Worldcon is over, and people are now returning to their lives. I've got a day and a half here to enjoy Seattle, but the funny thing is, right now I'm in the same hotel bar where the above die-hards were closing out Worldcon last night - it's got a great high-top table at the window, which is great for writing.
Which I need to do, after reading more of Dwight Swain's Techniques of the Selling Writer over breakfast. You'd think I'd have finished this book given that I lecture on Swain, but I got introduced to him through his audio lectures, so the lead up to my Worldcon talk was my first time to go through this book cover to cover, and even then I focused on the scene-and-sequel stuff that I was discussing. His discussion of openings - focusing on where, what's going on, and to whom, with what conflict, expressed with showing through immediate action - got my brain thinking about how to rework the opening of WATCHTOWER OF DESTINY. My room's being cleaned, so I decided to sit down and write my notes on these ideas right now.
Even though I'm a night owl, sometimes it's good to start the day with food for body and mind.
It can inspire you.
-the Centaur
Pictured: The Fountain bar last night, the Fountain bar this morning, and yet another breakfast at Alder and Ash - smoked salmon omelet, dry toast and fresh fruit.
So! Worldcon 2025 is at an end! And what a wild blast it was. I enjoyed the previous Worldcon I attended in San Jose, but I wasn't really prepared to take advantage of it. This year, I couldn't swing a sonic screwdriver without bapping a friend or colleague, or without making a new business or academic contact. I credit at least some of that to the prepwork that I and the Thinking Ink Press team did, and at least some of it to having the Clockwork Alchemy / Milford Workshop table as a "home base" to go back to.
After the Hugos, the Fountain bar at the Sheraton was so packed they couldn't even take my order before close, but I wanted to get more writing done, and I was just up the street last year for CVPR 2024, so I remembered the Elephant and Castle bar, right up the street, open until 2. I got a goodly chunk of THE WATCHTOWER OF DESTINY done right here in the table in the center, until roughly 1am.
BUT! Even as a night owl, I understand the value of early to bed, early to rise, and to convince myself to do that, I try to get up for a hearty breakfast. I don't always make it, but I made it today. The TIP gang has been keeping tabs of each other on Signal, and so my colleague Liza Olmsted and I realized we were at the same restaurant, got together (as I was starting my breakfast and she was finishing hers) and during our discussions came up with the idea for a brand new anthology! Woohoo.
The simple expedient of bringing Clockwork Edgar (Sandra's messenger raven) attracted a lot of people to the Clockwork Alchemy table, and the backstory Sandra had built around Edgar's messenger bag (complete with spare gear, compass, message and a few other items) was very entertaining.
After a neurodivergence talk at noon, which was very productive for me and Liza, I returned to the show floor to close up and found that we had two more hours before close due to a typo in an email. So, I had one last chance to attend a talk by my new friend Dr. Paul Price, who lectured on "exponential plots" (think Goku getting more and more powerful in Dragon Ball Z) with a strongly evidence-based lecture built on a close read of old space opera.
Paul showed that cyclical (episodic) plots work well with no-growth (think Sherlock Holmes versus case of the week) or slow-growth plots (think a slowly learning protagonist) but can get out of hand if a ridiculous enemy attacks every week with a similarly ridiculous growth in the protagonist's power - nevertheless, if you build in humanizing elements from the start, it can still work.
The coolest thing in his lecture was his critique of gender roles in the old space operas - I don't remember the precise numbers, but the gist was, in an entire space opera series by John Campbell, there were 25 instances of the pronoun "she" - but 18 of those referred to a ship, 6 to love interests, and the remaining was a stenographer who was alien, but was nevertheless depicted in a stereotypical gender role.
After that, we did close, and even as we did so, I kept on making contacts, meeting people, and so on. Even trying to buy a last-minute gift from a friend ended up with a vendor taking my card and inquiring about my writing as they were a voracious reader and were interested in my series.
Paul and I, who just met, nevertheless found many similarities in our research styles, and got together tonight to discuss next steps on using his data in our corpus or our code to analyze his data. A laser-guided question from an audience member at my talk got me thinking about DEI issues with our corpus, and Paul's "usages of the pronoun she" analysis sounds like a perfect candidate for implementation by an LLM.
