And the winds blew

The panel on ethics in SF was proceeding nicely at illogicon iii earlier today. Moderator Metricula and panelists John Kessel, Jim Minz, Liz Woods, and I were ranging far and wide in our discussion of the topic, and the audience seemed to be engaged and enjoying the conversation. 

Then all the phones in the room went off, most buzzing, a few playing their ring tones.  All carried variations of the same message:  Tornado warning.  Severe storms were churning up our area as a front passed through.

No problem; just a warning.  We finished the panel, and all was well.

I moved immediately to my next panel, an in-con recording of the Baen Free Radio Hour.  Show host Tony Daniel had invited John Kessel, Jim Minz, Gray Rinehart, and me to discuss the future of the book.  By now the wind was whipping the trees and blowing the rain sideways.

All the phones went off again.  This time, though, the messages they carried all contained the same instructions:  Take cover.  The hotel had already spread through the con its instructions for safe (or, at least, as safe as possible) passage during tornadoes, which were basically to head to the ballroom, a large space with no exterior walls. 

So some of us did.  Most of the con did not.  Those of us who did enter that room sat there until the warning was over about ten minutes later.

The show resumed.  We did the podcast, which you should sometime soon be able to access via the link above.  I enjoyed the conversation, which was as wide-ranging as the first one.

As I was getting ready to leave the con, I ran into Steve, who said, "I hope your house is okay."  I had no idea why it wouldn't be, but Steve had heard that 85-mph (that's not a typo; eighty-five mile-per-hour) winds had knocked down a tree at the closest exit on I-540 to our house. 

The house proved to be fine.  Branches were down, but nothing particularly large.  Cone Man had fallen,

Click on the image to see a larger version.

but Allyn had already returned him to his standard standing pose. 

So, the winds blew, they blew really hard and really fast, but we're all fine.  For which I'm grateful. 

Library happy snaps

Gina was kind enough to take some photos of Tuesday night's library event, so I thought you might like to see a few of them.

First up is our host librarian, Carla Payne, setting the stage for the evening.

Click on an image to see a larger version.

She did a fine job of running the event.

The four of us, all hesitating to answer a question.

I find it difficult to express how much I dislike photos of myself.

It wasn't all hesitation, though.  We certainly did laugh, as Mur and Dave are doing here.

For those who tell me to post smiling photos, here's as close as I can manage right now.

Did I mention how awful I look?

John hasn't suffered a close-up yet, and Gina went to the trouble of creating some black-and-white shots, so we'll close with John in mid-answer.

Thanks to my fellow panelists, Ms. Payne, and our swell audience, the event was a good time.

Spec-Fic Writers Throw Down In Library War!

Well, not exactly.  We sat for an hour and fifteen minutes, answered questions, and left as quietly as we entered.  Still, I'm working on my New York Post headline writing skills, in case they need to call me up to the show, so I need to practice whenever I can.

As I mentioned in Sunday night's post, this second (for Dave and me) library event of the month featured David Drake, John Kessel, Mur Lafferty, and me.  Our gracious host librarian, whose name I'm embarrassed to admit I did not write down, asked us a bunch of questions, and then the audience--which again outnumbered us, for which I'm grateful--hit us with a few.  We talked a lot about writing, with all of us generally agreeing that the most important thing was, surprise, to actually write.  As Mur noted, everyone who wants to be a writer knows this secret, but few actually take advantage of the knowledge. 

After the panel, a small group of us headed over to Gonza Tacos Y Tequila for a tasty dinner.  I'd not been there before, but I'll definitely go back if I'm in the area and craving Mexican food.

Now, to write.

Come see me Tuesday night (October 8) at the Wake County North Regional Library

Last week's gathering of SF authors nearly destroyed a library (okay, that's a lie), so there's no telling what might happen Tuesday night (that's kinda-sorta true, in that no one can know the future).  We might sit around and talk writing and genre fiction, but we might also pull out our light sabers and duel, throw down with the audience, or even share milk and cookies (I wish). 

The "we" in this gathering, by the way, includes John Kessel, Mur Lafferty, David Drake, and me.  That's a group of four writers with strong opinions on pretty much every topic, so the discussion should not lack for enthusiasm.  All we need is an audience, which is where you come in.  Bring questions, bring friends, bring milk and cookies (would the library even allow that? why am I on a cookie binge?). 

