Thanksgiving Quick Post

Happy Thanksgiving, all.  I've got pies and stuffing and turkey to make*, so I won't go on for too long on this post**.  I had considered just linking to some past posts, like on worldbuilding holidays or food details.   But I didn't want to be quite that lazy. 

So: state of the writer, thankfulness version.

First and foremost, I'm thankful for by amazing wife, whose love and support have kept me going through this journey.  She's put up with the many, many times I've stayed awake into the wee hours or sequestered myself with headphones on and nose in the computer, accepted the fact that my head is quite literally in some other world half the time, and has kept the fire under my feet when I get distracted.  She's willing for me to not only have giant maps printed, but to have them framed and hung in our studio.  Thanks to her I've got three novels*** in my agent's hands, and more on the way.

Second, my agent.  It's hard to quantify what an agent does for someone, but in the time we've been together, he's been a source of support, as well as inspiration.  He's pushed those three books into being better than they were without him.  He's regularly plugged this very blog.  He's working for me, and he doesn't make a dime from me until we have a sale.  And when we do, you damn well better believe he's earned his percentage. I sure do.

I'm thankful for my health and my energy, and that I've had the ability and freedom to keep working like I have been.  I'm thankful that I've just finished a draft of a short story, and wrote another short play last week.  I'm thankful that I have more ideas than I know what to do with.  Novels are cooking and brewing in this brain, and I have every intention of continuing to crank them out.

I'm thankful for all the people who've given help and advice over the past year and more-- from my mentor and friend Stina Leicht to my worldbuilding brainstorming partner Dan Fawcett to the café manager who doesn't charge me every once in a while because she likes supporting writers.  Too many people to name.  Besides, that's what the acknowledgement page of books are for, right?

All right, time to hit the kitchen, folks.  Have a good one.
___

*- I'm a traditionalist, but that ties to my roots as a worldbuilder and an amateur food historian.  Turkey, potatoes & corn are all native foods to the Americas.  That's important, in my mind.  That's why desert is a chocolate pecan pie. 
**- I swear, half the times I say that, I end up writing twice as much as a normal post.
***- And two trunked ones.  I don't think anything tests the patience of a writer's spouse quite like a trunk novel. 

ArmadilloCon After Report

So now, it's all over.  I'm still not recovered yet, so some of this may be incoherent.

• Friday we first had the Writers' Workshop, which went very well.  From the response I saw amongst the students, it was a good experience for them.  My group of students, in fact, handled the critique session with a lot of grace and professionalism.  I was teaching with Jeremy Lassen from Night Shade Books, who was a great teacher, and Robert Jackson Bennett, who impressed me a lot with his insight.  
• Robert had some of the best comments in the large panel section of the workshop, where he compared writing (especially writing a novel) to building a house in the dark from the inside-out.  And the purpose of good critique is to essentially have someone look at one you've done and say, "Hey, man, you put a toilet in the kitchen"-- because you didn't even realize that was a toilet.  It's an odd metaphor, but I think it's apt.
• I have to say-- one thing I always said when I was in theatre-- half the secret to success is getting the right people, on stage and behind the scenes.  So much of our success is because Stina Leicht did exactly that. She assembled a ridiculously good group of teachers, and brought in volunteers Beth Bugbee and Mandy Lancaster to keep everything running smoother than we could hope for. 
• Katy Stauber organized our critique group, the Bat City Novelocracy, to have dinner at The County Line with Jeremy Lassen.  Meat and beer and great conversation with new and old friends. 
• Saturday I returned with my son in tow.  I had two panels and a reading.  The first panel was on SF/F Mysteries, which was a lot of fun and very insightful for me.  Martha Wells, especially, always gives good panel-- I've thought so ever since I started going to ArmadilloCon- so it was a pleasure and honor to share the table with her for that one.  Even if the moderator did bust on us for whispering about Babylon 5.  Then I had "SF and Fantasy and Live Theatre".  That was fun, because any panel with Mark Finn is going to be.
• I had my reading after Stina had hers (and her book in progress is going to be fabulous if the section she read from is any indication), which was a tough act to follow.  I did my best, reading the opening of Maradaine Constabulary, and on the whole I was pleased with the results.  The crowd reacted well, several people came up to me afterwards telling me they would buy it when it came out.  
• Then the Bat City Novelocracy gathered in the bar for a late-night critique session of Abby's latest work-in-progress.  That went well into the wee hours of Leigh and Vidya and I throwing brainstorming ideas at Abby before we all crashed.  
• You know how I mentioned how I had my son in tow?  Yeah.  Let me tell you, he won ArmadilloCon.  Hands down.  He was astounding. He had his art portfolio, which everyone praised.  John Picacio even took time out of his schedule to give him a fair amount of critique and advice.  And he was going to up to everyone and chatting them up.  He did fantastic.  I was amazed and impressed.
• Sunday was a bit of a haze of weary.  I had two more panels: Importance of Workshops and FutureSex.  FutureSex was especially strange and odd, especially since Mark Finn was present for that one as well.  I'm pretty sure we fell completely away from FutureSex in terms of SF/F literature, and went entirely into the actual future ramifications of robot/holodeck sex and the sexual political ramifications of aliens coming to Earth.

I'm sure there's plenty I missed here.  Like I said, still recovering. 

There's no ArmadilloCon next year, as WorldCon 2013 is in San Antonio.  Looking forward to that.