On the way back, we had an interesting conversation about religion, mortality, transhumanism, the weird giant statue we saw in front of an art museum, and the crowd of filkers still filking away in the hotel when we finally got back.
I ended up retiring to the hotel bar - which I interpreted as the right thing to do because on my way down there I ran into someone I had wanted to run into at the con but had only passed and waved. We had a great conversation, and I got a lot of work done at the hotel bar before closing it up.
On that note, that's a wrap for Worldcon 2025. I may have more to say about it ... but it's gonna have to be tomorrow.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Me at the photo booth, the courtyard of Elephant and Castle, fresh fruit for breakfast, Edgar the clockwork raven, Paul giving his talk at the academic track, packing up our booth at the con, a giant statue on the street, a giant crowd of filkers, and me and a giant tray of oysters - all rendered with my "make it look like an illustration" series of Photoshop filters.
Well, we made it through WorldCon Day 4! My talk apparently went well, as I was mobbed when it was over and a half-dozen people actually dropped by the poster session - some of them, interested in serious academic followup! And one guy said, "Your talk was the fastest thirty minutes of my life. I loved it."
Mission accomplished!
The Clockwork Alchemy contingent finally arrived in force, so we at last had a proper table setup!
So I got to head out to see the show floor, which was pretty amazing! There was a Star Trek Jack Skellington, holding what appears to be either a Babylon 5 Shadow Ship or a modified Klingon batleth sword.
There were too many cool things for this post, but, I always have time for ... robots!
Sonic screwdrivers!
Wand duels!
Our books continuing to sell! (The stack isn't shorter, but we've been replenishing it)
Later that night I attended the Hugo ceremony, which was pretty awesome, with singing by Nisi Shawl that is still echoing in my head because they did it as a "bit" between the different presentations ("Down, down, down the Hugo road ...) and a really funny video bit from the actual Hugo Best Novel winner.
Afterwards, some of the award winners came to the Fountain bar in the Sheraton for a victory lap!
I also got to see a lot of friends at the con. All in all, a pretty good day!
-the Centaur
Pictured: The fan tables, me at my poster, Sandra Forrer talking to a steampunk fan, our table, the giant Jack Skellington in a Next Generation uniform, a youth robot team, a sonic screwdriver collection, a LARP wand duel, the Neurodiversiverse at the Liminal Fiction table, the Hugos, and the hotel afterparty.
Not a lot of pictures from today proper because our Friday volunteer had an unexpectedly rough trip in, and I'm again stuck at the Clockwork Alchemy / Milford Workshop table:
But the costumes have been great! I've seen a fair bit of Oz this year ...
Some Star Trek / Steampunk riffs:
And whatever these folks sitting at the far table are:
My buddy RM Ambrose gave a good talk on framework for discussing violence and nonviolence in fiction:
I have even finished a rough cut of Saturday's presentation, and despite the fact that it is +110 plus slides, because many of my slides are sequences that add elements to existing slides, there are only like 30-40 content slides, and I was consistently able to get through it in ~20 minutes, well under time.
Don't you think he looks a little tired?
-the Centaur
Pictured: The WorldCon Bar, our table, various costumes, Ralph's talk, my slides, and the Centaur, sleepy.
Day Two of Worldcon! And The Neurodiversiverse is already selling out at Liminal Fiction! (Apparently someone mentioned it at a panel!) But if you want forty-plus hopeful, empowering own-voices stories of neurodivergent people encountering aliens, conveniently packaged with poetry and art in an award-winning anthology, please drop by their booth and buy up the rest of their stock of the NDV!
We still don't have a fully staffed table as some people couldn't make it to the con (one, yesterday, held up when their train stopped while the police resolved an active shooter situation (!)). But I am getting work done on my presentation for Saturday (and on my blogging!)
Some great costumes and t-shirts this year, even though traffic near the CA/Milford booth is a bit thin.
I particularly liked this Oz guardsman!
