NerdCon: Stories. One week after.

I recently attended NerdCon: Stories. This is the first time this Con was held, and my first time going to one. I must say that I was more than a little apprehensive going to Minneapolis by myself. But, I'm a big boy, I can take care of myself.
  It didn't start off so well. I had to leave the day before the conference started, which was probably normal for everyone going. What wasn't normal, I'm guessing, is that my flight left the airport at 5:30AM EST, so I had to get up really early, like 2AM early. Things went fine, even thought the flight was delayed in Philly so we could change planes in favour of a smaller plane. Apparently flights going from Philly to Minneapolis at 7AM are not popular.
  So it was that I arrived in Minneapolis at about 12PM, hopped the light rail which I didn't have to pay for because a stranger gave me a valid ticket he had just paid for but couldn't use. So, thank you to him. I then hoofed it the last half mile to my hotel, checked in and went to go get some lunch. The rest of the first day, after I had checked in for the Con, was nothing special. So I reached the end of the day with some trepidation that I would be quite solitary for the next two days.
  NerdCon started on Friday promptly at 9AM, but most everyone was there and raring to go by 8:45. The place was packed, with between 1 and 2 thousand attendees, we filled up most of the auditorium. What followed was two days of sheer geeky awesomeness. From the start with Paul Sabourin's epic retelling of the history of the story (laughed my fool head off), I knew we were in for a great time. The panels were fantastic, though at times rambled a bit off topic, much to my enjoyment. It turns out that when you're somewhere with a thousand other people who like the same things you do and are there for the same reason you are, its very easy to make friends. I had lunch on the first day with a couple who came up from the south and on their way were looking at colleges to attend the next year. I talked to I don't even know how many Librarians, but I should have guessed that since the whole point of the Con was stories. I sat next to and talked with people from Winnipeg in Canada, South Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, North Carolina, Minnesota, There were even people there from Ireland, though I never met them personally. I skipped the events at the end of the first day to grab some dinner where I talked for about 90 minutes with a woman who was up from Ohio to attend a Mental Health and Wellness seminar and two others who worked locally. We all shared flat bread pizzas and fresh made donut holes with hazelnut cream and basil coulis. I know, it wounds weird, but the donut holes were awesome.
  I left to head back to the Auditorium where I had signed up for a 5 minute slot in the open mic. I was going to tell one of the short stories I had written, and I was freaking out. I ran into five others doing the same thing and we chatted, I calmed down, and we all sat together at the open mic. One of the couples daughters, let's call her Z just for the sake of anonymity, sang and played the Ulkelele. She was awesome, unfortunately she went on right before me. Anyway, here is a video of my story, the audio is a little bad and the video was taken in low light, but you'll get the general idea. Enjoy.

I laughed So Hard.....

  In my few decades on this planet I have felt some rather interesting pain. The pain of abrading your face on rough ice in a skiing wipe out (When your face warms up, it's quite interesting), the pain of someone stitching your mostly severed fingertip that's not numbed up, The pain of getting your head stapled with no Novocaine, the pain of crashing onto the still surface of a pool from three meters up.
  All of these have their own pain, each is unique and not something that I would care to repeat. I thought that I had felt most of the types of pain that a non military person could feel. The other day, I was able to expand my pain horizons again.
  I'm sure that most of you have had the unpleasant experience of accidentally snorting water or soda or some fluid through your nose. It's not pleasant and the aftermath is quite messy and embarrassing, just make sure you have a box of tissues. Well, I think I can top that one. You see, the other day I was eating lunch, (WAIT FOR IT) a buffalo chicken salad. I was reading my most recent acquisition from the Library, Fool Moon by Jim Butcher, when the food I was eating started to go down the wrong way. What's a person to do? I started to cough. The problem was, my mouth was still full of food. Now since I'm at my desk, it's covered with computer keyboards, reports for customers, and various and sundry things that I didn't want to spray with food, so I made a choice, a bad one. I decided to cough through my nose.

(Pause for wincing)

  Yes, that's right, I coughed BUFFALO CHICKEN SALAD OUT MY NOSE, complete with blue cheese dressing. The next hour and a half was not the most fun I've ever had. The first twenty minutes I had to fight the urge to snort water through my nose to cool the furious burning in my sinuses. THAT is a pain I'll not soon forget. I can't even describe the feeling, the best I can come up with is imagine someone sticking a blunt soldering iron into your brain, but through your nose. The most embarrassing part of the whole this was that I kept blowing lettuce out my nose for the next hour or so.

Good times.

