Tag: ConFusion

The Books of ConFusion 2022

John Winkelman

Though ConFusion 2022 was much smaller than previous ConFusions, many authors still attended so I arrived with high hopes, a pocketful of money, and some bags. I brought a stack of books to get signed, and returned home with those and a dozen more, with the majority of the new books signed as well. Truly, this was a glorious weekend for my collection!

Books signed at ConFusion 2022

The first photo is the books I brought to ConFusion 2022 which were signed by the authors.

The top row is Jim C. Hines‘ Magic Ex Libris series, including Libriomancer, Codex Born, Unbound and Revisionary.

The second row starts Terminal Uprising, the second book in Hines’ Janitors of the Post Apocalypse series. Jason Sanford‘s new novel Plague Birds is next, followed by Pimp My Airship by Maurice Broaddus, and Patrick S. Tomlinson‘s Gate Crashers.

Books purchased and signed at ConFusion 2022

This photo includes the books I acquired at ConFusion 2022 and which were signed by the authors.

First up is The Banished Craft by E.D.E. Bell. Next are Starship Repo and In the Black by Patrick S. Tomlinson. Then comes Hidden Menagerie, an anthology edited by Michael Cieslak.

Next are two books by Jen Haeger, Whispers of a Killer and Moonlight Medicine: Onset. Next is Meaningless Cycles in a Vicious Glass Prison, a collection of poetry by Anton Cancre. Cancre was at the signing table filling in for author Sarah Hans, who was unable to attend the signing session. As thanks for buying two of Hans’ books, Anton gave me his book for free (!) and was gracious enough to sign it. Later that day Anton again filled in for Hans in a panel I moderated, “If You Liked That, Read This!” which was loads of fun. I will discuss it more in my ConFusion 2022 wrap-up post.

And finally we have Jason Sanford‘s collection Never Never Stories which upon returning home I found is a duplicate. Oh, well. Now I have two copies of this book, in case I want to read it more than once.

Books purchased at ConFusion 2022

And these are the books I acquired at ConFusion 2022 which were not signed. For the first two, Dead Girls Don’t Love and An Ideal Vessel, author Sarah Hans was indisposed during the signing. The other two, Yoon Ha Lee‘s The Fox Tower and Other Tales, and Damian Duffy and John Jennings‘ graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler‘s Parable of the Sower, my partner and I picked up at the bookstore in the dealer room on our way out of the convention to return home.

A dozen new books is actually a fairly small haul for me at a ConFusion, but again, this was a much smaller than usual version of the event. I should just have time to read these before the next ConFusion in 2023.

A Weekend Away, and Some New Books

John Winkelman

Books from the week of January 16, 2022

As I start writing this post (Thursday, January 20) I have just checked in at the Sheraton Hotel in Novi for the 2022 edition of the ConFusion Science Fiction Convention, dubbed Rising Confusion. I am here as a volunteer and a moderator for one panel, and also an attendee in what is sure to be a fun, if substantially smaller than usual, convention.

Two new stacks of printed-upon tree-derived material arrived at the house this week.

First up is the latest issue of Poetry, the first of 2022 and one of my few remaining subscriptions.

Next is Fateforge vol. 4, titled Encyclopedia, an RPG rulebook for an RPG I have never played, and likely never will. I backed it on the spur of a moment back this past spring. It is gorgeous, as have been all the other RPG manuals I have backed on Kickstarter over the past several years. This may be a habit I need to rein in, as RPG manuals tend to be expensive and take up a lot of shelf space.

And that’s it for this week. More next time, after I have had a chance to reintegrate into the mundane world.

A Good Week of Reading and Writing, and a ConFusion 2022 Update

John Winkelman

New reading material for the week of January 2, 2022

ConFusion 2022 Con Chair Lithie DuBois has just posted a transparent, detailed update on the state of ConFusion, which starts in a little less than two weeks. To sum up: ConFusion 2022 will still take place as a live event, and I will still attend as a volunteer and a panel moderator. However, the convention is in a precarious situation due to the timing of the Omicron variant and their contract with the hosting hotel. The post is well worth reading, even if you are not planning to attend the convention. This is truly a make-or-break year for ConFusion.

In more personal news, three new volumes arrived at the Library of Winkelman Abbey this past week.

First up is the latest issue of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, from one of my few remaining active subscriptions.

