Creativity takes a dive the day after a ten hour drive and the FOUR BIGGEST DAYS IN GAMING! (That’s what the signs said all over Indy, so it must be true.)

Gencon was a very busy convention for us this year. All signs point to Maschine Zeit having done really incredibly well in sales and in terms of getting handed off to the people who need them. I don’t have any sales figures, but of course as soon as we get them, I’m sure they’ll be up over at the Machine Age Productions site.

As usual, the gentleman and ladies we know on the industry side of things were wonderful to be around, and I only wish I’d had more time to sit and talk with the people who really make these events worth going to.

Media was great, and in the near future you’ll hear some podcasty interview-y type stuff from your truly which is always exciting. More on that as I get links in.

We got a chance to say hi to some fans. (Fans? Really? Do we have those other than my mom?) If you stopped by to either David’s panel or mine, saw us in the hall or otherwise accosted us, drop by and say hi!

I’m still not sure how to process the stuff that was a major downer about the convention this year, but I have other places to work those issues out. So, to the fans, professionals and ecetera who made this years event fun, thank you!

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First, let me apologize for the flash fiction that appears below. I have no words to express how deeply sorry I am that you may actually read it. Consider yourself warned. It is not just not safe for work, it is pretty much not safe for consumption period. (I had my husband read it, and he instantly grew a gray streak. He won’t look me in the eyes any more. I’m so sorry David.)

That said, it’s for a contest, so you can all go there and blame Chuck Wendig. So without further ado, I give you,

I Wanna Do Laser: A Flash Erotica

By Filamena Young

He was a hairless gorilla, frankly. A Neanderthal who shaved is chest and plucked his eyebrow. Women said they found him attractive because he was athletic but ‘clean cut.’ Really American.

I knew better. Women found him attractive because on some level, most of us want to be fucked by a caveman at least once in our lives.

It was a tradition at this point, I’d wait outside the locker room to try to get an interview or a post ‘game’ wrap up.

(This was not my idea of journalism, mind you, but it was a paying job and there was no serious work for pretty young journalists right out of school, so you take what you can get. I’d report on the injustices in Gaza and the poverty of Haiti when I could afford the shots to travel and maybe get myself one of those really good digital video cameras. Independent, fierce, in-demand and passionate, that would be me.)

Instead, I’m getting paid to pretend to be a sports journalist and wait for ‘the scoop’ outside of the men’s locker room. He passes me and smiles without looking me in the eyes, it’s tradition, you see, he won’t acknowledge that I’m there until after he’s had a shower. ‘I’ve got to cool down afterwards,’ he’s told me in a candid moment last month, ‘for your sake.’

But today it was different, he passed by and smiled without looking, but I felt his hand pass like a ghost past my shoulder, flicking my hair so that it fell back and away down my back; like he wanted to expose my neck. He was already headed into the locker room, but I watched his meaty shoulders rise and fall as if he were taking in a tremendous breath.

I talked to the rest of his teammates. They were thrilled to talk, still jammed from their matches of the day. I made it quick, eager to get rid of them so I could get out of there, get away. Like I needed to get away before he finished his ‘cool down,’ though to this day I couldn’t tell you why I felt that creeping sense of panic.

When I was done getting my quotes for the show’s producers tomorrow, I turned to leave, and got three hurried steps down the hallway before I felt a weight on my shoulder like a bear paw. I turned, sharply, and found myself face to face with him.

“Jim, what are you doing?” We’d been friendly, conversational, but he’d never gotten this close, he was in my personal space, toe to toe with me, and breathing down into my face. I couldn’t look past his eyes, wild and unabashedly intense.

“You’re a good girl, Tracy; a nice girl who wants to do big things someday. I like that about you. That’s why I’ve been trying so hard to ignore it, ignore the thing you want between us. I don’t want to ruin your life.” There was sadness there, too, behind the intensity, like a force of nature with a conscience. “But I can’t ignore it anymore, the way you smell.” He took in another deep breath and cupped my shoulder. “I can’t ignore your desire.” He tilted his head to the side and leaned in as if he was going to kiss me, but instead nuzzled his face into my neck and shoulder. His other hand slipped behind me and lifted me. He pressed me, off the ground, into the wall supported by his one thick arm.

