Jim Macdonald and I have a reading at 1 PM in Griffin, here in the Westin hotel, and we’re going to be reading a brand-new, just-finished short story . . . one that we’ve been mulling over for a long time, that finally came together in this past week.
If you’re here at Boskone, we’d be delighted to see you there.
If you’re driving into Boston from out of town, you have to get lost at least once on Massachusetts Avenue.
Normally, our GPS navigator saves us from this, but the rules caught up with us this trip, because the navigator went toes-up on us shortly before departure. Fortunately, we were able to access Google Maps via my phone — not by using the phone’s web feature, because it doesn’t really have one, but by calling our younger son back in Colebrook and having him find the necessary directions and relay them to us.
After that mini-adventure, we made it safely to the Westin hotel, and our first programming item is a signing at 2 PM in the Galleria. We’re signing alongside Ken MacLeod and Charlie Stross, so if you’ve got a book (or a short story in an anthology, or a bookplate, or whatever), feel free to bring it in and we’ll happily sign it for you.
And if you’re one of the people who mostly own our stuff in electronic format . . . if you can figure out how to get us to sign that, we’ll happily do that as well.
(Surely somebody, somewhere, has invented an app for getting author signatures on e-books. Heaven knows, they’ve got apps for everything else.)
The current snow depth, as indicated by the height of the snow cap on the top of our bird feeder:
And it’s still snowing.
At least we should have decent driving weather tomorrow for the trip down to Boskone, and the weather down below for the weekend is supposed to be fair and not too cold.
Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald
Autographing
Saturday 14:00 – 15:00, Galleria
(We’ll be autographing alongside Ken MacLeod and Charles Stross, a couple of overseas guests from the UK, so if you’ve got anything by us you’d like to have signed, feel free to bring it in so we won’t let New Hampshire down.)
Debra Doyle
Design Your Own Mythology:
Saturday 15:00 – 16:00, Harbor III
What goes into mythmaking? Panelists share their experiences in creating mythologies and pantheons — offering up dos and don’ts, tips on resources, and things to think about as you try creating a coherent mythology of your own.
James D. Macdonald
From Rapiers to Ray Guns
Saturday 16:00 – 17:00, Marina 1
From epic fantasy to space war, speculative fiction is rife with useful tools and weapons that can be used in battle. How much does a writer or reader really need to know about these weapons for fictional frays to feel real? What weapons work best for close-quarters or downrange combat in specific settings?
Debra Doyle
A Muddle of Mad Scientists
Saturday 20:00 – 21:00, Burroughs
From Dr. Frankenstein to Dr. Faustus, Mrs. Coulter to Dr. Horrible, genre fiction is filled with a long list of the crazily creative geniuses known as mad scientists. Why do we love them? What makes the mad scientist character so appealing in horror, comedy, and everything in between? Join us for a mad, mad discussion featuring some of our favorite screwy scientists/inventors from the past, present, and future.
James D. Macdonald
Abracadabra! Making Magic Real
Sunday 12:00 – 13:00, Marina 1
In writing fantasies — from epic to urban– how do you keep your story’s magic feeling fresh and new? It’s a challenge. Rules and boundaries can help, but how do you make the “science” of the supernatural seem, well, natural? Panelists discuss the perils and potentials of using magic in fiction.
Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald
Reading Sunday 13:00 – 13:30, Griffin
And so do the winter electric bills, because we heat our (big, old) house with electricity. We used to heat it by means of a wood-burning forced-hot-air furnace in the basement, but gave that up after about a decade and a half – wood is cheap, compared to other locally available heating methods, but it’s a hassle from start to finish.
First you have to purchase the firewood, which means finding a reliable Firewood Guy – something that’s a lot harder than you’d think, because your typical reliable Firewood Guy is usually just one year away from selling his chainsaw and his skidder and retiring to Florida, so calling last year’s supplier almost never works. Once you’ve got the firewood, it has to be stacked, all eight or nine cords of it (a cord, if you’re interested, is a stack of logs measuring 4’x4’x8’, and if you’re ever in the business of purchasing cordwood for yourself, make certain you specify “full cord”, because unscrupulous dealers are not above selling you so-called “face cords” which are only half the width of a proper cord.)
Then the stacked wood has to be heaved down into basement where the furnace lives; this will have to be done repeatedly throughout the winter, usually in the dark on bitter cold nights, because that’s always the time when one or another of the house’s occupants comes into the office and says, plaintively, “There’s no more wood in the basement and the fire is getting low.” At which point somebody – probably you, because why else would they have come into the office to complain about it – has to suit up in full north country outdoor gear and go move some logs.
After that, you have to go down into the basement and heave yet more logs, this time from the basement into the furnace. And you’ll have to do it again before you retire for the night, and as soon as you get up in the morning (forget about sleeping in, if you heat with wood), and every four or five hours throughout the day.
