Fencon Dallas Sept 21-23

I'm going to Dallas next week to talk comics, King Arthur and Doctor Who on some panels and hang out with a lot of cool geeks.

If you're in the area, come check it out. Much fun will be had, and I will bring books!

My Fencon schedule:
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Friday  6:00 PM  - 7:00 PM  Red Oak  
Talkin' About My Regeneration (M)

Description: Time Lords originally had twelve lives. Now maybe it's 401. What's changed? What can kill a Time Lord?


Panelists:
B. Hale , A. Porter , K. Sullivan , S. B. Taylor , P. Roberts *


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Friday  8:00 PM  - 9:00 PM   Pecan
Reading


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Saturday  10:00 AM  - 11:00 AM  Red Oak  
Return of Son of Super-Hero Summer

Description: Just like 2011, this summer has seen a flood of great superhero movies at the box office! How do you think it went, and do you think the movies are getting better or worse?

Panelists:
J. Anealio , A. de Orive , C. Medellin , P. Roberts , R. Rogers , A. Porter *


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Saturday  7:00 PM  - 8:00 PM  Live Oak  
There and Back Again (Again) (M)

Description: "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" will be out within a couple months, and expectations are high.  Panelists discuss casting, the breaking of the story into multiple movies, the soundtrack, the special effects, and other related topics.

Panelists:
T. Eber , M. Fletcher , F. Summers , P. Roberts *


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Saturday  8:00 PM  - 9:00 PM  Live Oak  
50 Years of Web-Spinning & Smashing

Description: Come celebrate the birthdays of Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk, two of the greatest radiation-affected heroes of all time.

Panelists:
Ma. Finn , P. Roberts , C. Sledge , S. Patrick *


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Sunday  10:30 AM  - 11:00 AM  Gallery  
Autographs

Description:

Panelists:
A. Porter , P. Roberts , R. Rogers


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Sunday  1:00 PM  - 2:00 PM  Addison Lecture Hall  
King Arthur in the 21st Century (M)

Description: Despite the fact that strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government, the story of King Arthur has been told and retold over the centuries.  Each time it gets updated, it gets a new take and a whole new audience.

Panelists:
P. David , A. Porter , G. Warfield , P. Roberts *


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Sunday  3:00 PM  - 4:00 PM  Elm  
It's... (Monty Python's Flying Panel) (M)

Description: Enjoy some Owl Stretching Time as we discuss the greatest sketch comedy show ever. Monty Python changed the face of comedy forever, and for some reason science fiction fans still love it today. We want to know why.


Panelists:
D. Rainbolt , S. B. Taylor , P. Roberts *

Protectors Update

A quickie update on life in the Protectors universe. The first Damson Dragon Diary novel, "What is a Hero?" is out as a print book and Kindle e-book . 50 Advanced Reader Copies of "The Protectors," the anthology of superhero stories all set in the same world as Damson Dragon, have been printed, and most of them distributed to the contributors and to folks interested in writing us a review. If you have a review blog or website and would like to review "The Protectors" let me know, and I'll send you a digital copy, or mail you one of the few ARCs left.

Several folks have expressed interest in writing for a second book in the shared Protectors world. So, it looks like this thing is going to take off into a shared world series. "The Alliance" is the next book planned.

I'm sorry I've been so pokey slow with Damson Dragon updates. I promise there's a lot more to come, but getting the new books ready has been eating up most of my writing time.

On the plus side, I will be a panel participant at Fencon next month in Dallas. Guest of Honor is the amazing CJ Cherryh!! If you're in the area, don't miss it! Fingers crossed. I'm hoping to have copies of both "What is a Hero?" and "The Protectors" to sign and read and generally show off.

And on the ridiculously awesome side, I just got some preliminary roughs of cover art for "The Protectors." Denis Loubet seriously rocks the art. He's been doing covers for video and tabletop games for a lot of years. His cover of Ultima Ascension is stunning.

Here's some of the thumbnail roughs he sent me.

  

That's Tesla Girl on the left, one of my characters, and Avenger Girl on the right, Marshall Maresca's character. Avenger Girl is a protege of Liberty, also Marshall's creation, who will be familiar to D Dragon readers.

I think I know which one I like best. What do you guys think? Which one would you pick?

Paige

Weekend

Watched 3 movies in a row Saturday, and snuggled a whole lot with my baby. We were overdue. I started my new job Monday, and got on a plane to California for a Hadoop conference the next day. Just got back Friday night midnight-ish. My brain was darn near exploding from all the big data technology and market information I crammed into it over that week.