Let's pack this room and show those rowdy librarians how SF fans rock! 

1985

This entry is the one-thousand-nine-hundred-eighty-fifth post on this blog.  Recently, the entry numbers have looked more and more like years to me as they have marched closer to the present.  For no more reason than that, every now and then I'm going to use the occasion of one of these posts to mention a few writing-related events in my life that occurred in the corresponding year.

In 1985,

• With John Kessel and Greg Frost, held the first Sycamore Hill Writers' Conference at my house.  For good and for bad, it and the ensuing SycHills were hugely formative experiences in my writing.
• First started becoming friends with Dave and Jo Drake and thus began a friendship that has lasted to this day and that has taught me a lot about both writing and the writing business. Earlier tonight, we and others celebrated Dave's birthday at a small dinner.
• Turned 30, a development that took me out of young-gun territory and that also hit me hard with my first huge failure; I had vowed to retire by the time I was thirty.
• Watched as my first professional short story sale, "My Sister, My Self," which was published the previous year, failed to gain any award attention whatsoever.  I had thought I'd set the writing world on fire, but it didn't really notice me.  I've had to relearn that lesson every year since then. That story, by the way, was the first Jon Moore tale. 
• Went to Europe for the first time, an experience that, predictably, changed me forever and that provided writing fodder I'm still using. 
• Published my first computer-related article, "Three-Part Harmony," in the November 26 issue of PC Week.  My co-author on that article was Bill Catchings, with whom I've co-written roughly a thousand assignments with many more total headlines.  Bill remains my business partner to this day.
• First visited Australia and New Zealand, another trip that permanently altered me.

A great many other important events occurred in my life that year, of course, but just looking at this list makes me see now, for the first time, how big this one was in my writing career--and in my life.

Library Boy

Last night, the Cary Public Library had an SF in NC event that featured three local writers: David Drake, John Kessel, and me. Dan Brooks organized the event and led the discussion, which took place in the tiered reading place for kids' books. We got to sit under a small cover with a nice curtain; I had to fight the urge to throw a play.

Check it out:


Over two dozen people turned up, which was a nice surprise--even though quite a few were folks we knew. Dan asked several questions, which we took turns answering, and then we fielded questions from the audience. We discussed what drew us to science fiction, our earliest writing experiences, our writing processes, and other related topics.

The show ran almost fifteen minutes long, but no one seemed to mind, and several folks stayed afterward and chatted.

My thanks to Dan for organizing such a nice event, and to Dave and John for being swell fellow panelists.

Party night

Here in Raleigh, I don't attend a lot of parties other than the small extended-family gatherings I usually host, but tonight marked the kick-off of the NASFiC with two SF parties.

The first was an open house at Baen's offices in Wake Forest. The food and conversation were both excellent, and I got to catch up for a few minutes with Eric Flint (the con's Guest of Honor), John Kessel, and my publisher/editor, the redoubtable Toni Weisskopf (the con's Toastmaster). I also had the chance to meet and chat briefly with Mary Robinette Kowal, whose first novel, Shades of Milk and Honey, also came out yesterday.

From there, we drove to Quail Ridge Books for the launch party of the second issue of Sam Montgomery-Blinn's SF magazine, Bull Spec. The short readings were generally interesting, and I had a chance to at least briefly meet so many local SF/fantasy writers that I couldn't catch all their names (sorry, folks; I was already tired). Sam even made a point of mentioning the Children No More charity program, for which I was grateful.

All in all, a fun evening.

A completely meaningless sample

A long time ago, when popular music was mostly awful and good music was mostly punk--yes, the eighties--John Kessel and I ran a writer's workshop we called the Sycamore Hill Writers' Conference. During the years when I was attending SycHill (which is still running; I'm no longer invited), we often took informal surveys of the writers on topics of huge import, such as handedness. I offer three of these for your amusement:

* Left-handedness was more common than in the population at large--or at least, so I remember. (I'm right-handed.)

* The overwhelming majority of the writers were either first-born children or first-born male children. (I'm a first-born.)

* The overwhelming majority of the writers did not attend their high-school prom. (I did not.)

Like most such anecdotal data, I find this material suspect, but at the same time, I've always liked knowing it, so I thought I'd pass it along.