Eric James Stone

Dragon*Con is one of the largest science fiction & fantasy conventions. Its focus is more on media (i.e., TV shows and movies) than on written fiction, but it does have a writing track.

I actually went to a Dragon*Con back in 1998 or so, when I lived in Virginia and it was only a few hours drive. (In those days I wasn’t writing, but I went to a lot of media-oriented conventions.) This year, though, I decided to fly out to the convention, and I’m glad I did. It was a lot of fun, but it was also a good professional networking opportunity. Read the rest of this entry »

LDS author James Dashner writes fantasy and science fiction for the young adult market. His four-part Jimmy Fincher saga has sold over 20,000 books–and that was through Utah-based Cedar Fort publishing, not a big national publisher. Besides being a prolific writer, James also takes time to speak about writing at various writing conferences. I’ve recieved from very useful tips from him about writing for young people.

I’ve read the first book in the Jimmy Fincher saga, A Door in the Woods, and it’s a fun adventure. While part of it does take place in Utah, it is not an “LDS novel,” because the main character is not LDS and religion does not play much of a role in the book.

I asked James if I could interview him for my LDS writer interview series, and he was kind enough to agree. Read the rest of this entry »

The World Science Fiction Convention is colloquially known as WorldCon. The 2006 WorldCon was hosted by L.A.con IV in Anaheim, California. This was my first WorldCon, and it was a lot of fun.

I left Wednesday, August 23, after work. My companions for the drive were Howard Tayler, the professional cartoonist behind Schlock Mercenary; Spencer Ellsworth, a friend from one of my writing groups; and Kimball Larsen, a friend of Brandon Sanderson. (Brandon drove down earlier in the day with another group of Utahns. You can read the saga of organizing rides for everyone here.)

Our group broke up the drive by staying overnight in Las Vegas. We hit a breakfast buffet in the morning and then continued on to Anaheim.

Some highlights of the trip:

• Meeting up with several of my Writers of the Future co-authors: Ken Scholes and David W. Goldman from Volume XXI, and Andrew Tisbert, Ken Brady and Jason Stoddard from Volume XX.
• Hanging out with several Codexians: the aforementioned Spencer Ellsworth, Ken Scholes, and David Goldman, plus Lawrence M. Schoen, Christina Kinnan, Elaine Isaak, Matt Rotundo, Jenny Rae Rappaport, Robert J. Defendi, and John Pitts. Various combinations of us got together at various times for various meals.
• Seeing several of the major authors I had just seen the weekend before at Writers of the Future.
• Spending Friday afternoon making the rounds of L.A. bookstores with Brandon and his agent, Joshua Bilmes, so Brandon could sign the copies of his books in stock. Joshua was kind enough to answer my questions and share his knowledge about the publishing business.
• Attending Lawrence’s reading of one of his hilarious Amazing Conroy stories, and then later going to the launch party for his Conroy book Buffalogenesis.
• Going to the Writers of the Future ice cream party put on by Galaxy Press and chatting with various GP people who had been too busy to talk much during the WOTF festivities the week before. I found out that the two anthologies I’m in are going to be translated into Turkish, which will be my first publication in a foreign language.
• Having lunch on Saturday with Stan Schmidt, editor of Analog, along with David Goldman and Amy Bechtel. Stan asked us all to be more prolific in writing stories for his magazine.
• Attending my first Hugo awards ceremony. The Hugos are one of the two major awards for science fiction and fantasy, the other being the Nebulas. I’m sorry to admit that I hadn’t read most of the nominated works, but I had seen the winners in short and long film (a Doctor Who Episode and the film Serenity, respectively.)
• Attending various parties and meeting people throughout the whole convention.

Sunday morning, Howard, Spencer and I began our long drive home. (Kimball went later in the rented car. For an explanation of that, see the saga of organizaing rides linked to earlier.)

Overall, it was a long and tiring weekend, but a great experience.

Next year’s WorldCon is in Japan, so I will not be going unless through some incredibly unlikely sequence of events I get nominated for a Hugo. But two years from now it will be in Denver, so I’ll be going to that one.

On my way back from the Writers of the Future Awards, I stopped off in Las Vegas for Creation Entertainment’s convention celebrating Star Trek’s 40th anniversary. I managed to pick up a few interesting T-shirts while I was there, but I mainly wanted to get photos with two Star Trek actors: Michael Dorn (Worf) and Jolene Blalock (T’Pol).

Because I was browsing the dealer’s room, I was near the end of the line for Jolene Blalock. Before I got my picture, they stopped the line and said she had to leave but would be back later. I came back later to find out that she had been taken to the hospital and would not be back. (I hope she’s all right; I haven’t seen any news about her since.)

Based on that, I decided it would be a good idea to be near the front of the line for Michael Dorn. I had seen Michael Dorn at previous cons, but I had never managed to get a picture with him. This time I did. I’ll post it after I get it in the mail.

I’ve been traveling quite a bit over the past few weeks. Now that I’ve caught my breath, it’s time to blog about my trips.

Because I was a previous winner in the Writers of the Future contest, I was invited to attend the August 18 awards ceremony for the most recent batch of winners. After deciding to go, I talked to Sarah at Galaxy Press (publisher of the WOTF anthology), who has been the person arranging most of my book signings. I suggested that I might be willing to share what I had learned about doing signings for the anthology, so I was invited to attend the workshop the day before the awards for that purpose.

I drove down to Carlsbad, California, arriving around lunchtime on Thursday. At lunch, it was great to see the main workshop instructors, Tim Powers and K. D. Wentworth, again. I also met author Steve Savile (a WOTF winner from three years ago), whom I knew from the Codex Writers forum but had never met in person.

After lunch, I met some of the new winners, including another Codexian, Diana Rowland. I had the chance to read Diana’s story, “Schroedinger’s Hummingbird,” months ago. On rare occasions, when I finish reading a story I say to myself, “Wow! I wish I’d written that story.” Diana’s story gave me that feeling. If you buy Writers of the Future, Volume XXII, you can read it and see why.

I sat in on the lectures at the workshop, and despite the fact that I’ve attended the workshop twice before, it was still a thrill to sit there and listen to authors like Jerry Pournelle and Kevin J. Anderson share their advice.

Due to a bit of confusion about scheduling, both Steve and I should actually have given our presentations the day before we arrived. But Sean Williams (Australia’s biggest SF writer) was kind enough to share his time with us, so we got to share our perspectives.

That evening, during and after dinner, I got a chance to chat with several of the new winners. I also found out that one of the workshop attendees was Mike Rimar, who was a winner along with me last year but was unable to attend at the time.

Either that evening or at some time during the next day, I also had a chance to chat with Kevin J. Anderson, Sean Williams, Todd McCaffrey, Larry Niven, Robert J. Sawyer (Canada’s biggest SF author and the man smart enough to have gotten the sfwriter.com domain name) and others.

Friday evening, I went to the awards ceremony, which was held in the San Diego Aerospace Museum in Balboa Park in San Diego. It was fun to attend the ceremony without worrying about giving a speech, which I had to do two years ago as a published finalist and one year ago as a winner. After the awards came the mass signing by the authors and illustrators. I spent a good while chatting with various people before finally going through and getting my book signed by most of the authors and illustrators.

Saturday afternoon, I was part of a mass signing at Mysterious Galaxy by the new authors and the judges. Anne McCaffrey is so popular that there had to be a separate line for her autograph. I sat next to Mike Rimar, and we ended up signing a few copies of the volume we were both in. (We also signed copies of volume XXII if requested.)

Eventually the time came for me to begin my journey home, so I said goodbye to everyone and left.

All in all, it was a fun time.