Next up is SPFBO 7 finalist Shadows of Ivory by TL Greylock and Bryce O’Connor. I met Greylock at ConFusion back in 2019, when Dyrk Ashton introduced me to a number of self-published authors and thus opened the door to a vast trove of books and authors I likely never would have heard of.

Next is Bastion by Phil Tucker. I met Tucker in the same conversation with TL Greylock, at ConFusion. Truly that was a banner year for self publishing.

2022 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints

I also received the 2022 edition of the Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints, which is always a hoot. For example, this is the entry for January 9:

Holidays: Play God Day, Martyr’s Day (Panama)
1859 – American feminist Carrie Chapman Catt born, Ripon, Wisconsin
1870 – Russian social theorist Alexander Herzen dies, Paris, France
1890 – “Robot-worker” writer Karel Čapek born, Malé Svatoňovice, Bohemia
1905 – Revolution breaks out in St. Petersburg, Russia
1908 – Philosopher, feminist Simone de Beauvoir born, Paris, France
1944 – Indian-German filmmaker Harun Farocki born, Neutitschein, Sudetenland
2021 – Ultra-leftist gay Israeli human rights activist Ezra Nawi dies, Jerusalem

You get the idea. It’s quite an informative calendar.

I first became aware of Autonomedia when I worked at Schuler Books as the special orders manager. At that time there was no Amazon.com, the internet was new, and the WWW was very much in its infancy. Therefore if people wanted books and didn’t know how to suss out publishers’ addresses and catalogs, they came to me. We had an Autonomedia catalog, and received a small but steady trickle of orders for their titles. I have a few of their books in my library, and I think I had more, once upon a time, but either loaned or donated or sold them during one of my early, ill-advised book purges.

In reading news, I finished Rebecca Roanhorse‘s newest book, Black Sun, and loved it! Highly recommended. I am now a little past page 100 of Tamsyn Muir‘s Harrow the Ninth, and enjoying it every bit as much as I did her previous book Gideon the Ninth. I hope to have it finished by the end of the week, because my pile of unread books is still embarrassingly large.

In writing news, I didn’t do a lot of writing as such, this being the first full week of the month and therefore the week set aside for editing and submitting. I spent all of my writing time organizing and cataloging all of the short stories and poetry which I wrote in 2021, and reviewed several of them to see which ones are worth revising and might eventually be worthy of submitting, or at least putting in front of beta readers. This will undoubtedly be an ongoing, rolling process, as tomorrow begins a week of writing, either creating new works or adding to existing, partially-completed works.

If any of you, my two or three readers, have writing goals, stories, or successes, feel free to leave them in the comments.

And that’s it for this week. 2022 is starting off slowly and carefully, with looming dangers and wonders just over the horizon. Happy New Year, everyone!

This Year Can’t End Soon Enough

John Winkelman

New reading material from the week of December 5, 2021

This past Wednesday I received my COVID booster shot at a local pharmacy and, like with the first and second shots in April, I felt an immediate sense of relief which was welcome but not altogether pleasant. It was something like a hangover, a post-stress reaction to getting a thing which is desired but not wanted, if you follow me. Since it was necessary, I was glad to get it, but I would much rather that it was not necessary. But this is the world in which we now live.

I just found out that an old friend has entered hospice, which, coming after another friend passed a couple of weeks ago, and two others in late winter and early summer of this year (none from COVID), really took the energy out of me. And all this in addition to Mom dying back at the beginning of September. Yeah, 2021 can go straight to hell, which at this point is kind of redundant.

On a more positive note, this was a most excellent week for the library at Winkelman Abbey, with many books and magazines arriving in this, the first full week of December.

First up is The Tempered Steel of Antiquity Grey by Shawn Speakman, newly arrived from a successful Kickstarter. This is another of the Kickstarters which was significantly delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated fallout and supply chain disruption. I suspect this will not be the last Kickstarter reward which will suffer from the events of the past couple of years, and at this point it is probably fair to say that this will be the normal state of affairs for the foreseeable future. As Hofstadter’s Law states, “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”

Next up is the latest issue of The Paris Review. I recently cancelled my subscription, or rather the automatic renewal of my subscription, as I have not read any of the previous six issues. However, the thought of no longer receiving The Paris Review causes me a sense of unease, so that cancellation may soon, well, be cancelled.

Next up are two(!) books from my subscription to the catalog of And Other Stories — Paulo Scott’s Phenotypes, translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn, and Mona Arshi’s Somebody Loves You.

Next is issue 44 of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, a small magazine of great words published by Small Beer Press.

