San Diego Comic Con Photoblog - Friday

The convention is EXHAUSTING.  Worry not, I took many photos, I was just too tired to edit and post them the last two nights.  Let's see what we've got!

So, SDCC is a big deal, 150,000 people and more that spills all over the nearby neighborhoods of San Diego.  Someone thinks this is a crowd worth advertizing to.  A lot of someones.  Here we have an actual blimp flying around above the convention.

Here we have Game of Thrones based rentable transportation!  You too can sit on the Sword Throne!  Ho ho ho ho ho!  Game of Thrones advertizements were EVERYWHERE.  Giant posters, paintings on buildings, street signs - madness.

And here's that scene from the other side.  Game of thrones had competition!  Very, very weird competition.

This photo is not relevant to anything.  I thought the empty building and the guy standing at the window looked neat.

No more boring on-the-way-to-the-con stuff you don't care about.  I declared Friday to be Cosplay Photographing Day!  I knew it would be when I walked in the door right next to the weapons check booth.  Luck was with me, and Mad Moxxi was checking one of her custom SMGs.

Note the lack of confiscation.  Mad Moxxi ALWAYS gets what she wants.  It's a talent she has!

Here is something you need to understand about San Diego Comic Con.  I only photographed the costumes that whim struck me as amusing, because costumes are everywhere.  I took this next photo when I realized that I could take a photo in any direction and there would be a cosplayer.  That's also why the image quality is so bad.  I pulled out my camera and snapped a random photo.

My whims decided to take pictures that would entertain my friends.  This is for you, Chaos.  Well, that and the costumes are incredible.  I think they may have been professional and attached to the booth next to them.  Cammy was awfully friendly.

Moments later, a photo opportunity to please my friend Lucy, some incarnation of whom finds her way into most of my books.  I pay my beta reader by making her immortal, and also with photos of creepy little girls.

Did I mention that there was a cosplayer EVERYWHERE you looked?

And right next door... this booth speaks for itself.

And for my friend Orv, this place.  This is down the street from the convention as we went to get lunch.  I don't know what this place is, but they have pixel seagulls.

I don't know who this is.  I just liked his hammer.

I'm told this series is finally coming out.  I love gothy cartoons, so I'm looking forward to it and I had to photograph these cosplayers!

And then everything went to Suck.  We tried to go to a panel, and the line was... it's hard to be sure.  Half a mile would not be an outrageous claim.  I couldn't photograph it because it twisted around so many corners there'd be no point.  Instead we took the long route back to our hotel, and stumbled over a little playground with this silly Lego Hobbit display.

And some pleasing serendipity for me.  They had huge Teen Titans balloons, and I took photos of two of y favorite characters in animation!

San Diego Comic Con Photolog - Thursday

I spent most of the day on the plane, but even there, I got pictures!  You see, the Midwest is so boring it's freaky fascinating.  Imagine miles and miles and miles of flatness reaching to every horizon, divided mysteriously into squares.  Oh, wait, you don't have to imagine it.  I took a photo.

 That is a city down there.  These eerily regular squares are huge.

Even the clouds were laid out with perfect regularity.

Eventually that changed.  White scars replaced some of the squares.  I honestly don't know what these are.

And... the circles.

 

After awhile, they were just mocking me.

The unifying theme of all of this is flatness.  Colorado was flat flat flaaaat flat flaaaat flat flat MOUNTAINS.

Eventually I successfully reached San Diego, and hooked up with my mysterious patron who got me my badge, Dana Simpson!  She's the creator of the ever-more-successful comic Heavenly Nostrils, and my good buddy, except the female version of that.  Gal pal?  Here she is, in a moment of deep philosophical contemplation.  She's going to be in a lot of my photos, so get used to this expression.

 

We'd spent a lot of time battling with the bus routes of San Diego, but I knew we were close.  It was something in the air.

 

Might have been the street signs in Dothraki.  Yes, there were a lot of these.

 The Convention Center was right on the other side of Dothraki Street.  We began with the customary aimless wandering of the exhibition floor.  Here, I record that perfect moment when I walked through the doors and into my homeland.

From then on we wandered.  I'm not sure what order most of these were in.  They're snapshots in time, like when I noticed this weird combination.  I mean, I understand WHY they're together, but it's so jarring.

Since we'd found the pony palace, Princess Pedantia the Magical Pixel fairy had to pose with her mane-sister.

But I kinda like this one more.

Evidence that my beloved Avatar: Legend of Korra will have a second season eventually!

 

Sometimes you see things you can't explain at Comic Con.

And things that scar your very soul.  He-Man + absolute territory = OHGODNO.

 

And things you reeeeeally want to buy.

And things you reeeeeally want to buy but are huge so you pose next to them for photos instead.

 

On the way out, we stumbled across the Chuck Jones Museum, and... well, Chuck Jones Museum.  I hope it doesn't need explaining.

