What’s Up Wednesday? The Nano-est time of year

What’s Up Wednesday is a weekly blogfest to share the answers to a few simple questions… Join us!

What I’m reading:
Well, I’ve finished reading “Furies of Calderon”, enjoyed that quite a lot, got the sequel “Academ’s Fury” from the library as an ebook, enjoying it so far. Also finished “Gossip Girl” and enjoying some graphic novels, mostly “Chew” and the last IDW Doctor Who run with Matt Smith’s Doctor.

What I’m writing:
My split Nanowrimo is going quite well so far! I’m almost at twenty-five thousand words just now, and have been flipping back and forth between “Never Found” and “Hypermappers” without any particularly stressful issues.

What works for me:
Flipping back and forth between two novels! I’ve been concentrating a few days at a time on each project, and using my soundtracks as mental cues, so if I decide that I’m finished with Never Found, I stop listening to its soundtrack right away and listen to a little of the Hypermappers soundtrack before I start writing that. I’ll probably ramble about the soundtracks in another blog post soon.

Also, going to write-ins. Amazing source of word count and creative energy. Luckily our region has daily write-ins, and I’ve been able to make them 5 days a week. (The Tuesday and Wednesday write-ins conflict with my day job schedule.)

What else I’ve been up to:
Dealing with a little unexpected car trouble, pitching in with the @Nanowordsprints twitter account, and running around dealing with some ML stuff. (We’re going bowling for our midway party this Sunday, yay!)

What about you? Click here to join the hop or check in with some other great writers.

A shout out for Toronto Comicon

Some hard-core fans are already gathered at the Metro Toronto Convention Center tonight, for Toronto Comicon. A few things you should know about the con. It’s not affiliated with San Diego Comic-Con (the BIG one,) and really it’s a spin-off Spring show from the company behind Fan Expo, the big for-profit Canadian multifandom expo that hits Toronto late in August. So it’s pretty commercial compared to fandom-organized cons, but still a good opportunity to meet cool genre celebrities, pick up some cool graphic novels, see people in great cosplay costume and maybe dress up myself.

I was pretty excited about Toronto Comicon because they’d booked Morena Baccarin from Firefly – she was a cancellation at Fan Expo last year, and they try to get guests who had to cancel for Fan Expo at Toronto Comicon–last time Patrick Stewart made up for missing Fan Expo by bringing along a bunch of TNG castmates. 😉 So I bought a ticket for Saturday online and figured that I’d figure out if I wanted to go Sunday once the schedules were out, or after seeing how Saturday went.

Unfortunately, a week ago, they announced that Morena had cancelled again on account of filming commitments for Warriors. And when I checked the schedule on Sunday night, I didn’t see anything I was interested in for Saturday. The Q&A with Eliza Dushku, panels for Bitten and Continuum were on Sunday. I was really disappointed and felt that if I went on Saturday, I wouldn’t have much fun.

Well, it took a little while to get the details sorted out and confirmed, but I’d like to thank the people behind Toronto Comicon for helping me out. I have my ticket for Sunday, and they were able to process the refund for Saturday, which they didn’t have to do, because the small print does warn, ‘no exchanges, no refunds.’ But I’m grateful and looking forward to the show on Sunday. Whatever you’re doing this weekend, especially if you’re heading out to the Convention Center too, have a great time!

Disappointments versus great memories

It’s easy to focus on disappointments versus the good side of our lives. For instance, at Fan Expo this weekend, I had a lot of cool experiences:

• Took part in the costume masquerade as a contestant, (as Harry Dresden again) and had a blast!
• Got some cool graphic novels for decent prices.
• Watched and listened to three great Q&A sessions, with Zachary Quinto, Colin Baker… and Nathan Fillion! (Whoo-hoo!)
• Got my Serenity blueprints book and ‘Those Left Behind’ graphic novel signed by Gina Torres

However, there were also a few things I was looking forward to that I didn’t have a chance to participate in, mostly because of the insane crowd of other Browncoat fans from hundreds of kilometers in every direction converging on the Metro Toronto Convention Center, and having to make choices and settle on priorities without full information about what all’s going on. Specifically, I didn’t get in to see Gina’s Q&A session, and I wasn’t able to get anything signed by Nathan. Big sigh here.

I also didn’t get much sleep on Saturday night; the costume masquerade ran late, and I had to stand on the GO bus to get back to Hamitlon by midnight. I was on the road again by quarter after seven in the morning Sunday morning, and spent a nervous hour waiting outside Room 105, my gray bag with all my stuff (including cell phones, other electronic gadgets, and the things Gina had signed and Nathan didn’t,) stuck inside, unable to go back in to get them before the Walking Dead panel let out, hoping that I’d be able to reclaim it, and that I’d get a seat for Nathan’s Q&A. Which I did, for both, even if it wasn’t quite as nice a seat as the one I’d had before I left the hall and managed to slip past the security Nazi without somehow figuring out I had to tell him that I was going to the bathroom. *facepalm*

Umm… yeah. Need to remember to look on the bright side. 🙂

Enigmatic convention notes: How to write a graphic novel in one hour

Do you wish you had been at Toronto ComiCon this past weekend, to learn about writing graphic novels from Ty Templeton? Well, fear not, because you can copy my notes!

Warning: Notes were taken on an iPhone and have undergone minimal editing. 🙂

Comicon graphic novels

Triangle of fiction. Information. Action. Emotion.

