F is for Fairy Fatale

For the A to Z challenge this year, I’m sharing science fiction and fantasy story ideas…

So, here I’m mashing up the fae with ‘femme fatale.’ (And yes, I know that Jim Butcher has done this already in ‘Summer Knight’, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do it too.)

She sells our modern private eye on a fantasy, and she’s trying to find one of her own, something ephemeral, a (metaphorical) firefly. A dream somebody stole from her and she needs to get back.

If you’re interested enough to pick this up and write your own version, feel free; ideas are cheap. And let me know! I’ll be keeping the notions vague enough that lots of different stories might be written from them.

Thanks for visiting!

A small Firefly shoutout in an Analog story!

Hey! Just a quick post as I bed headwards this evening, because there was something cool I came across as I read on the bus this morning. I was cruising through the second half of a novella by Richard A. Lovett, fourth in a series about an AI implant named Brittney, called “Music to Me.” Brittney is a big fan of human videos and music, and she’s confronting another group of AIs who want her to join them on the web, leaving her new human partner behind. Suddenly, I come across this passage…

Another vid-line popped to mind:

“A man learns the details of a situation like ours, then he has a choice,” one character says–implying the man in question could either help make the situation right, or ignore it.

The response: “I don’t believe he does.”

Damn, I wanted that vid back too. I’d kept key vid-lines in core memory, but when I’d lost the vids, I’d also lost many of the titles. In this case, all I remembered was something about lightning bugs in space, which seemed dubious.

In case you’re not a Browncoat, the lines are classic Joss Whedon dialog from the episode “The Train Job,” with the second one delivered by Nathan Fillion as Malcolm Reynolds. It’s all very casual, not including titles or character names, probably to avoid giving FoxCorp a trademark infringement claim, but I love the bit about dubious lightning bugs in space.

So goodnight, and shiny dreams!

Guest Post: I’m in a Bag of Holding!

Hey, everybody. Something really cool that I’ve just been waiting for has arrived – my guest post over on The Geektastics Bag of Holding. Rhianna has interviewed me about Nanowrimo, writer’s block, zombie apocalypses, Firefly, and other really cool things. So come check it out, and then wander around the rest of her shiny new blog!

First afternoon at Fan Expo

I’ve been inside Fan Expo for a little more than an hour now. At this point on Thursday afternoon, things are relatively quiet, but there’s still some fun stuff going on.

I left work just before noon, lugging my suitcase onto the train, and walked up Bay and Yonge streets all the way to Wellesley, sweating up a storm as I went. A nice lady checked me into my room, and I spent half an hour there organizing my stuff and cooling down before taking the subway down and figuring the right way into the convention center through crowd control – though the crowds haven’t really arrived yet.

Since I got here I’ve signed up for a Dresden Files RPG session tonight, walked most of the sales floor, and talked to a few guys at the photo sales booth about Kaylee cupcake dress pictures. Jewel Staite isn’t at this show, but I want to get that picture signed by Jewel and Jane Espenson at DragonCon. A fellow customer said that he got the picture at Jewel’s autograph table at Polaris last year, so I think I should be able to track it down in Atlanta.

I only bought two items so far – packs of trading cards, Firefly and Angel

What else? I scouted out the autograph situation a bit. Looks like John Barrowman and Juliet Landauwill be signing tomorrow, but I’ll have to wait until Saturday at least for Rose McGowan and Alan Tudyk. That helps me know what I need to bring to get signed. I’ve seen a few familiar faces around and chatted with Jason R briefly. The Toronto Browncoats fan booth isn’t where it’s marked in the programme; I wonder if they let TCON have their space for today.

It’s still more than an hour before Julie Benz’s Q&A session. I want to go find the ctv sprawl again and find out more about this ‘arrow’ show, and then maybe I’ll get in line early for Julie and read as I wait. Please excuse any typos in this post as the on-screen keyboard is not really meant for long composition.

A few pics of the convention center hall:

The joy of being tagged and tagging.

So, I’ve been tagged. (Kinda had to hint around for it, but anyway…)

Two different batches of questions to answer today, and one more to ask of my tagees. First, from Mina Burrows:

– Where do you find inspiration?

All kinds of places. Sometimes I trip over a story idea from something random, sometimes it’s something in a book or tv show that gets me thinking of a different twist, sometimes I go and look for story prompts. And sometimes my muse brings me notions and I don’t ask her where she got them from.

– What’s your favorite TV show?

Of all time? Has to be Firefly. (Sigh.)

– What are you reading now?

‘Currant Events’ by Piers Anthony. ‘Inheritance’ by Christopher Paolini. ‘Star Trek New Frontier: Martyr’ by Peter David. ‘Deja Dead’ by Kathy Reichs. ‘A Twist of Malice’ by Jean Rae Baxter. (Yes, I multitask my reading.)

– What’s your favorite recipe?

A spaghetti sauce that I partly got from my Mom, and partly tweaked until it’s just the way I like it.

