Guest Post Experiences From Twitter: RIXSHEP on Cons and RPG

On #scifichat on twitter, in September, we set a topic for convention experiences for the following week, and one of the more interesting twit-folk @rixshep found me on Facebook and gave me the following information to relay during the next week's chat -- when he would not be able to attend.

Since RPG and especially online RPG, Star Trek, with a counterpoint undertone of my own Sime~Gen Novels, are going to become an ongoing topic on this blog next year, I wanted to give you these URLs.

---------QUOTED EXCHANGE FROM FACEBOOK----------

Howdy, Ms. Lichtenberg!

I know I don't get to #scifichat as much these days, or to your blog page, as much as I would like. Probably won't improve much in the near future. But, considering next week's #scifichat topic, I wanted to pass some items along to you, that I thought you might appreciate.

Back when I had a lot more time, I used to do a lot of role play on a site known as The Keep. Chat based stuff. Over time, I created a couple of rooms and characters that got a lot of mileage.

One was a typical Dungeons and Dragons / Forgotten Realms type fantasy tavern that was very successful. It was called The Prattling Pirate Inn and Tavern. The other was a scifi tavern that never got used as well, imo. It was The Stardust Lounge on Starbase 12. This one is based on Starbase 12 from Ishmael by Barbara Hambly, and the lounge itself is loosely based on Draco Tavern by Larry Niven.

(By the way, Yesterday's Son by Crispin and Ishmael by Hambly are two of my favorite Trek novels. Another big one with me is How Much for Just the Planet? by John Ford. It is a parody musical, and one of the characters in it is Ann Crispin!)

For various reasons, I think you would appreciate some of what was done with these fantasy/scifi taverns. So, here are the links to these two places. I think you will like the scifi one better.

The Prattling Pirate Inn:
http://www.freewebs.com/jon_teela/

The Stardust Lounge at Starbase 12:
http://www.nexxushost.com/rpg/thekeep/whois_popup.php3?L=english&power=weak&U=Starbase12

I will be traveling all day next Friday, so may not get to participate, and if I do, I won't have any of my files available.

Meanwhile, good luck with the contract work on the game!

Rick Shepherd / rixshep
Prattling Pirate Inn
www.freewebs.com

JL: Oh, thank you! I'm going to put those links into the aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com blog, if you don't mind.

Rick: Not at all. The link for the starbase is in The Keep, and it goes away after a couple of weeks, if I don't renew it. Eventually I will get it added as a distinct page on the other website where I keep the pic of the Prattling Pirate Inn. Hope you like them! Btw, I was thrilled to hear you had a hand in Ann Crispin getting started! Very nice!
-----------Chat Conversation End--------------

You can follow Rick on twitter as @rixshep

He mentioned YESTERDAY'S SON by A. C. Crispin because I had mentioned on this week's chat that I had agented that book -- a topic which came up because the guest for the chat was:

James Kahn  who was a (terrific) guest on #scifichat today.

http://www.jameskahnwordsandmusic.com/

He is @thatjameskahn on twitter

Here's the transcript of the chat:
http://flyingpenpress.com/DavidRozansky/blog/scifichat-script-120921/  

He has a new book out titled World Enough And Time.  Here is a whole page on Amazon with his Star Wars novels and other great stuff: 

James Kahn on Amazon

And I connected James Kahn with one of my favorite talk show hostesses, Lillian Cauldwell.  She wrote to him thusly:

------excerpt------
Dear Mr. Kahn:

Jacqueline Lichtenberg recommended that I contact you and see if
you're interested in doing an interview over PWRTALK's airwaves.
You can find the station at http://pwrtalk.ning.com and http://pwrtalkondemand.com  or the newly upgraded http://pwrtalklive.com/

In the first six months of 2012, PWRTALK received an additional one million and one-half
new listeners from RETWEETS alone.
The network is heard in over 200 countries and our largest demographic base is college
and university students worldwide.

The following days and times are available for an interview. All times are Eastern.
All programs are LIVE, 30 minutes, RECORDED, and posted on the website,
social media, and heard for the next 3 months via PWRTALK's automatic
radio software. Over a 3 month period, your interview will be heard over 400
times. You can include a 30 second commercial advertising your books should
you wish.


Best regards,
Lillian S. Cauldwell
---------end excerpt ----------

Lillian's show will be running Black Friday author-specials Nov 22, 2012.  http://pwrtalklive.com/

Lillian included a number of times, and he chose Monday, October 8th, 2012.  So now, in November, that interview should be available in the on demand section at Lillian's website. 

And James Kahn wrote back to me thanking me for connecting him to Lillian and saying we should keep in touch.  We're planning to meet at Worldcon in San Antonio. 


Now let's see who else we can connect to whom!  It's all about networking. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Desperately Seeking A Stopper

A few weeks ago Linnea Sinclair shared a fabulous post about mentoring. Well, I don't claim to mentor, but I will pinch hit on occasion.