The backhanded compliment dissected

  I am not an author. This may seem a strange way to start a post, but the truth is, I am not. I hated grammar in school, my handwriting is atrocious and I couldn't tell the different between a gerund and a participle if they smacked me in the face. Not that I wouldn't recognize the difference if some one said 'Here, this is a gerund and this is a participle', but I can't just tell you what one is. I'm sure Grammar Girl will know.
  REGARDLESS, I never went to school for writing, or literature or any of the things one would associate with becoming a writer, the possible exception being I love reading books. I am, and probably will always be in my heart, an engineer. I loathe imprecision and lack of specificity, I would rather design a solar array or a computer than study literature or art. The design of the Scion Xb literally offends my sensibilities. Yet, here I am with a completed book in my hands. A work that I never sought to write or, indeed, thought I was capable of writing. Needless to say, as I'm sure many writers can attest, I think my own book is pretty darn good. I like that characters, I've read it cover to cover between five and ten times for editing, and have yet to tire of the story. I've even started writing a second book in the *gasp* series.
  So what does this have to do with backhand compliments? Plenty, I say. Because the first person who read it is the one who gave me the unwitting backhanded compliment. I had given this person the first three chapters of my fledgling work and steeled my heart as I knew I must. It didn't matter, but it helped. When she put down the pages and looked up at me, I had hopes, but her words were not the glowing praise I yearned for:
  "I've read worse."
  These were the three words she had to say about my masterpiece. I felt a little of my soul die, but then a sparkling idea came to me. I followed her lack luster comment with:
  "So when you say that you've read worse, do you mean in print?"
  Her answer will forever be etched in my heart:
  "Yes. I've read worse books than this."
  I've got my manuscript out in my writing group mow, and I'm hoping for a few more detailed comments than "I've read worse", we'll see. I've also come to a decision, I know I'm not a writer, I'm an engineer. But, perhaps, in addition to being an engineer, I can be something altogether better than a writer or author, a little phrase uttered by a five-year old who doesn't know the words author or writer yet, a phrase which suits my technical heart.

  I can be a Story Maker.

Nerd and Turds

So, you ever have one of those days where you're just plain stupid? Well, I do. In fact a day like that cropped up recently where I was able to do something that I had not thought previously possible. I go a sunburn, inside, in a WINDOWLESS LAB. How had I achieved this remarkable feat of weirdness? Well first you have to understand what I do for a living, the short version is people send me stuff and I shoot it with a laser until it either breaks or burns. Sounds cool right? It can also be wicked dangerous. I have, personally, set fire to bricks and aluminum, vaporized arsenic, and pulverized selenium. If you want to check out the relative dangerousness of those various achievements go right ahead, I'll wait.......

Ah, you're back, great, where were we? Oh yes sunburns inside. Well this particular oddity was achieved when I was using a mercury lamp to illuminate a test sample for purposes that need not be discussed here. A mercury lamp in just like a regular lamp except that it emits light only in the UVB spectrum. Yep, that's right, the same stuff that give you a sun burn. I was being super careful, I was wearing the right protective glasses, keeping my face away from the lamp, the whole bit. I just forgot that a lamp is is like a flashlight, the beam expands the further you get away from it. So, long story short, I ended up with a sunburn, a perfect negative image of a mounted optic on a post burned into my arm.

This job has really weird hazards.

"Next time I'll be serious next time!"

   Well, I guess joining the writers group did not make me post more, maybe I'll set a calendar event or something. The Group is nice however, the mediator (we have one of those) is a research librarian who generates the writing prompts and lends her experience to the commentary on the group pieces.
   Before the last meeting I contacted her (let's call her Miss Librarian), and asked a favor. I wanted to present the book that I had finished to the group and ask for their response. Miss Librarian said she would love to do that, and I received many affirmatives from the group for their willingness to read said story.
   I realized when I read the hook for the story that not only was the hook inaccurate but it was actually bad and sappy. So, I have been working on creating a new hook. I have a few that I've been mulling over and I think I have a couple that may be winners. Here they are:

  Amnesia, slavery, attempted rape, murder, deceit, backstabbing, missing organs, deadly secrets, Monsters, microscopic robots, decapitation, dismemberment, blood and incredible super powers. And that's just in the first two weeks after I woke up in a dark cave wearing nothing but a hospital smock.

   A powerful and well respected company, a prevalent technology, and an unspeakable and deadly secret. These forces revolve around a seemingly ordinary young woman who has no useful memories to speak of, no clues to her identity. Yet she must unravel these mysteries and the only things she has are a strange tattoo, a piece of paper and a hospital smock.

