Neat Little Website

At work, I'm part of the team designing and building the new website. One of the things we need to do is ensure our website is accessible for those who are colour-blind, which led me to searching the internet for a tool to check it, which led me to snook.ca.

Snook.ca is the website of web designer and developer Jonathan Snook. It's nice little website with some interesting information, including his Colour Contrast Check. This handy tool allows you to put in any two colours (a foreground and a background) and see how well they fare in meeting standards for web accessibility. Alas, the piece I was working on didn't fare well at all, so it's back to the boards for me. Argh.

A great, very handy little tool.

And now, I'm going to... wait for it...

All right, it's editing Cold Magics.

Anyone surprised?

A Little Night Music

Friday night and I have nothing to say.

So how about some music?

This is a Soundie featuring Matthew Barber, produced by Athens Soundies

For those reading this on facebook (and there are some...), here is the link to the video.

And what is a soundie, you might ask? In this case it is the pet name for a single-take, live music video. For the history of the name, have a look at the Athens Soundies website.

Also, check out some of the bands. They've got some good stuff out there.

Tonight I am editing Cold Magics again. Then I'm to sleep well before midnight if I have to use a bottle of scotch and a meat tenderizing hammer to get there.

(exact method of using these two devices left as an exercise for the reader)

What? How did a week go by?

It's been a week since I've posted anything, which is bad from a marketing point of view. Most things I've read suggest you should be writing at least a post every two or three days for best coverage, with 2 out of five posts on brand (meaning about my books).

So where have I been?

Exhausted.

I've a lot on the go right now, in work, in school (yes, I'm back in classes), in writing and in life. So much so that I haven't been sleeping at all well. The result: no posts.

So, I'll try to come up with something a bit more creative later this week. Now, I am going to go to sleep for a few hours.

We're Men! Manly Men!

One of the guys on bodyweightculture.com, the workout forum I hang out on, posted a link to an article that led me to The Art of Manliness, which is a well-thought-out website on all things manly.

Now, be certain that it is not a website on all things macho. Being macho and being manly are generally two different things. Here, the focus is on manliness, from dressing well for little money to what to carry in your briefcase, to the five things every man must master to save his life.

The Art of Manliness is a fun, informative, well-written site, and -- putting on my communications hat for a moment -- an excellent example of niche marketing.

Hat tip to Cheeze Baron, who led me to the site.

By the way, am I the only one who, when he hears the word "manly," thinks of this:

Killing Your Creations... Again

So I've got a scene in Cold Magics. I really like it. It has great emotion, depth, pathos, all sorts of fun things. Unfortunately, it does nothing to advance the plot.

I've tried modifying it, I've tried shortening it, tried changing it, but none of that works. It's either the original scene, or nothing. And the original scene doesn't add anything to the book. All I can do is kill it.

Sigh.

On the bright side, it should knock 10 pages off the book.

Sigh.

I had the exact same issue (different scene) when I was writing Small Magics. Sometimes there's good bits that just don't fit the book you're writing. And even if they're really, really good bits, there's still no point in keeping them in the book.

So I have a file on the computer where I keep the scenes I can't use. After all, I might be able to use them somewhere else, right?

All right, I'll never use them, but I still keep them. Anyone out there want to tell me I'm not alone in this?

Twelfth Night by Urban Bard

Late night posting tonight. Just saw Urban Bard's production of Twelfth Night. They did a great job, and I wanted to spread the word.

Urban Bard is "...focused on using Toronto's urban landscape in unexpected ways to stage entertaining and relevant theatre." Their venue was the park space behind the College Park building at the corner of Yonge and College. The production had the audience moving from one location to another to see the action of the play.

The actors all did fabulous work, the physical work was great -- especially the fight work. The venue sometimes worked against them, with people walking through or behind the scenes, and with others having loud conversations near the locations. And, of course, College Park is near the hospital district, so we got to hear sirens on regular occasions as well the normal street noises.

All this, however, added to the experience, rather than detracting from it. It gave a fun, entertaining ambience to the production, which the cast and crew carried off in fine style. They made excellent use of the surroundings, including the fountain, stairs and various other obstacles.

My compliments to Scott Moyle, the Artistic Director, who did a great job bringing his vision to life, and to all the cast and crew. Excellent work from everyone.

Urban Bard's Production of Twelfth Night runs September 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 24, 25, 26 at 7 p.m.

Feeling a Little Zen-ish...

Or possibly a little peckish, but I'll go with the Zen because I need a lead in.

There's an interesting site I stumbled across called zenhabits, whose focus is "simple productivity." They've got some interesting articles on decluttering your life, slowing down to enjoy the roses, and doing less to be more productive (very zen, that last).

The blog is run by Leo Babtauta, a Guam-based writer. It has some excellent articles, and the owner has spawned a second blog: mnmlist, which is all about living better with less.