I leave you with this inspiring photo of Dana Simpsons making an elaborate joke about her comic and My Little Pony.

Derby City Comic Con, A Photographic Journey

I just got back from Derby City Comic Con.  It was much smaller than I knew - one day, really one big dealer room.  Very strict comic focus.  As an author, absolutely and utterly useless.  Personally, I had a BLAST.  Knowing that I was going to a comic con and they are full of Things To See, I took a lot of photos.  They are horrible blurry iSpud photos, but I took three or four of each and kept the best focused.

First up, we have what I refer to as the 'Home Court Advantage' - living in the city, I knew a free parking lot in the area.  This is the heart of downtown at noon on a Saturday.

This was the first thing I saw when I walked in the door.  I knew I was going to have a good day.

 

This was the first thing I saw when I walked into the dealer's room.  I'm not sure what he's selling, but he's part of the display.  Did Mario shaft you on the royalty contracts THAT badly, Luigi?

I liked this lady and thought her booth was adorable.  I bought some gifts for friends.  Currently deciding on the best way to ship them.

I call this piece 'Tiny Hat, Tiny Babies':

Behold, the Discount Demon Parade!  When I saw them walking around in a pack, I HAD to get a photo!  I took this one rushing ahead of them in a desperate attempt to get the effect of their parade.

Of course, the moment they saw me take one photo, they immediately lined up and posed for more.  Sadly, the girl who had coke cans as horns has already taken them off and is drinking them.

And then, disaster struck.  Maybe because I fraternized with the dark forces too much, I don't know.  I went looking for the presentation rooms for listed events.  I got lost.  I got very lost.  I got so lost I wandered into a basketball convention.  That would be lost enough, but it was an EMPTY basketball convention.

There's a slide show still on this projection screen, but my iSpud couldn't capture it.  Imagine how it adds to the eeriness of these lifeless halls.

An easel and room schedule informs me that this is not an empty basketball convention.  It's an empty gymnastics convention.  Sure, that makes much more sense.

As an aid to understanding how I could get lost, I present this giant, doorless hallway.

I did eventually find my way back and resume important duties, like finding out Luigi scored after all.

And photographing random people in random costumes for the fun of it.

Such as Hell...boy?  (I wish I could have captured the incredible detail on that hand)

And of course, I had to get a photo of one of the multiple Fionas wandering the convention hall.

Having covered the place at least twice and enjoyed myself immensely (but it really was a very small convention, so the dealer's room was all there WAS to cover) I prepared to leave.  I was sure I had seen everything there was to see.  Walking up the aisle, I pass... this.

What is a Corn Island Steampunk Society?  They could be puppy home taxidermists for all I care.  They're the CORN ISLAND STEAMPUNK SOCIETY.

And... I think that's it!  Whew.  Must rest.  Must add more chapter breaks before emailing manuscript of Cades Cove novel to publisher.

Cades Cove

Okay, so, I thought this was supposed to be a secret.  Apparently it's not.

There's this author.  His name is Aiden James, and his books are pretty popular, but apparently he's got too many irons in the fire.  My publisher made a deal with him.  They would find a co-writer to help with the next book in the Cades Cove horror series.

That turned out to be me.

So that's what I've been doing, and why there haven't been neat story updates here or anywhere else.  I'm writing book three of the Cades Cove series, and it's over half done now - I think.  It can be hard to tell how complete a book is, since I often get more inspired as the book goes along.  That's certainly happening here.

Getting into the head of the central character has been so important to my writing in general, working with someone else's main character has been a huge challenge.  I'm also highly resistant to things other people think of as horror.  They usually make me laugh.  As the book goes on I get to introduce more of the weird and pretty things I enjoy and slowly crank up the tension, but I'm going to have to hand this one to my editor and hope it's what they wanted!

As soon as it's done.  writewritewritewrite

Random Book Review: The Lensman Series

Hail ereaders!  Hail Project Gutenberg!  Together they have given me the chance to do something I always wanted to do - read EE Doc Smith's Lensman series in order.

For those unfamiliar, the Lensman series (Triplanetary, First Lensman, Galactic Patrol, Second Stage Lensman, Children of the Lens) were written by EE Doc Smith in the 1930s, mostly a chapter at a time as serials printed in magazines.  They are one of the foundation stones of modern science fiction, and physical copies are hard to track down.  I was tickled pink to find out that they're now public domain and Project Gutenberg has scanned them into ebooks and they can be obtained for free online.  Note that they were very obviously computer-scanned out of physical books.  The typos are terrible, the kind of thing you get when a computer is trying to make sense of printed letters.  'Ploor' is written as 'Floor' about two thirds of the time.