Also met many authors and friends of authors I know. And, at breakfast at Alder and Ash this morning, I got in line at the host stand, only for the guy in front of me to step aside and say "Sorry! Still waiting for my party to arrive." I was seated promptly ... and then, moments later, the guy saw the woman sitting at the table next to me and joined her, saying "You were seated at the only table I couldn't see from the door. THEN this random dude starts mentioning that The Shattering Peace was doing well and discussing panels, and a quick glance confirmed it was John Scalzi, my favorite blogger, who apparently also writes books or something, which some of you may have heard of, discussing publishing with someone in the industry.
I let them eat, and finished my delicious breakfast so I could staff the table.
-the Centaur
Pictured: NDV at the Liminal Fiction booth, the booth itself, the view from the CA/Milford table, a t-shirt, an Oz guardian costume, and breakfast at Alder and Ash (with John Scalzi just outside the frame to the right).
Hey folks! I'll be attending WorldCon as part of the Academic Track! My presentation is on "The Cognitive Science of Scenes and Sequels" - an exploration of the real science behind writing teacher Dwight Swain's theory that you should write stories in action scenes followed by reaction sequels - and will be held Saturday, August 16th, at 11am, with a poster session in the Paramount Lounge from 12-1:
Many of my colleagues will also be there - Liza Olmsted and Betsy Miller of Thinking Ink, and our Neurodiversiverse authors Clara Ward (author of Be the Sea) and Cat Rambo (author of You Sexy Thing). Fellow Taos Toolbox alumnus RM Ambrose, editor of Vital: The Future of Healthcare will also be on a panel.
I'm working on a paper on "The Cognitive Science of Scenes and Sequels" with my friend Kenny Moorman. We're attempting to harmonize "scenes and sequels" from professional writing craft with the findings of the cognitive science of story understanding ... and I'm presenting it at WorldCon in a little over a week.
It's been slow going due to the amount of research involved---at least seven narrative disciplines affect our work, and relevant papers and projects go back fifty years---not to mention my periodic struggles with writer's block whenever I switch projects (as two other writing deadlines are overlapping this one).
SO! I've been working on the paper a lot of late, scribbling on printouts over coffee, then editing over dinner, staying up late at night to harmonize details. And I was plugging away at the "WC:AD" (WorldCon ACademic) paper when I hit a new section my collaborator had added on "the Lorentzian Argument."
Huh, I thought, I've been working on general relativity, where Lorentzian metrics show up; I wonder if this is the same Lorentz? Surely, I thought, I could take a stab at the section. Then I saw Kenny had moved the section on "Implications for the Transgender Narrative" to just after "The Lorentzian Argument."
He'd done so on purpose. There were notes there. There was a deep connection between them.
I realized there was no way I could fill out this section; I had to move on.
Then I woke up.
-Anthony
Pictured: Working on WC:AD at Monterey by the Mall. I wonder if the strength of the margarita has any effect on the bizarreness of the dreams?
P.S. In case it wasn't clear, our paper doesn't have implications for the transgender narrative, nor is there a Lorentzian argument in narrative theory---at least, that I am aware of. My brain made it all up probably because I'm also studying general relativity and transgender issues in the background for other projects.
Whew! What a few months it's been. I've been so busy I haven't even had time to publicize some of the stuff that I'd naturally use this blog for (like the Embodied AI Workshop). But, we're through most of that now. And the most important thing is completing my 42nd successful Nanowrimo challenge!
The Nanowrimo organization imploded this year, but the challenges roll on - and for me, this year, it was working out the complicated plot of JEREMIAH WILLSTONE AND THE WATCHTOWER OF DESTINY. Finding out what the Watchtower really was and what the bad guys were up to was hard enough, but weaving into the plot all the threads of inspiration that led to the story was ... quite the challenge. But I got there.
