Orycon 31

I've booked my ticket to Orycon 31 in Portland, November 27-29. Hope to see some of you there!

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World Fantasy Con Report (Finally)

So while everyone else in SF/F has been blogging about what a great time they had in San Jose, I've been pretty quiet except for my occasional bleatings on facebook. Well the fact is that's it's pretty much taken this long for me to come down far enough to actually write about it.

I had a fantastic time, the best con experience ever. The parties, as evidenced by my photos, were epic. But the most exciting part of the weekend for me was signing my contract of representation with my new agent, Joshua Bilmes of JABberwocky Literary Agency. This has been a long time coming for me, I've been working for about four years to get to this point. I couldn't be prouder of working with Joshua and JABberwocky. Just to give you an idea of their client list, it includes such notable authors as Charlaine Harris (True Blood/Sookie Sackhouse), Kat (Greywalker) Richardson, Brandon Sanderson, Elizabeth Moon, Tanya Huff, Peter Brett, Tobias Buckell, Jack (The Lost Fleet) Campbell (AKA John Hemry), Jim C. Hines, and many other fine writers. It's an honor to be associated with JABberwocky's clients, and of course Joshua and his assistant, Eddie Schneider.

Joshua took a group of us (his clients and significant others) out to dinner at a Thai restaurant on Saturday, where I got to sign my contract. Thanks to Myke Cole for taking the pictures.

Me signing with JABberwocky.

The proprietor himself, Mr. Bilmes.

Group photo.

It was a great time and I can't wait until next year. Obviously, more blogging to come!

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Speedwing Progress

Been doing very little on the WIP while I've been prepping for WFC and dealing with other business. Still, some progress, and it should be pretty easy to finish by the end of the year.

44628 / 60000 words. 74% done!

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World Fantasy Con

Prepping for my first World Fantasy Con in San Jose this weekend. Should be fun.

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Insta-Review: Battlestar Galactica - The Plan

3 *'s out of 5:

Unfortunately for BSG fans, The Plan suffers from many of the same problems as the other BSG stand-alone movie, Razor; it's not very illuminating. The fact is both films focus on things we already knew about in the BSG-verse. In The Plan it's the holocaust of the Colonies, the fact that the Cavill's are evil, that he manipulated the Final Five, that Boomer was a sleeper agent, and that some of the skin-job Cylons had reservations about the holocaust. We learn very little new here, and the tale is told in more of a travelougue-style series of disconnected vignettes rather than a cohesive plot with a beginning, middle, and end.

Some of the revelations are far from jaw-dropping; Caprica Six secretly met Cavill after manipulating Baltar on Caprica; all of the "Final Five" had hints that "this has happened before"; the Doral cylons aren't very bright; and ultimately we just don't give a damn about Sam Anders and his pyramid team, the Caprica Bucs. The only truly new information we get is that one of the Simon's was in love with his human wife and adopted child, that love changes things for the cylons, and a small bit about Caprica Six and Boomer really trying for a truce with the human race. Unfortunately this sub-plot was almost entirely left out of The Plan, and can only be seen via the "Deleted Scenes" Bonus Features.

In the end none of this (not even the nude scenes, which don't feature any of the series stars naked, sorry) really adds much to the cannon of BSG, nor does it make up for the lack of an ending that Ron Moore gave us just six months ago in the series finale. Ultimately we are still left wanting more, more answers, more mind-frakking twists and turns like the series gave us. The Plan mostly fails to deliver on any of this. If we are ever to venture into BSG-land again, Ron Moore, please don't give us your tired left-overs, give us what we got hooked on, or just don't make the effort.

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Speedwing

1,333 today

Just over 43k total.

43039 / 60000 words. 72% done!

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Speedwing Progress

1,248 for the day. On to other things.

40048 / 60000 words. 67% done!


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REUNION DAY

Just finished the Dead Brother rewrites. Came in at 100,015 words. Off to JLB in the morning after one more pass.

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Dave Bara on Facebook

REUNION DAY and World Fantasy Con

REUNION DAY has finally crossed the magic 100k word mark, coming in at 100,048 currently. More to do still as I try to weave in a dead brother to the plotline. Perhaps 1-2 days left of work before it goes back to JLB.

And speaking of JLB, he will be attending the World Fantasy Convention in San Jose, this Oct. 29th - Nov. 1st. Now I will be there as well! I booked my membership, my plane ticket and my luxury suite (okay, it's a regular room) today. I'm member #1020! So I'll be making plans around that trip and hopfully spending a bit of time with JLB, among others.

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Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

In which I must give Peter Cochrane a brother...and kill him before the book starts!

Yes, more changes that Joshua wants. He is the wise one in these endeavors and I am the writer, so I do as the potential agent wants.

I'm actually very excited to write this new thread in to the book. I think it will have impact from page one and may require some extensive rewriting, but it will be gooooooodd in my opinion. Can't wait to dig in. "The children are goooooooddd..."

In the mean time, I'm going to a signing for fellow South King County writer Mark Teppo's first book "Lighbreaker". Don't confuse his book with this one by Rob(yn) Thurman. Due to an unfortunate alphabetical anomaly, they tend to get stocked right next to each other on the racks at Borders and B&N.

More Later,

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RD Update

96,340/320 pages

Got one more plot thread I want to weave through the book to enhance the backstory, then it's off to JB.



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RD Rewrites

Plus 3,345 words after much deletion and reconfiguring.

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रद रेव्रितेस पीटी. ई Updates

94041 / 100000 words. 94% done!

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RD Rewrites Hours Count

3.0 / 24.0 Hours. 13% done!

RD Rewrites Word Count

93215 / 100000 words. 93% done!

Reunion Day Rewites, Part II

Time: 3.0 hours

Words started: 92,446
Words finished: 93,215
Net Words (+/-): +769

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Speedwing Update 5/13/09

1,436 New

38692 / 55000 words. 70% done!

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Speedwing Update

Yes, you've probably all forgotten about my well-under-way YA SF novel. I've decided that today it's back to it!

Speedwing:

37333 / 55000 words. 68% done!

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How My Hyperdrive Works... Really

This is what writer's do when they can't seem to make the prose work. We draw nifty little pictures.

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Reunion Day Rewite

Finished at:

307/307 (+34 pages)

92,446 (+10,686 words)

Sent off to Joshua this afternoon (evening New York time).

Looking forward to the next steps.

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