Local Reader/Writer Cons to Attend!

Last week, to celebrate the release of THE TALON OF THE HAWK, I also released a prequel story to the series, NEGOTIATION, and set it to free. You can still download it free for a couple more days!

Our topic in the Bordello this week is Three Reader or Writer Cons/Events Near You (that you'd recommend). Love that Calendar Queen KAK tacked on "that we recommend." I've bitched about cons I hated before, so it's good to focus on the love.

Also, I'm going one step further and suggesting four!

Bubonicon

2015 will be Bubonicon's 47th year! Held annually in Albuquerque, New Mexico, usually at the end of August, Bubonicon is a Science Fiction and Fantasy reader convention. It's organized in part by some of the fine folks at Page 1 Books, who hosted the Standing Room Only signing I did with Darynda Jones yesterday. (Or, as I like to see it, that she did with ME.) Bubonicon attracts many of regionally local SFF authors - a surprising density given the relatively sparse populations of our big square states - like George R.R. Martin, Connie Willis, Stephen R. Donaldson and Melinda Snodgrass, to name only a few. This year also sees long-distance guests Tamora Pierce, Mary Robinette Kowal and Catherynne M. Valente. At $40, the registration fee is dirt cheap and the organizers generously do not charge their featured authors to attend. Highly recommend. August 28-30, 2015. Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Reading Until Dawn

I confess I have not attended Reading Until Dawn before - because this is the first year! However, I've met organizer Casey twice now, at the Coastal Magic Convention (which I also love, but it's not near me) and when she and two of her buddies road-tripped down from Denver yesterday to attend our signing. Her whole concept is to create a low-key atmosphere where readers and authors can hang out, mingle and have real conversations about books. At $85 for the weekend, this is also very affordable to attend. I'm looking forward to it! October 8-11, 2015. Denver, Colorado.

Sirens

Okay, I haven't been to the Sirens conference before. I only heard about it last fall at the World Fantasy Convention (also great, a movable feast that so far has not moved near me). (Also WFC - foolishly, to my mind - uses a different URL every year, so that's the 2014 link.) Amy Boggs, SFF agent at Donald Maass Literary Agency told me about it. I was all fired up to go to this all-female Fantasy convention, also held in Denver - until I found out it's the dead-same weekend as the aforementioned Reading Until Dawn con. ALAS! Still, I'm a woman of my word and, though sorely tempted to renege, I'm going to RUDC instead. (Though I'm totally sneaking out at some point so I can meet Kate Elliott and Thea Harrison for drinks!) This one is pricier - $195 now and $230 at the door. Still the attendees and programming look amazing. October 8-11, 2015. Denver, Colorado.

Enchanting the Page

Every-other year my local chapter, LERA, hosts a very small, one-day conference, Enchanting the Page. This is always a stellar day of workshops, discussions and pitches. This year we have Alexandra Sokoloff giving her awesome workshop on Story Structure, along with editor Brenda Chin and agent Laura Bradford. At $85 for members, $95 for non-members, plus an optional $25 for the pizza and movie night - where Alexandra will walk us through the screenwriting tricks used in a major blockbuster film - it's a great value for the aspiring writer. November 7, 2015. Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Non-Human Antagonists (and I Don't Mean Aliens)

Sometimes I feel like a fraud, writing these craft posts.

You know - now with topics like this week's: Antagonists who aren't villains - I start thinking more about what I studied back in the days of AP English than of my own work. Things like place as a character and antagonists who function as protagonists. Things OTHER writers do. My undergraduate and graduate degrees are in science, not literature. I am not one of those studied writers who plans out themes and symbology, who even thinks in terms of protagonists and antagonists.

It's funny because yesterday my local chapter of RWA, the fabulous Land of Enchantment Romance Authors (LERA), sponsored a program on using the Scrivener software, taught by Ben Prior. For those who don't know, Scrivener is a program many writers use for drafting and revising novels. It lets a writer compose by scenes and shuffle them around, combining and recombining, along with tracking metadata like setting and character profiles.

All of which makes my skin crawl.

Pretty much literally. In fact, my chapter mates know me so well that they teased me about it, asking at the end of the presentation if I was a convert. Anna Philpott, sitting next to me, burst out laughing and answered for me, saying no - that I'd been actually squirming in my chair in discomfort. Ben came over to me after and asked about my process. So I showed him my spreadsheets. ~eyebrow waggle~ And I explained that I don't think in terms of scenes or character profiles, that it's all one story to me, that I write from beginning to end.

