Work

Seven Paragraphs About LTUE

By / February 14, 2013 / 5 Comments

I came home to an explosion of valentines wrappers and cards strewn all over the kitchen table. All four kids were downstairs watching Avatar: The Last Airbender episodes, only Link felt the need to welcome me home with a hug. They were all fine and had been fine all afternoon while I was gone. I have reached the point where I do not need to obsessively plan contingencies and give detailed instructions when I’m going to be gone. The holiday also meant that the kids did not have a homework panic because none had been assigned. All was well at Chez Tayler.

People came up to me at the table, not to ask me questions about Howard, but to say hello and ask me about my writing and projects. This time I had answers for them, which is a huge improvement over last year when I stood behind a table of Howard’s things and only had one four-year-old book to show. The difference is in me, I have shifted inside, made space for my creative things, and bit by bit they accumulated over the course of a year. This year I can point to two books on the table. In a few months I hope to be able to point at four. I talk about those hopes and people are glad for me. Then they tell me about their hopes and I am glad for them.

Often it is the small conversations which stay with me, the seem inconsequential: talking about projects and events. But then one person will share some small piece of information which shifts the possibilities for someone else. I see it over and over as the people come to our table to talk to us and to each other. I love seeing that moment when a new future becomes visible or a solution is handed over. Sometimes I get to be part of that exchange, sometimes I am the recipient. At home I think of the faces I saw today, the conversations I had. I turn them over and examine them like a jeweler examines stones. Small moments shine, the people shine and I’m not even sure they realize it.

Publishing a book is often compared to giving birth with analogies drawn between pregnancy and writing. There is another similarity, authors share their publishing stories just as women will spontaneously tell labor horror stories to a pregnant woman. I hear stories that sound to me like glowing shining tales about the wonder and beauty of this process. Other tales clarify how badly this can all go wrong. I listen and I wish somehow the whole thing could be easier and less messy. The thing is that there are happy and horrible stories about every single available publishing path. Listening to some of these stories is educational so that pitfalls are identified: theoretically to be avoided. However listening to too many stories can leave me discouraged and wondering why I want to publish in the first place. Then I remember the people who come up to the table and tell me that my words made their lives better. I just need to keep on going and pray that I’ll muddle my way through some hybrid path that takes me to places where my words can continue to help.

The room was full when I walked in, I’d not really expected that. On other occasions when I’ve taught solo presentations I had between five and twelve people for an audience. The room was full and I walked to the front to lay out my presentation props: books that I might want to hold up as examples. In the end I forgot to hold them up. I forgot to mention several other things as well. This did not matter because somehow as I followed the bread crumbs of my presentation notes I was able to say the right things. I did not say all of the right things, but sometimes the whole room laughed, which is a pretty good sign of a presentation going well. I was also able to see moments when an audience member nodded or a head dipped to scribble a note. These are also good signs. Probably the most important thing I said was that some of what I said is the wrong advice for some of the audience because everyone has to find their own ways to build creativity into their lives. Sitting here and thinking about it, I keep thinking about additional things to say. Some of those will end up in the presentation notes I type up here for the blog next week. Others will wait until I give the presentation again at LDS Storymakers. Mostly I don’t know exactly what I said or how I said it, but people came to thank me afterward which means that for some of my audience I said exactly the right thing. There was a recording device in front of me I wonder if I will continue to think I did well when I listen to the recording. Yes it will be available on the internet. I’ll link it when it is.

Howard and I had solo presentations at the exact same hour. We made jokes about how our friends would have to pick which Tayler they liked best. I pictured myself with a mostly empty room next door to Howard’s full room while he made the audience laugh. Both of us had full audiences, which felt very happy to me. Howard’s presentation/workshop also went really well. I hope he gets a chance to give it again.