“Jim,” I asked again, “what are you doing? This is… I don’t even like you. You’re a meat head.” I put hands on his shoulders and managed at least to get him to move back enough to look him in the eyes, even if I was still held up against the wall.

He searched my eyes; they were different tonight, not just in intensity but also in color. Golden, luminous, and catching the cold florescent light so that his eyes seemed to glow. “I think you know I’m more than that. I don’t know if you know it in your conscious mind, but I think you know in that repressed brain stem of yours just exactly what I really am.”

Visions of ancient woods, of strong-bodied wolves hunting and howling, eating and fucking passed through my mind’s eye, and I felt his arms tighten around me. I mouthed ‘werewolf’ but could not say it aloud.

He nodded once. “I don’t want to do it, Tracy, but neither of us can escape fate. Maybe, instead, we can just try and… enjoy the ride?” Without ceremony, he dropped his after-show sweatpants to the ground and I could feel the solid force of his erection against my thigh. Apparently, it wasn’t steroids that made him so muscular. I grinned without meaning to.

“What do you want me to say? Jim? You say this is fate? I think you’re a creep, but you just,” I breathed in and felt a rush of endorphins. “You just smell so good.”

He nodded in understanding, using his free hand to push up my skirt and toy with, before simply pushing my panties aside. “Just say it.”

“Say what?” I tried to stare him down, give him the full brunt of my disgust for him, but it was a lie. I knew what he knew; I could smell destiny and sweat mixed together in his skin.

“You know what to say.” He grinned, all teeth, and pushed my knees apart.

I did. “Damnit. I wanna to do Laser!” I tossed my head back into the wall as he forced himself up into me, grunted, and dug his teeth into my throat.

-Fin

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In the beginning, there was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. John 1:1*

If you sort of ignore the actual intention of the quote and take it literally, man, that’s a sexy egotistical concept for even the most humble wordsmith.

I’ll say it, I’m a devotee of the Word.**

I have hymnals floating all over my house. Bird by Bird is sitting in my bathroom right now. Two copies of On Writing float around the house, though both are right now in my dining room. I have books on structure and genre piled up next to my bed and there are more then a few editing books in my living room. I go to these books when I want to revel in my faith, but I also go to them when I find I have a crisis of faith. Picking up a good one, flipping through for inspiration, generally fills me with fervor and suddenly I want to get back to practicing my faith.

I’m not clergy, though, I spread the faith casually, I have neither the vision nor the dedication to teach The Word to others. I have to live with it, practice my religion in the real world outside of the safety of many churches devoted to The Word. I envy clergy their solitude to contemplate The Word, but I guess if none of us were laity, there wouldn’t be much of a faith to discuss. I honor the men and women who devote their time to the Word as an idea and something to study, but I’m not smart enough to do much more with it then live it.

But this isn’t some hippy religion with guitars and a lot of forgiveness. As far as I know, confession exists, but it’s generally something you can only do if you aren’t successful and even there, there isn’t really anyone to absolve you.

To add it it’s cult-like mystique, it’s usually something no one practices in public. You can’t go to an open service on Sunday or see us spreading the Word in a public park on at an airport. Sure, you’ll see the rare anarchist sitting in a coffee shop with their alter pieces; laptop and moleskin notebook and hymnal. Sometimes they’re actually practicing, but more often then not it’s just set dressing to control how people judge them. “Oh, they must be Wordists, you can tell by the props they carry. They must be really faithful. Look at all their stuff.”

I admit, I am sometime guilty of putting the alter pieces before the worship and get so lost in the rituals, (I must have silence or the right music or the right candles,) that I neglect the Word. Here, I’m confessing.

Anyway… We don’t often do it in public. We tend to have to do it in dark places, under rocks and in closets and away from eyes that judge. It often alienates us from people who don’t understand the Word the way we do. Hell, it tends to isolate us from each other. Almost like and anticult. We have to form elaborate excuses to gather in hotels or convention centers or coffee shops or online on forums just so we feel a little bit less alone, and yet service to the Word is still done so inside the self that it has to be done in private.

And of course, no one worships the Word right so far as anyone is concerned. When my worship is done, the first thing I want is to find other worshipers to tell me what I did wrong. Like the  gathers, we construct elaborate ritual around critiquing the way others celebrate the Word and what they did wrong and right. Sometimes we gather around the works of Worshipers long dead to decide if their work is still relevant or how it’s so much better then anything out today.

