Category Archives: Travel

Writer-mind impressions of Atlantic City (with a writing prompt)

photo(1)I’ve lived in New Jersey for more than nine years now, and you’d think I’d have gone to Atlantic City before today. But thanks to the World Championship of Sand Sculpting, that omission has been rectified.

Why yes, there IS a World Championship of Sand Sculpting. And to be completely fair, there was some impressive work on display. It made the sand castle Anna and I made on the beach later seem rather…lacking…by comparison, even though we had a moat, dammit. A moat!

Atlantic City fascinated my writer-mind, much as our visit to Japan did a few months back. (For another perspective on that trip, check out my wife’s Lonely Planet piece on animal cafes! Being married to a travel writer has its privileges.) Anyway, it wasn’t that Atlantic City was all that alien — though it did have its moments. Rather, it was chock full of those little details that I know I’m going to end up using, in spirit if not in literal fact, in my fiction.

For example:  Continue reading

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Join me at BEA today at 2 p.m.!

The Book Expo America is once again taking over New York, and seeing as I have a book coming out and such, I figured I’d take part. I’ll be helping out at the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America booth today — yes, one day only! — and will be doing a bit of a thing at 2 p.m. The SFWA booth is #2625, which is right near the 3E entrance on the exhibit hall floor. Here’s a handy map.

That thing I’m doing at 2 p.m….well, it was supposed to be a signing, but given the delay of The Daedalus Incident into the summer, I’ll basically be handing out Special Commemorative Flyers (printed front and back) and talking up the book. Yes, I’ll be taking questions. Except regarding that incident in Bolivia which, well, I really can’t talk about. You know how it is with sanctions.

Anyway, if you’re around, stop by the SFWA booth and say hi. I’ll also be roaming about and Tweeting as well, so you can live vicariously through me if you can’t attend and really like books.

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My turn to be interviewed, plus what I’m up to at BEA!

After interviewing Peter V. Brett for a piece this past week, it seems it’s my turn under the interrogators’ lights. Fantasy Faction‘s Dan Hanks, who gave The Daedalus Incident a very nice review, is back to ask me all about how it came to be. Dan asked some great questions; you can check out the entire interview here.

Fantasy Faction is an outstanding fan site, and a popular one, too — so much so that they’ve bulled through their bandwidth allotments for two straight months. They’re asking folks to donate to help them upgrade their servers; here’s the post on why they’re asking, and the Donate button is on the right-hand side of every page. So if you like their content, it’d be good karma to help ’em out.

I’ve also been interviewed by an honest-to-goodness literary magazine, The Rathalla Review, run by the folks at Rosemont College. Grad student Feliza Casano asked me about my writing process and how my background in journalism helped me put together my first novel. Click here to read the whole thing.

Finally…I’m going to be at Book Expo America! So if you’re a bookish sort heading to New York this week, I’ll be doing a thing on Thursday, May 30, at 2 p.m. at the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) booth. That’s booth #2625 near the 3E entrance for those hoping to map things out. I’ll be at the show all day Thursday, so feel free to come say hi. There’s also a great bunch of SFWA authors doing stuff at the booth all weekend, so be sure to check it out if you’re going to the show!

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A handful of quick news items

Thought I’d give you folks a few updates on various and sundry things surrounding The Daedalus Incident. No, I don’t have an ironclad launch date yet, but things on the Skyhorse/Start deal front look good.  And that’s all I can say on that. So, moving on:

I’m writing over at SFSignal today, participating in a rather epic mind meld on the literary appeal of gods, goddesses and myths. Not only is the subject matter epic to begin with, but I’m sharing the stage with a lot of great folks, including Mike Underwood, Chuck Wendig, Chris Lites and Christopher Garcia. Lots of interesting stuff in there; you should check it out. Big shout out to Paul Weimer for including me in such august company.

While I’m here, I really want to give a hearty thanks to everyone at the Hugo Award-winning SFSignal — Paul, JP Frantz, Patrick Hester, Regan Wolfrom and especially John DeNardo — for all the support and interest. They’ve been awesome. If you’re a SF/F fan and haven’t bookmarked SFSignal…man, I can’t even contemplate that. Just go do it.

Also, I got confirmation from Steve Feldberg over at Audible that the audiobook of The Daedalus Incident is primed to go whenever the ebook hits the market, likely around early July at this point. I’ll post a link as soon as I see one. Also, the audiobook has two narrators, Kristin Kalbli and Bernard Clark, which I find quite cool. In retrospect, given the two different protagonists in two different settings, having dual narrators makes sense. It just never occurred to me that someone would actually want to do that. So, yeah…very excited. Thank you to Steve, Kristin, Bernard and the rest of the Audible crew. Can’t wait to have a listen!

Finally, just today I received my official invitation to be part of the programming at LoneStarCon3, also known as the 71st annual WorldCon. So that means I’m headed to San Antonio, Texas, over Labor Day weekend! If you’re heading to WorldCon, come on out to hear me talk about writing and Daedalus and other assorted topics. No, I don’t know which panels yet, or with whom I might converse, but I’ll be sure to announce it here when I get more details. Plus, word is that some of the Night Shade authors may do a little shindig for folks in attendance, so stay tuned.

