You are currently browsing the archives for the “GenCon” tag.


Airships and Sherlock Holmes

October 22nd, 2011

The master sleuth and Master of the World.

What’s not to love?

The World Fantasy Convention has just released its program schedule for 2011, one that offers an impressive blend of topics centering on this year’s theme: Sailing the Seas of Imagination.

At the con, I’ll be joining a discussion about airships and reading from my latest Sherlock Holmes mystery “The Executioner.”

First up, I’ll be joining  Jetse de Vries, Eric Flint, Charles Gannon, and Cliff Winnig for a panel titled “To Sail Above the Clouds: Airships.” Here’s the description:

With Steampunk’s popularity, airships are rising too. Sometimes they’re treated just like sailing ships. (Airship pirates!). Sometimes more like trains or planes. What is unique about this form of transportation that’s grabbed the attention of Steampunk? What has literature done with it and what does literature get wrong and right? (Friday 2:00 PM)

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about airships, working on a new story tentatively titled “Zeppelin to the Moon,” which brings together Professor Challenger (The Lost World), Mr. Bedford (First Men in the Moon), and Count von Zeppelin (the renowned airship designer) on a mission to rescue the inventor of cavorite from the clutches of the Grand Lunar. Sound interesting?

 “To Sail Above the Clouds” will mark my second appearance on a steampunk-themed panel this year. The first was two months ago when I joined my good friends Paul Genesse, Anton Strout, Gregory Wilson, and Maurice Broaddus at GenCon for a presentation titled “Make it Steamy: A Look at the Steampunk Genre.” That event really packed them in, with nearly 100 people in attendance. One of the highlights was Maurice’s account of his forthcoming “steampunk story with all black characters.” It’s title: Pimp My Airship. Looking forward to that one!

Paul and I also got the chance to reminisce about works that introduced us to the tropes of steampunk. His was the Ray Harryhausen 1961 film Mysterious Island (soon to be released in a limited-edition Blu-Ray  from Twilight Time). Mine was Karl Zerman’s 1958 Vynález zkázy, released in the States as The Fabulous World of Jules Verne. I remember catching that one at a drive-in near Philadelphia. The world has never been the same.

Also on the bill at this year’s World Fantasy will be a Saturday night book launch and party hosted by Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing.  This will be the big debut for Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes, the third in the critically-acclaimed series of anthologies edited by Charles Prepolec and J. R. Campbell. I understand that Paul Kane will also be there, reading from his entry “The Greatest Mystery” – one of the anthology’s standout horror stories.

And of course, as always, there will be the WFC mass-autograph session on Friday night, where I’ll be looking forward to meeting old friends, making new ones, and signing copies of Gaslight Arcanum, as well as Veins, Vipers, Visions, and last year’s collection This Way to Egress. (All titles will be available in the dealers room.) I also hope to have some preview material for the forthcoming Voices: Tales of Horror, which Fantasist Enterprises will be releasing later this year.

If you’re one of the thousand or so people lucky enough to be attending this year’s World Fantasy Convention (memberships sold out last winter, making this year’s con one of the hottest tickets around), I’ll look forward to seeing you there.

Oh yes, and did I mention Neil Gaiman is this year’s Guest of Honor? Should be a good time.

Whether you’re attending or not, please consider leaving a comment below. I’m particularly interested in hearing about when you first encountered the wonders of steampunk.

Perhaps it was Mysterious Island or The Fabulous World of Jules Verne, or maybe it was with more recent works, ones actually published under the steampunk banner. Either way, feel free to chime in. 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted in 21st-Century Scop | 4 Comments »

Book Miles

July 10th, 2011
Book Signing at Seton Hill University

Signing for Many Genres, One Craft at Seton Hill University.

So here’s a question: how important are live events in the marketing of books? I trust everyone reading this blog is a book reader and buyer, and many of you are writers as well. So what do you think? Do the wonders of Social Media make is possible for a writer to rely on virtual touring? Or is it still necessary to do in-person events?

I’ve just returned home from a string of appearances, starting with a couple of book-launch event for Many Genres, One Craft – one event at the Stoker Weekend in New York, the other part of the In Your Write Mind Writers Retreat at Seton Hill University. The events were successful, providing opportunity to sign books, meet with readers, and network (often long into the night) with fellow writers. Those are important things, but ones that need to be balanced with travel expenses and time away from writing.

