Matthew S. Rotundo's Pixeltown

Con season has officially begun for me.  Consequently, I am wiped.  Tuckered.  Nackered.   What I’m sayin’ here, I’m tired.

Last week was all about getting ready for OSFest, which included doing a couple of critiques for the writing workshop.  The weekend was all OSFest, all the time.  (Well, most of the time, anyway.  I also spent a few hours at my–gasp and swoon–25-year high school reunion.  Dude.)

The con itself went pretty well.  Robert J. Sawyer was Guest of Honor, and since I knew him from Writers of the Future, he recognized me right away.  We had some good chats, and shared a panel on Sunday.

Also present:  Travis Heermann and his lady Chanel, Marcus Pelegrimas, Shelly Li, Chloe Neill, Daniel Nielsen, Sherri Dean, Jimmy Hollaman, and the list goes on and on.

My reading on Saturday was surprisingly well attended.  I actually filled the room.  Granted, it was a small room, but still.  It probably didn’t hurt that the wife enticed folks with attractive signage . . . and hot dogs.  Yeah, it was probably the hot dogs.  Something to keep in mind.

Saturday night, I played RoomCon 6.2, which was a good time.  Travis once again immortalized the moment.  Last year, he zombified me.  This year, he Cthulhu-ized me, to wit:

(For those needing context, this.)

So, yeah.  A good weekend, but an exhausting one.  Still haven’t caught up on the sleep.  Must rectify that now.

Write Club update:  A tier one rejection from Daily Science Fiction.  Response time, about a week.

And so to bed.

Once again in the Between Time.  As I mentioned last week, the to-do list that accumulated while finishing my recent rewrite is not inconsiderable.  I’m at the point where I can only address the stuff that’s on fire, or at least boiling merrily.

Item one:  Proof a galley and return to editor.  Check.

Item two:  Respond to some correspondence regarding NASFiC programming.  Check–albeit probably a bit too late.  This pot boiled over.

Item three:  Select a story for yesterday’s reading, and rehearse same.  Check.

Item four:  Give a reading.  Check.  Seemed to go over fairly well.

Somewhere in there, I managed to get a story back in circulation and do some prep for OSFest, which is this weekend.

Now, all of this sounds productive, and I suppose it wasn’t too bad–especially considering the scheduling minefield I had to navigate last week–but I have to confess that I’ve been mostly stressing over something that isn’t on that to-do list:  starting my next novel.  The reason it’s not on the list is that I don’t even know what it is yet.  A few ideas have popped up, stuff worth exploring, but I’m not sure if any novels are in there.

Why is this stressing me so?  Because a few years back, I set a goal of writing a novel a year, every year until I drop.  I’m three for three since then, and that’s cool.  But here it is mid-July, and I haven’t even started making any story notes yet.  I do 20K a month when drafting, so I still have time for a 100K novel . . . but only if I start in August.  Which is–lemme check my calendar–12 days away.

Right.

See what I’m getting at?  This goal is really important to me, and I’m on the verge of blowing it.  Meanwhile, all these other, smaller pots are boiling over.  What’s a boy to do?

Take a chill pill, I guess.  Writing the new novel is important, but so is selling some of the older ones.  I haven’t hit that task anywhere near as hard as I should be.  Might as well address that problem while waiting for the new novel to percolate.  Who knows?  I might still make my goal.  I have a trick or two up my sleeve.

So it’s back to the list for me, and hope for the best.

No updates for Write Club.

Let’s see . . . what’s next?