I was not sure if I should go out to dinner or rush home to the kids. I sort of split the difference, staying to eat for awhile then ducking out to go home. Partly I needed to make sure that all was well. (It was, even with valentines detritus strewn everywhere.) The other part was my need for the quiet of my house after the sociability of the convention. I needed to hug my children and be here for bedtime. The routine comforts us all and grounds me. I have to sit in my house with my fingers on the keyboard to unspool my thoughts, tucking them away for the night too. Tomorrow will be another full day. It begins early as I have a panel starting at 9 am.

Life the Universe and Everything Symposium

By / February 7, 2013 / 2 Comments

One week from today the Life the Universe and Everything Symposium begins. If you love to read science fiction and fantasy, then this is an excellent event for you to attend and learn more about the things you love. If you are a teacher who wants to include these things in your classroom, then you may be interested in the Saturday educational track which tries to help with exactly that. If you want to write science fiction or fantasy, then LTUE is an event you can’t afford to miss. If you register in advance you can attend all three days for $30. That is $10 per day for a full day of presentations, panel discussions, and a chance to meet working writers and artists. Prices are more expensive at the door. If you are a student, you can attend for free. Did you catch that? Any student from any school who has a student ID can attend the entire symposium for free. This is because the whole point of LTUE is for people to share their knowledge and love of science fiction and fantasy.

Both Howard and I will be there all three days. You’re most likely to find us in the dealer’s room sitting under the big Schlock Mercenary banner. I do have one scheduled panel each day and I’m really excited about all of them.

Thurs 4pm
Structuring Life to Make Room for Creativity
This is a solo presentation where I get to teach how to organize your life so that you have time and energy to write, draw, paint, sew, or what ever else calls to you.

Fri 9am
Overcoming Adversity
Or How to Keep Writing when Life Gets in the Way
Sandra Tayler, Loralee Leavitt, Al Carlisle, Danyelle Leafty, Julie Wright
I love panels like this. Stories are told and I always learn something that helps me later.

Sat 9am
Social Media Q&A
Heather Ostler, Robison Wells, Mette Ivie Harrison, Sandra Tayler (M), Peter Orullian
I’m particularly excited about this in light of the social media experiments I’ve been doing lately.

So don’t miss LTUE February 14-16 at the Marriott in downtown Provo.

Choosing Between Professional Events and Family Needs

By / February 5, 2013

It was not a good day for reasons that I’d been unable to discern. I tried to manage it with willpower and then an application of caffeine, yet I couldn’t seem to get started on important tasks. Time slipped away from me in reading things that weren’t particularly important. When I focused on something important, concentration eluded me. I sat down to write all the thoughts in my head to see if I could sort some order out of them, that did not lead me to clarity either. I muddled through, accomplishing only the most critical tasks, until I washed up in Howard’s office at the end of the day, like driftwood.

I talked, Howard listened. My words were just repeating the things I’d written out for myself, but I framed them for my audience of one: the listener I could count on to not think less of me even when some of my thoughts were selfish or judgmental. I don’t like to be judgmental, because I recognize it and then I try to fix it, which is good, but exhausting if I am in a situation where an unending stream of judgmental thoughts keep appearing in my head. But Howard listens and lets me sort the thoughts, even the unfair ones, the ones I never want to write down because written words give permanence to something I want to get rid of.

One thought followed another and most of them ended up being about scheduling June. That is the month of the Writing Excuses Retreat, it is Gleek’s first girl’s camp, it is when extended family reunions are scheduled. The trouble is that Gleek’s camp and the retreat are right on top of each other, in direct conflict. Additionally, the people who usually watch my kids for me when Howard and I travel together have had life shifts. They are not available this year. Thus my attendance at the retreat is complicated. I talked through all the possible fixes and complications of fixes. I expressed what Howard and I both feel: that Gleek’s girl’s camp is far more important than me being at the retreat. I pulled out all the “if, thens” I could muster. I was still talking when Howard held up a hand to pause my flow of words.

“Sandra, you keep talking about possibilities, but the tone of this conversation is you grieving the retreat.”

Oh.

