News and Views

From C3PO to Murderbot: why we love our droids Format: Panel 16 Aug 2019, Friday 17:00 - 17:50, Wicklow Hall 2B (CCD) From robots to sentient drones to cyborgs, our not-quite-human creations continue to fascinate, inspire, and break our hearts. As different as Star Trek’s Data is from Iain M. Banks’s minds, we cannot help but see ourselves in those larger-than-life creations. The panel will discuss the reasons why and how the machine-people serve as a mirror cabinet to humanity. M V Melcer, Mika Koverola, William Ledbetter, Karina Steffens (M) From concept to the screen Format: Panel 16 Aug 2019, Friday 20:00 - 20:50, Wicklow Hall-1 (CCD) What are the unique challenges of creating art for film-makers? From static ideas on a flat surface to 3D in real life, and then back to two dimensions on the big screen, what surprises have these artists encountered? Gregory Norman Bossert, M V Melcer, Charles Vess (Green Man Press), Norman Cates (Weta Digital / CoNZealand) (M)

It appears I'm slowly emerging from the crazy six months with way too much on my plate. I just hope I'm not going to let myself fall into another rabbit hole... The first change was with one study module's finishing in May. I'm doing another one through the summer, but this one is very manageable on its own. I'm actually enjoying it, too, and much more than I expected. It's math -- not super high level but a bit higher than I've ever done. I've always been okay with math -- passing well enough but not going beyond what was required. So far I'm doing really well, to the point of considering doing more math modules, which is frankly surprising. Don't need to decide for another month or so, though. I have also finished the novel edit for the new agent. There are still discussions to be had, but fingers crossed she will like the changes I made. It seems I've been working on this one forever--I think the first draft was done in August. I'm

Well, that went much faster and smoother than I feared. I'm happy to announce I'm now represented by Lisa Rodgers at JABberwocky. Really excited about this. :D

I've gotten really bad at posting updates... Too busy, too stressed, too everything. Anyway, here's quick catch up... I've had a really good Eastercon this year. Partly it was because I now know more people in the community so there's always someone to hang out with. The other part was that somehow this convention seemed smaller than last year, at least in terms of the number of pros present, so it was easier to meet new people. I'm not sure if point two really was true or an illusion due to point one, but either way, it worked out well. Highlights included: Codex Writers lunch, finally meeting some UK-based Codexians as well as some visitors. (Why didn't we take any pictures?) The panel I moderated on The Future of Space Opera with John Scalzi, Aliette de Bodard and Zoe Sumra: (Here I am, looking all in control, hehe) And post BSFA awards party, where some of us did our best to embarrass Gareth Powell in every possible way: (I'm the one on the right

I've been peeking over here every now and then but not as much as I used to, for various reasons. One of them has been that the beginning of the year has been crazy busy with writing and study. My study is part-time, and so far I've kept it at a conservative pace, but then I figured I could sign up for another course that would run over Feb-September, which'd give me only three months when both courses overlap; something I thought I could manage. Well, the second course has proven much more time consuming than advertised. Also, I'm not making things easier on myself by learning Latex (a program for mathematical typesetting), which is not required at my level but typing math in Word gets on my nerves, and I have to learn sooner or later so it might as well be now. I've had some decisions to make on the writing front, which also resulted in changes of plans, and more work. But that will have to be another post. I got to have a break earlier this month when I went on

2018 was an odd year for me. It started well, with high hopes for the novel that went on submission at the end of 2017--but as months went by, I lost hope. I got busy outlining a new project. This one proved difficult to get started. I tried two openings, searching for the right protagonist and the right voice, until I finally found it on the third try. Once I found the voice, the novel started taking shape. I was still painfully slow, but eventually I had a zero draft, and then the first, rough edit out to alpha-readers at the end of November. I'm still waiting for most of them to come back to me, but the early indications are that it's not going to be a total disaster… So that took most of my writing year. It must seem ridiculous to those who can knock out a novel in a month but I'm not that lucky/gifted. I'll take what I can get! Another development this year--not really writing-related, or only at a very long stretch--is that I decided to scra