   I'm partial to the first hook, but its first person, not the POV of the book . The second one is OK, but it feels formulaic. Maybe POV won't matter in the hook, we'll see. I also worked on "The Pitch". This is the one sentence that is supposed to summarize the entire novel, entice the imagination and encompass what makes the book stand out. This is nigh on impossible. Imagine condensing "Harry Potter" to one sentence, and making it good enough that everyone wants to read it. Daunting. But here is my go for "The Book":

How do you find your friends when you can't even remember who your enemies are?

   Not bad, it's compact, to the point, pertains to the story and gives just enough hint to make you ask questions. Who are your friends? Why do you have enemies? And why don't you remember who they are? Hmm, on second thought, that's not that bad. I think I'll keep it. 

   I'd really like to post an excerpt from "The Book" here but that would be silly if I ever want to sell it. Maybe if no one touches it, I'll post the first few chapters and list it on Amazon myself, but until then, here is another tid-bit of mine from the writers group:

   

   “YAAAAAA!”

   CRASH! Damn, that hurt! I nurse the top of my head and try to stand as the contents of a curio cabinet rain down around me, small figurines and plates shattering on the floor. I lurch to my feet and stumble over to the computer. Typing in a few quick commands, I shut down the cleaning field. I hit the enter key to issue the last command and the painting I was cleaning, Van Gogh's Starry Night, shudders slightly and topples gently forward off the easel.

   Fear stabs my heart and I dive forward, sustaining another blow to the head and a sprain to my wrist as I crash into the wall. It's all for naught though as I miss the painting by several inches and it crashes to the floor. Heart pounding, I crawl over to the Van Gogh and gently lift it off the floor. Luckily, it's still intact, no damage was done to the canvas. The frame has only a few new blemishes, and since it was “distressed” to look old I figure a few more dings won't be noticed. Sighing with relief, I lay the painting face down on the floor and lean back against the wall, recovering for a few minutes from my ordeal.

   You'd think that after having done this a few dozen times, I would have mastered the re-entry. In my defense I was being chased when I jumped back through the portal, so a certain amount of disarray was to be expected. I've had a few close calls since I discovered what I could do, but none like that. It started some years ago when I invented a new method for cleaning paintings using buckyballs and encapsulated quantum singularities. I found that if I captured the painting digitally on my computer, sprayed the microscopic balls on a painting, and exposed them to a computer modulated EM field, the singularities inside the buckyballs would remove the grunge from the paintings, no mess, no precautions, no damage. I first noticed something was weird when I was cleaning a painting for the Boston MFA and tripped holding a cup of coffee I had just poured for myself. I fell head first and slammed into the floor, coffee flying. I looked up just in time to see the cup disappear into the Monet I was cleaning. Intrigued, I put on a pair of Nitrile gloves and gingerly reached out for the painting. Imagine my shock when I didn't touch the painting! My hand went right through the canvas!

   Ever since then I've been experimenting and taking trips into the larger paintings. This last one, though, was almost enough to make me re-consider my adventures, or at least make me swear off Van Gogh. Sure, those adventures were wonderful fodder for my blossoming writing career. Of course, I had to publish under a pseudonym. It was the only way I could continue cleaning paintings and get fresh material. It meant that I had to stay anonymous, but hey, I was willing to trade off fame for fortune.

   Shaking out of my reverie, I glance down at the painting, glad that I managed to shut off the cleaning field in time. If that thing had followed me back.... The problem with paint jumping was that the worlds the paintings led to were complete un-knowns, brought into being by the artists imagination. At least that's what I thought at first. The truth was these artists were actually quasi-psychics, able to see through time and dimension. At least that's what I've come to understand from my limited research. That stuff about making political, social or economic statements? Total crap. And don't get me started on Escher or Dali! It's amazing those guys never went insane! Well, maybe Dali, just a little.

   At least now I have an inkling why Van Gogh was such a tortured artist. The worlds he saw? Well let's say they make Picasso's look like Sesame Street. The one I just came from, Starry Night, was a hellish world. Humans kept in villages, used for food and bio-electricity, Matrix-esque, by the most intelligently evil creatures ever to grace the dimensional continuum. That big black thing in the foreground? That's actually one of the beasts, a giant mass of tentacles and venom that strangles its paralyzed victims for pleasure. That was what I was fleeing from. I was just glad I escaped with all my appendages in tact. Turing off the portal would have been difficult without two hands.

   RATTLE!! I cease all movement as a wave of cold grips my heart. Please. Please no! I tilt my head slowly down and stare at the upside down painting. It rattles again and shivers on the floor. Dear God. They're figuring out how to open it from the other side! This is so not good.