I did get a few hours to enjoy the beach and a nice seaside seafood dinner, thanks to having a ridiculously awesome boss.

So, watched 3 movies in a single day, something I've never done before.

Movies:

Prometheus - Scary! A lot like the original Alien. But, I have to agree with all the murky plot comments. It made very little sense, but I was too busy squeezing Joe's arm in time honored date at a scary movie fashion to care.

Dark Shadows - Fun romp in time honored Johnny Depp, Tim Burton fashion - dark, weird, twisted and kind of cool. Enjoyed it, but wouldn't rush back to see it again.

Battleship - Wow. I had heard this was not great. Who the heck was rating this thing? This movie was brilliant! It reminded me a lot of Independence Day. It had a lot of that awesome ID4 style action, humor, and kick the bad guys in the teeth coolness. It also, surprisingly, had intriguing aliens who were not either space squids or humans in alien suits, nor were they cardboard cutout evil. They didn't do unnecessary harm or violence, only what was necessary to win military objectives, and they only fired when first fired upon. I found them reasonably okay for suspension of disbelief, although I found their ships a bit implausible.

I finished a couple of Damson Dragon posts today, that I started while driving back from North Carolina, and worked on while flying to California. I'm not sure how I'm going to keep up with D Dragon posts now that I'm not flying on a regular basis. It's my best writing time.

Watching a marathon session of Drop Dead Diva, now while doing some housework. Never saw this show when it was on the air. Really good television. Glad I got to watch it.

New Year, New Me

I've been having a lot of fun playing the part of my superhero character, Damson Dragon on Twitter, but I realize that hiding behind my character isn't really the best way to go about things.

I'm trying to enhance my on line presence a bit in the new year. I'll be putting up a new web page and such soon.

In the meantime, one of the things I haven't been able to share has been the stories behind the stories. I'll put those here, in Paige's Pages from now on.

You may not know this, but The Damson Dragon Diary is a fun mix of reality and fantasy. Many of the events in the diary are inspired by real events in my life in Austin. There really was a grass fire, an 18 wheeler wreck, a bank that keeps their doors locked during the day because they were robbed, a 16 mile wide wildfire in Bastrop, a cat like Cam, a dog like Peanut, and more.

Many of the people in the diary are also real people that I know, included with their permission, or characters that others have created. There really is a Lord Vile, and a Madspark, actual fun friends of mine who live in Austin.

My friend Jarrett Crippen has inspired no less than three characters, Det Long, Officer Flynn, and TakeDown, who is his own superhero invention. You may know him as The Defuser from Stan Lee's Who Wants to Be a Superhero.

Lord Vile, or Alex Gray in his non super-villain personna, wrote a story for the Protectors anthology, and has a world wide following. Madspark, my favorite real life mad scientist, although he prefers the PC term, rogue technologist, might show up in the next Protectors anthology.

Austin is the only place I know where that many fascinating personalities mix. How many towns can boast their own real life superhero, supervillain and mad scientist?

Add to that the talents of many of my fantasy and sci fi writer friends from the Slug tribe and the Austin Comic Creators group, and I had an amazing talent pool to pull from for the Protectors anthology. A few semi-famous visitors to Austin for the Armadillocon writer convention also pitched in. The anthology is nearing completion. I'll keep you guys posted on it's status as it goes along.

In the meantime, pay no attention to me. I'm just the woman behind the curtain.

Keep enjoying the Damson Dragon Diary, and I'll keep writing it.

Paige E. Ewing

Ilona Andrews Silver Shark Review

Happy New Year!

I've got a little something up on line as of today on sfrevu.com. Ilona Andrews is a marvelous fantasy writer. She's started a new series of e-book science fiction romance novellas called the Kinsmen series. Since most of the folks who review her stuff are fantasy fans, she was having difficulty finding someone to review the second book in the series, Silver Shark.

I volunteered, did the review, and the folks at sfrevu.com where I used to do reviews put it up today in their January issue. sfrevu.com is a great place to find reviews on the best new sci fi, fantasy, and paranormal romance books. If you're wondering where to find something good to read, that's the place to check.

Check out the review here:
Review of Silver Shark by Ilona Andrews on sfrevu.com

There's a link right on the page to download the book.

Enjoy!