Still, it led to another blood-in-the-water month, which felt pretty bad, but which (after I fixed a bug in my tracking system) doesn't appear to have been too much worse than other bad months: other than a few blips around the 22nd to the 24th, it seems to have been slow but within the envelope:
And, oh great, images are doing something weird again. Joy. Okay, that seems to be fixed. But I will say, this month felt like the research required on this novel was much greater than normal. No matter! I finished! Oh yes, the traditional excerpt. Sometimes we're our own worst critic:
“What an untapped well of self-loathing I have discovered,” Jeremiah wondered. “Yes, I’m a thirty-two year old three-star general and award-winning athlete, and that’s exceptional. But I’ve cracked my skull, broken my arm, even broken my back through my own carelessness—”
“Oh, the hard life,” Firamiah scoffed, “of the decorated veteran—”
“—and, also, I’ve been exiled, dismissed, even temporarily blinded, because I’m such a whiny Cassandra,” Jeremiah said. “I don’t understand how I rub people so the wrong way that they’d rather stand on their heads than help me fight a monster standing in the very room—”
“Ever consider,” Firamiah barked, “it’s because that smug, annoying smirk of yours annoys people so much that they want to punch you straight in your smug, punchable face?”
Firamiah got nose to nose with Jeremiah in a roaring display of righteous flame.
“If you’re quite done browbeating me,” Jeremiah said stiffly, “please get on with delivering your nodes of the directed acyclic graph, so I can connect the dots and get your self-righteous, unfortunately not-punchable face out of my suitably-chastened, yet still-punchable one.”
Anyway, no celebratory dinner yet: time to move on to the two scientific papers I need to finish editing, one due tomorrow, one due in a week.
... when you're a publisher and you get a book proposal that makes you feel: "This is an important book and I want to publish it." No more details for now - don't count your chickens before they're hatched, and all that - but that feeling, I just wanted to share.
-the Centaur
Pictured: my portable office, with said book proposal on display, and a nice pair of drinks at Brixx. Full disclosure: I had made that decision about the book before the drink arrived. ;-)
So one thing here to remind myself to blog about it in more details - I attended a panel at the Nebulas on "Moving Beyond Milford" which was very useful. Milford, for those not steeped in writerly inside baseball, refers to the Milford Writer's Workshop, or, more generally, a critiquing model in which a group gets together, shares stories to read in advance, and everyone critiques each other.
The key element of Milford is that each person in the group gets their turn to critique - say, four minutes - during which nobody else can speak - not the other authors, not other group members, with the exception of a facilitator who can keep things on track. And most people seem to agree that the gag rule is critical to Milford in that it helps authors to learn to take criticism - and shuts up "that guy" so he doesn't dominate the critique.
But it can cause people to pile on, or for criticism to be repetitive, or even misplaced. So people were recommending different approaches - online, threaded critique, or structured critique where you had to start off with what resonated with you in the story before critiquing it, or encouraging facilitated discussion so everyone doesn't pile on with dittos.
I had "office hours" at the Nebulas, during which I advised other authors on problems - not because I'm some super experienced author or anything, but simply because I'm an editor and publisher, which means authors who are arguably equally or more experienced than me thought they might benefit from talking to an editor and publisher about specific problems. Which we did, with a couple of people.
And, when I did, I took the advice of the "Moving Beyond Milford" panel: I reformulated my critique into a five-point breakdown:
What did I think the story was about? Reiterating what the story is about ensured that I "got" what the author was trying to do, in an attempt to head off at the pass any misunderstandings.
What did I like about the story? Identifying what resonated with you about the story helps the author understand what's working about the story which they probably shouldn't change.
What areas of improvement did I see? This is something that can crush newbie authors - or experienced authors hit with impostor's syndrome - so it's important to formulate this in terms of suggestions.
What features or turns of phrase stuck with me? These might be small things, but I think highlighting key sentences, elements of description, or ideas are important to remind authors they can be effective.
What areas could potentially use copyediting? If there are typos, grammatical errors, or other opportunities for low-level textual improvement, highlight them here.
But even though that's what I used when I analyzed the story, that's not how I presented the above material to the author in our meetings. What I did instead was use the following script (after the meet-and-greet):
Here's what I think I read. I started off by briefly reiterating what I thought the story was about, so the author knew I had read their piece (and we could clear up any misconceptions).