In that light the grayness of the day made sense. I was grieving, not because I would never get to be part of a retreat, not because I was shut out of professional opportunity, not because I’m forced to stay home, I may yet get to go for a portion of the retreat, but a reduced length of stay means I am a visitor at the event rather than an integral part of it, and that is a different experience. I am mourning the trip where I get to go early, help set up, assist in making things run smoothly, be part of the structure of the retreat. I would have enjoyed that. I would have been good at it and useful. But they will be fine without me and the cost of getting that trip is too high. It is more important to me that I be present to help Gleek prepare for camp and that I wave to her as she drives away on the bus.

This has been a year of choosing between professional events and family needs. Last week I was part of a panel discussion on blogging at the Orem library. It took place at the exact day and time as the church young women’s “New Beginnings” program which provided orientation about the year of activities to come. Parents were invited. It was Gleek’s first young women’s event. She was excited, bouncing. Kiki took her because I was busy. In another week will be LTUE. Gleek’s class is having a fantastic medieval feast for which parents are providing help and activities. I would volunteer, but I’ll be at the Provo Marriott helping run a booth and giving presentations. In May I’m scheduled to speak at the LDS Storymaker’s conference. I don’t know what family event will conflict with that, but at this point I’m certain there will be something. I have to choose, all the time. Only in retrospect can I have any inkling whether I chose wisely.

I want to make clear that these are my choices. I am not trapped. I am in the fortunate position of having to choose between dreams, and most of the time there isn’t really a bad choice. Howard has to choose too. For eleven years he chose to work for a corporation to pay our bills. Now he chooses work over relaxation and is hard on himself when he doesn’t do enough. He sacrifices his ideal work schedules around the family schedule. Sometimes he abandons his projects to do things for me and the kids. This is not a situation where one person makes all the sacrifices. We are all having to balance work and family every day. Even the kids. I like it that way, even when it is hard. I do not want my adult children to say of me that I gave up everything for them. Instead I want them to know that I had a life full of things which mattered to me, but that I would drop those things for them if they really needed me. I try to live that way every day, even when it lands me in a day when I must cry a little for the road not taken.

Final decisions have not been made about scheduling for June. The plans will solidify as we get closer. Howard must go to the retreat. He is one of the hosts and a significant draw for the attendees. Gleek will definitely go to girl’s camp. It feels like I’ll be home to send her off, but whether I stay home after her departure is yet to be decided. It doesn’t need to be decided at this time. For now it is nice to see my choices clearly. It lets today be a better day than the one that came before it.

Providing Support and Working Together

By / February 2, 2013 / 4 Comments

On one of the writer’s forums where I participate there is a discussion about relationships between writers and their spouses or significant others. People have been sharing stories of support, or commiserating about lack of support. A few even shared how conflicts over writing time have contributed to the demise of a relationship. Reading that thread makes me very grateful for what I have with Howard. I can’t imagine us deliberately failing to support each other in something that we wanted. Sure there are times where we accidentally cause each other grief, but when Howard began a record production business I learned accounting to help out. When I decided to make a picture book, Howard used his photoshop skills to clean up the images for print. When Howard wanted to cartoon, we gave him a box on the counter, then a drawing table in the front room, then a bigger drawing table in the office. There are times when I sacrifice for Howard and times when he sacrifices for me. Sometimes we make these small sacrifices even when we’re not immediately thrilled by the project the other one wants to do.

As an example, I love the show Dancing with the Stars. I watch it whenever it airs. It makes me happy, but Howard has no interest in it at all. In fact there have been times when he has begrudged, just a little bit, the time I spent watching episodes of the show. Though we soon figured out that the begrudgement was indicative of something else, not really the show. Yet he also recognizes that watching the show gives me a small measure of happiness. This evening I’ll be going to a live performance of some of the dancers from the show. This means I’ll be out of the house for hours and we paid for the tickets. If it was going to cause huge stress for our family, I would not go. But instead Howard helps me create space in our lives for this small happy thing. In return I don’t demand that he come with me or try to make him enjoy the show as much as I do. It is okay for us to enjoy different things.