Next is Terminal Uprising by Jim Hines. This is my second copy of this book. Hines signed the first one at ConFusion 2020, and I gave it to some friends who live on the east side of the state. This copy, however, is MINE, and I hope to get it signed at ConFusion 2022, which is scheduled for the third weekend in January.

And finally, the boxed set of the Interdependency series (The Collapsing Empire, The Consuming Fire, and The Last Emperox) by John Scalzi, of which much to my surprise I did not own copies. This is also a purchase specifically meant for receiving one or more signatures, as Mr. Scalzi is a regular attendee at ConFusion.

Jim Harrison Collected Poems

As Zyra and I were leaving to pick up dinner last night I noticed a box tucked in a sheltered corner of our porch. When I opened it I found my copy of the single-volume edition of Harrison’s Complete Poems, which I was not expecting to arrive for several more weeks. This book is gorgeous; nearly 950 pages long, and it contains, as it says on the cover, all of Harrison’s poetry. This edition includes a beautiful introduction penned by Terry Tempest Williams, and cover art, as with so many of Harrison’s other books, by the late Russell Chatham.

Wednesday night after Tai Chi class, I watched the book launch event for Jim Harrison’s Complete Poems, hosted by his publisher Copper Canyon Press. It included stories about Harrison, as well as his friends reading some of his poems. I have been a fan of Jim Harrison since the early 1990s when, at the suggestion of one of my professors, I picked up Wolf. One book led to another, and I have never looked back nor regretted a single minute spent reading his words.

The event was recorded and is available for viewing here on YouTube.

In reading news, I am (still) working my way through the stories in Dostoevsky’s The Eternal Husband and Other Stories, as well as David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years. I am enjoying both immensely, but times being what they are I don’t have a lot of energy or focus, and these books each deserve both. So I am reading slowly and in small chunks.

In writing news I am noodling around with a short story and a few poems, trying to work up the energy to dive back into my partially-completed NaNoWriMo manuscript. I would have made better progress, but 2021 keeps finding way to kick my legs out from under me, metaphorically speaking. So maybe I will hit my writing goals for the year. All I can say about that is, this year was a hell of a lot better than last year, writerly-speaking, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it was good.

ConFusion 2022 Is Happening!

John Winkelman

After a year off, and many months of undoubtedly difficult decision making, ConFusion 2022 is happening! Dubbed Rising ConFusion, the convention will take place at the Sheraton Detroit Novi hotel on January 21-23, 2022.

Information and links were posted last night by the convention staff. They are still adding more info and content to the website, but they have the sign-up forms in place as well as their mask mandate and anti-harassment policies. As they update the official website, I will update this post for my three or four readers.

In the interest of spreading the word, here are some individual links, highlighted:

REGISTRATION. If you don’t get a ticket, you can’t attend.

HOTEL ROOM. If you plan to spend more than an afternoon at ConFusion, you will need a place to stay.

VOLUNTEER. Confusion is run by volunteers! Your help and hard work is needed and appreciated.

BE A PANELIST. Offer your knowledge, wisdom and expertise on topics which interest you (and others, hopefully).

JOIN THE CONFUSION STAFF. Be part of the crew planning, staging, and running the show.

 

Not Quite Normal, But Close

John Winkelman

February was unexpectedly chaotic, though the ups and downs seem to be tending upward, in part due to a steadily increasing outdoor temperature and amount of sunlight. The lack of a card-carrying white supremacist in the white house also helps.

Three books arrived this past week. On the left is Neeli Cherkovski‘s biography of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, released in 1979, when Ferlinghetti was 60 (!). I picked this up from Third Mind Books in Ann Arbor, which is an excellent resource for anyone interested in the Beats, as well as the Modernist, New York School and Black Mountain poets.

Ferlinghetti died this past Monday, at the age of 101. When I get get my head sorted out about this I will post an article or two.

Next is Anders Dunkers’ Rediscovering Earth: Ten Dialogues on the Future of Nature, (OR Books) a collections of conversations with writers and thinkers discussing what may be and what will be the state of nature and our place in it, going forward from here.

On the right is Cuba in Splinters, a collection of short fiction in translation from Cuba. This was an impulse buy from OR Books, which I picked up when I ordered Rediscovering Earth. My attention was probably primed because I was in the middle of reading Super Extra Grande by Cuban science fiction writer Yoss.

