CONduit Report: Celebrity Sighting

Have to share this one.

CONduit Report: He's Science Fiction, but She's Steampunk

I met Bill Housley of Wyoming at the Con.  He's the author of a novel called Into the Dark: Escape of the Nomad (Cowboy Logic, 2010), which I just finished reading.  Bill Housley and Umberto Eco back to back are some stiff competition, but I expect Umberto can take comfort from the fact that Bill's not after his medieval thrillers audience.

Into the Dark is Star Trek: First Contact meets The Astronaut Farmer with John Galt cast in the starring role.  It is science fiction and also a thriller and also a call to action, strongly advocating the manned exploration of space (which I support, too, whether or not there are alien civilizations out there waiting to bio-mine us out of existence if we fail to achieve it).

Bill makes the first chapter of Into the Dark available on his blog (link above).  It's a strong start, and I recommend it for writers thinking about how to begin a novel.  Some strong points:

• it begins on conflict (an argument);
• it has to handle a lot of exposition, and for the most part it builds this into the argument, which is almost always the best (least boring) way to handle exposition;
• the protagonist is introduced;
• the stakes (interstellar war and the destruction of the Earth) are made clear; and
• the chapter ends on something of a hook -- even the good guys are skirting at the fringes of the law.

Bill attended CONduit with his daughter and assistant, Alicia, who went in character as Bess Raptor (a stylish steampunk sky pirate of her own creation).  Here's Bess:

CONduit Report: How Do You Feel About Zombies?

It turns out a lot of people think they're cool.  Enough that I should consider writing a zombie book?  Nah, I probably couldn't do it as well as the people that are already doing it.

For instance, there's Carter Reid (and his wife -- he never names her on his site, so I won't out her either).  I met them Saturday night, waiting in line to do a short spot on the radio.  They're hilarious, and he's a very talented artist, and you can check out their work at the Zombie Nation.  What is Zombie Nation, you ask?  Shorter to ask what it isn't.  It's a blog, it's a comic strip, it's a shop for zombie merchandise, it's a repository of survival tips for When Zombies Attack.  Check it out, even if you don't think of yourself as a zombie person.

I had another, sort of surprising, run-in with zombies at CONduit, in the form of Shawn Zumbrunnen.  He fronts a trio called Rev Mayhem (on Myspace) and he joined us in the filk songwriting contest to play his song Zombie Girl, which was absolutely hilarious.  A little reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft's Rats in the Walls, the way it ended.  A lot reminiscent of Flight of the Conchords, say, The Humans Are Dead.

CONduit Report: Filking

I spent the weekend in Salt Lake City, at CONduit XXI, "Utah's longest-running and largest general science fiction and fantasy convention."  I'll spend the next few days reporting on things I did there and related observations and links.

I drove down to Salt Lake for the event, and coincidentally I brought one of my guitars (my Fender Toronado, for images of which see below).  I say "coincidentally" because I had not planned on participating in any of CONduit's filking events, but since I had a guitar with me anyway, more or less on impulse, I entered the filk songwriting contest.

The contest was judged by a panel of three, comprised of convention guest of honor Joey Shoji (pics) and special guest Kathy Mar (bio with pic) and a senior member of the Utah Filk Organization (UFO) (who might have been Danica West, but I could be mistaken).  I entered in the "original song" section, and played The Gift of Solomon Kane.

And won!

Here's my nerve-wracked, fumbling, award-winning performance.

The filk folks were all very generous and gracious with me, an interloper.  Filk is really cool.  I've never seen so many basically shy people being really brave to participate in an art they love.

I was unable, incidentally, to collect a portion of my prize after the awards were announced at Masquerade, which was to be a copy of UFO's CD (see the link above), so I can't review it.  If the CD is as fun as their live performance, though, it'll be worth the $10.

CORRECTION:  Per Joey Shoji, in the comments, the third judge was Dawnya Thill.  My apologies, Dawnya, and thanks again to UFO, Joey and Kathy!

Congratulations!

(Notice that, even here, conflict generates interest.  The best thing about this photo is the cheesed-off little gargoyle-pixie in the bottom left.)