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More from the Nebulas, plus the Daedalus audiobook!

It takes a lot for me to feel like the little guy. I’m over six feet tall and not exactly waifish. Professionally, I’ve held my own conducting interviews with politicians and CEOs for many, many years. I’ve had Steve Ballmer yelling at me a bare foot away from my face, and broke down in laughter with Jeff Bezos after a particularly fun grilling.

But here, at the Nebula Awards Weekend, I was most certainly the little guy. And it was pretty cool.

As part of my volunteer duties, I helped babysit the press room. And there was a moment yesterday where I’m sitting there while Sword & Laser interviewed the legendary (and truly wonderful) Gene Wolfe, with Nebula nominee Kim Stanley Robinson listening intently nearby, and John Scalzi and Mary Robinette Kowal hovering by the door, also eavesdropping.

And I’m just this newbie, you know? I don’t fanboy much, but it was a great moment.

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Updates from Nebula Awards Weekend

Hello from San Jose! I’m here for the Nebula Awards Weekend, and it’s already been a lot of fun. I’m continually impressed by how welcoming folks have been to the new kid on the block.

Since I’m helping out a bit with the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America’s publicity efforts this weekend, I was invited to join a small group of folks for dinner last night with SFWA Grand Masters Connie Willis and Gene Wolfe. Both are amazing writers, but perhaps more importantly, they’re just lovely people to be around. It was an honor to meet them both. They then went on to do great readings and an interesting discussion at SF in SF here.

As it turns out, The Daedalus Incident is a known quantity around here, and people seem quite interested in it, which is really gratifying to see. I mean, one person said, “Oh, you’re the guy with the book in limbo.” Yes, yes I am. But you HAVE heard of it. So that’s something, right?

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Updates, travel and musings

This is gonna be one of those blog posts made up of stuff that’s too long for Tweets, but too short to warrant their own separate posts.

First off, no official word yet on the Skyhorse/Start purchase of Night Shade Books’ assets. There’s not a heap I’m comfortable saying publicly, other than I remain encouraged by developments. While a bit of uncertainty remains, I expect it’s more a question of when than if at this point.

Folks who have pre-ordered The Daedalus Incident on Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble may have noted that the release date has been changed from May 7 to June 11. This was news to me, and I’m not sure if that’s the official date or if it’s just a placeholder. Some pre-order customers at Amazon got e-mails updating them, others have not. Either way, you can still pre-order the book, and it’ll show up on or shortly after the official release date…whenever that is.

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An American SF/F writer in Japan

japan-fuji

In Japanese, Mt. Fuji is called Fuji-san, a term of respect. Appropriate, I think, for a massive volcano.

It’s Monday morning here in the land of the rising sun, and I can see Mt. Fuji over my shoulder as I write this. I’ve been lucky enough to get my travel on regularly, but this is the furthest I’ve ever traveled — and the first place where I can’t read the language, let alone speak it. Thank God for Google Maps and Google Translate on the iPhone. That and a data-roaming add-on package will get you far almost anywhere, I imagine.

In no particular order of importance, relevance or insight, here’s a few thoughts from the trip so far.

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Six months to go, and the to-do list grows

There’s a lot of stuff sneaking up on me these days. Like giant shark jaws.

Writing a novel was a great personal accomplishment. Getting an agent, and an awesome one at that, was even better. Landing an offer from a well-respected publisher — on my 40th birthday, no less — was freakin’ incredible.

Now, with less than six months to go before The Daedalus Incident is released into the wild, I have to say…there’s a lot more to do.

Of course, you’ve seen the blog updated regularly with details on the cover and pre-orders. (There’s more sites up and running with pre-order pages, including those in Canada and the U.K., so find your favorite here.) But there’s also a lot going on behind the scenes. The machine is gearing up, and I’m going to be a big part of that.

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What makes a story click?

I stumbled across this in L.A. No, Iron Man was not inside.

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll already know that I went out west for work (and some vacation time) over the past few weeks. I went with the best of writing intentions, and even pounded out two scenes and 4,000 words on the cross-country flight. Super proud of myself. After that? Nada.

Given that this was the first real vacation/work trip I’ve taken after my novel sold — and thus increasing the pressure to produce more worthy prose — I quickly discovered that writing, while a joy and a major raison d’être, is still work. And thus after a long day at the mothership office, or out seeing sights, the last thing I want to do is plug-in and pound out words.

I thought I’d take a stab at writing on the flight back, but darn it if United didn’t put us on a plane with free Video-On-Demand. Combined with the 5 a.m. wake-up call to catch the flight, The Avengers were too tempting to resist. And after that, I decided to give John Carter a whirl to see what all the (largely negative) fuss was about. I hadn’t seen either before the flight.

The verdict? The Avengers was a paint-by-numbers summer blockbuster, but the people who did the painting had Picasso-level skill. John Carter struck me as a film that wanted to be far more than typical sci-fi fare, but fell short of that lofty goal on a number of fronts. And as a writer in the middle of the follow-up to his debut novel, it got me thinking about what makes a story click, and what makes it miss.

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