I spent the last week reading books in translation, and completed three more of my backlog of such books – Permafrost by Eva Baltasar (And Other Stories), Super Extra Grande by Yoss (Restless Books), and A Greater Music by Bae Suah (Open Letter Books). Now for a change of pace I am reading Starship’s Mage by Glynn Stewart, which I picked up last year at ConFusion. I’m less than 100 pages in, and really liking it so far.

In writing news, I am working on edits to a short story I wrote for a call for submissions for the Grimm, Grit and Gasoline anthology published by World Weaver Press. The story was not accepted, obviously, but I think it has promise.

This past Friday I had the great good fortune to spend some time talking the story over with Jason Sizemore of Apex Book Company. The opportunity was made available to supporters of the Apex Patreon, which I am and have been for a couple of years now. I met Jason at ConFusion back in (I think) 2016, where we spent a few minutes discussing the ins and outs and ups and downs of the publishing business. Obviously Apex is doing much better than Caffeinated Press ever did, but there were many similarities in the experiences of running our respective independent publishers.

The increased reading and the access to a professional editor have me feeling reinvigorated, and warmth and sunlight are always energizing. It’s time to get writing.

Funk and Fugue

John Winkelman

With the inauguration now in the past the world exists in the consensual illusion of having returned to something like normal. That is absolutely not the case of course, and it will be a long time before we even have an idea of what normal looks like. It certainly won’t be what things looked like on this date four years ago, or even one year ago.

On this weekend in any other year I would be at ConFusion right now, hanging out with old friends, meeting new friends, talking about reading and writing and past cons and publishing and not getting published, and drinking and carousing and enjoying being in the company of good, smart, talented people.

Of course ConFusion is cancelled for this year, and I think ConFusion 2020 was the last normal thing I did before lockdowns began last March. I miss the experience terribly, but it is not as bad as it would be if it were going on and I was not there.

Right now I am sitting in the waiting area of a hospital, waiting on test results for a family member who is in poor health. This is part of a process which has been ongoing for some years now, so while it is not unexpected, it is also not a thing which could be predicted in any meaningful way.

Thus even though the exceptional chaos of the past four years is over, we are still awash in the ordinary chaos of daily life here in the cyberpunk hellscape that is the mid twenty-first century.

Anyway.

It’s been a quiet week for books here at the Library of Winkelman Abbey. One book arrived – War Stories, an anthology courtesy of my subscription to Apex Book Company.

I am almost done with Democracy, Incorporated, and am about 120 pages into The Brothers Karamazov. I plan to round out the month with short stories before I pick up another book to follow the Wolin.

Writing is still going nowhere, though I can feel the knots in my mind loosening up and the creative juices beginning to flow again.

In the absence of ConFusion for inspiration I will need to rely on the mundane chaos of the world.

Re-centering Poetry

John Winkelman

One of the advantages, if you can call it that, of working at home in the Days of COVID is that I can see the day-to-day progression of the diminishing daylight as we move from the autumnal equinox to the winter solstice. When I close down my laptop at the end of my shift the sun is just a little closer to the horizon, the light a little more golden – or red, depending on the drift of smoke from the west coast. And each day it is just a little more difficult to pull myself from bed early enough in the morning to complete my morning routine.

Two things are helping keep me on my game as winter approaches: Poe, who still insists on being fed at 5:00 every morning, and a large stack of poetry books and chapbooks to read through as part of the Sealey Challenge. I am managing to stay on schedule, mostly thanks to a large pile of unread chapbooks which have arrived over the past four years as part of my subscriptions to Horse Less Press (currently on indefinite hiatus) and Ugly Duckling Presse, which is still going strong though I had to let my subscription lapse for financial reasons. I note that traditionally the Sealey Challenge has run during the month of August, so next year I will align myself with the rest of the poetry universe and complete the challenge in the appropriate month.

An excellent pile of books arrived this week at the Library of Winkelman Abbey. On the top left is a new one from Subterranean Press – Edited By, a collection of stories which have been edited by Ellen Datlow. The collection itself is, well, edited by Ellen Datlow. So there’s a lot of meta going on with this one.

In the top middle is Francesco Verso‘s Nexhuman, the latest delivery from Apex Book Company, to which I have a subscription through Patreon. Editor Jason Sizemore was kind enough to reach out to me when the original print run for this shipment ran a few short and he allowed me to pick any title from the Apex catalog. This was my first choice, and it was fortunate they had copies in stock, as I am slowly picking up every book Apex has published, thanks to Patreon, Kickstarter, and purchases at various ConFusions over the past several years.