So, if you're feel zennish, of feeling like you need to get your life simplified, head on over and have a look.

A Universal Health Care Message

I try to stay away from political matters on this blog, and I try to stay away from talking about my job. The first, because politics isn't really my focus, and the second, because it is never wise to talk about work on a public forum, even if you like your job, which I do.

Tonight, however, I get to do both:

See, today my boss forwarded me the latest newsletter from Longwoods Publishing, a Canadian company that "... publishes academic and scientific research, commentary and information related to health sciences and health care."

This week Longwood Publishing has on their website a video entitled "Universal Health Care Message to Americans from Canadian Doctors & Healthcare Experts." It's a good, solid piece that dispels several of the lies put out by the opponents of universal healthcare in the USA, and talks about the benefits of the single-payer system:

Everyone is welcome to register opinions, of course. I will say, however, that if you are going to engage in personal attacks on other commenters or unnecessary rudeness, I will delete your comment without explanation or warning. Differing opinions are welcome, but there is no excuse for being uncivil.

Buy Small Magics

if this is your first visit to my blog, whether or not you came solely as a result of this video being posted here, do me the goodness to nip over and buy Small Magics while you are around.

Think of it as doing your share to stimulate the economy.

facebooking

Just thought I'd mention, for those who are on facebook and like to see what I'm doing with my time, I've started a facebook fan page to see about doing some social media marketing as things go forward. So, if you are on facebook and not yet a fan, pop on over and sign up.

After all, if a certain well-known pizza chain can get 1,000,000 fans, there's no reason I can't. Right?

Right?

All right, I'm shooting for the stars but, hey, you have to start somewhere.

And now, editing!

Random Blogstuff

Whenever I stumble across an interesting article at work, or when I'm surfing the web, I think, "this would be a good piece to blog about." Then I email it to myself and promptly forget all about it.

So here are a few sites and articles that I found while clearing out my yahoo inbox:

David Cheong had an interesting article on 11 Ways of Staying Focused, for all those of us who have trouble BIRDIES!

So Misguided is a Canadian blog about publishing, marketing, books and technology. Interesting information, and she does book reviews, including reviews of fantasy, so I may have to send something her way when Cold Magics hits the shelves next year.

Over at Yahoo there's a short piece on how to eat so your brain works better, for all those who have trouble BIRDIES!

If you are a skywatcher, you can learn exactly when satellites (including the international space station) are passing over your head by going to www.heavens-above.com. Just enter your location and they do the rest.

My long weekend is going to be spent in equal parts working, editing Cold Magics and playing with my child. With luck, there will be an element of sleeping in there as well, but I'm not holding my breath.

West Side Story, Forum, and Zastrozzi

I should really do a post on each one, but my time is limited and well, I wanted to talk about them all.

For those who haven't been following, I've been at the Stratford Festival this weekend. Saw three wonderful shows, ate mostly great food, including a wonderful dinner at Down the Street, a great lunch at Fellini's and unfortunately, the worst eggs Benedict it has been my misfortune to eat at a restuarant I will not name because they cook everything else well. Their hollandaise sauce looked like they hadn't bothered putting in egg and tasted worse. Blech!

Enough about that, though. On with the plays:

West Side Story

I cannot say enough good things about this production. Absolutely amazing, Great dancing, great singing, well-staged and excellent fight choreography. The actors were vibrant and drove the plot forward. Extra points to the girl playing Maria for letting herself be that vulnerable on stage. Amazing.

My one quibble was the inclusion of a boy as an observer type. He also sang "A Place for Us" in Act 2. Now, I don't know if this was part of the original show, or if it was something the director pasted on. Either way, didn't work. The boy playing the part carried himself quite well, but the concept didn't work.

Interestingly, the songs "Officer Krupky" and "Cool" are reversed in the play from where they were in the movie. This is a change they made for the film, and was very effective, as "Officer Krupky" seems out of place in the grimness of act 2.

Overall, brilliant.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to The Forum

This was done exactly as it was meant to be: stupid fun. Lots of gags, lots of laughs, lot of cheap jokes, and I am pretty sure that the actors were working hard to crack each other up as well as the audience. In other words, comedy at it's best.

The woman who played Maria played Philea in Forum. She was brilliantly funny. This was some of the best comic staging I have seen in a good while. The actors were given great direction, and they ran with it.

Zastrozzi

What can you say about Zastrozzi? I have done this play. And watching them doing this play, I can say that they did a very good job with it. Because Zastrozzi is a very hard play to do right. There's something about it that doesn't ring true, and too often it is done by earnest young actors finding deep meaning in it (I was one of them). It's a fun play, with sword fights and sex and laughs and brutal violence. But it isn't an easy play.

