We are well past the halfway point in 2020 and part of me doesn’t understand how that could happen. How is time slipping by so fast? What have I been doing with my time. (I mean I know what I’ve been doing, but still, the question lingers.)

I think it’s because we are in the middle of what would’ve been my convention season. Norwescon, Westercon, Origins…and coming up Gen Con and Worldcon. For the last ten years, spring and summer have been broken up with travel—be it local or not. Everything used to hinge on what convention did I just do and what convention do I need to prepare for next? It chopped up the months nicely.

Now, I’ve got “before Rainforest” and “after Rainforest.” I went away for a writing retreat and the world changed. Possibly—probably—forever. The only things marking time right now are “when I said good-bye to dad” and “when dad died.” These are not things I want to mark my time. I’m trying to find other things to focus on.

I did have two books come out last month. Shadowrun: A Kiss to Die For and BattleTech: Ghost Hour. Both are doing all right, but this would’ve been the convention season I would’ve touted them, showing them off, and signing copies for old and new fans alike.

I was recently (in the grand scheme of things) nominated for two awards: the Scribe award for BattleTech: Iron Dawn and the Bram Stoker award for A Secret Guide to Fighting Elder Gods. I lost both of them, but, as they said, it is an honor to be nominated. (Of course, not going to lie, I would have rather have won one or both of them.)

I do miss traveling to conventions or for weekend trips with the Husband. They were much needed vacations from reality. I think both of us have realized how much we miss them, even though conventions were so much work. They filled the creative well for me and allowed the Husband to get away from the computer. I hope we get back to them again someday.

In the meantime, we’re doing a bunch of virtual events for conventions. My next one is Gen Con. My author card will be linked to this blog and I’ll be posting books for sale and such. I don’t have any panels. I just did a series of panels for “JulyCon” on Arvan Eleron’s twitch channel. There’s a recording of the panels on YouTube.

Virtual events are fun, but they are a stop gap measure until we find the new normal for conventions and other writing/fan events. Mostly, they just make me miss going to conventions and seeing my friends and peers all the more. Plus, I miss the business aspect of them where me and my editors/publishers can get some face-to-face talking time about what’s the plan for the next year. That said, we are lucky to have the opportunity to host and participate in virtual events.

In the meantime, I’ve got my last BattleTech novel to write. I’ve got a deadline to meet. It’s good to have something keeping me busy. I hope everyone else out there has stuff to keep them busy and is doing as well as they can be. I miss my friends. Know you are missed and loved.

Now that you’ve seen what I did in 2018, here’s the basic plan for 2019.

Writing/Editing:
•    Finish processing publisher edits on BattleTech Rogue Academy 1: Iron Dawn.
•    Write two BattleTech Rogue Academy novels – Complete Rogue Academy 2: Ghost Hour (writing and publisher edits), complete Rogue Academy 3: Crimson Night first draft.
•    Edit Shadowrun long fiction – First, edit the novella, A Kiss to Die For. Next, in-between Rogue Academy novels, process publisher edits for my long-ago written Shadowrun novel, Makeda Red.
•    Release a limited run Shadowrun Flash Fiction Podcast called Shadow Bytes. This includes three excerpts from DocWagon 19 and five loosely linked original pieces of fiction.
•    Edit/manage a brand new, soon-to-be announce project. It is super exciting and I can’t wait to tell you all about it.

Expand My Creative Horizons:
As it’s turned out, I’ve received the opportunity to try some new things in 2019. Each is new to me and something I’ve wanted to for a while.
•    I’ve joined a Twitch RPG game. It will be set in the Emberwind universe. I believe we’ll be playing once a month.
•    I’ve joined the cast of the Dire Multiverse podcast as voice talent. I’m voicing two characters so far and I’m already having a lot of fun with this ensemble podcast.
•    I’ve joined Curious Fictions. It’s a little like Patreon, but is focused on writers. I’ll be posting weekly. Two weeks will be open to the public, two weeks will be for my subscribers only. I’m not completely sure how this will go, but if you become a subscriber, know that I appreciate you immensely.

Travel:
I have five conventions scheduled for 2019. There will, most likely, be a couple of one-day driving events that I do with Raven Oak or with Books & Chains. I’m really making the effort to do less travel because I have a heavier writing schedule this year. Also, me and the Husband plan to spend a couple of weeks in New Zealand in 2020.
•    Mar - Rainforest, WA (Teaching a workshop)
•    Apr - Norwescon, WA (Dealers table)
•    May - StokerCon, MI (Teaching a workshop)
•    May - MisCon, MT (TBA – I haven’t heard if I’m in the dealers room or on panels yet.)
•    Aug - Gen Con, IN (TBA – Author’s Avenue most likely)