On the top right is Road to Heaven, Bill Porter‘s beautiful travelogue/story of wandering the mountains of China looking for the Buddhist and Taoist hermits who maintain a tradition once much revered in Chinese culture.

Bottom left is The Collected Ghazals by the late, great Jim Harrison. Copper Canyon Press recently released this collection, as well as the book in the bottom center, Letters to Yesenin. I have been a fan of Jim Harrison since a college professor turned me on to him back in 1993, when he picked up a copy of Wolf. Since then I have read almost everything Harrison wrote, and have bookshelf dedicated to his poetry and prose.

On the bottom right is the new collection from Garrett Stack, Yeoman’s Work. I first heard of Stack when we published a few of his poems in an issue of The 3288 Review. This is an excellent collection, and well worth seeking out.

In reading news, I have so far read 18 poetry books and chapbooks, and am keeping a running tally of the list up on Instagram and Twitter. I haven’t taken a deep dive into poetry like this since the late 1990s, unless you count the thousands a year I read as editor of The 3288 Review, which is not really the same thing. The Sealey Challenge has been a wonderful experience and with 13 more books to read my mind will be in a wonderful place when NaNoWriMo starts on November 1.

I just finished reading For Exposure, Jason Sizemore’s brilliant history of Apex Publications, with contributions by half a dozen or so of the editors and other contributors, employees and supporters of his wonderful company. I picked up For Exposure at ConFusion back in, I think, 2015, when I managed to spend a few minutes talking to Sizemore about the trials and tribulations of running a small independent publishing company. He is a Righteous Dude, as the kids say these days, and I offer all the kudoes to him and his team for the work they do in the literary world.

Writing hasn’t been going as well as reading, though I managed to put down a couple hundred more words in the book as I try to work through this one lynchpin chapter and scene, from which the rest of the book will flow, which tells me I may need to just mash my fact against the keyboard until something clicks and I can move ahead. The goal is still to complete a first draft this year, and with luck even complete the draft during NaNoWriMo, though I am having more and more concrete thoughts about a series of short stories which might eventually become chapters in a new book. All I know is that I will spend a lot of time writing in November 2020, assuming the slings and arrows of the mundane world allow me the mental space and emotional clarity to do so.

Will No One Rid Me of This Turbulent Year?

John Winkelman

I imagine I am not the only person making that request of the universe. Though I have managed to keep myself gainfully employed through the first six months of the Plague Time I am doing my best to not take it for granted that I will still have a job come the end of the year.

To that end I continue to accumulate books against the day I find myself with a sudden abundance of free time, though on balance I would rather have a steady income, as I am in my fifties and the tech world is unkind to programmers who are not willing to work nights, weekends and holidays. And that is me. Been there, done that, not willing to do it again.

Speaking of accumulated books, the past week brought in three new volumes to the Library at Winkelman Abbey. On the left is the new issue of Reckoning, the journal of Creative Writing on Environmental Justice. The wise and wonderful Michael J.  DeLuca, who I met at the ConFusion Science Fiction Convention several years ago, is one of the founders of Reckoning, and it was he who introduced me to this excellent little magazine.

In the middle is the novel That Time of Year by Marie Ndiaye, and on the right is Home, a collection of Arabic poetry in translation, both published by Two Lines Press, a project of the Center for the Art of Translation. I keep forgetting which subscriptions I have cancelled and which are still active, so it is always a pleasant surprise when a new package shows up on my porch.

In reading news, this past week I finished The Orc King and The Pirate King, both by R.A. Salvatore, part of his long-running adventures of Drizzt Do’Urden the Drow Elf Ranger. Of the 35 books I have read in this calendar year, 18 have been books from this series, and I think I am done with the adventures of Mr. Do’Urden and company for the rest of 2020. Plus, they clash with the other books I am working my way through – The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and The Making of the Indebted Man by Maurizio Lazzarito. Though the fantasy novels are fine adventures and excellent entertainment, they are very much escapist and I can’t deny a certain feeling of fiddling while the country burns when I can be educating myself about the state of the world, and the past states which got us to this state.

In writing news, I am a little over 5,000 words into my new novel. That puts me squarely in the middle of chapter 4, and just above the lower limit of progress I set for myself for the rest of the year. 5,000 words a week, minimum, until the first draft is done. In theory this is a piece of cake, as during National Novel Writing Month I occasional turned out more than 10,000 words in a day. I think my record was 18,000 in an unbroken 9 hour stint. Of course I was single at the time, and in a position where I could take a sick day when the muse struck.

