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The Weekend that Was

31/3/2016

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So I survived Eastercon. Barely.

My panels went well (scroll down two posts ago for details). All three were scheduled to be in the small rooms--so small that they were dubbed 'the closets'. They each had about 20 seats for the audience, and by the second day people realised that to get a seat you had to show up for a panel as the previous panel was letting out, and then sit in the room for 30 minutes to hold the seat for the next panel. By the time a panel started, every inch of allowable space (that is, leaving space for the door to open and people to walk down one side of the aisle) was taken up with people either sitting on the floor or standing. It was unfortunate, but it's difficult to find hotels that can handle cons and that have all the amenities, so we dealt with the small rooms as well as we could!

The first panel was daunting, as they always are--getting used to being on panels after several months is. And as I introduced myself, I realised that, once again, I am tired of being a short-story writer ('only') and am tired of feeling like the fraud police are going to come take me away because I haven't yet sold a novel. My friend Val Nolan (lecturer in creative writing in Wales) was on the panel with me, along with some other very smart people. One of the panellists (Matthew De Abaitua) is a novelist and lecturer as well, and was so smoooooth with the vocabulary of writing and analysis that later Val and I decide *that guy* was the grown-up we wanted to be one day.

My second panel was rockin'! It was me and four female scientists, all with PhDs! That is nearly unprecedented at a SFF con. I was the last to introduce myself again, and the only non-scientist. Again, the room was packed, but the audience was a mix of men and women, and they were eager to participate. We ended the world and then discussed how to re-populate it...and what to do about the lack of tampons and rubbers.

The third panel, which ended at the very moment I had to leave for a train, was schedule to be held in a closet. At the last moment, we realised a larger room was holding a panel with a small audience, so we switched rooms. The reason for our bigger audience? One of the Guests of Honour, Ian McDonald, was on the panel. The audience size and the other panellists--their achievements--made me nervous all over again. Plus, by that time, after 4 nights of drinking and staying up too late, I had lost the ability to brain. Luckily, my friends sat in the audience and live tweeted much of the convo, quoting me, and people were generously interested in my garden geekery. There is just no hiding your freak flag at a SFF con!

And then I came home, to quiet and a distinct lack of booze and work work work. It is 8pm on a Thursday, after dinner, and I am in my home office, looking at writing pieces, doing what I can so that next time I am on a panel, I can maybe put 'soon to be published novelist' in my introduction.

The things we want in life--we have to grab them because no one is going to hand them over. 

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Self-Pub: A New Frontier (for me, at least)

22/3/2016

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As someone who has taught Creative Writing at university level for many years, I'm used to being asked about self-publishing: how to do it, why to do it, how it works, if it's worth it, etc. But my answers were informed by the experiences of those writers I knew who had self-pubbed, and by the opinions that many of us writers had developed over the years of trying to break through traditional publishing *and* thinking of 'trad-pub' as the pinnacle. As a lecturer in publishing, I now have a different reason to think about the practice. And so, as an experiment and learning experience, I have decided to self-publish a pair of short stories via Amazon KDP. Then I can explain the steps to both sets of students form a practitioner's perspective.

I have the stories and am working on finalizing the text, proofreading, etc. The next step is to get a cover designed, which is going to be tricky because one story is SF (post-apocalyptic) and the other is dark fantasy (witchcraft and family feuds). One cover has to work for both! This is going to be interesting. 

So, as I embark on a new adventure, I invite you to follow along. 

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My Mancinucon (aka "Mancunicorn" aka Eastercon 2016) Schedule

19/3/2016

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I had hoped (ha!) to post here more often. I also had hopes to lose some weight, get more sleep, finish some new short stories, be further along on the new novel, sell the previous novel, grow taller.... That last one feels about as possible as the others because the others lately all feel impossible.

But this coming weekend I get a little bit of time off and am heading to Manchester for Eastercon and a weekend of seeing peeps, listening to smart folk, talking about books and movies and geekery, and just having fun and NOT READING WORK EMAIL!

My panel schedule:
Friday at 1pm: Transcending the Genre and Other Polite Insults: Kate Wood (m), Tiffani Angus, Matthew De Abaitua, Tom Toner and Val Nolan Exploring the borderland between genre and literary fiction.
I'm rather excited about this one because it means that my friend Val and I get to debate (aka argue and make fun of each other) in public. Which we do anyway.... so perhaps not that exciting for others. *Magical realism may be mentioned.

Friday at 7pm: Menstruation, Contraception and Reproduction in the Apocalypse: Helen Pennington (m), Tiffani Angus, Amanda Baker, Tracy Berg and Dr Bob It's the end of the world, but life goes on.
This one is me and a bunch of scientists! My rallying cry: where's the damn tampax in post-A lit?

Monday at 1pm: Place, Identity, Story: Ruth EJ Booth (m), Tiffani Angus, Ian McDonald, Taj Hayer and Russell A Smith How do SF and fantasy explore the inter-relationship of place, identity, and story?
I'll be the resident garden expert on this one, and possibly the only one to have written a novel set in countries I had never been to (and still haven't been to all of them!). This will be my last hurrah for the weekend (I'm catching a train home at 2.40). 


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2 To-Do Lists is Either 1 Too Many or 8 Too Few

1/3/2016

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The job has been non-stop for the past month. I have had, I think, 4 days off. As of today, because of behind-the-scenes reasons, I am now a full-time lecturer, rather than a .8. This means that I will now be paid for the Mondays that I work, which I worked anyway but that were my 'day off.' I spend a lot of time of email. A LOT. I also spend a lot of time in meetings. And organizing meetings. And tracking down information. And tracking down people. And answering questions from my students. And filling out paperwork. 

For years now I have kept a day-planner, one of those larger ones, the size of a piece of copy paper, with each week taking up a spread and each day showing the hours from 8am-8pm. I had this wild idea that I needed a new, updated tracking system to go with my new job. So I got a new journal and watched the video for the Bullet system. I think I did it for about a day. I just missed the old book--where I could SEE at a glance when I had meetings and classes and etc. But the new book has an index, and I can write whatever I need in it: lists, addresses, ideas, notes. So my planners have decided to shack up. They're not getting married: too old-fashioned of an idea. But they co-habitate in my backpack (I need a new one of those: deets to come--I'm in the market for a leather one that looks like Indiana Jones would've owned it). The big silver planner has my daily appointments listed; the little turquoise one has all of the notes and stuff I CANNOT LOSE in it. Work schedule SORTED!

Now if only I can get my life sorted. To get started, I made an index entry in the turquoise book and called in Life To-Do. It's nearly full already. First up: quit the gym (because the 3-hour block of time it takes is just not happening with my new schedule) and buy a rowing machine. Having disposable income is nice! 

Also on the list: 
Sort a pair of stories to self pub via Amazon KDP
Finish dealing with my new visa (the immigration kind, not the credit kind)
Do my taxes (ugh)
Schedule a holiday!

Here, have a nice photo taken at Fenton House, London, in April 2011.
 
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    Tiffani Angus

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