Paige

New Beginnings

It's been a good year for Damson Dragon, my imaginary dragon superhero. She's gone over 1400 followers on Twitter, started a #GeekTrivia game that is fun for all including me, plus is getting around 100 hits a day on her blog.

Damson started out, aside from a comic book idea that had been percolating in my brain for a while, as a way to get the word out about the Protectors anthology, a collection of stories set in a world I created and shared with a bunch of my best writer friends. Some of the writers are folks who've been writing for years, comics and video games mostly. A few are sci fi and fantasy writers that are just getting started, with only a few short story sales under their belts.

None of us have big known names, but we created an awesome new kind of storytelling, where characters created by one author could walk into other stories and interact with characters created by someone else. It has the variety and creative range of an anthology, with the continuity and character depth of a novel.

Characters like Liberty, the Elvis Avenger, Remedy, Lord Vile, TakeDown, Death, Scythe and the Devastator will be familiar to Damson Dragon readers, and also have starring roles in their own stories in the Protectors anthology.

We've gained a few better known writers on the project as it's gotten close to completion. I've still got one or two authors working on their stories, and a few artists doing illustrations, but it's nearly there.

Here's a fun illustration done by the young son of one the Protectors authors. We're not published yet, but aleady we have fan art:

In the meantime, Damson Dragon has gained a life of her own. Her story has come to a sort of conclusion, but I've still got tons of interesting complications in store for her. Watch here for out of character background info on the various stories. I've decided to package up the Diary so far as an ebook, probably called Damson Dragon Diary: Definition of a Hero. So, watch for that coming soon.

And in the meantime, one story from the Protectors anthology by Alan J. Porter and Rick Klaw is being serialized on New Pulp "Nameless Here For Evermore" It's a very cool story set around WW II era when hero groups like the Alliance were just being formed and supes were still in the closet.

I'm planning on shifting some things around a bit in my on line presence for the new year. Lots more activity on this blog, maybe a new web page coming soon. I mainly just wanted to say thanks to all the folks who've been reading and enjoying the Damson Dragon Diary and telling their friends. It's hugely appreciated, both by me, and my favorite dragon EMT.

See y'all next year!

Paige E. Ewing

Evolution of the Editor

(Something I wrote a couple years ago. Just came across it on my hard drive, and thought I'd post it.)

It always feels good to get published.  It frequently doesn't, however, feel good to get edited.  Having been both a writer and an editor for a few years, I was pondering the life cycle of an editor, and I believe I see a pattern in their evolution from lower life forms to lofty heights.

It's a cycle that all writers have to go through.  You write something.  Whether it's a fantasy story or a technical article, you pour your brain and sweat and soul into this little creation.  Then, you hand it to someone and anxiously wait for them to read it over, and tell you that it's absolute shit.

For the first hour or two after you get edits back, the editor is an ignorant moron lower than pond slime who deserves to be stabbed to death with a dull pen.  It is at this point that, for the sake of your career and your continued freedom, you should avoid talking to or even being within long range sniper rifle range of your editor.

After you breathe past the homicidal rage, you can return to your story and read the edits again.  At that point, the editor is still an imbecilic ass with the sensitivity of a rhino in plate mail, but at least he has a few possibly slightly valid points here and there.

You then sit back down at your computer and go over the story, re-reading sections that have ugly scars of red smeared on them by that incompetent jerk.  A sentence that made perfect sense to you when you wrote it, the stupid boob says is confusing.  You read it and realize, you're not entirely sure what it was supposed to mean in the first place.  Okay, maybe that one bit could stand to be changed a little.  And this part is perfectly, oh, yeah, I guess I did forget to put a verb in that sentence.  And this seemed logical to me before, but how exactly did the six foot six hero fit through the two foot wide drainage tube?

At that point, you think maybe the editor is a semi-intelligent life form and you might even want to thank him later for catching a few obvious glaring errors.  You go back and re-read his suggestions with a different eye, and realize, hmm, maybe this really might be better if I cut back on the exposition at the beginning, and add a bit more action at the end.  By the time you're through with your revisions, and you read your new, smoothly flowing, grammatical error free manuscript, that editor is a really sharp guy, and deserves a pat on the back next time you see him.

Then, you make the mistake of going back and reading your initial draft that you sent to the editor in the first place.  It is at that point that a writer must suppress the urge to call the editor and tell this unbelievably brilliant gift from the almighty creator, this genius paragon of verbal kung fu, that you want to bear his or her love child.

Paige