E.J.
(Emma) Swift has a quaint English accent and is graceful, since she works for
the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama.
At
the self-editing session, she surprised us by saying she enjoys deleting words
from her rough drafts. I think she said
she deleted forty thousand words from one manuscript, and she was really happy
about it. I’m not sure what her book Osiris
is about, but here’s the cover:
Both
she and Carrie Vaughn have multiple critique partners help them go over their
manuscripts before submitting them to their agents. Carrie is famous for her urban fantasy Kitty
series, but I enjoyed her talk last year about pirates, as research for her
young adult pirate novel.
I
was so intent on telling John Hemry that I’m writing a mashup of the The War of the Worlds (see my previous entry), I forgot to take a picture of him.
Here’s one from last year’s Worldcon.
Of
course, he simply nodded at my writing a mashup on the same novel he had
written a “forgotten chapter” for. A
number of us had a chance to speak to him for ninety minutes. If this sort of meeting takes place in the
morning or afternoon, it’s called a Kaffeklatsch (and tends to be
shorter). This took place in the
evening, so it was called a Literary Bheer, reflecting what was available to
drink. Only a small group is allowed, so
convention members have to sign up early.
This
was so comfortable—a small group of people with common interests—that I think
I’ll do them instead of the major parties where there’s a crush of people and
conversation is difficult. To get in any
good conversation, I’ve ended up staying incredibly late, which can ruin the
rest of the convention for me. So I
think I’ll stick to these more personal meetings, and small parties that are
held by individual authors to launch their latest books. This makes sense.
In
the next post I’ll wrap things up.
WOW! I can't even believe this. That's a total talent too. Thx for sharing, Mark. :)
ReplyDeleteIf only I could have been there! But I'm living the experience through your posts. Thank you!
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