And he said, "Oh, you're just one of those naturally talented storytellers."

So I'm clinging to that explanation, rather than the fraud one.

ANYWAY.

As I mentioned in last week's post about villains, I don't think I really write them. I suspect *most* of my antagonists aren't actually villains. Particularly in my contemporary romances, there aren't really villains at all. And the "antagonists" tend to be whatever it is in the protagonists that is stopping them from finding happiness. Their own stubbornness or blindness to what they need to see.

It's interesting to me, writing both genres. Particularly now, having just completed a final read of the galley proofs of my (very long) epic fantasy romance, THE TALON OF THE HAWK, and finishing and sending to my other editor the draft of my contemporary erotic romance, UNDER CONTRACT.

You'd think these two books would have little to no overlap and yet I noticed that they do. And it's in this arena - the antagonist who's not only not a villain, but not even a person.

Drought.

Yes, I have drought in both books, a relentless force that drives a great deal of the desperation to effect change. I did not plan it that way - or even notice until the other day - because (duh!) I don't plan any damn thing in my books. But it's there in both. No doubt a reflection of my life in the desert southwest of the US, where our ongoing severe drought has woven into the fabric of my subconscious.

I suppose my point is - since I really ought to have one - is that an antagonist can be any kind of conflict faced by the protagonist, whether human, alien, animal or a force of nature. Villains are a very small subset of antagonists, and fairly limited to certain subgenres. And, to my natural storytelling mind, among the least interesting variety. ;-)

How Writing 1st Person POV Gave Me Boy Cooties

Yesterday, at #LERANM, my local RWA chapter, I gave a tutorial on using Twitter. We had a great time and the lovely and viviacious Katie Lane snapped this pic as I was talking. And gesticulating. LOL!

This week's topic in the bordello concerns perspective - as in first, second or third person point of view (POV) - which works best for us and why.

I started out writing in first person, because my natural form from the beginning was personal essays. Very much like my blog posts. I sometimes segue into second person, I notice. Particularly in blog posts where I start saying things like you don't really notice how essays and blog posts tend to be in first person because you expect non-fiction to be more so than fiction. <-See what I did there?

So, when I went to write my first novel - which eventually and after many revisions and iterations became Rogue's Pawn - I wrote that in first person. In fact, and I admit this with chagrin, I originally wrote that book in a memoir style. As if I, myself, had fallen through a gate to Faerie and wrote a memoir about my adventures. I thought I was SO BRILLIANT doing that, subverting the genre tropes and all. Thing is, I didn't write genre well enough to subvert the tropes - something I had to learn through painful trial, error and ego-bruising. Thinking about it now, it IS kind of a cool idea. Something I might have the craft to pull off at this point.

Hmm...

Anyhoo. I wrote in first person because it was what I knew and I had some skill at it. Readers tell me they like my first person perspectives when they don't like others. It's not easy to do because it's so restrictive. The reader can only know what the first person POV characters now. You can mix in more than one first person POV character (I don't like it) or mix in a third-person POV in with the first (like that even less), but the purest form - and really my very favorite - is one person, telling the story through their eyes. It works well for me because I feel like I can really delve into the person's character, along with their emotional and spiritual arc.

I started writing third person with erotic romance. Most fiction is really in third person. With my full length erotic romance novels, the Falling Under trilogy, I added in the hero's third-person POV too. I alternate POVs in those and that's fun, too, to build the story from two perspectives like that. I keep a very close POV, so that it's barely a step removed from first person. So close, in fact, that in writing the third book in the trilogy, I inadvertently slipped into first person - writing from the hero's POV! I couldn't figure out why I felt so... odd. Then I realized, a page or two later, that I was inside a man's head. A very strange place to be.

This may have marked a step up in writing craft for me however. I might try it again, if I can make sure to wash off the boy cooties afterward. ;-)

For the fantasy series I'm working on now - brand new, top sekrit stuff! - I'm writing in third person alternating POV, because my agent, fabulous Connor, asked me to. He  and Iwanted to target a particular market and I like the idea of selling books as well as the next Word Whore. At first I struggled, however. I *really* wanted to write in first person, particularly the heroine. But I applied discipline (GASP) and found my way through to her voice. Now I'm into it.

So, that doesn't really answer the question, I know. I like having all the tools. Each story is different and so are the various markets.

It would be interesting to know if you all like how I write one kind of POV over another - feel free to share!