Plus there’s the blood sacrifice.

No, really. Sometimes you’ll be in worship, have say, 10,000 words down of a 60,000 word novel when the Word speaks to you and you realize that about, say, 5,000 of those words don’t actually fit in this novel and without them another 3,000 don’t work so I’m pretty much going to have to start over.

So, I’m cutting and hacking and bleeding all over and the Word is appeased. Hemorrhaging word count on the alter is sometimes the only way to reconnect with the Word, and that’s why so few people really stick with the church for long. I don’t have a problem with those who lapse, they’re probably smarter then me, less brainwashed by their faith. I almost envy them too.

I’ve probably stretched the metaphor, but since my form of confession is a one way street anyway, I’ll just have to live with that.

*You know who’s fantastic? Cherie Priest. You know why? Apparently, she has that phrase it Greek tattooed on her lower back. I love her so very much!

**Not to be confused with any actual religious figures, spirits or ideas. The faith represented here is purely fictitious. Probably. Unless you want to give me money.

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Just a quick note to mention that we’ll be at 7th Dimension Games Saturday at 2pm running demos of our game Maschine Zeit.

Come down, try the game, meet myself and my husband and rock out with your… nerd out? Yeah, that one kinda got me away from me.

Point is, come down, game!

Here’s the store’s site with rather nice directions.

Speaking of Maschine Zeit, did you know we have a Kickstarter for it? That’s right, the best way to preorder the game and support indy games that push the boundries is to check it out. We’ve already doubled what we need for a small print run, but if we hit $2k, we’re going to put out a special adventure just for our patrons decided on by you!

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As spring turns to summer and gamers flock to their natural watering holes and, I suspect, spawning pools, you’re going to see a lot of advice toward ‘what to bring to a con’ and ‘how to bathe yourself if you’ll be out in public.’

I can’t give you perfect general advice because my experience is very different from yours.  I tend to be packing for two to four people, have business concerns to deal with at any given time, and may have more of a need to feel pretty than you do as your packing up for the adventure ahead.  That said, pick and choose, and for godsake, don’t forget your business cards.

Business cards. Did I mention those yet? Have some. Have extra. Even if you aren’t going to conventions as a professional, it might be the very best way to stay in touch with new friends you’ve made at the convention. If they’re not professional cards, make sure you have all your social networking listed on them. (Twitter, facebook, whathave you.) That way I can look up who you are when I’m looking through my stacks of cards after a few weeks of convention recovery.

Get a water proof folder, or binder with page protectors in it. I print out this stuff:

• Maps of all the locations I’ll be walking/driving. Yes, GPS and Smartphones are nice. Yes, they can break, not function, think the town you’re in doesn’t exist. Don’t let technology get the best of you.
• Print outs of all your confermations. Hotels, buses, planes, con tickets and any other thing you can preregister for. Also, preregister for everything you can possibly preregister for. Seriously, save yourself the hassle.
• A list of phone numbers and addresses. Emergency contacts, the people you want to hook up with at the Con, the local guy you’ve gotten in touch with ahead of time to ask questions of should you need to. (You do have that guy, right?) The hotels and centers you’re going to visit. It also never hurts to scope out a restaurant or two ahead of time. If you’re in a place you’ve never been too, knowing what the locals love might give you the chance to try something awesome as only the locals can do it, but that’s going to take some research. (Case in point, have you ever heard of a Lobster roll? me either. If I can find one while I’m in Boston, I am noming the hell out of that!)
• Blank character sheets for your game of choice. You never know when the moment will strike and be lost to have a great pick up game because no one has sheets.

Other important stuff.

Fresh clean socks. This is mostly a thing for my husband, but it can make all the difference. For him, we buy a new bag each time.

Clothes, sure, but extra clothes for weather hiccups. Layers are always the way to go in unfamiliar locations. Strip or stack on as needed.  (With the little ones, I try to pack 1 and a half outfits per day. That is, for two days, three outfits, and so on. Kids are very good at ruining clothes in inverse proportion to the rarity of clothing you brought.)

