I always forget my anniversary…

I started by introducing myself to the blogoverse as Chris Kelworth on the tenth of June,  2010, inspired by something I was told at my first Brian Henry Saturday workshop. I meant to do something really cool for the Kelworth Files’ second birthday. Well, the tenth was a Sunday, so I did Six Sentence Sunday, and for the days around it, I was rambling about superstition and posting a goals update, which is cool, but not very celebratory.

So – mucho thanks to all you cool bloggers, followers, and everybody else who’s helped me feel welcome throughout this two year journey. For all of you, I’ve brought a special thank-you present! Click on the box to get your special gift.

And this is a gift that keeps on giving, too! 😀 Can you figure out how?

A self-introduction for my campaigner friends.

Hey there, I’ve noticed a few people already dropping by from the Platform-building Campaign. I’m afraid I won’t be able to make the rounds myself until I’m back from Dragon*Con, so I’ll be starting around Tuesday, but I thought I’d say a few things about myself so that fellow Campaigners, especially my group-mates, will be able to get a sense out of who this Chris Kelworth guy is.

I’m Canadian. I get a steady paycheque for programming field service technician websites. I write science fiction and fantasy, for middle grade through adult readers. I’m trying to focus on rewriting my collection of short stories and submitting them to publishers.

I’m a huge fan of many things: Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Doctor Horrible, Doctor Who, Star Trek. I love to read Diane Duane young wizard books, just about anything by Larry Niven but especially Known Space, and also Madeleine L’Engle, Anne McCaffrey, Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea books, and Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni series. I’ve recently discovered the fun of going to fan conventions – which is what brings be to Atlanta this coming long weekend. (Never been to a convention as high-profile as Dragon*Con before, though.)

I have created fan fiction, fan art, and fan videos. I have a fairly impressive collection of portable digital electronic devices, and love to write my own apps for them when I can. I’m love National Novel Writing Month, Script Frenzy, and several other online writing challenges, and belong to a few local writer’s circles and critique workshops. I love playing games of many types, though I’m not a serious gamer in any particular type, such as console or tabletop RPG.

Thank you so much for dropping by. If you’re a campaigner, please use the ‘follow that blog’ widget or the NetworkedBlogs box to subscribe to the Kelworth Files, and leave a reply telling me something about you!

Late New Creations Blogfest, and a very small fire.

First, the blogfest entry.

I’m entering the ‘New Creations’ blogfest late, because I’m still catching up on ‘Show me Yours,’ but I couldn’t resist the fun of actually contributing something for this one. I really like the idea of writing community blogfests, such a great way of networking and having fun together in the blogosphere. I’m going to need to remember to keep watch for more.

So, first, an ending sentence for a book or story finished last year. As it happens, as I reviewed the stories that I finished last year, all the strongest contenders for a closing sentence were from the Straight Dope short fiction contests. Maybe there’s something about trying to write a two thousand word contest story that helps me end it on a high note. The one I’ve picked, somewhat arbitrarily, as the favorite, is this one, from ‘Devin versus the Distinctive Sweater.’

Just in case something else should happen with the damn thing if he forgot it for a few hours.

And now, a brand new sentence to start off a new story, which is how I often get into trouble with new Works in Progress, but anyway:

I didn’t see how I could possibly concentrate on the blue magic, shut up in a stifling little room with no windows like this.

In other news – I had a fire in my kitchen last night. Not a really big one, but it’s frustrating me, especially since the whole thing was my fault. It started with a pot on the stove, not enough water in the pot, and me spending far too much time commenting on other people’s blogfest entries, actually.

I realized that something smelled a bit funny. “That’s weird, it’s almost as if…” Suddenly clued in and rushed over to the kitchen doorway. There was a cloud of smoke starting to obscure the stove, and orange flames licking around the bottom of the pot.

I remember wondering why the smoke detector hadn’t come on, since it usually reacts to the slightest whisp of something burnt before I can even smell it. Filled a plastic one-cup measure up with water from the sink and tossed it into the pot. This quickly turned into a cloud of steam, and set the smoke alarm going, but didn’t actually make a dent on the flame. I tried again, with more water, throwing it underneath the pot, and that helped. I think I needed a third cupful of water at least to put things out, and noticed that a little river of leftover water was carring some soot and ash across the stovetop to the far corner.

It took a while to get rid of most of the smoke, with two windows open in my apartment, (not that pleasant on a January night like we’ve been having lately,) and there’s still a faint smoky smell when I come in from outside. The pot got dumped into the garbage – possibly I could have cleaned the thing off until it was usable, but I just couldn’t cope with leaving it around. I’ve still got some scrubbing to take care of, and a lot of things that were in the kitchen have got little specs of soot that landed on them.

But aside from that, no damage seems to have been done, so that’s good. And hopefully, I’ll be a lot more careful with stoves in the future.

So many great storytellers…

This isn’t a particularly uplifting holiday thought for Christmas eve, but – sometimes doing critiques for other writers can be very personally discouraging. Because most of them are so good.