What do you want help with? I then asked the author to explain what areas they needed help in. If anything about that wasn't clear, I asked them to explain in their own words the problem.
Let's brainstorm solutions to your problem. Before digging into my notes, we discussed their problem in greater depth and used story structure ideas to start looking for solutions.
Let's discuss where my notes intersect with your concerns. Then, we dug into where my notes intersected their problems, focusing on the parts where they needed help.
Once we have ideas about a solution, then share the other notes. Where the other notes were still relevant, I shared them, trying to build suggestions about how to make the story stronger.
Overall, I wanted to not dive in with how I thought the story could be better, but to improve the author's experience working with the story first, then focus on how my thoughts about the story could help them.
I think this is a better approach than tackling the story proper as an entity divorced from its author. Once a story is done, we can talk about the text as an entity independent of its author, but BEFORE the story is done, it's a work in process being worked on by a real human being, asking for help.
When critiquing, put helping the author first, and worry about your personal pet peeves some other time.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Some writing advice from me, from back in the day, while blog image uploading is down.
In case the travel process goes kazoo, I'm nabbing tomorrow's post in today - looks like on June 6th I will be at the meet and greet space Thursday at 2:30pm (Meet-and-Greet Table E Anthony Francis Pasadena – Fountain Foyer), no matter what the sticky post says.
I will have books, and will sign them; hope to see you there.
Hey folks, another "sticky post" for my next three events: The Nebula Conference, the Embodied AI Workshop, and the Workshop on Unsolved Problems in Social Robot Navigation!
This is the day after day one five two, but, whatevz, I had to deal with a minor emergency yesterday, so you have to deal with a late post. Regardless, I was at Con Carolinas, at the "Hooked" panel, which went well, and if there's anything I could take away from that panel, it would be the following:
Your hook for your story isn't just your first line, but it encompasses everything from your genre, your prior output as a writer, the cover, the title, the subtitle or blurb, the first line, the first paragraph, the first page, the first chapter.
All of those can attract your reader's attention; to engage their interest, you need to raise a story question which needs answering. This can be the surface problem, the deeper story-worthy question, an exciting incident, the voice of the main character, an intriguing setup, or a mystery ... that makes people want more.
Most of the panelists felt that you should leave out of your hook any excess description or backstory that does not help build that story question. Those issues can be raised later, once the story is moving; only when your readers are desperate to have questions answered should you spend time answering them.
I'm sure I could say more, but I'm not, because I have a leak in a roof to deal with. BUT, since I am not going to be able to post new images for a bit, I'm going to change my strategy for my "Blogging Every Day" posts with a little Livejournal-style annotation! Lo:
Today's event? Con Carolinas, where I saw a lot of old friends and was on the "Hooked" panel. Today's exercise? Just thirty pushups and a relatively brief walk. Today's drawing? More Goldman studies: by my count, I am up to day one five three, which means I'm caught up (as this blogpost is one day behind).
That's it! Here's hoping I have enough bits left to post.
-the Centaur
Pictured: From the archives, the red editor's pen, over a redacted manuscript. Full disclosure: my normal editing pen is blue, as I am partially colorblind - while I can see red, it doesn't stand out for me the way blue does. There is no such thing for me as "fire engine red" unless I'm wearing Enchroma glasses (which do not give you true color vision, by the way, but they certainly can make certain colors stand out more). I was probably using the red pen in this case either because the blue one blew up, or I need two kinds of notes.
Hey folks! I am appearing at several conventions in the next few weeks, so I'm creating a "sticky post" to let y'all know about my schedule - in case the problems I'm having with my blog software get worse, at least this will be up here to let y'all know I'll be talking about AI, robots and writing in the next few weeks!
First up is Con Carolinas, the Carolinas' longest running science fiction convention, where I will be on four panels and an author signing, talking about book openings, artificial intelligence, neurodivergence, and what's possible and what's not in science and science fiction!