I like bags inside of bags. I section off bags for my makeup, for toiletries, for road-medicine. (You bring soap? Good. You bring aspirin and Tums to handle headaches, backaches, and stomach upset from crappy con eating? You are a master.) Also, stop buying little travel sized shampoo. Seriously. Get some empty bottles and fill ‘em up. You don’t need to spend a dollar on a nickel’s worth of soap. )

Also, don’t forget a little febreeze. I have kids and cats, and sometimes you don’t notice something has a … special added scent… to it until you’re outside of your home environment. Carrying a little fabric refresher can help and help you feel more confident and relaxed on your trip which is a big part of having a good time.

So there’s most of my Con pre guide. (Maybe I’ll examine traveling with kids more closely another time.) Now, I should probably stop typing and get back to packing for PAX East! Wooo! Wish me luck stalking Wil Wheaton!

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I’m no expert in the backend of running a Con, and I won’t tell you that Farpoint was the be all end all. I have little point of comparison. (You can see the little list of Cons I’ve spoken at/will speak at in the future over to the side.) I’ve never been to Dragon*Con or San Diego Comic Con and I doubt I will any time soon. When I think of a convention, I really am thinking of small to medium sized fan-run conventions. Gencon Indy is the biggest I’ve gone too and plan to continue to go to since it’s such a big deal for pen and paper RPGs.

All that in mind, from a speaker/panelist point of view, I was happy and sane by the end of Farpoint, and sane at the end of a convention where you’re doing more than one panel is a sort of state of Nirvana. (Especially when you consider I was carrying around a three month old with me the whole time.)

The staff was knowledgeable and helpful without being fussy or snotty. (Sad fact, snotty staff at a convention kills a good day for me faster than pigs blood on my new prom dress.)

What’s more, things were set up so that I didn’t even have to talk to staff if I didn’t want to! Really, I actually had all the information I needed at hand from check in to leaving. How is this possible, you might ask? Pay close attention other conventions, I’m talking to you.

When we checked in, we got our passes, and typed clearly on the back was a little list for me of times, places, and panels I was supposed to be at. Holy heck, I geeked out about the convince of that pretty much all weekend. I know, it’s a small detail, and I don’t know how much time I took to prepare that little luxury, but it seemed like it saved me so much work and I hope saved staffers work as well.

Eli Senter was our point of contact and I think doing the main wrangling for the DIY portion of the convention. Great work, great stuff and he was oh-so-friendly. I’d work with him at any con in a heartbeat. He answered emails! Do you know how awesome that is with convention staff? Even weird emails like, ‘what panels am I on?’

Some of the panels had a bit of low turn out, but hey, that happens when Felicia Day is down the hall signing autographs. As my friend Kelly mentioned over at her Con report, a little descriptor on the schedule and by the doors might have been nice, but I’ve come to think that if I’m a speaker, there’s a little bit of self-advertising I need to do anyway.

That said, I plan on going back to Farpoint next year as a speaker or even just and attendee, the atmosphere was fantastic, the staff was great, and you can’t beat good solid organization.

Other People who rocked Farpoint for me:

Sally Catlin, who did a really beautiful job at the World Building panel and pointed me toward Little Details.

Blake Schreurs for the Angry Prostitutes.

Sarah Martinez spoke with a really level head about geeking-for-profit. This lady knows how to promote without being the least bit pushy of self-centered.

Gavin Schmitt for creating grudges left and right, as well as one hell of a game title.

Nobilis because Dragon Age RPG, Fuck yay! A perfect con game with you in charge, sir.

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So it’s a year since I started keeping track of this sort of thing. Despite last years cynicism, I don’t actually feel particualry bad about what I have to report for this year in told. What I said last year still holds– Tell me what you did this year and what you hope to do next to keep it public to add accountability.

