went (flu notwithstanding). Now, back to real life. I need to revise my list of things to do and add in the new ideas/plans. It’s about time for another “things to get written” post, so I’ll work on that for sometime this week. First, however, I need to reread a few chapters of Chwedl so I know what I was thinking when I quit (has it really been a month since I worked on it? Eek. Momentum loss, anyone?) and then start the writing. And maybe do something with the stack of hotel stationary I scribbled all over in Montreal.

Last Post til Worldcon!

Well, until after Worldcon really, since I’m not bringing a laptop and most likely won’t be checking the net while I’m there.

Finally got a response about Delilah. Great response short of a sale, sigh. They held the story for over 5 months, but in the end decided that due entirely to the biblical retelling nature of the story they had no spot for it. Apparently they loved it otherwise though and want to see something else. *rubs hands together* Fine! Something else you say? I has something else for you…

Well, I’ll have something else for them after Worldcon. I’m beyond oh god oh god I’m full of lame panic and into the “I hope all those reservations I made back in Jan still are good” and “where did I put that thing I totally need for the trip” panic. I made a list, and now I can’t find my list. I’m made of organized, really.

If anyone wants to catch up with me at Worldcon, I’ll be the terrified looking one with the short blue and orange hair.

I’ll be taking notes while I’m there and hopefully posting the funny, strange, or useful stuff here afterwards.

Worse? or… Better?

Got my workshop assigment for Worldcon. (Yes, I’m obsessing… this is me, remember?). The people leading it are freakin awesome and people I’d love to meet. The other two people in it with me? Also awesome, which I was able to glean via google. Thank you google for making me even more insecure. Both of the people with me are published already. On the one hand, I can’t wait to get their stories because I’m betting the stories, even in draft form, will be pretty darn good.

On the other hand, and it’s a big hand, I’m somewhat intimidated. I realize it’s just a workshop, but this whole damn con is in some ways my introduction to the spec lit “scene” so to speak. I’m freakin new to this whole writing as community thing. I’ve taken huge steps in the last year. Joining OWW was a big step (strangers! seeing my writing! oh noes!). Getting into an MFA program was a huge step (professors! seeing my writing! oh noes) (dropping out was another step, though Iv’e decided to commute that to a sentence of a year off to think about things and look at options). Starting to actually send things out on submission was the biggest step of all (editors! seeing my writing! oh n- you get the idea).

And now going to Worldcon. I got my feet wet at NorWescon (pro writers! seeing my writing! oh noes!) and had a blast. I know objectively that I’ll be fine. I’m looking forward to putting faces to names and now that I’ve gone over the huge programming schedule, there are definitely interesting panels to go to. I’ll have way too much to cram in, I’m sure.

And the workshop. I wonder if I made a mistake subbing a story I really love that’s on version 9 or so. It’s gotten a few form rejections and a couple positive rejections, but still, it’s just rejected at this point. I subbed it because I’d like to hear not only how to improve it but really I’m hoping to understand why it isn’t quite hitting the editorial spot. But man, between the starry list of workshop leaders and the two other already publishing workshop-ees, I’m intimidated. I know objectively that I’m nowhere near the number of rejections where I should start wondering if it’s me/the writing, but subjectively I have high standards for myself that so far I’m not meeting. I’ve watched what happens sometimes in workshops to the worst story in the room, so to speak. It often isn’t pretty. Not that I fear people being mean, I doubt they would be. But as an introduction to people I might want at least a professional relationship with, well, being the worst writer in the room… it’s scary.

I just keep returning to the W.S. Merwin poem “Berryman”. “You can’t ever be sure”. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be any good at all. But I’ll keep trying.