We do similar adjustments and planning for the more important creative projects in our lives. It is not always easy. There are times when I’ve really struggled to stand up and say that a project matters to me and I need support with it. There are times where I’ve looked at my own thoughts and realized that I need to adjust to be a better support to Howard. There are times when the best form of support is to get out of the way and let the other person struggle with it.

My heart really goes out to those who have heads brimming with creative projects but whose spouses are jealous of those projects, or of the time those projects take. That is a hard place to be. I am greatly encouraged by the fact that several people in the forum have been inspired to go and speak with their loved ones, airing out the dreams and associated difficulties. Some of those people have come back and reported that talking it through brought to light the true source of the conflict and it was not about writing at all. Instead it was about allocation of time and resources when those things are in short supply. If this is the case, then adjustments elsewhere make space for writing or creativity. Or it was about how the difficulty of writing and publishing affected the emotional well being of the writer. Watching a loved one pursue something painful can be very difficult. Finding solutions and having discussions can be hard because it requires both people to be self aware enough to identify the sources of their emotions and to carefully take steps to change their actions. Yet I have hope that my friends who are struggling will be able to find ways to become a team instead combatants. The answers are not easy, but they can be found.

The Schedule of Upcoming Events

By / January 29, 2013

This is a week full of events and appointments that disrupt my schedule. They are good things, but I’m having to pay attention to the time rather than relying on my habits. This means the hour before I have to be somewhere often ends up as wasted time. I don’t want to start into anything new because if I get deep into a project I’ll lose track and miss the appointment. I should probably spend that hour on simple tasks, like laundry, but somehow that doesn’t feel exciting. All the appointments are also chewing into my compositional brain space, which is where writing percolates.
Today Howard and I had a podcast interview which will air sometime in February.
Tomorrow is the Orem Writes event where I’ll be talking about blogging with C. Jane Kendrick. (7 pm, Orem Public Library.)
Friday I have a concert in the evening.
Saturday family comes to town.

Next week has a similar array of appointments including parent teacher conferences and an orthodontic consultation.

The week after that is Life The Universe and Everything symposium. If you’re a writer or reader of Science Fiction or Fantasy, then LTUE is worth your time. It is packed full of panel discussions about writing and about books, shows, and art in the genre. There is even an educator’s conference on Saturday with panels to help teachers use genre fiction in their classrooms. This year it is taking place at the Provo Marriott hotel. I’ve seen a preliminary schedule. I have three panels and Howard has many panels. You could spend all three days listening to Taylers if you wish. However I recommend you listen to lots of the other amazing authors and artists they have lined up to teach.

After that my calendar is much more empty. The emptiness is probably a mirage, but I’ll believe in it for now.

Not All Likes are Created Equal

By / January 22, 2013 / 7 Comments

I’ve been doing a social media push these past couple of weeks to promote One Cobble and Hold on to Your Horses. I should probably call it a social media creep, because I’m reluctant to be pushy. So much so, that my sister, who was watching for announcements and information, did not see any. She suggested I might want to increase the volume just a little to get any results.

My reluctance stems from a belief that merely collecting Likes or followers is not inherently beneficial. The person who is excited and interested in Hold Horses will click Like, watch for updates, and be a willing supporter of the sequel. Someone who has just clicked Like in order to enter a contest or win a freebie will probably evaporate when the time comes to support the sequel. I could be wrong about that. It could be that once people show up, they’ll stay and become engaged. I just feel better about hawking my wares if I believe I’m talking to an audience who wants to hear about them. I’m not trying to inflate the number of Likes on the Hold Horses page, I’m trying to use the number of Likes to gauge interest in a sequel. That effort will fail if I use contests or giveaways to artificially inflate the number of Likes. this article is most talking about how buying likes leads to false search data, but it also supports what I’m saying. Spending money and effort to acquire Likes or followers is wasted. Instead I must focus on creating compelling content and use social media to help people become aware that the content is available. Good content + awareness = a growing group of people interested in new projects.