This last week, Lillian Cauldwell and I have been fighting a dragonish problem… but we are not well matched as temporary critique partners.

I fly under false colours, writing scatological social and political satire disguised as futuristic romance aka alien romance (which is not set in the future). Lillian writes well researched psychic mystery stories for young adults, and her heroes and heroines are African-American and Hispanic teens who see ghosts and are transported back into history through time and space.

Lillian's work reminds me of Indiana Jones in junior high.

Our dragon's name is "The Stopper" and we can't crack it.

For those not familiar with "The Stopper" it's an escalated version of a hook or grabber, intended to stop an agent or editor from answering the phone while your pages are in their hands. Ideally, one would like to come up with a "stopper" that not only leads to a contract, but that goes viral when the book is released.

Emily Bryan achieved something of the sort for "Distracting The Duchess" (a historical romance) with "I'm going to have to shorten his willy." People who had no intention of buying the book were happy to tweet about the line.

From a GoodReads.com discussion of first lines, come some more examples of great stoppers:

“I don’t know how other guys feel about their wives leaving them but I helped mine pack.”

“I’ve been sleeping with your husband for the last two years."

“When the phone rang, Parker was in the garage, killing a man.” That's from Firebreak, by Donald Westlake.

If those examples represent the gold standard for stoppers, dross might be this year's Bulwer Lytton winners:
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/scott.rice/blfc2008.htm

For those who have never heard of it, the Bulwer-Lytton is an international literary parody contest, which honors the memory of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873).

Entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. … Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words …."It was a dark and stormy night."

Winner
Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."

Garrison Spik
Washington, D.C.

Dishonorable Mention (Children's Literature)
Joanne watched her fellow passengers - a wizened man reading about alchemy; an oversized bearded man-child; a haunted, bespectacled young man with a scar; and a gaggle of private school children who chatted ceaselessly about Latin and flying around the hockey pitch and the two-faced teacher who they thought was a witch - there was a story here, she decided.

Tim Ellis
Haslemere, U.K.

Runner Up (Children's Literature)
Dorothy had reasons to be nervous: a young girl alone in a strange land, traveling with three weird, insecure males badly in need of psychiatric help; she tucked her feet under her skirt to keep the night's chill (and lewd stares) away and made sure one more time that the gun was secured in her yet-to-develop bosom.

Domingo Pestano
Alto Prado, Caracas, Venezuela

Find more here: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/scott.rice/blfc2008.htm


Lillian Cauldwell is trying to find a stopper for her second novel in the Anna Mae mystery series, which is targeted at young readers from eight to eighteen. Anna Mae is a youngster with psychic powers which she has inherited from her grandmother, and ghosts from the past guide her to find ancient, buried treasures.

She would very much appreciate any reader's opinions on which of her drafted first lines comes closest to grabbing their interest. (I've deliberately not presented the five examples in any kind of order.)

1.
Make love, not war Anna Mae Botts remembered from her dream-vision, but the AK 47 automatic rifle slung over Jonathan Selassie's shoulders said something entirely different. She awoke with a start.


2.
Carried by six teenagers, three girls dressed in white shorts, yellow tee shirts and flip flops; three boys dressed in the Atlanta Braves tee shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots, the Holy Relic gleamed in the mid day sun. Ahead of the procession a sixteen-year-old boy dressed in combat fatigues and slung over his left shoulder an AK47 rifle led the way. Behind them, a dust storm whirled and wiped out all traces of their prints.

3.
Twelve year old Anna Mae Botts awoke with a jerk. She tried grasping the sides of her mattress only to find herself bound with rope and her mouth stuffed with a cotton rag, Anna Mae wailed inside her mind. “Granma!”

4.
Twelve-year-old Anna Mae Botts struggled awake. Heaviness trapped at her limbs.
She willed her mind to break free of the oppressive smell of cinnamon and frankincense. The obnoxious odor blocked her mind and sent her spirit spinning into an opened black pit where a wooden rod became a snake rope and seven metal circular keys opened a rectangular gold box with angel wings outstretched on top and meeting in the middle.


5.
“I’m cold.”
We’d just stepped out from the Lowry Dollar Cinema. The sun bathed me with its heat. My tee shirt clung to my back. Yet, I shivered in the hot sun. Raul looked at me. A slight grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. “It’s hottah than blazes out here. Yar always cold. Here!” He gave me a quick tight hug. “Bettah?”

6.
Missing: Black teenager, last seen asleep in bed, Anna Mae Botts is five foot three inches, weighs one hundred pounds, brown eyes, and a butterfly birthmark on back of left calf. If you have any information, please call the Lowry sheriff’s department at 604-983-8867.

7.
Anna Mae Botts struggled. Her heart thumped. She gripped the sheets. A boy opened a golden box and dissolved into ashes.


If something works, Lillian would like to know why. If readers can put their fingers on why one or more drafts veer off course, that, too, would be instructive.

Thank you, and Happy Mothers' Day.

Rowena Cherry