I keep thinking that I shouldn’t feel that way, that it should be incredible how many interesting stories are being told, but… in terms of my goals of becoming a famous, published, or notable author, it can be depressing to stand in a huge crowd, and not be able to turn in any direction without seeing somebody who looks just about as talented as me, as far as I can tell. There can’t be enough room for all of us in the bookstores, can there? There just might be enough room on Amazon for all of us, but how many people would keep searching that long?

I’m going to stop this ramble early, or I’ll just bum myself out even more. Happy Christmas to us all, and goodnight! May whoever you believe in provide good loot under the Christmas tree.

Happy Holiday season to all!

Merry Christmas, or whatever other winter holiday you may happen to observe. (Festivus for the rest of us, anyone?)

I’ve got all of my Christmas shopping done, and nearly all wrapped, though one item that I bought on ebay looks like it won’t be arriving in time to actually give it on Christmas – my sister will probably get that for her birthday in about a month’s time. I also went to see Stuart McLean live in concert Monday night, at Hamilton place, which was a great show, and he told some really funny stories.

Saturday afternoon will be the big family celebration up at my sister’s place in Kitchener, along with my Mom, brother, nieces, nephew, brother-in-law, and my brother’s new lady friend. Once that’s done, I actually have three days off, and can hopefully catch up on my creative to-do list, which has been falling somewhat behind, as well as maybe getting some Boxing week shopping done.

And a happy winter for everybody!

Time to break out of the word count slump.

I haven’t written many new words since Nanowrimo ended. For a while there, I didn’t feel like I really could – writing seventy thousand words in thirty days is a bit draining on that creative faculty, so I needed time to recharge, and I’ve been working on other facets of my writing like critiquing other people’s stuff and proofreading.

But I put down 16,000 words as my December total on Stringing Words, and my grand total so far is fifteen hundred and fifteen – from the two Star Patrol blogisodes I’ve already posted. Nine and a half percent of my target, with fifty three percent of the month gone. Time to get moving a bit.

Hopefully, it shouldn’t be that hard to get the words to start flowing. 14.5k in two weeks isn’t that much for a Nano-er, after all. I picked the word count goal based on how much I’d figure to do four blogisodes, and write chapter updates for two of my Roswell crossovers.

So time to stop blogging and actually WRITE, if you know what I mean!

Browncoat Ball 2010 – Reprise

I know that I’ve already blogged about my experiences at the Browncoat Ball, but I was going through some files on my flash drive, and found a bunch of notes that I must have made while I was in Charlotte on Saturday morning or before I could get to bed Friday evening. Since it doesn’t look like I consulted this before making my other post, I’ll include some of my thoughts here:

Browncoat ball memories – day 1
Drive-through breakfast with Russ – french toast dipping sticks, hash brown bites, and apple juice from Burger King
15 minutes waiting at the border crossing on Peace bridge
Throwing out toothepaste before going through TSA
Difficulty getting room the safe to work – front desk called a maintenance guy for me, and he actually called in ANOTHER maintenance guy because he couldn’t figure out to open the safe after the last guest left it locked.
Presentations:
Self-defense…
Breaking a grip from behind, (pressure on thumb, forward with hips to make use of leverage, hooking the leg from behind, hooking their arm with yours.)
Breaking a bear-hug grip, (stepping back, creating a window to move one of your arms under theirs. Also stepping on toes often works.)
Fancy sparring demonstration at the end.
Civil war history.
Lots of stuff about taking care of your musket, also pocket watches.
Fencing:
three kinds of swords, each with their own rules.
saber for ‘cutting’, everything above the waist.
foil as the most delicate training weapon, only the torso
epee is a slightly thicker pointing weapon, target is anywhere. NO RIGHT OF WAY rules. Large handguards, because the sword arm is a valid target.
Footwork practice – en guarde position, advancing, retreating, and lunging.
Reflex practice on the target.

Whedonverse book authors – buy the rest?

Wash luau… mostly waiting for the KARAOKE! also the team exercises, coming up with the alliance cruiser heist

Folk songs:
Jayne’s favorite things
The cautionary tale of Yo-Saff-Bridge
Kaylee’s song for Jayne, hehe
Travelers and dreamers.
Build new worlds
The ballad of Malcolm Reynolds

Pajama party screenings, winning the pony in pajamas, (with his teddy bear.)

NaNoWriMo Day 29: (Almost) Done!

November has almost drawn to a close. I finally reached my goal of 70,000 words tonight at the Blue Danube write-in. Current count is 70,087

Tomorrow, I will have to pack up my things, leave San Francisco, and fly back to the reasonably frozen lands of Ontario.

But… I had a great NaNoWriMo this month, and look forward to even greater things to come in December and the new year.

Getting to bed early now. Much packing to be done in the morning.