Personal Growth:
I’m 48 now. Something clicked in 2018 that proved I really need to take control of my space, my work-life balance, and my health—both physical and mental. I worked 316 days last year. That is too many. I should be closer to 260 days. Also, there’s not that much in my life I have complete control over. Based on the business I’m in and the world at large, I need to take control over what I can control.
•    Physical health – I’m eating better and I’m exercising more. This isn’t a resolution. I started this back in August 2018. I’m going to continue doing what I’ve been doing.
•    Declutter – I have now lived in one place, one home, for longer than I ever have in my life. 10+ years. For someone used to moving every 2-5 years, I’ve gotten good at decluttering and downsizing my stuff. That hasn’t happened in 10 years. Needless to say, the house is a mess. A cluttered mess. Because I have a hard time being motivated to work on Mondays and because I can’t seem to actually take a weekend day off, I’m scheduling Mondays to declutter, downsize, and clean. I can write/edit on Monday if I want, but Mondays are guilt-free no publishing work days for 2019.
•    Crafting – Finish craft projects. Compared to most, I am not a crafter. I’m a dabbler. I’m okay with this. I have one baby blanket and a couple of nebulous projects in the works. I want to get those done and evaluate if I get any joy out of crafting or if they are just added stress.

That’s it for me. What’s on your plate in 2019?

Here is my OryCon and SF Authorfest schedule. If I'm not at my table, I'm at a panel. Come say hello, buy books/ebooks, get stuff signed, and get holiday gifts for your loved ones! I've got some out-of-print books as well as collectible books to sell. I'm going to be right next to Angelwear Creations.

Friday, Nov 9
3:00:pm-4:00:pm, Horror For Beginners, Room: 166 B   
Want to write a scary story, but don’t know where to start? Advice from some of our favorite horror authors!

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Saturday, Nov 10
12:00:pm-1:00:pm, Willing suspension of disbelief, Room: 166 B   
A discussion of earning the willing suspension of disbelief, why you need it, and when to overstep it.

1:00:pm-2:00:pm, Are You Doomed by Your Muse?, Room: Pettygrove   
Creatives have a reputation for self-destructing, suffering, starving, succumbing to various illnesses and addictions... How much of this is self-fulfilling prophecy, how much is sensationalism and cultural influence, and how much is it the nature of being a writer, poet, artist, musician, or other creative?

7:30:pm-8:00:pm, Jennifer Brozek Reading, Room: 152 Readings   
Jennifer Brozek reads from her works—one published, one not published.

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Sunday, Nov 11
10:00:am-11:00:am, Horror vs Modern Technology, Room: Pettygrove   
A discussion of how things like cellphones and the internet impact horror stories, and how to write stories incorporating them.

1:00:pm-2:00:pm, Autograph Session, Room: TBA   
Get your books signed by Jennifer Brozek, Dayle A. Dermatis, David D. Levine

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SF AUTHORFEST, Nov 11, Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
4:00:pm-5:30:pm, 20-25 authors all signing books!

Article: From Bookwraiths Author Spotlight – Observations of an American Military Brat. “For most of America, “kids don’t act that way,” but on military bases and in military academies, they do.”

Interview: Community Outreach – Interview with Jennifer Brozek, Author Of BattleTech: The Nellus Academy Incident. I love Sarna.net. I really do.

Publication: “An Open Letter to the Family” is live in Uncanny Magazine’s Disabled People Destroy SF issue. I love this story, even thought it was really hard to write.

Review: To Fight the Black Wind reviewed by Uncaged Reviews. Short but sweet.

Reminder: For the North Coast Redwoods Writers Conference, I will be reading in Crescent City on Friday the 21st at 7pm and teaching two workshops (The Principles of Tie-In Fiction and How to Pitch a Story) on Saturday. There are still openings in both workshops and the reading is free.

I will be at Worldcon and easy to find in general. Most of my time, during the day, will be spent behind my booth in the dealers room. Come find me at the Apocalypse Ink Productions booth, say hello, buy a book and get it signed! I'll have copies all of my new stuff as well as the sudden and unexpected appearance of my SF anthology, Bless Your Mechanical Heart. It is out of print and filled with wonderful stories about robots and cyborgs dealing with emotions.

I do have a couple of panels. They are listed below. Hope to see you there!