Can’t stop the Serenity 2011

The Toronto CSTS screening event is tomorrow afternoon. I’m so excited that it’s almost here!

Background: Can’t stop the Serenity is a charity fundraiser put on by fans of the ‘Firefly’ franchise, benefiting Equality Now, an organization that fights for the human rights of women around the world. (It’s a favorite charity of Joss Whedon, the creator of Firefly.) They run events in many US cities and other countries around the world, though I’ve only ever been to the Torotno screenings. Check http://www.cantstoptheserenity.com/ to see if there’s one near you!

The 2005 feature film ‘Serenity’ is screened, some of the attendees dress up in character, there’s an auction of some cool geeky souvenirs, (some of which have been signed by celebrities,) and then some of the fans move to a local restaurant for the ‘shindig’ party.

This will be my third screening. I actually found out about the first one, in 2008, more or less by accident, from another member of the Hamilton Nanowrimo writer’s group, who was saying that she wouldn’t be available to meet at a coffee hous that Saturday. I decided it was too cool not to go into Toronto for it. That was really the start of my participation in the Toronto fandom scene, though it took me a little while to actually go back in for another Shindig.

I didn’t actually make it to the screening in 2009, though I prepaid my ticket and my t-shirt, so I still contributed to the fundraising that year. (And I love the shirt.) I had some health issues that summer, and if I recall correctly I was out of the hospital by that weekend, but not feeling up to much more than sitting around the apartment and going out for my clinic appointments. I did have a little Firefly DVD marathon to console myself for what I was missing.

And last year, I went in costume for the first time, having put together a thrift-store outfit that looked recognizably like one of Simon Tam’s suits. Picked up a great needlepoint at the auction that I still have sitting on my desk – and that’s the day that I had a bit of unexpected excitement getting home on account of the G20 riots.

This year, I’ve got my eye on a Serenity mousepad as well as some other goodies at the auction. And I’d like to actually put myself out there socially and talk to more new people than I have before.

Fanart flashback #12: Coming full circle.

Fanart flashbacks index

Well, the day has come – I’m ending the fanart flashback tuesdays series here, and sharing two of the earliest fan wallpapers I ever made. These were from back in the fall of 2003, which was probably before I’d even heard of fanfic banners – though I’m not sure, because I was at Fanatics by then. Maybe I’d seen some but never really paid attention.

This first one is a fairly simple wallpaper for Smallville – almost a generic cover banner for the entire show, rather than trying to encapsulate a more specific message:

Fanart flashbacks #11: The art of arranging

Fanart flashbacks index

I know I mentioned two weeks ago that in my next Fanart flashback, I’d be wrapping the series up with some of my earliest wallpapers, but then I decided to extend it one week, and wrap up with #12. This time, I’ll share a bunch of fanfiction banners, and talk about the different ways of actually arranging different video capture elements onto the banner canvas, since I kind of glossed over that before, and I was thinking about it as I struggled over my latest banner last weekend.

There’s no one pattern of arrangement that will work for every banner; it depends on what size and shape banner you want to end up with, (which depends on where you want to show it,) and what you want to include from the video captures.

Fanart 9: Two Firefly Banners

Fanart series index.

I want to talk a little bit more about the ‘concept’ of fanart, since I realize that some of my readers may not have been exposed to it that much. To me, the point of fanart is using images from a television or movie to create a new picture, some kind of original vision, and convey that thought to other people who are already familiar with your fandom.

There are lots of different kinds of fanart, and I’ve only tried a few. Some people do original paintings or sketches, and some can do very elaborate manipulations using programs like photoshop and superimposing images that originally didn’t have anything to do with each other into a coherent image. I’m hoping to help with a manipulation fanart sometime soon, but I’ve been finding that even my part, finding the right pieces to put together, is much harder than I expected. Mostly, as I’ve explained, I just work with fairly simple techniques – DVD captures or promotional images, simple cut and paste graphic software, and so on.

And fanart can have lots of different messages that it’s trying to convey. There are some that are very simply calling back to a moment from the original canon, like my Simon/Kaylee wallpaper, or a few that I’ll be sharing later in the series. Some are meant to raise awareness for a particular site or event within the fandom community, a bit like virtual advertising flyers, like the signature banners from two weeks ago.

And then, there are fanfic cover banners, which are a bit like movie posters for somebody’s original fanfiction story. These are possibly my favorite, since I’ve been a very prolific fanfic author in my day, and it’s a great feeling to be able to show somebody a picture that kind of sums up thousands of the words that you’ve put down.

So, without further rambling, here’s a few banners that I made in the early summer of 2010 for two of my Firefly stories. First, “Passing through the storm:”

There’s a lot that this banner conveys to a firefly fan. First, it shows the ensemble of main characters in the story, and how they mainly relate to each other – River off by herself, Kaylee with Simon, Jayne with Zoe, Mal with Inara. To many fans, that roster will also suggest the timeframe of the story, particularly because the missing characters match with some who are no longer around after the movie ‘Serenity’. Also, most or all of the pictures are taken from the movie, not from the TV episodes.

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.)