• I guess the big one is I had another baby. That’s two. We have replaced ourselves with smaller, more beautiful and probably more intelligent hybrids of our combined DNA. I’m already a more recovered and happier mom than I was, but a lot of that is because I didn’t have major sugry with this birth and I’m no longer a first time mom. (Duh.) I’ll call that a win.
• Tina gets smarter and more beautiful everyday. We’re talking about getting her a desk top next year because she’s already so computer literate. Every time she shows me a craft she’s done or a picture she’s drawn on the computer I tell her, ‘just beautiful.’ Every time I say it, I’m really saying it to her.
• I’m still getting paid to write, and now I’m starting to eek out a qualified career making enough money to get by.
• I think I’ve sold about another 15o,000 words this year, writing about 170 to 180,000 in total. Next year I’ll have a better count. (HA!)
• I’ve spoken at at three Cons this year and helped David land similar apperances, which boosts both of our careers and rocks pretty hardcore.
• I’ve actually seen physical copies of books I’ve worked on, three of which are on my shelf as we speak.
• I wrote for and got accepted in my first anthology. Buried Tales of Pinebox, TX is awesome and you should buy a copy if you haven’t already.
• I’ve been published on The Escapist and now have a regular blogging job at Altern8.com.

Looking over last year, there’s a few things I didn’t get to I wanted to this year, but I’m not too down about it.

• I didn’t hit 250k this year, but I did have a baby so I’m just going to have to live with that.
• I didn’t write and produce any radio drama. I just… forgot about it. What a damn shame. Maybe this year, assuming they go to a 36 hour day all of the sudden.
• I did not get Unhero out, but I’ve come to terms with the rewrites I’ll need to do first so that’ll just have to happen over time instead.

Plans for this year?

• I hope I can get more personal writing done, fiction and the like. I have a few creative writing classes this Spring so I don’t have much choice on that, but after the classes and in terms of novel writing we’ll see.
• I am dying to see Maschine Zeit finished up. I love it so much and believe in it it’s just a matter of time, like everything else.
• I’d like to speak at more cons this year. I have a few lined up, but really any excuse to travel and get out of the house is better than the last.
• I want to read more books this year.
• I want to get back to learning Italian. This entirely novel-writing related.
• And how about a totally arbatrary goal? I want 500 twitter followers by 2011. I have no control over that, it sees like a pretty random thing, so that should be fun to look at next year.

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You can find me, (or at least my writing) all over the place now and in case you hadn’t heard via twitter, (my primary source of communication with the world these days) go ahead and take a look at what I’m reporting to you here.

A second short story of mine has appeared over on www.spacewesters.com! No Child of Mine is a second story that takes place on the same Mars as found in my other spacewestern short, Mars Ain’t No Place for Ladies. All this thinking of Mars as a harsh frontier makes me crave that as a setting for a game. I might have to look a little more closely at Mars in Eclipse Phase. But that’s beside the point.

I’ve started having regular article writing over at Altern8.com. The dude running it is enthusiastic, excited, and smart. I must highly recommended also checking out David’s articles there as well. (And if you’ve missed his RPG in an hour Panel, let me recommend checking out the written version he’s gotten up over at The Escapist.)

Speaking of Panels. David, myself, and our roleplaying shock troops will be running games and partying at this years Haunter Convention. (That’s the latest Con we’ve heard a green light back from, though I’d say we’ve got a number others in the pipe line, information to follow as I get it.)

And here’s a short list of games you should be looking into because, hey, I might have material out for them soon:

-Traveller’s, the Mongoose Edition as 3rd Partied by Terra/Sol.

-Gumshoe, you need to be playing this, my writing not withstanding.

-New Gods of Mankind. Really, you need to check this out. It’s a little bit like an old favorite game of mine, (Act Raiser,) but in table top form. You can do it like an RPG, as a sort of SIM, even as a board game. It’s out with IPR, and those guys pretty much can do no wrong from what I’ve seen thus far.

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So, I had the baby the 9th, and everything is wonderful with that. (Thanks for asking!) With the baby here you have to understand that baby matters are forefront on my brain. (Milk, poop, sleeping, not sleeping, that sort of thing.) Since it’s my blog, and you clicked here of your own free will, I can talk about any body fluid I want.

The second thing you need to do is go here and read a short story I just got published. Nathan Lilly runs Spacewestern.com, and it is fantastic. There’s a connection here between breastfeeding and this short story, but I’ll get there.

If you’ve never breastfed, here’s what you need to do. It takes time. It is hella time consuming. I’ll break down the numbers for you, in case you aren’t yourself a mom. Ever two to three hours you need to sit down and give your infant a full twenty minutes to half an hour of your time. Maybe, you can do something else with a free hand, (pick out an email, read a novel, whatever,) but mostly you have to sit down and be still. You have to wait and be patient while nothing appears to happen. It isn’t as if you can watch your newborn fatten up or grow bigger right before your eyes. There’s a lot going on behind the scene, but in all that time you devote to breastfeeding, (and lets face it, the nipple tenderness and engorgment pain,) you don’t really see change or success until much later.