Show the normal, change it with action. Resolving it emotionally

Intriguing normal.

Normal character, situation, event

The blankiest blank in the blank. Smartest girl in the family. Only man left in the universe

Plot. Character desires something and makes an effort

Sex, violence, suffering, wickedness, comedy and novelty

Tallest girl in the school wants to be shorter

Creepiest zombie in the graveyard wants a date with a living girl. Loneliest geek at comicon wants to become friends with Stan lee

Unexpected gain or loss- she becomes the basketball star and finds love with a tall boy

Set pieces. Scenes where the location plays a part. North by northwest

The roof, to be alone

Earning karma , rescuing cats and things from the roof

Roadblocks make the story longer and show off how the character solves problems

Money and finding a surgeon who will help her

Figure out what you want the solution to be first, then invent the fix

Tragedy and comedy. Ending in disaster, or life continues on (marriages)

Six kinds of fiction: Plot tale sketch character piece monograph

PS: I’ve got my G road test tomorrow morning, so wish me luck!

More Wizard World Toronto 2012 Memories

Previous memories.

Okay, so – the Vampire Diaries panel was a lot of fun. The panel was just Paul Wesley and Torrey DeVitto – and I think I didn’t realize for a few minutes that they were both married and castmates on the show, but it sounds like that’s a lot of fun for them. I hadn’t actually gotten to see any of Torrey’s episodes of the show at the time, because I was many months behind, though I’ve caught up to her first appearances by now, thanks to a small weekend marathon.

Jeri Ryan’s Q&A was scheduled in the same room next, and I’d heard enough to guess that Wizard World was going to enforce the ‘clear out of the room and let the people waiting in line have first choice of seats’ policy, so I actually took off five minutes early, when the volunteer mentioned that it was going to be last question, just to beat the rush – and that seemed to work pretty well, though I’m not sure if there was any chance of not getting back into the room.

Jeri was a lot of fun, telling stories about what it was like to be the new girl on Voyager and how she almost fell over on the bridge wearing a laser prosthetic piece over one of her eyes, because it took away her depth perception. She talked up her new show ‘Body of Proof’ a lot too, which makes sense because it’s still waiting on news for getting renewed. I asked her about if she felt she was typecast from having been on Voyager – “No, I feel like it gave me a lot of career opportunities that I wouldn’t have had otherwise” – and asked about her favorite role since, which got her talking for several minutes about Leverage. I’ll have to check that series out.

My last event of the day on Saturday was a Doctor Who fan panel, which was a lot of fun. It was put on by a new fan group, the Doctor Who Society of Canada, which was apparently born at Fan Expo 2011, and they said that they’re looking for new members and had events regularly in the Toronto area.

After the panel, I hurried home so quickly I realized on the bus that I’d completely forgotten to collect the photo that I had taken with Amy.

Sunday morning, as I got off the bus at Union station, something unfortunate happened – I slipped on the slightly wet pavement and wrenched my knee. 😦 But I didn’t want to let it ruin my day, so I hurried off towards the convention center as quickly as I could manage, and soon I was in line to get back into the show. I’d inventoried my Buffy and Angel graphic novels Saturday evening, and managed to pick up several new titles, (getting a discount on a slightly worn copy of the last ‘Buffy Season Eight’) and I also remembered to get my Amy Acker photo.

Soon enough, I was headed back down to panel room B. First was the Quantum Leap Panel – Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell talking about the old days together, which was an awful lot of fun. I kept using the same trick of leaving the audience a few minutes early to get in line for the next one – hobbling actually, on my injured knee, but I managed well enough. Sean Maher’s Q&A session was next, and it was a lot of fun. He talked about some of his favorite bits of filming “The Playboy Club”, and being a part of Joss Whedon’s “Much Ado about Nothing.” I was able to ask him about his favorite moment of working with Jewel Staite – he said that moment in the Movie where Simon tells Kaylee that his one regret is not making time to be with her, and her reaction is ‘Hell with this – I’m gonna live!’ I also asked him if he had any notion of what happened next for Simon and Kaylee after the movie.

“Well, Jewel and I joked a bit about that. She said that if there was a Serenity 2, it should open with Kaylee like eight and a half months pregnant, really big. And she’s shaving Simon’s head, saying that he’s just too damn pretty.”

And the last Q&A panel of the entire con was Amy Acker. She was great, really funny and sweet, talked about Cabin in the Woods, and Much Ado about Nothing, and how she’s going to be guest starring on Person of Interest. That’s about all I can remember now – catch you later!

G is for Genre Lounges

The Script Frenzy A-Z challenge so far…

I was originally planning to do G for Graphic Novels, which a lot of people write in Script Frenzy, but since I never have, and didn’t arrange anything beforehand with asking people questions, I thought I’d cover something that I do have firsthand knowledge about.

The Genre Lounges are a collection of Script Frenzy forums that cover just about any genre you might want to write a script in – Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Action-Adventure, Comedy, Mystery, Drama, Romance, and more. Many genre keywords are set up to share lounges, so as to encourage discussion between similar genre writers and get fresh perspectives.

And within your Genre Lounge, you can start a discussion on just about anything you like, asking for help or answers to genre-specific questions, or just procrastinating and having fun.

So, that’s about it for this week of the A-Z challenge. Hopefully, I’ll get six sentences of my script up for Six Sentence Sunday, and we’ll be back with the A-Z of it all on Monday!