Now, for the review.  The Lensman books are space operas, cowboy books in space.  The good forces of Civilization, led by the incorruptible near-supermen Lensmen, are trying to prevent us all from being conquered by the dictatorial and tyrannical forces of Boskone.  There are very few moral shades of grey, even though the author admits to their existence.  Everything is bigger than life.  The men are super manly, the women are super beautiful, the aliens are weird, the bad guys are abhorrently evil, the space ships and space ship battles are dramatic, there are gunfights and gloating villains and seedy dive bars and benign alien benefactors.  Suspension of disbelief is definitely not a priority, and the words 'starkly' and 'irresistible' get thrown around frequently, especially together.  It has hardcore pseudoscientific gobbledygook, like 'q-type helices of pure force' and 'duodecaplylatomate' and 'allotropic iron'.  It has an arms race that even Dragonball Z would be proud of, where by the end of the series planets traveling faster than light are being thrown around as siege weapons.

Is it any good at these things?  Yes, it's great at them.  The books are fun and suspenseful.  The silly tech feels very consistent, especially the whole inertialess drive concept.  The worst thing I can say about the books is that the purple prose describing how powerful space weapons are starts at excessive and moves quickly to ridiculous, and stays there.

The characters aren't deep, but they're likable in a 'gee golly whiz' way, and some of them are fascinating.  The series contains one of my favorite characters of all time, in fact:  Nadreck of Palain VII.  In these mostly morally simplistic books you have occasional flashes of fascinating insight.  Palainians are beings who live on planets like Pluto.  Their biology resembles ours so little they don't entirely exist in three-dimensional space.  As a race they are inherently lazy cowards.  They find risk unacceptable, and do everything the easiest way possible.

Nadreck is as heroic a Palainian as Kimball Kinnison, the main character, is a heroic human.  Nadreck is capable of taking risks, but only if they are absolutely necessary.  In his laziness, he identifies the most efficient way of doing anything.  He is utterly brilliant, inhumanly patient, and ruthless.  'Compassion' is something he doesn't understand.  He is dedicated to the general social good, but pity for his opponents, or even bystanders?  Forget it.  Nadreck is, absolutely, the most terrifying badass in the series.  He causes an entire fortified planet of evil archcriminals to commit suicide by subtly playing on their paranoia until their inherent evil sends them all berzerk and they kill each other.  The books explicitly state at one point that Nadreck would be the hero of civilization, except that the focus on efficiency that makes him so dangerous cripples him.  He's not capable of thinking beyond the current assignment.  Involving outside factors, planning for a general campaign against Boskone, these things would make his tasks too risky.  He just can't think that way.  It's a psychological point of surprising depth, and I love the character because of it.

One final note:  These books were written in the 1930s, and they provide an interesting glimpse into the prejudices of the times.  Some people may very understandably find them offensive, particularly misogynistic.  The heroes are white anglo-saxon males.  Other human ethnicities don't seem to exist.  Interestingly, they're not Christian.  The only religions that come up are given lip service to so people can swear when they're angry.  The attitude towards women fascinates me, because the books repeatedly stress the importance of equality of the sexes, yet they over and over flat-out state that the sexes are different in very 'Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus' ways.  Women are incapable of the ruthlessness of being soldiers, are emotional and filled with a 'vitality' that seems suspiciously maternal.

In summary:  The Lensman series is old-fashioned high adventure epic space opera.  Do not expect serious modern science fiction.  Do expect to have fun.

To An Author, This Is A Big Moment

My author's copies of my first three books arrived today.  Touching them makes me feel funny in my emotion places.

Right now they can be bought on Amazon and other book buying websites, but we're trying for Barnes and Noble stores.

Also Out In Paperback!

And now the trio is complete!  Wild Children is ALSO out in paperback!  Turns out it was slow being released in that format because it's a honking god damn big book and that creates printing and expense issues.  Still, everyone always asks 'When will it be out in a paper version?'  Well, my personal favorite of my books is now out in paper version!

Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain has not yet started editing, and I suspect it will be awhile.  Curiosity Quills is growing so fast they're crushingly understaffed, and selfish author that I am I demanded my favorite (and badly overworked) editor.  Frankly, Verity is worth it.  She's amazing.

This horror novel continues to drag, but it IS getting written.  Every scene gets a little more fun, as the process of bending without breaking the characters to suit me is left behind and the monsters creep back onto the scene.  The noose tightens, and I love building tension.  I'm getting interesting inspirations a little more all the while, but I can't deny my heart is still with Metal, Candy, Flesh.  My moods get involved weirdly, as well.  I'm a terrible writing addict.  If I stop writing, I close up in a ball and stop enjoying the world.  If I get really stressed, that process can work backwards.  This makes momentum tough when I'm constantly reeling from the emotional highs and blows to my self-esteem that come with being a newly published author.

On a lighter note, that duck that used to hang out on my front lawn watching the house returned this year, but I only saw him once.  Will he be back regularly?  Why in heaven's name did a duck want to hang out alone on a suburban lawn in the first place?  It's these little mysteries that make life interesting.