With First Writes at Borders, Wilmington, DE

Following the NY and SHU events, I had a week at home to work on two books (editing one for a fall release, drafting another for an early-winter deadline) before heading east again for events at a Borders in Delaware and Garden State Horror Writers in New Jersey. Now, back from those, I am once again endeavoring to make more progress on the forthcoming books while simultaneously getting ready for events at Confluence, GenCon, and Context.

Wordsworth wrote of “the bliss of solitude,” and I wonder how many writers (who are by nature an introspective lot) begin their careers with the intention of plying their trade in peaceful isolation only to find that the writing life does not exist apart from the world at large.

To me, the biggest challenge is shifting gears. This morning, when I should be devoting time to the characters in my next next book, I find myself wishing I were still enjoying to company of the people I met during my swing through the east.

Consider all of this the challenge facing the 21st century scop, for whereas the storytellers of an earlier time plied their fiction in public, the modern writer needs to balance both worlds – the world of public performance and that of solitary creation.

Or am I overthinking this?

I’ll look forward to reading your comments. For now . . . back to the books.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted in 21st-Century Scop | 5 Comments »

Scop 101

June 25th, 2011

scop (skop)  — n

(in Anglo-Saxon England) a bard or minstrel

an Anglo-Saxon minstrel, usually attached to a particular royal court, although scops also traveled to various courts to recite their poetry. In addition to being an entertainer who composed and performed his own works, the scop served as a kind of historian and preserver of the oral tradition […]. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008.

Back in the days before printed books, when the live reading was the primary means of getting literature to the public, storytellers appreciated the connection between music and narrative. They knew that delivering a story was more than just reciting words, but today that seems to have been forgotten.

The cover of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's collections Coney Island of the Mind

Have you attended a reading lately? Did the author bring a backup band? Keyboard? Boombox? Probably not. It’s easier to just bring a book.

I remember Lawrence Ferlinghetti at a performance sponsored by the now defunct (and sorely missed) International Poetry Forum. It was April 3, 1968, and Ferlinghetti was reading from his collection A Coney Island of the Mind. I was young and impressionable, studying the performance, learning from the master. For an hour it was just Ferlinghetti and his voice, but then, for his final piece, he produced a tape player, adjusted the podium microphone so that it hung midway between his face and the machine. I remember the pose. He held it like an harp, for a moment recalling a classic pose of Florence Farr.

Then he hit play.

And then – in the tradition of the Anglo-Saxon scop – he read “Moscow in the Wilderness, Segovia in the Snow” while guitar music played beneath his words.

 

In the years that followed, I heard others do the same. Most notably Patti Smith, who gave spoken word performances accompanied by guitarist Lenny Kaye in the early 70s, and four-time Bram Stoker Award winner Michael A. Arnzen, who released AudioVile, a CD featuring some of his stories read to original music, in 2007. But live meldings of music and spoken word remain relatively rare, even though modern technology makes it easier than ever to bring quality sound to a reading. Indeed, full multi-media accompaniment – laptop, PA, projector, and screen – can fit easily into the backseat of a Cobalt.

In 2008, as Fantasist Enterprises was preparing to debut my novel Veins at GenCon, I began working on a studio CD of music inspired by the novel. Part of the impetus for the project was a CD that Poe had produced based on Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves. But also in the back of my mind was that long ago performance by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. If all went well, I figured the new music might enable me to score live readings from the book.

The resulting CD, Veins: the Soundtrack, was released by Fantasist in 2009, and that summer I took music and book on the road, giving readings at the International Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts, Confluence, GenCon, Context , and PAISTA, a gathering of educators at the Kiski School in western Pennsylvania.

Naturally, writers needn’t produce original CDs in order to score their readings. There’s a lot of music out there. More than ever before. And the technology needed to arrange and edit a playlist is probably already on the computer you are using to read this blog.

With 21st-Century Scop, I’d like to talk about bringing live readings back to their roots and employing new forms of media. There’s a lot to consider as we move headlong into the future. Let’s follow the road together, see where it leads.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted in 21st-Century Scop | 3 Comments »