Thursday
Dealers Room Hours: 12 Noon – 6 PM

Friday
Dealers Room Hours: 10 AM – 6 PM

1-2pm, 210F (San Jose Convention Center)
Playing in Other Sandboxes: Media Tie-In Writing
The media tie-in. Once, the dirty secret of the spec fic market -- now the best way to get exposure for your name. Movies, TV, Video Games, RPGs and even other books. How does an author find the room to move in an often already crowded world? Dancing with license holders, tiptoeing around cannon, and waltzing with readers expectations; is it worth it? And why the sudden upsurge in tie-in short fiction?
David Boop, Joy Ward, Jennifer Brozek, Sarah Stegall, Wesley Chu

Saturday
Dealers Room Hours: 10 AM – 6 PM

11am-12pm, 212D (San Jose Convention Center)
DD: How to Pitch a Story
Participants will learn four basic pitch techniques, two verbal and two written, to help sell both short and long fiction. We will also discuss how, why, and when each is used. Participants will be asked to present a pitch based on a provided prompt.
Jennifer Brozek

Sunday
Dealers Room Hours: 10 AM – 6 PM

Monday
Dealers Room Hours: 10 AM – 3 PM

Life has been busy, busy, busy, but good.

Writing
I've finished Rogue Academy: Iron Dawn, polish-edited it, and turned it in. I feel accomplished and actually pretty good about the manuscript. Of course, now I’m in that “I finished a novel, now what?” flail. It’s not that I don’t have stuff to work on. I do. It’s the fact that it feels like I’m doing “procrastination work” – which is what writing flash fiction, editing, and outlining is while I’m novel drafting. I’ll shake my brain out soon enough.

What am I working on now?

• Shadow Bytes – five pieces of Shadowrun flash fiction for a podcast.
• Editing the stories for A Secret Guide to Fighting Elder Gods Lovecraft anthology.
• Prepping to write a Shadowrun novella, A Kiss to Die For.

What does my brain want to work on? After a call with my agent, a far future oceanic novella that I've been noodling over for about a year now. It might become a good Wit'n'Word writing group project.

Conventions
August – I have two major conventions coming up in August: Gen Con and WorldCon. I am a dealer at both and a panelist at WorldCon. I’ll find out this week if I have any panel things to do for Cat Labs at Gen Con. I’ve got my house/cat sitters in place. I’ve started my plans for packing. Gen Con will be more complex than WorldCon, but all of it is doable.

September – I’m participating in the North Coast Redwoods Writers’ Conference. I’ll be reading Friday night, 21 Sep, and teaching two workshops on Saturday, 22 Sep.

Household Stuff
Back patio – Our house is 30+ years old. We’re the second owners. We’re slowly making it look less like a 30+ year old house. The latest project is replacing the back red-brick patio with pretty grey paver stones. The Husband did most of the work. It’s involved and still ongoing. There’ll be a blog post about it soon. It’s not done because it includes replacing the deck stairs on the patio side of things.

Eating from the pantry – Twice a year, the Husband and I do what we call “eating from the pantry.” We don’t eat out. We don’t grocery shop except for fresh veggies and milk. We eat from what we have in the pantry and the deep freeze for the full month as a way of cleaning out the older / soon-to-expire dry goods. It’s also a way to save money. Of course, this means we end up with some strange meals by the end of the month. Bubble-and-Squeak for the win!

Kitties
All four of them are fat and happy. I’m sure you can see that from my Twitter and Instagram. Feel free to join us there.

I’ve been back from Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for two days. The first day was easily taken up with catch up work. Memories of the workshop flittered around my head like the cottonwood blowing in Laramie. Today is the first day of “normal” work. I’ve got a BattleTech novel to finish and I find all I want to do is read space opera and hard SF. I’m not going to succumb to the urge (yet). I’m delaying things by writing this AKA procrastination work.

I learned so much and had much of what I already knew confirmed. It’s nice to know I actually set up the Kember Empire almost exactly correct and I will always thank Yonatan Zunger for helping me with my SLING space travel via branes and gravitational waves. (Helpful to have once dated a theoretical physicist from Stanford back in the day.)

Even better, I got to talk to other authors about a space combat problem I knew I’d have coming up in Rogue Academy #2. Michael Mammay (author of Planetside) not only helped me work it out, he gave me a great idea on how to do it. That was one of the best things about this workshop: the caliber of people attending and the conversations we had in and out of class.

Our professors, Mike Brotherton and Christian Ready, were excellent teachers. Dynamic, playful, smart, engaging, and challenging. We got about a semester’s worth of cosmology science thrown at us in a week. Long days, too. Start at 10am and go until about 9-10pm every day with breaks in-between. I took 40 pages of notes. A lot of it was “Look up, X. It’s about Y if you need it.”

Also, I had the dubious honor of being interviewed by campus police because I didn’t go on the WIRO telescope visit due to personal biology.

*Everyone leaves for the WIRO telescope.*

Me: “I’m alone in a dorm building on a college campus. This is the beginning of a horror movie.” I sit in the 2nd floor lobby and read.

*20 minutes later, footsteps on the stairs. Campus security, teens doing walkthroughs. We startled each other.*

Me: “There’s the first tension breaker. Now I’m going to be murdered.*

*15 minutes later, lots of footsteps on the stairs. The teens and two cops come through, but don’t stop.*

Me: WTF?