A friend of mine heard me ruminating about this piece and did some research on it. Apparently it is based on a novel written by Percy B. Shelley when he was a teenager. Explains a lot about the angst in the piece, but doesn't explain what George F. Walker did with it. In his notes, George F. Walker does mention that he only had the time to do two drafts of the piece. It shows. Unfortunately, Zastrozzi became an iconic piece of Canadian Theatre before he had time to do a third draft. Too bad.

The actors took the parts and ran with. All of them did great jobs on a hard piece. Good work.

And now I am home, and back to editing. It was a good weekend.

Billy Bishop Goes to War

I'm here at Stratford, slightly drunk and happily stuffed, having just finished a wonderful dinner at Down the Street, after spending the afternoon watching West Side Story, which I will rave about tomorrow, because tonight I want to talk about a magnificent performance I saw on Tuesday: Billy Bishop Goes to War, featuring Eric Peterson and John Gray in the roles they originated 30 years ago.

My God, Eric Peterson can act, and the dynamic between John Gray and him on stage is incredible. They've been friends for 30 years, and it shows. John Gray's music and lyrics are as powerful now as when they were first written, and Eric Peterson has the ability to grab an audiences attention and hold it in a way that few actors can manage. Even when a cel phone went off in the audience, which can be a killer for a one man show, he managed to keep his cool, gently scold the audience member and get everyone else in the audience to check to make sure their phones were off, all without being mean, without losing his dignity, and without ever losing his hold on the audience.

Soulpepper has "Talkback Tuesdays," where the actors stay and talk to audience members who wish to ask questions. Wonderful idea - a great way to learn more about the show, the performers, and the concept behind it.

An interesting thing that was raised in the talkback, and that one saw in the performance, was the change of the nature of the show for the actors. When they were younger, it was a play about coming of age, and the horrors of war. Now, as both actors are the age Billy Bishop was when he died, the play for them has changed, taken on a new meaning as a story of survival.

Great play.

Tomorrow, I will rave about West Side Story. Tonight, I'm going to sleep.

A Little Night Music

A great bit of fun from Old Man Luedecke, whose album Proof of Love won the Juno for best Roots album this year.

The man plays a mean banjo, and has a great turn of phrase in his lyrics. Enjoy.

More on Social Media

This time, talking about websites, and I want to take a moment to say I am very annoyed at my inability to find a webs designer willing to take on the job of rebuilding my website for free.

Sigh. I'll just have to pay someone, then.

Anyway, and interesting article from SEOwizardy on the importance of making your website ready for social media. Very much sales oriented, so if you aren't selling things from your website, you probably won't be interested. On the other hand, if you're an author...

Anyway, enjoy. I'm going back to editing for the last 15 minutes before I go to bed.

Social Media - A Cool Video

Think social media is a fad?

Socialnomics doesn't, and they've put together a cool video to convince you that social media is the next social revolution. Here it is:

Courtesy of my boss, who sent it around work.

My Dinner with... well... Near Neil Gaiman

It was like having dinner with Neil Gaiman! Only he was sitting two tables away and talking to someone and I could only sit and watch casually because I didn't want to stare or do something crass like going over to interrupt him to start gushing about his work.

French-Canadian food. Great little restaurant and as soon as I remember the name, I'll put it in here.

But it was cool to see him! Wish I'd gotten to his signing, but I was running around like a mad creature pushing books and doing panels. Too bad. He seems like a neat guy, though he has a strange fascination with bees and bell jars.

So this is my six-day late-WorldCon wrap-up piece. Work has been busy as all get out and I've been too tired to do anything except edit a little bit and get to bed. Today, however, the house is mine, and I wanted to post about what an excellent time I had hanging out and going to panels and doing panels. It was all cool.

I spent a great deal of the convention hanging out at the Hades Publications table. Met Brian and Anita Hades, and had good talks with them. Excellent folks who run a fine publishing house (and I don't just say that because the publish Small Magics through their Dragon Moon Press imprint).

Also got to hang out with my soon-to-be editor Gabrielle Harbowy, who will be doing the edits on Cold Magics in the near future. Good woman, excellent editor, and fun to hang out with. She was also present during my dinner with near Neil Gaiman and can attest to the fact that he was two tables away and we didn't go over and act like idiots in front of him.

I didn't make it to any of the parties except the Tesseract book launch because exhaustion had its way with me. Work has been long and busy and home has been the same. Plus there's the writing which I need to finish ASAP.

The panels I attended were fun, and the ones that I was on were more so.

Panels I Attended: The Function of a Cover (sell books), Podcasting (get professional help), Elizabethans and fairies (didn't talk about fairies much, but lots about Elizabethans and magic).