Nanowrimo day 27: Seeing the sights

Current word count: 63,187 words

Tentative target for November 30th: 70,000 words

Words written over the past 2 days: 2150

I’ve finished the new short story idea that I started Tuesday evening, ‘Alien artifact.’ Struggled a bit to find a new project to keep writing on, and I’ve possibly settled on beginning an idea that I was thinking of doing for my Nanowrimo before I settled on ‘The onus of Grace.’ So it probably won’t be something I can finish in the next four days, which is probably to the good. I can stop it once I get into December and then get back to that start later.

In other news, I haven’t writen much lately because I’ve been spending more time on touristy stuff and less on write-ins. My time in San Fran is definitely starting to draw to an end – I have only two full days left, in addition to what’s left of tonight, and Tuesday, which is the day I fly home.

Yesterday (friday): Spent all day on the bus tour to Monterey and Carmel, which was fun, but a little exhausting. Had fried chicken, corn on the cob, and mashed potatoes from a Forest Gump-themed shrimp shop in Cannery Row. Squeezed in a few hundred words at the pebble beach golf course, and at Carmel before the twilight faded too far. Got rather lost in Carmel after the sun went down – it’s a town without many street lights, but managed to find the bus just in time to not get left behind. Left my umbrella on the bus when I got dropped off at my hotel.

Today (saturday): Rainy. Got my umbrella delivered in the morning by a tour bus driver. Went down to the Cow Palace to take part in the Dickens Fair Victorian Christmas, which was mentioned by some people on the sfbrowncoats group. I was hoping to be recognized by some of them in my browncoats t-shirt, but the only one I actually met was Louise, who had posted details about where to find her and how to recognize her. Still had a great time, filled up the memory card on my camera, had a roast beef dinner for lunch, and the Legion Fantastique stuff was awesome!

Went home a little on the early side, and got some more words written.

Tomorrow (sunday): I have a booking for the Alcatraz ferry at 11am, and a bus tour to Muir woods and Sausalito starting at 2pm. Looking forward to it.

Monday: Nothing particular planned, except for meeting a guy from the area who I first met through a Roswell fanfic community, and have stayed in touch with over IM for several years. I’m going to BART all the way out to Dublin, and we’ll have lunch.

Nanowrimo Day 23 – jumping from story to story.

It’s been a good few days, since the Night of Writing Dangerously. I took a couple of hop-on, hop-off bus tours of San Francisco on Monday, touring around downtown, climbing up to the top of Telegraph Hill, (but not to the observation deck of Coit Tower because the elevator was out for repair,) and crossing the Golden Gate bridge.

I’ve also been attending a number of local San Francisco write-ins – last night at the Blue Danube cafe, this morning at Nervous Dog coffee in the mission district, and this evening at Epicenter. It’s been great going to all of these different neighborhoods in SF, meeting other writers, and adding onto my word count.

When I was planning for Nanowrimo, I said that if I actually got to 50k on or around the 21st, and finished my novel idea then or soon after, I would keep writing at more or less the same pace and work on science fiction-based short stories, especially ones that I could consider submitting for Clarion and Clarion West. At the NOWD, I pulled out one, ‘Harry and Mars,’ a story that I’d started around the end of September, (as part of my September projects list, ‘Start a new science fiction story’,) and abandoned since then. I actually made a lot of headway on it Sunday night, and finished it yesterday soon after getting to the Blue Danube. Ack. ‘Now what?’ I didn’t have any other sci-fi ideas waiting and ready to be written.

I ended up trying an incomplete fanfic chapter just to see if the words would flow there, though I hadn’t really planned to do any fanfic during November. Sure enough, Michael Guerin and Lana Lang’s crossover chemistry was still working fairly well in chapter 3 of ‘A Roswellian Alien in Metropolis’, so I kept working on that, through the Nervous dog write-in this morning, and finished the chapter at Epicenter. I really didn’t want to start another fanfic chapter during Nano, so what next?

Asha, the other Nano-er who made it to Epicenter, had mentioned something about brainstorming, so I actually opened up a scratch pad file on the Dana to list out possible notions, just starting from my ideas about what Science Fiction was. Slowly a new idea gelled, a sort of sequel notion to my 2009 Nanovel, and also a psychological mystery, about a commanding officer who must decide if one of his specialists is a psychotic delusional, only paranoid enough to lie to him, or if one of the specialist’s team members actually did steal something valuable from him. Of course, writing a mystery without knowing ‘who done it and how the sleuth figures it out beforehand’ can be a great way to write yourself into a block – I have a strong notion, but won’t tell you now.

A few trivia items relating to ‘Harry and Mars.’ A few months from now, in the spring of 2011, we can celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first human being entering Earth orbit. And also, I mention something in the first draft of ‘Harry and Mars’ about there not having been anybody who died in space before, as opposed to fatalities within Earth’s atmosphere when a spacecraft was taking off or landing. Unfortunately, I didn’t research that enough to find out about the Soyuz 11 disaster, and will have to rewrite it.

Sweet selections with Chris B and Lindsey G tomorrow – I can’t wait!