We had hoped to reach postcards or even the audiobook, but this was a great achievement, and I'll take it. Not only did we take in almost $9K to help pay our authors and defray other costs in the book, but also a hundred and eighty people backed and another hundred bookmarked the campaign. Which means that over two hundred fifty people liked it ... and probably ten times as many looked at it. Mission accomplished!
Next up, finishing the ARC (the preliminary version of the book for industry and sensitivity reader review).
Onward!
Pictured: Graphics from the Kickstarter, which were not only fun to do but taught me a lot, and an Old Fashioned from Select restaurant in Greer.
Yay! The Neurodiversiverse Kickstarter funded, with two and a half days to go! And it has been amazing, after a month of slow but steady growth, that the Kickstarter continues to now rapidly fund even as we're trying to publicize it! A shoutout to Cat Rambo, who graciously let us do that guest blogpost! Let me shout back, with the story card we came up with for Cat's story, "Scary Monsters, Super Creeps"!
Now that we've met our funding goal, we've announced our stretch goals, which include cool things like bookmarks and postcards and, if we really stretch, an audiobook of the anthology.
Airtable is a system that looks a lot like a spreadsheet, except it's actually a database under the hood, enabling you to build different views of the same data; a Kanban board is one such view, with rows turned into "cards" organized into "stacks" by a given field - and as you move cards about in the stacks, the field changes with it. This helps visualize the flow of, well, many things - including stories in the editing pipeline, or stories in the table of contents; I'm even using it for tracking the writing of new stories. But for now, the most important thing is that it enabled us to put together this:
We're proud of the table of contents - but also, pleased with the process that got us there, and hope other people find it as useful as we did.
So please, go check those posts out, and maybe even help spread the word so we reach our stretch goals!
Way behind on word count, please enjoy this picture of sushi at One Flew South in the Atlanta airport.
Lots of work to do, not much time left to do it.
-the Centaur
P.S. Oh good grief! This blogpost is having trouble uploading its images, so I'm rabbit-holing on trying to post a simple update, instead of typing words! AAA! Turns out the problem was the wi-fi in this Barnes and Noble Cafe, which allows me to download gobs and gobs of images, but chokes when uploading even relatively small files. I have seen this before at internet cafes and I can't quite tell why that is happening.
Hey folks, this is a reminder that we still have a Kickstarter going for The Neurodiversiverse: Alien Encounters! While the campaign is running, you can reach it at neurodiversiverse.com or by searching on Kickstarter. This hopeful, empowering anthology explores neurodiverse encounters with aliens, and we'd love your help paying our authors more money (and, if we reach stretch goals, doing an audiobook or even a sequel)!
So we had a great first day at Clockwork Alchemy! I got a great Guest of Honor banner for my table, and we had a delightful Tea with the Author Guest of Honor in the con's amazing Tea Room!
My co-editor for The Neurodiversiverse, Liza Olmsted (far left on the picture below), was on an #ownvoices panel, which was very informative! I particularly liked her quote:
The world is so much more beautiful with intersectionality ... everything is so much more nuanced."
Liza Olmsted
"Intersectionality" is a funky word for the simple concept that people aren't a single attribute, like "black" or "women" or "gay" but that each person is a combination of all these things - and discrimination isn't just additive, but can compound in interesting ways. In one famous court case, for example, a court ruled that a group of black women weren't discriminated against because the company had hired a lot of black men (in a factory setting) and a lot of white women (in an office setting) thus improving the percentage of blacks in the factory and women in the office - but the point was, the women were being discriminated against for being black and women at the same time, and the court was essentially arguing you couldn't be one or the other. But, if you acknowledge that people can be more than one thing, you can take their distinctive appearances into account into how you treat them, rather than sweeping it under the rug.
Neurodiversiverse author Clara Ward dropped by and left us a few of her new book, "Be the Sea", which is (as I gathered from discussions) a climatepunk story featuring neurodiverse and nonbinary characters. I worked with Clara before on Doorways to Extra Time and we're excited to have her back for this one!
We hope to see you tomorrow at the con! Next up, Steampunk Vehicles, Bringing Anthologies to Life, and the world premiere reading of "Jeremiah Willstone and the Choir of Demons"!