So I’m working hard to be content with a slow-growth model of building fanbase. Yes I get impatient. Yes sometimes I feel like I’m tap dancing to an empty theater or an unresponsive crowd. But I’m still pretty convinced that this is the right way for me to approach social media. I just hope I can build up enough momentum to support the sequel I want to do.

Not Quite the end of a Very Long Week

By / January 10, 2013

There is an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 6 called Life Serial. In it the villains place a device on Buffy which messes with time. She’s walking into class then blinks and class is over. She takes a few steps toward her next class and then she’s missed that one too. My whole day has felt like that. I look up from my computer and realize that 90 minutes have passed and I still haven’t done the thing I sat down to do. In my case I don’t have a device or villains to blame, just lack of sleep. It feels weak to claim that. I’ve managed on less. I used to do it on a regular basis when my kids were still waking me up in the middle of the night every single night. Of course Patch did wake me up this week because he was sick. And then I never napped to make up for it, because this was the first work week of a new year, the first full week back at school, the last week of the term for my two teenagers, and so many things were more pressing than sleep. Which landed me in today when my brain just stopped functioning properly.

The printer ran out of toner. This is a normal complication in a work day. Except in the holiday rush I forgot to place an order for toner cartridges. I had to go to an office supply store. Thus instead of spending five minutes printing postage, putting out packages for the mailman, and taking a nap; I drove to the store and back, returned to see the mail truck driving away from my house, printed the postage, drove the packages down to the post office, and then got back just in time to begin the after school pick ups. With extra trips out to conference with Link’s English teacher because the term ends tomorrow and there is last minute work to do tonight. The whole package thing wouldn’t have been today’s problem at all if I’d had my act together any time in the last four days when I knew those packages had to be sent before today. But the last four days had their own urgencies, their own lists of things which must be done today to prevent future crisis.

My whole week has been like that Google app Martin Van Buren commercial. The one where the kid shows up to breakfast saying “It is dress like a president day. I’m supposed to be Martin Van Buren.” So the mom slaps together an amazing costume in ten minutes. I have rescued and salvaged so many things this week. Little things which never had a chance to turn into big things. Little things which probably I should not have rescued, but I was in super-rescue mode and didn’t pause to think whether the little thing needed my time and attention. I could have let a lot more slide. I could have rearranged sleep higher on the priority list. Instead I find myself at the end of Thursday, wishing it was Friday, knowing I had a super productive week, but feeling like I failed.

At least today I’m thinking about dinner before it is already 6 pm. That’s a first for this week.

Adventures in Social Media

By / January 22, 2013 / 6 Comments

I want to fund a picture book, The Strength of Wild Horses, and the obvious choice for that is to run a Kickstarter drive. However those who are wise in the ways of Kickstarter have advised me that the project has a better chance to fund if I do some community building first. This makes sense to me.

Completely separate from my Kickstarter project I have been thinking about ways to build community and about some ways I’d like to do that which are difficult to do from this blog. Or rather, I could do them from the blog, but I am interested in seeing how it would feel to run a different sort of place on the internet. I want to run a series of posts talking about different picture books, how they show character traits which are common in high energy ADHD or Autistic kids, and how parents can use those books to help kids and their siblings to come to terms with these traits. It was to accomplish exactly this that I wrote Hold on to Your Horses in the first place. I’ve had a growing list of books for years and would love to find a useful way to share that list.

I’ve also been thinking about stages of parenting. I’m in the middle of parenting headed for the endgame. Several times I’ve had parents who are just starting out come to my blog hoping to find posts about the early years of parenting. There are some. Patch was only a year old when I began blogging, but I’ve grown as writer since then. I’ve grown as a parent since then. My perspectives have changed and I have new thoughts about old topics. I thought it would be interesting to run a series where I link to an old post and then provide commentary from my current perspective. It isn’t the same as me going through being a young parent myself, but it would help me delve into those topics. It is certainly a worthy experiment.

