After a busy fifteen days of Ohayocon prep, staunching the constant bloody nose of Dog #1, and writing a script for a 24-minute animated short, I’m finally back to Cursed Hearts.
[re-reads the last couple of paragraphs; scratches head]
[re-reads the last few pages; wonders who are these people?]
Oh…kay. Looks as if I’m going to need to ‘re-familiarize’ myself with just what the Hell is going on in my own story. Wonderful.
Friday PM, a looooong walk from the action of the rest of central Ohio’s biggest animecon. I was to give a talk on Creative Writing & Self-publishing. I expected 3. Maybe 5. Ten minutes before the talk, doors open. 18 came in. I had 15 hand-outs.
Ten minutes later, when I stand to begin my talk, there are just over 50 people. I reach down for the water bottle, think better of it, and reach for my flask of bourbon, instead. I raise my head and smile like Milo does.
“Thank you so much for coming all this way! You’re obviously not here by accident, so let’s get to it!”
One full hour later (the con changed the format so we really get a full hour) completing both my presentation and the dozens of very good questions (barring, well… never mind), I’m shaking hands, signing & selling books, suddenly the room’s empty. I look at Daughter #1.
“That went very well, father.”
“Yeah.”
Later this evening, people from the panel stopped me in the halls of the Columbus Convention Center saying, “Thanks so much! I’m going to start on my book tomorrow!”
Being an asshole, I do what I do:
“Why not tonight?”
Fantastic panel, fantastic group; thanks be to God!
PowerPoint slides for Ohayocon 2017: complete.
Script for Ohayocon 2017 talk* about Creative Writing & Self-Publishing: complete (and revised after I found out yesterday that I’ve about ten more minutes!)
Outline for my long-delayed music video, ‘Lightning Across Clearest Blue:’ complete and in the hands of my collaborators. It’s now up to those “visual” artists to turn my lifeless outline into something that get us about 250k pageviews.
Wait…. Wasn’t I working on another book, too? Custard…? No, it was Cursed… Livers? I cannot recall….
*They’ve put me in a convention center room that likely seats 200. On a Friday afternoon, far from the main action of the Con, with a hyper-specialized topic. I’m anticipating 2-3 attendees. Five, tops. Oh, well: that much sooner to the bar, I suppose.
Whew! Finished the ‘script’ that I’ll be using with my Powerpoint slides in twelve days at my presentation on Creative Writing & Self-Publishing at Ohayocon. I’ve much ground to cover, and – since I’ll be a little drunk – cannot allow myself to get side-tracked, so I’ll have a written script in-hand to keep me on the rails. I’ll likely as not tweak it a little, but that’s one less thing to fret over.
Have to work a short shift tomorrow (ironically with the woman who’ll be starring in the music video I need to finish) so perhaps I can take all my hand-written direction notes for what I’m provisionally calling “Lightning Across Clearest Blue” and type them up and get them to the rest of the team.
What? Work on ‘Cursed Hearts’? Never heard of it.
machciv 