Panels I was On:

Research and Writing (with Aliette de Bodard, Darlene Marshall, Mindy Klasky, S.M. Stirling -- ever feel like you're outclassed?). This was a great panel. The other panelists were extremely well-versed in the topic, and very well spoken. I discovered I was the moderator when I walked in the room, but managed to pull myself together to ask intelligent questions of the panelists and answer some of the audience questions fairly intelligently myself. Cannot say enough good things about this group and the audience we had. Thanks to everyone.

Also, met a woman from the audience who was the spitting image of someone with whom I went to high school. No relation at all, but a professor down in the USA (If you happen to read this, send me the name of your book [it was an academic study of on science fiction] I want to get a copy).

Martial Arts Primer for Writers (with Sean McMullen and Walter Jon Williams -- remember that outclassed thing I mentioned before? Here it is again!). This one was a hoot. Nothing like putting three martial artists on a panel and letting them go. Got put in an armbar by Sean, got to demonstrate some cloak and dagger fighting with help from an audience member's cloak, talked a whole bunch of martial arts and even managed to be occasionally on topic. Lots of fun.

I did two other panels: The Morning Workout with Birgit Houston on Saturday to which no one attended but myself and Birgit, who is a lovely woman and an excellent martial artist. And Fitness for Geeks with Nancy Louise Freeman (whose name I kept geting wrong. Sorry, Nancy!) which was all right, but under attended. Nancy was a great co-panelist and excellent to work with.

I was supposed to do another panel, but had to get on the highway instead.

And that's my time at Anticipation/WorldCon 2009. Great fun and maybe I'll get back to Anticipation next year, if I've got something to show (like a new book!)

UPDATE: The restuarant was the Restaurant Vallier. Great food. Try the halibut BLT (Yes, halibut. Welcome to Quebec). Thanks, Gabrielle!

Saturday at WorldCon

Four things to carry when running in a strange city:

1. Map
2. Water
3. Camera
4. Taxi Money

Four things Erik didn't take with him while running this morning.

1. Map
2. Water
3. Camera
4. Taxi Money

Got to the promenade at Mt. Royal and saw the 7 a.m. light shining over the city. The river was flowing with white light, and the windows of the cars going over the bridge flashed silver as they headed into the city.

I tried to figure out where I was going from there, but couldn't and headed down the mountain. then I saw an interesting road. So I took it.

Erik's rule of running in a strange city: Never fall for the voice in your head that says "hey, what's over there?"

I fell for it. I ended up going through the McGill campus and then the restaurants of the student quarter. Saw nineteenth century tenements huddled together, their fantastical rooflines -- turrets and crenellations-- facing down the bland squareness of the 1970's high-rise apartments across the road. I saw the beautiful Parc de la Fontaine (if misspelled, I am sorry) and discovered I'd run about 4 km further than I intended and had to backtrack, get back, shave, shower, and rush rush rush to my 9 a.m. panel --- to which no one came.

Obviously I missed blogging on Friday. I was completely exhausted. But during the day I went to interesting panels on the importance of covers and podcasting SF/F, and ate shish tauk for lunch and went to the launch party for Tesseract 13 and heard six of the authors to read their stories. They are all amazing, I bought it, and I am adding it to the "must read" stack.

There were a dozen parties happening Friday night, and a hundred good restaurants near the convention. And I went back to my room, dumped my stuff, got pizza and a salad from the restaurant in the food court near my hotel read most of Sojourn by Jana G. Oliver which I cannot say enough good things about, and went to sleep early.

Yes, I am a wild party.

And I'm here!

At WorldCon, having a blast. Went by the Hades publishing table (who publish Edge, Dragon Moon and Tesseract) signed three copies of my book that were sold while I was there, and met the folks in charge.

Going to be going to bed soon. Will post pictures tomorrow, if I can manage to download them, and will wax eloquent about how wonderful the signings for Small Magics went. I have two of them. One in the autographs area in the morning, one at the Hades Publishing table in the afternoon.

--Oh yeah, and I'm doing an interview for a podcast tomorrow!

Talk to you later!

Truer words were never spoken...

From Tate Hallaway at Wyrdsmiths:

You know what I hate about being a writer? Writing.

Good Tips of Being on a Panel

Five days until I arrive at Anticipation (AKA WorldCon 2009), and I am prepping for my panels and getting my materials together. I'm getting all sorts of excited, first because it's WorldCon, which is going to be huge and great fun, but because it's Montreal, which is one of the most beautiful cities in Canada.

Meanwhile, my friend and editor-in-chief, Gabrielle Harbowy, is writing clever things on her blog about what to do as a panelist at a convention. It's a good little list and one that I will try to remember and no doubt forget and I wander around, enjoying the whole thing.

Look forward to seeing folks there. Now, I'm going to go do some of that editing on Cold Magics that I'm so far behind on.