Back from World Con. Met some neat people and sold books to some of them. :-) Looking forward to working my way through the material I collected and making contact individually with the readers and writers and possible reviewers or other fellow 'pilots' I might "soul touch" in the future. Read a page a day of Denise Torgerson's book Attributes of a Goddess; hung with the Edge folks (Anita never ceases to amaze me, very proud to be one of Brian's authors and happy birthday Janice!) and with Canadian SF luminary Robert J. Sawyer who is now also publisher of his own line of books; met fellow authors Adrian Bedford and Rebecca Rowe; met the aptly named Grace from Broad Universe and some of my fellow Broad Universe authors; said "hi" to Cory Doctorow in person for the first time; discovered much and scored some good books. Took a crack at getting a signature from David Hartwell for his new non-fiction book The Space Opera Renaissance but just didn't manage to be in the right place at the right time; spent some good social time with the Neo-Opsis Magazine team of Karl and Stephanie and we all three agreed we were sorry Virginia O'Dine couldn't make it and look forward to seeing her next con. All in all, enough experiences and material to be investigating and reporting on, here, for the rest of the year as I work through it.
posted by Lynda at 07:21   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
On Sunday 27th August 2006 at about 0715 Lynda and Jennifer were interviewed on the CBC radio show "North by NorthWest." It's 12 minutes long and full of deep insight into the need to write.
posted by David at 09:27   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 

The pictures of our trip to ConVersion 22 are finally up.
Maybe next month there will be captions on them. :-)
posted by David at 21:29   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 1 comments

 
Delighted to find myself included in Edward Willett line up of SF Canada members present at Con-Version 22 in Calgary. Click my picture or the entry's title for the rest of the line up.

Hope my loving-hubby and webmaster will get up the con pictures we took soon, as well, and blog it here. Hint hint David. :-)

posted by Lynda at 23:33   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Recommend the essay by Scott R. Bakker, The Skeptical Fantasist: In Defense of an Oxymoron. I don't necessarily agree on all fronts but I do agree, heartily, that philosophy and the arguments about meaning are a critical aspect of literature and are alive and well in speculative fiction of all sorts. It isn't "just" about entertaining and making a buck however integral entertainment may be to the bigger questions and however necessary money is to life.
posted by Lynda at 09:42   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 

Back from Conversion XXII plus extended holiday in which we visited the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Heritage Park and the Calgary Zoo. David will have pictures up before long. In the meantime, the breathless summary will have to do: stayed with Edge Publisher Brian Hades and his wife Anita who made us feel like family; saw a draft of the cover for Righteous Anger when Brian and I met with artist David Willicome; met Richard, the editor for Righteous Anger; had the pleasure of selling a copy of Courtesan Prince and Throne Price to David Weber's wife, Sharon, when she and her celebrated husband (who was guest of honor at the con) stopped by the Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy table in the dealer's room; embarrassed myself by not recognizing R. Scott Bakker prior to the opening ceremonies; listened to my husband, David Lott, and media guest of honour Jeremy Bulloch reminisce about Corona Academy, the acting school in London, England that they both attended; socialized with Edward Willett; signed some Okal Rel Universe books; attended the annual Robyn Meta Herrington BBQ where I met Robyn?s parents and niece (a copy of In Places Between, an annual writing contest held in Robyn?s honor, came with the con bag of goodies) and read the remarkable eulogy she wrote for herself; socialized with writer-friends Rebecca Bradley and Marie Jakober; Robert Sawyer was also at that party; also socialized with IFWA members Randy McCharles and Sandra FitzPatrick, who have placed stories in the ORU anthology; saw and socialized with other friends like Clayton and Tammie, and Allan and Katie, and Karl and Stephanie the intrepid masterminds behind Neo-Opsis magazine (to which I subscribe); pleasantly surprised to find a quote from my review featured on the brochure for Leslie Carmichael's book Lyranel's Song

; oh, and gave away some buggy copies of the Guide to the Okal Rel Universe to people I trusted to pardon the typos in that run, which are entirely mea culpa :-(

On the Anthology front, I met once with Steve Swanson, the artist for the next Okal Rel Universe anthology, and spoke more than once with John Preet, the editor for the same anthology.

posted by Lynda at 22:02   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 1 comments

 
Friend and writer Anne M. Stickel is featured on the current issue of Surreal Interactive. Surreal is a horror mag.
posted by Lynda at 09:01   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 2 comments

 

Ah, how the web weaves connections. :-) Spotted an ad for Cambrian House on BoingBoing while looking at Cory Doctorow's article about my daughter, Jennifer Lott, and her Animorph ending that Cory posted there. Always enjoyed dabbling in ideas so I signed up on the Cambrian House site and played a little. I liked their style so much, I had one of my spontaneous urges to soul touch propsective kindred spirits and threw together a mixed bag of Okal Rel Universe memorabilia, books and junk to fire off to them with a letter expressing my wistful thought that "if only I was younger I'd love to be doing what you're doing". Delighted by the response, below, and recommend Cambrian House to any ORU enthusiasts into creative ideas for software development. (I know there are some of you out there!)

From e-mail received Friday, July 28, 2006 4:41 PM, reproduced with permission. Hey Lynda, The Team here at Cambrian House has received your care package and we absolutely love it. Thank you so much! We think it's awesome that you decided to send it to us and you?ll be glad to know that Courtesan Prince is making the rounds; I have seen it on a few people's desks as I walk by. It's great to see that we have fans in our early Beta Stage; I hope that you have already signed up for the community and received a Beta Award reserved for our most brave community members, those who sign up before August 1. And there is no reason that you can't contribute, regardless of your age J, and lend us some of your great ideas and feedback. We are working hard at making our site the best it can be with help from all our users. We look forward to seeing and hearing more from you on our site! And we are also looking forward to the release of Part Two of the Okal Rel Saga, Righteous Anger. Cheers, Amanda

posted by Lynda at 08:28   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments