Gary Kloster

Enough socializing, back to the workshops.

Friday morning we spent picking on– I mean encouraging three of our class mates.  Schon, Don, and Heather got to be the honored fattened calves, and we spent the morning rotissering their stories.  They were all pretty good, but to be honest they felt a bit rushed.  Like they were rough drafts, cranked out the day before.

Yeah, I laugh now, but we promised to e-mail each other our 24 hour stories after the workshop.  So the pain will be shared.

After that, it was time for the guest lecturers.  First up was Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta who talked about a lot of things, but chiefly professionalism.  They showed theirs by providing us with pizza, which we really needed.  Then Doug Beeson and Yoji Kondo spoke, reminding us that science fiction does involve the word science, and that our stories should probably at least make a stab at scientific accuracy.  Dave Wolverton, Sean Williams and Steve Savile were next, but I was dragged away before I could hear them.

They were having us do radio interviews for Sirus XM Book Radio.  So they pulled us out in pairs all through the lectures.  Me and Cheryl went together, managed to find the place and did our interviews.  I believe I was coherent, but I haven’t heard the interview yet.  I have no idea when those interviews are suppose to air, but if I hear I’ll post the times.

Back to Author Services, where Jerry Pournelle was finishing up.  He was doing some storytelling about the business, and how it’s changed.  He wrapped it up with a good luck, I have no idea how your going to make it nowadays.  Then the folks from Locus came and talked to us about why its important to read Locus (got it covered), and Robert Sawyer came and talked about working with Hollywood.  His book, FlashForward got picked up to be a series on ABC, so he talked about options and other cool Hollywood stuff.  And managed to make it seem like it might be an interesting experience, as opposed to one of utter horror which was the impression I’ve gotten from most other writers.  Then we had a little lesson about PR, and how to sell, sell, sell ourselves to the public.  Good and useful stuff, but again, introverts…

The pros wrapped it up, and then the illustrators came in and showed us the artwork they had done for our stories.  Very cool.  Mark Payton did mine, and I love the concept, the trophy snapshot.

Then we got to go over to the Blossom room in the hotel, where the ceremony would be held.  It was all set up, lights hanging everywhere, a giant flatscreen, a huge stage.  And dancers, spinning around, chasing each other with a giant quill pen.  That was odd.

When the dancers were done, they had us go up on the stage.  They pointed out how to receive the trophies, where we should stand for the pictures, and had us check out the mic.  This was when the whole public speaking reality of the thing crashed in.  I had visions of falling down the stairs and impaling myself on the trophy (they’re kinda pokey).  But I handled it in my usual way– finding someone who was more nervous than me and pretending that it was no big deal, see, I was perfectly calm (Thanks, Cheryl!)

Last thing of the night was a party in Sean Williams room.  Got to hang out and talk some more, which was great, but eventually exhaustion set in and it was off to bed.  The next day was going to be long.