So once I started having paranoid fantasies about chimney fires, and about the insidious threat of carbon monoxide, and about tripping and falling on the rickety basement steps – but especially about the basement steps, because I have the sort of ankles that can turn on a crack in the kitchen linoleum – I said the hell with this, and switched to the backup electric baseboard heat. I have dreams of converting the house to oil or propane, because all the ductwork is still in place, but a project of that expense and magnitude would require major money up front, and Hollywood hasn’t bought one of our novels yet.
Which is why one of the early posts on this blog, back when I was just getting started, was my Fire in Fantasy Rant, and why I’m taking this opportunity to point a discreet finger at the Editorial and Critique Services link up there above the header. If you’ve got a novel in need of editing, you have it in your power to help me make the electric company very happy.
What Lies Beneath: Adding Subtext to Your Story Alcott Fri 8:30 PM
In real life and in storytelling, what -isn’t- being said is often more gripping than the actual dialogue between your characters. How can you use subtext to develop your characters and boost suspense? What dialogue tricks, body language, and setting communicate there’s a story which isn’t being told? Our panelists will teach you how to make your characters lie, dodge, and evade the thing they don’t want to face, all while foreshadowing the existence of inner demons.
Reading: Doyle, Ronald, Macdonald Hale Sat 10:00 AM
Expecto Patronum: Animal Symbolism in SFF Marina 1 Sat 5:30 PM
Symbolic and magical connections to animals are a standard trope in fantasy. But they are also prevalent in science fiction. From Black Panther to the Mockingjay, characters’ connections to particular animals can say a lot about them, especially in the context of the culture that produced them. What do animals mean in SFF, and how have they changed as we learn more about biodiversity and the changing natural world?
The 100 Year Old Barbed Wire: The Great War & SF Marina 2 Sun 1:00 PM
We are in the midst of the centenary of World War I. The US was not hit badly by it compared to Europe, and in 2017 the centenary of US involvement (6 April 1917) is coming up. How did the war and its aftermath change society and our idea of the future. Could “Brave New World” or “Things to Come” or other early classics of speculative fiction been written without the war’s impact? Why do so many alternate histories use earlier or later events as a changing point rather than this one?
Reading: Doyle, Ronald, Macdonald Hale Writing Sat 10:00 AM
Just the Facts: Vaccines Alcott Sat 8:30 PM
Why do we need a flu shot every year? Why do more people have to get vaccinated when the vaccine is less effective? What kind of harm _can_ they cause? And why is the U.S. having measles outbreaks again when Pakistan and India are eliminating polio? Come hear the science, the anti-science, and the ongoing discussions of immunology and epidemiology.
Pew-Pew-Pew! How to Write a Sci-Fantasy Gunfight Hale Sun 1:00 PM
Whether you write steampunk, gritty urban fantasy, post-apocalyptic fiction or futuristic sci-fi, chances are you’ll need to write a gunfight. What kind of firearm (gun, pulse cannon or ray-gun) should your characters use? How should they secure and store their weapon? What are their weapon’s limitations? What materials will provide cover when the enemy fires at them? Don’t let your gunfights be like the Stormtroopers who always miss!!!
Going Viral: How Pathogens Spread Faneuil Sun 8:30 PM
Zombies don’t really work, but viruses do. This is a look at fast versus slow pathogens and how they can spread. Maybe it’s time to buy that house in Madagascar?
Or, what our driveway looked like yesterday morning:
And it snowed some more, after that. And it’s snowing now.
In weather like this, there really isn’t much to do except stay inside at the computer and listen to the chatter of the road crews on the office scanner work on the various projects currently in hand.
(This is also why the very next editing gig that comes in has got “studded snow tires” already written on its metaphorical forehead.)
This is, of course, National Novel Writing Month – which really ought to be called International Novel Writing Month, as the map on its web page shows.
In a month that’s been full of bad news from all over, and much unhappiness and partisan animosity, I find looking at that map to be immensely consoling – because whatever else may be going on, there are people all over the world striving to do the same difficult but rewarding thing, and cheering each other on as they go. The 1,994 writers hard at work in Chicago are doing their bit; so are the 8,046 in Chile and the 39 in Kenya, the 127 in Latvia and the 756 in India . . . and all the rest, all around the globe, working on their individual acts of subcreation.
(Shameless self-promotion time: If, after you’re finished with your project, you should happen to want it gone over with an editorial/critical eye, please imagine me making a discreet gesture toward the “Editorial Services” link just beneath the header.)
My candidate didn’t win. But as Rocky would say, “she went the distance,” and maybe that was the best we were truly likely to get at this point in time. We’ve just finished with two terms of a precedent-shattering presidency, and I’m not surprised, in retrospect, that the elastic band wasn’t up to stretching out to another one.
But I’ve voted for — pauses to count on fingers — eight presidents, now, and half of the ones I voted for won, and half of them didn’t. Which is the sort of thing that happens, with elections.
Granted, it’s still no fun to get so close you can almost taste it, and then not get it anyway.
The world goes on, however, and we as writers still have books to finish and books to edit, because people aren’t going to stop reading just because their candidate lost, or even because their candidate won.
Jim Macdonald was over at Dixville Notch for the minute-past-midnight voting, and reports on the results of it here.
Dr. Doyle's Blog 