Updates

Bursts of Fire has been supported, so far, by two action-adventure videos. The next videos we want to put out are artist-inspiration videos, but the feedback we got last summer was that they were unclear. So we are re-thinking the idea of having them with no voice-over.

I had one of the artists (Adria Laycraft) visit me this week and we did a voice recording of her answering a bunch of questions about what inspires her art. Of course, with modern technology, you can do a fairly good digital recording with minimal equipment, but my daughter, who has her BFA in this field, suggested we do it in the laundry room with foamies to absorb the echoes, and use a nylon-stocking pop-blocker.

I think the recording worked pretty well. Of course, the proof will be when we put it onto the video, and see if the quality is what we want. Still, an interesting experiment.

Got a lovely compliment on the last day of teaching Show vs Tell for the Alexandra Centre. Two students, separately, asked if I was teaching any upcoming courses. Then, during the Q&A at the end, a third student asked the same thing in front of the group and suggested I let the class know if/when I had an upcoming course. I’d told them I was negotiating potential dates to teach “Novel Surgery,” and when that was finalized a day later and I informed them, I got two registrations within the next 24 hours. I took that as a compliment!

This week, I (almost!) finished the final read-through for Scents of Slavery. Sometimes the back-and-forthing can introduce new errors because you work in small chunks of text. Then, next week, I hope to have this one off to Laksa Media!

This week, I did the back-and-forthing for Scents of Slavery. That is, referencing all the notes I took while doing the first draft (and the continuity notes for all the books, like checking to see I never used the words “month” or “moon”), deciding in which scene each change needs to go, and incorporating them.

My previous accountability group, the Accountability Confluence, was a face-to-face group that met in person monthly to review each other’s previous goals and set goals for the following month. But when the organizer moved, it kind of fell apart.

However, I have a new, on-line accountability group, Writing Buddies. It works the same way, only monthly and electronically. This is a small group of SFWA colleagues at various stages in their careers, both traditionally and independently published. Very interesting to get to know some of my fellow writers better, and to have that touch-base support.