I’ve also been thinking about cross promotion. Many times people find Howard because of Writing Excuses (or some other project) then they find me because of Howard. Having multiple creative pursuits reaches into different groups of people. For a long time I’ve been dependent on Howard’s internet stature as the primary promotional tool for my creative work. Except we have different audiences and I’ve been feeling like it is time for me to strike out on my own to build my own community which is not annexed to his. In the long run I must do this if I want to be able to afford to create the things I want to create. I need to believe that Hold Horses and One Cobble are works strong enough to be the foundation of a community.

All of these thoughts connected with the advice to build community in advance of running a Kickstarter and the result is an experiment that I intend to run for the next several months. I’m going to extend myself a little bit further online to see what I can accomplish. I’ve picked venues where I’m already comfortable and have been for awhile: Facebook, G+, and Twitter. These are places I like to play already and so I’m just introducing a new game into those spaces.

On Twitter I’ve just set up an account @OneCobble. It will be a simple feed of links back to this blog. This provides a simple way for those on Twitter to follow the blog without me feeling like I’m spamming everyone with links to blog entries. People who want to see every single blog entry will follow @OneCobble. Others will be able to blissfully ignore it.

On G+ I’ve used the new communities feature to set up a One Cobble at a Time community. This is where I’ll post those blog links with commentary. I’ll also post links to articles of interest. I’m sure I’ll come up with other things as well. I’ll be deliberately trying to encourage conversation about these topics.

I’ve also set up a One Cobble community on Facebook. At first I expect it to be nearly identical to the posts on G+, but I’m quite curious to see how the two communities develop differently. If they don’t become different, it will be because I’m talking to myself and I’m pretty sure I’ll get tired of that in a hurry.

Facebook also has a Hold on to Your Horses page. This is where I’ll post about those picture books. It is also the measure I’ll use to figure out when I have enough community support for a Kickstarter to be successful.

A month from now I’ll evaluate to figure out which of these ventures is adding happiness to my life and which is adding only stress. I’ll see whether I can feel an increase of interest in the things I write and do. Perhaps at the end of that month I’ll pull back inward. I don’t know for sure. I just know that this feels like the right experiment.

I haven’t yet sent out invitations to these new feeds and communities. I’m still debating whether I should or if that feels spammy to me. (It is pretty important to me that I not annoy people by misusing social media tools.) If I do, it won’t be for at least a week. I want to make sure that I’ve already got interesting things in the spaces before inviting everyone. However if any of you blog readers want front row seats while I figure this stuff out, I’d love for you to join me. You’ll be like the guest who arrives early and helps set out the snacks for everyone who will come later. If none of those things sounds interesting, feel free to hang out here. I’ll be keeping this place the same.

Let the social media experiments begin.

In Which My Brain Skitters Across Many Topics

By / January 7, 2013

At 6 pm I couldn’t figure out what to make for dinner. I had a cupboard full of food ingredients and a row of cook books, but every time I tried to put my mind to solving the problem of dinner, my mind went somewhere else instead. Mostly it mused through some social media outreach I’m planning for Hold Horses and Cobble Stones. I’m both excited by the possibilities and a little worried that I’ll get worn out by it. However when I yanked my mind firmly back to planning dinner, it then galloped off in the other direction to consider the beginning of the year accounting. It is how I spent most of my work day and I’ve gotten it mostly complete. Yet those last few tasks are like a book laying open in the middle of my brain and I keep checking to make sure I remember where I stopped. Then of course I can also consider which step comes next in the project of repainting the front room. My brain also has thoughts about that, but nary a coherent thought about dinner. Fortunately we had frozen meatballs, which the kids did not appreciate nor eat, and left over sloppy joes, which they snarfled down joyfully.