*5 minutes later, all four of them come back to the 2nd floor lobby and surround me.*

Me: WTF?!

*For the next 10 minutes, I’m interviewed by the cops on why I’m there, did I know anything about the pot smell, and where is everyone else? I explain who I am, where everyone else is (at the WIRO telescope), and that, no, I don’t smoke. They want to know what I write (“Genre fiction with a high body count”), and I end up giving all four of them my author card so they can look up my books later. Then I explain they all scared the crap out of me. The teens apologize.

After they leave, I debate about calling either of the professors, realize they aren’t even at the telescope yet, and I haven’t been arrested for existing. So, no. I’d tell them tomorrow.*

Me: “Now I’m really going to be murdered.” I go back into my dorm room, close and lock the door, then call the Husband because I’m so keyed up. We talk, then I write for a while.

That aside, Launch Pad is one of those once-in-a-lifetime workshop that really opened my eyes. The science is mind-blowing, the education is mind-opening, and the experience is the kind of thing that you’ll remember forever. If you get a chance, you should try to go. It’s hard to get into. I had to apply multiple times before I got in, but it is so worth it.

The month of May has been made up of me writing on the BattleTech novel, bookended by travel. At the beginning of the month, it was Crypticon where I got to meet up with some of my favorite people, speak on panels, and sell books. The end of the month will be taken up with the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop.

The Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop promises to be a blast. For a week, I will be out of my routine. Two days for travel and five days of the workshop in Laramie, WY. The workshop days are full. The schedule looks really interesting. I can’t wait to go and learn. I like writing science fiction and it’s good to brush up on real world science.

I probably won’t be on social media much during the week. At least, not actively looking at social media. I might post pictures of where I’m at and some of the sites. I’ve never been to Wyoming before. This will be a new experience. My main fear is getting lost on campus. Seriously, I get turned around a lot. If I don’t actually know where I’m going, I’m the anti-ask-for-directions or go-the-opposite-way person. I suspect it won’t be too hard to get around, but it is the one thing I’m nervous about right now. (You can bet I'll post about getting lost if it does happen.)

I have to admit, I’m looking forward to pretending to be a college student for a week. I think getting away from routine and staying off the internet will be good for me. If I can manage it, I’m still going to write in the mornings before class. But I’m not going to beat myself up if it doesn’t happen.

What I will miss is the Husband and the kitties. He’s promised daily kitty pictures. I can handle that. If history is any indication, the kitties will miss me and spend all their time trying to glom onto the Husband. That will make his life interesting in the short term. (He will miss me, too, and has already said such.)

Dealers Room
If I’m at not a panel, I will be in the Dealers Room with Apocalypse Ink Productions. I will have copies of my newest books, including Arkham Horror: To Fight the Black Wind and The Nellus Academy Incident. Come by and see me.

• Friday 4pm – 8pm
• Saturday 11am -7pm
• Sunday 11am -5pm

FRI 5PM    Cascades 9        Start Writing, Stay Writing (Mod)
Have you dreamed of writing your own stories? Dying to get published? Maybe you are looking for tips to keep you moving forward? A panel of writers will share their favorite tips on getting started, staying motivated and improving your work. Panel discussion is designed for beginner or intermediate writers across a variety of forms like short story, novel and screenplay. This panel will provide a foundation for other writing panels and workshops this weekend.
James Gillen, Rebecca Brown, Jennifer Brozek (M), Julie McGilliard, Jerome St. Martin


SAT 1PM    Cascades 9        Jennifer Brozek Author Reading (Mod)
I will be reading from TO FIGHT THE BLACK WIND. Psychologist Carolyn Fern is searching for the cause of a patient’s terrible nightmares that leave her both mentally and physically scarred.


SUN 11AM    Cascades 9        Crafting Compelling Protagonists (Mod)
So often great stories also have great protagonists. A protagonist can pull audiences in or leave them out in the cold. This panel of authors will discussion what makes a compelling protagonist and how to craft one in your short story, novel, screenplay or other creative work.
Jennifer Brozek (M), Cat Rambo, John Lovett, Jerome St. Martin

I will be at Anglicon this coming weekend as a panelist and with Books & Chains. If I'm not at the Dealer's table, this is where I am.

Friday:
Black Mirror: Too Much or Just Enough - Cascade 2, 2pm
The Best British Shows You're Not Watching - Cascade 2, 4pm

Saturday:
Sherlock Holmes in Every Incarnation - Olympic 2 - Saturday, 3pm

Sunday:
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Clara? - Cascade 2 - Sunday, 3pm

Both Raven and I will have mystery boxes to sell at the convention (perfect for that hard to buy for person in your life) as well as books and candles. Elise, of course, will have her fabulous chainmail.

Come by, say hello, get a book signed, and buy a gift for yourself or that someone special. Hope to see you there!