I was stuck in the third draft of chapter 1 when I watched the Wizards, Warriors and Words podcast, which includes as one of its panelists Mr. Dyrk Ashton, whose books have graced these pages several times in the past. I met Dyrk at ConFusion a few years ago, and for each of us it was the first time we had met someone in real life who we had first connected with on Twitter. It was from Dyrk I learned of this podcast, and it was from his paraphrased advice from Stephen King that I made it through my writer’s block. The advice was, roughly, “You don’t need to know how the book will end when you start writing it.” So I finished the chapter and if I need to go back and rewrite it to accommodate a change in the story 50,000 words from now, so be it. I expect this book to be between 80,000 and 100,000 words when the first draft is complete.

Speaking of ConFusion – ConFusion Science Fiction Convention has been cancelled for 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the board of ConFusion felt that it was in everyone’s best interests to table ConFusion 47 until 2022. This was a difficult decision, and the decision-makers have my sympathies for what must have been many sleepless nights arriving at this conclusion.

On the bright side, that gives me an extra year to write and hopefully get something published, assuming the world hasn’t fallen further into chaos and fascism by January 2022, and such things as creativity, optimism and hope are still allowed.

The Big Snooze, and Some Thoughts on Self-Publishing

John Winkelman

And that’s really what this whole spring has been, hasn’t it? Just at the cusp of getting out of bed we hit the snooze button and suddenly two more weeks have gone by. Here in Michigan, Governor Whitmer has extended the stay-at-home order until June 12, though she is gradually allowing the opening of more and more businesses under specific instructions as regards social distancing and the gathering of crowds.

For me, it won’t change anything as I am on my hellish project until (at most recent notice) June 18. 10 hour days, 50 hours a week, Tuesday through Saturday, 2 pm to midnight, for three and a half more weeks. It mostly isn’t really a problem except when the weather is beautiful (as it has been for the past week) and I can hear the neighbors hanging out in their back yards, drinking beers and grilling various meats. Then it feels like something which is being done to me, even though I volunteered, to the extent that anyone volunteers for a project when the alternative is likely unemployment.

But the books do continue to trickle in, though that is not a reliable or accurate way to measure the passing of time. On the left and right of the above photo are the most recent deliveries from Two Lines Press, Echo on the Bay by Masatsugo Ono, and On Lighthouses, by Jazmina Barrera. In the middle is the new Girl Genius collection, Queens and Pirates, from Kaja and Phil Foglio, just delivered from their latest Kickstarter. World events caused many delays in the delivery of this beautiful graphic novel, but they persevered and it is now in my greedy little hands.

In reading news, I just finished M.L. Wang‘s superb The Sword of Kaigen, which recently won the 2019 Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off. This is some seriously quality work, and should remove any doubts as to the quality of self-published fiction available to read. I, fortunately, had already had those doubts removed thanks to meeting stellar writers like Dyrk Ashton, T.L. Greylock, Phil Tucker, D. Thourson Palmer, Mike Shel, and many others at the ConFusion science fiction convention over the past several years, as well as Jean Davis here in West Michigan, who we worked with extensively back in the heyday of Caffeinated Press.

At ConFusion 2020 earlier this year I attended a panel about self-publishing and everyone was talking about the SPFBO, so I finally looked it up and, well, it is magnificent! 300 entries whittled down to ten finalists and then one winner over the course of about ten months. All volunteer run, and coordinated by author Mark Lawrence. The sixth year of the SPFBO has just commenced and I find myself continually distracted by the commentary on social media. It even prompted me to (o god) reactivate my Reddit account so I could keep up with everything on r/Fantasy.

All of this is timely, as now that things are less chaotic (but by no means  normal) I have the brain-space to think about writing again. I dusted off my failed 2016 NaNoWriMo novel (ran out of steam after 13,000 words), and discovered that there are the bones of something I can turn into a good book. My partner has recently finished setting up her home office and has been burning the midnight oil putting her thoughts to paper so it feels like there is something in the air, and that if I don’t at least lay the groundwork of a book in the next few weeks the opportunity will pass me by and my life will be the poorer for it.

Writing a fantasy novel is also a good escape from the stresses of the mundane world right now, as real-world travel is difficult and problematic during a pandemic-induced quarantine.

My mind, at least, has freedom to roam.