Drunken Owls and Other Delights

...and i totally blame Daylight Savings Time.  I was really starting to enjoy being able to get up with the sun and not have to feel my way around a pitch-black bedroom first thing in the morning. Ah well...it'll be getting lighter soon enough.

FOGcon was indeed fun!  It always feels like it goes by too quickly, as it's a very small con with only a few panels running at a time, so I'll go to maybe three or four of them and suddenly the day is done.  Still, I had fun on the self-publishing panel, talking with a few others who clearly had more knowledge than I did about print versions of their books!  Heh.  Still, we all learned from each other, so it was a great panel overall.  My reading panel was cut short a bit due to going last, but I'm okay with that -- I read from the Apartment Complex story, which is still rough at this point.  Next stop, BayCon! :)

Meanwhile, it's Monday and everything's back to normal.  Day Job continues apace.  Blogging and writing still on schedule.  Not too much else to report.  

Hope everyone has a good week!

So we've been having some weird weather of our own here in the Bay Area, and currently it's rainy and windy with signs that it'll probably stay that way for most of the day.  Which means that anything currently blooming out there is blowing my way and getting me all stuffed up.  Bleh!

Anyway...it's a new month, which means I get to take a quick look at my writing processes and see where I'm lacking and where I can do a bit of tweaking.  I've been doing this sort of thing over the last few months, not so much as a business-minded 'how can I maximize productivity' but more along the lines of a personal 'how can I stop wasting my time doing pointless things' project.  I like to streamline things so I can get it done quickly and easily, and I've always done this both in creative projects as well as the Day Job.  [In fact, I've been doing a bit of that with the Day Job as well...I've come to the realization that I'm busting my ass as much as my coworkers are, and I think I've actually been pushing myself harder than I really need to, so I've been lightening my load where I can.  I'm still getting the work done, I'm just no longer killing myself in the process.]

March plans to be quite busy on multiple fronts:

--FOGCon is the 9th - 11th, and I have two panels set up... one is a reading (I'm hoping to road-test some Apartment Complex Story passages) and another is a talk on self-publishing.  I had a lot of fun doing this last year and hope to do it again in the future.  Side note: it amuses me that I'm on the same reading panel as two big names: Katharine Kerr and Ellen Klages.  Woo,go me! :p ]

--Two visits to the East Bay campus for the Day Job on the 8th and the 22nd.  One's a group get-together and the other is the quarterly 'celebration of success' meeting (I always eyeroll when I have to refer to it as such).  

--SF will have a 'March for Our Lives' on the 24th, for the Parkland school kids.  A. and I definitely plan to be there to show our support.

Other than that...hopefully I can get some work in there!

Hope everyone's having a good week! 

I've just registered emmalyon and myself for FOGcon here in San Francisco, a smallish science fiction convention that aims to be on par with Wiscon or Readercon--not nearly as big as Worldcon, but decently sized and local...which is cool, since there really hasn't been any science fiction conventions in the area in awhile. They have a rough list of panels at the site that look to be filled with a lot of fun stuff, so I'm looking forward to it. And the fact that it's the easiest commute to get there doesn't hurt (1. leave apartment 2. take #1 bus to Van Ness Ave). It being a completely new con, I'm dearly hoping that, though it may not be a huge turnout, it won't be a complete failure. I like what I've read and seen about this one and am hoping the best for it.

That said, I've got a strong urge to actually sit in on a few panels. I don't mean sit in the audience quietly, but to take part in them. I've never done so before...when I first started going to Readercon in 2001 I wouldn't have entertained the thought, as I thought I was still a writer n00b at the time. Well, ten years down the line, four novels and plenty of projects later, I'd like to think I've improved significantly since then, even if I haven't had any novels professionally published yet (sure, I got paid for some articles for Vision and had an accidental sale to ZYZZYVA, but I mean aside from that). I'm thisclose from that last step, or at least I'd like to think that.

So...what do you think? Should I make that step and offer my services on some of these panels? I did see a few that sound like something up my alley that I think I could participate in, offer my own ideas and thoughts. Am I crazy to make this jump before I'm a full-fledged professional, or should I stop thinking things out so much and just shut up and do it?