My big conclusion is that I wish the thought of making pretty websites was as exciting to me as the thought of making a pretty dress, but it just sounds drudgerous. Drudgerous really ought to be a word. Wait, that conclusion didn’t match anything that came before? That means it is a fairly accurate representation of how my brain is running this evening. At least we made it through dinner, played a game as a family in which no one had a temper tantrum, finally convinced Link that his ingrown toenail really does need a minor surgical procedure to fix it, and then got 50% of the children into bed.

Did I not mention Link’s toenail before? We’ve been dealing with the thing for a couple of months. I hauled him to the doctor last Friday, but the very idea of letting someone else poke at his feet was unnerving. So we came home with antibiotics and care instructions. They didn’t work. So we’re headed back on Wednesday morning. It is just one in a long line of odd ball doctor visits which means I’m once again good friends with all the office staff. We’ve had a scratched cornea, an abdominal strain, chronic heartburn, and now this toe. We’re not at the end either, coming up is a case of minor eczema which we really ought to get checked, Gleek probably needs braces, and Kiki tells me she’s got wisdom teeth coming in. I dub this the school year of endless minor medical expenses which all add up.

So tomorrow I have a work day. Wednesday will be eaten up by toe treatment. Then Saturday will be entirely consumed by academic testing for Gleek and Patch. I really hope Patch feels better by then. He’s been running a low fever off and on for two days. This test determines whether he’ll be able to stay in the school program that I feel is right for him. I’m trying not to stress about it, or at least to hide my stress so that Patch does not pick up any of it. Fortunately my brain is highly distractable this evening. If I wander into the front room, it will probably start thinking about paint again.

Events I’m Excited About

By / January 4, 2013 / 1 Comment

I’ve kept my events for 2013 close to home and fairly sparse. Home is where I want to be this year and I have plenty of projects to keep me busy all year long. However there are a few events coming up that I’m excited to be involved with.

Orem Writes: Talking about Blogging
January 30 7pm Orem Library.
For this event C. Jane Kendrick and I will be talking about our experiences with blogging and answering audience questions. I’ve never met Ms. Kendrick before, but I’m very excited to get a chance to talk to her because she blogs like I do, where telling stories on the blog is the point of writing rather than using the blog as a promotional tool. I’ve been reading her blog regularly for the last month (ever since I discovered it) and thoroughly enjoy it.

Life, The Universe, and Everything Symposium
February 14-16 Downtown Provo Marriott
This is an event that Howard and I enjoy every year. If you are interested in writing genre fiction or in talking about it, you simply can not get a better event for the price. I haven’t seen an official schedule yet, but Howard and I are usually teaching something interesting during the event. When we’re not teaching, you’ll be able to find us in the dealer’s room where we’ll have set up shop under the big Schlock Mercenary sign. I’ll definitely have copies of Hold on to Your Horses and Cobble Stones available. Depending on how quickly I work I may even have the 2012 edition of Cobble Stones. Please stop by and say hello.

LDS Storymakers Conference
May 10-11 Downtown Provo Marriott and Conference Center
I’m really excited about this conference. They’ve given me an entire hour to talk about blogging, why I love it, and how a blog can be more than just a marketing tool for authors. I expect this presentation will be greatly shaped by my conversation with Ms. Kendrick in January. I’m also teaching a class on structuring your life to support creativity. Howard is teaching World Building and Focused Practice. The conference is more expensive and it definitely teaches from and to and LDS viewpoint, but it offers a world of education to anyone seeking to write as a career. Well worth the time and expense.

Writing Excuses Workshop and Retreat
June 10-16 Chattanooga TN
Registration for this event is full this year. Though you can still apply for a scholarship spot until January 15th. Howard, Brandon, Dan, and Mary will all be there running the event. My attendance is probable, but there are some family commitments which are in direct conflict and I can’t say for certain how I’ll be able to resolve those conflicts. Hopefully this retreat will be such a huge success that they’ll schedule another one.

In the second six months of the year, I don’t have any professional appearances scheduled. Which is fine, because that seems pretty far away.