{"id":30914,"date":"2017-04-06T09:38:07","date_gmt":"2017-04-06T13:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=30914"},"modified":"2017-04-06T09:38:07","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T13:38:07","slug":"a-news-dart-to-the-neck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2017\/04\/06\/a-news-dart-to-the-neck\/","title":{"rendered":"A News Dart To The Neck"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

AHOY-HOY, WORD-NERDS.<\/p>\n

I got sidelined with some\u00a0excess<\/em> travel this week — was supposed to come home on Monday from California, but “weather” in Atlanta kept me in California until Tuesday, instead. As such, I didn’t get around to tallying the winners to the Mystery Macro Monday contest<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. I’ll announce those winners\u00a0this<\/em> Monday, but here’s what the photos actually\u00a0were<\/em>, for the record:<\/p>\n

1. dead leaf<\/p>\n

2. dirty icicle<\/p>\n

3. dish draining \/ drying rack for kids<\/p>\n

4. the lip of a Chemex<\/p>\n

5. decrepit baseball<\/p>\n

6. tip of whipped cream can<\/p>\n

7. metal handle of umbrella (with rain on it)<\/p>\n

8. little cairns of baby powder<\/p>\n

9. ice crystals on chocolate ice cream<\/p>\n

10. raspberry sauce dripping from fork tines<\/p>\n

11. this was a hard one — back engines of Transformer toy, Jetfire<\/p>\n

12. wine sediment and stain at bottom of wine glass<\/p>\n

13. wet shower scrubby<\/p>\n

14. ice and frost on car windshield<\/p>\n

15. waterdrop on blueberry<\/p>\n

Winners announced this coming Monday.<\/p>\n

LET’S SEE, WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON.<\/p>\n

Celebrate Good Times, C’mon<\/h2>\n

In a week, I leave for my first\u00a0Star Wars Celebration<\/strong> — holy crap, I’m slathered in nerd-froth over that one. (Also slathered in nerd-froth: the Great Ewok Defense of 2017<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, FYI.) I don’t believe they’ve released proper schedules yet (to my surprise), but when it pops, it’ll pop up here at the blog and at the Celebration website<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. Hope to see you there!<\/p>\n

(Actually, looking at the site, it looks like some panels are up, just not curated under the guest names as yet. So, here’s a rough accounting of where I’ll be –)<\/p>\n

Thursday, 4\/13:<\/strong><\/p>\n

1:00 – 2:00 PM: Signing in B&N Booth #2022<\/p>\n

2:30 – 3:30 PM: I’ll Take Droids for $500, Obi-Wan — a trivia game show with me and Timothy Zahn and one lucky audience guest member. Hosted by awesome narrator Marc Thompson! Location: W304, 3rd floor.<\/p>\n

5:00 – 6:00 PM: Star Wars University: “A Small Group Of Characters Can Change The Whole Galaxy,” a character-writing panel taught by me. Location: W300, 3rd floor.<\/p>\n

Friday, 4\/14:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM: Signing, Del Rey Booth, #2522 — posters!<\/p>\n

3:00 – 4:00 PM: Signing, B&N Booth #2022<\/p>\n

Saturday, 4\/15:<\/strong><\/p>\n

1:00 – 2:00 PM: Del Rey Books, Behind the Scenes, hosted by Amy Ratcliff, featuring me, Elizabeth Schaefer, Delilah S. Dawson, Christie Golden, Timothy Zahn — discussing present and future projects. Loc: W304, 3rd floor.<\/p>\n

4:30 – 5:30 PM: Signing, B&N Booth #2022<\/p>\n

Sunday, 4\/16:
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

10:30 – 11:30 AM: Signing, Del Rey Booth #2522 — signing with Christie Golden and Delilah S. Dawson — bonus posters!<\/p>\n

The Shriek of the Thunderbird<\/h2>\n

I’m over at B&N talking about the new Miriam Black book in an interview: “Breaking Hearts and Cheating Death with Miriam Black<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Also, there’s a new excerpt of the book over at Daily Dead<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. Warning: contains vultures.<\/p>\n

To those who have read the book, haha, ahem, sorry about that ending.<\/p>\n

Also, if you’ve read it, I could use a review somewhere if you so choose. Honestly, I fear the book coming out just one wee little week after\u00a0Empire’s End<\/strong> was not great for it, and I strongly suspect\u00a0it got more than a little lost in the\u00a0Star Wars\u00a0<\/strong>shuffle. If you are free to check it out and leave a review of the novel somewhere, I will love you forever. And by forever, I mean roughly one week, but that one week will\u00a0feel\u00a0<\/em>like forever, because my love is just that powerful. Or scary. Powerful and\/or scary. Whatever, shut up.<\/p>\n

Wondercon Wrap-Up<\/h2>\n

I didn’t know what I was going to get with\u00a0Wondercon<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I honestly feared it was going to be more like SDCC — just a sweaty steamy throng of geek miasma as everyone packs in, elbow-to-elbow, slowly shuffling like the damned and dying through an exhibition hall.<\/p>\n

But it was pretty fucking awesome.<\/p>\n

Okay, the plus\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>the minus is that there’s almost no significant publishing presence there, not in terms of novels. Comics, yes! Not publishing proper, though. So, very little infrastructure and not a high volume of novelists attending — but but but, that also lets you stand out as a writer, and I had some of the best fan interactions at this con. And the panels were pretty packed. It was great. Bonus: it’s in California, and even though Anaheim is kind of like what would happen if Disney had a baby with a shopping mall and turned it into a town, it’s still warm and laden with palm-trees, so. All in all, a big, throbbing thumbs-up to\u00a0Wondercon<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Thanks for having me there, everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AHOY-HOY, WORD-NERDS. I got sidelined with some\u00a0excess travel this week — was supposed to come home on Monday from California, but “weather” in Atlanta kept me in California until Tuesday, instead. As such, I didn’t get around to tallying the winners to the Mystery Macro Monday contest. I’ll announce those winners\u00a0this Monday, but here’s what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-30914","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-82C","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30914"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30921,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30914\/revisions\/30921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}