Why mention this and my short story for Spacewestern? Because it’s a truth of publishing as well that you need to know upfront. I sold ‘No Child of Mine’ to Nathan over a year ago. Things happened and as a result things over at the site went on hiatus for a while. Sometimes this happens with a sold short story, sometimes there’s no clear reason why it takes a year or years for something to show up in published form. Sometimes it never shows up at all. (But that’s another post.) As a writer, you’ll spend years out of your life sitting still, nurtring your writing, your connection with editors and fellow writers and for many long stretches at a time you see absolutly no return. You can ping editors, you must keep writing, but at the end of the day, sometimes all you can do is wait and be still.

Here’s the other thing you may not have been told when you were reading a million articles on writing: Assume you aren’t getting paid this year.

You think I’m joking, think again. Whatever you’ve written, no matter what you’ve sold, and sometimes in spite of what your contract says, you can’t assume your going to get paid early, on time, or even this year. I’m not saying you won’t get paid, (that’s up to you to fight for every penny,) but I am saying that there are no immidate rewards in writing. Just like breastfeeding.

(Okay, yeah, there’s the bonding, the feeling of love, bla bla bla bla. But love doesn’t get your baby to college alone, and love doesn’t buy dinner.)

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…I call it procrastination. It means your heart isn’t in it, you haven’s sucked it up enough to do it anyway, or you actually don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing. (What, you didn’t outline? Well now, whose fault is that? Certainly we’ve all warned you about not outlining.)

All over the intertubes there are about a million pages worth of advice on how to ‘get past writer’s block.’ I don’t need to rehash any of that, mostly because I don’t believe in writer’s block. (Why? Well, Chuck Wendig said it far more succently than I feel like right now.)

So what do I do when I’m procrastinating instead of writing because I’m having trouble making words go? About a million goofy things, but the only thing I’d actually recommend is getting up and cleaning.* No, really, step away from the desk and clean the office, go do the dishes, get some laundry out of the way.

Why? Because you need to do it anyway, so it’s way better than three and a half hours of computer solitaire. You might not have the wordcount you want yet, but at least you won’t have roaches leaning over your shoulder giving advice on sentence structure. (You know what house/apartment I’m talking about. You KNOW that artist/writer friend. Weird how they’re rarely productive despite their clear lack of procrastination-cleaning. Correlation?)

It gets your blood going, and as Chuck reminds us in his post, your brain actually needs blood to function. (Not to mention the fact that as a writer, if you don’t get blood in your legs pretty regularly you risk getting blood clots AND DYING! You heard me. Clean or die.)

You probably don’t want to clean, anyway, so after a while, getting back to that writing project will be preferable to scrubbing the toilet, and before you know it, your writing a million words a minute just to avoid cleaning the garage.

Your spouse/roommate/family will be way less likely to give you a hard time about ‘getting a real job’ because you aren’t playing another round of World Craft of War and instead making their home nicer to live in.

Messes are distracting. No really, you might be used to living in a hovel. Many are, but at the end of the day most human brains get cluttered in cluttered environments. (Note: I have no scientific data on that, it just figures.)

Cleaning can (and in this context MUST) be a finite activity. If you are on a deadline and have no passion for it, now is not the time to paint the nursery and dig up all the infant clothes to put into said nursery for the upcoming baby. (Really. I can’t do that right now, no matter how much I want to.) Now is the time to say, file all the tax information on the desk, and after that, reconsider your desire to write.

While cleaning, you must be sorting through your writing project in your head. You must be thinking about it, batting it around in your head, finding what parts are preventing you from getting motivation. Like Agatha Christie told us, “the best time to plan a book is while doing the dishes.” Dull, idle tasks + thinking = ideas. It’s math. How can you argue with math? That’s right, you can’t.

Now how to stop Cleaner’s Block, that, I got nothing. Sorry.

*Please note, cleaning as a replacement for anything and everything may in fact have something to do with the fact that I am a few weeks at most away from having this baby, nesting is like that, but the advice remains solid. I think.

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