Yes, BYU had its annual sci fi con–er, symposium–this weekend! It was pretty freaking awesome! We had Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn, Elantris), Gail Carson Levine (Ella Enchanted), and Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game) as some of the main speakers, plus Kevin Wasden who’s a famous illustrator, Eric James Stone who makes it out to Quark writing meetings occasionally, and Howard Taylor, who writes the webcomic Schlock Mercenary. There were also all kinds of other cool LDS writers there who had some pretty awesome things to say–unfortunately, I didn’t recognize most of the names, but it was really fun to listen to them! Here are some of my thoughts and reactions from the symposium…
Author: Joe Vasicek
Joe Vasicek is the author of more than twenty science fiction books, including the Star Wanderers and Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus. He claims Utah as his home.
Writing…is…hard…ugh!
And it doesn’t help when you’re sick. Yeah, I think I’m coming down with something. It’s kind of…demotivating.
Still, 715 words isn’t too shabby. I’ll definitely write more over the weekend. What’s more, a pretty little romance story has sprouted up in my novel…
English 318 just makes me want to WRITE.
…so I did today. A lot. Somewhere around 1,500 words–though I wish I could write more. Progress is being made. As to the final status of this novel, well, I don’t know…it’s hard not to have doubts…
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
I wanted to read one of the books that was written right around the time when science fiction as a genre was just starting to form, so I decided to read this classic by Jules Verne. Even though I knew the story already, it was fairly enjoyable to read, and I noticed a few things in it that are typical of the genre even today…
Recap on tonight, and something strange
1,000 words, split between the two stories I’m working on, but something happened that made me a little uneasy…
4,000 words in two days, and the universal law of awkwardness
Yep. 4,000 words in two days–2,100 yesterday for the wormhole story, and 1,900 today for The Lost Colony. Both stories are progressing very, very well. It’s a lot of fun to write in them both.
Call for first readers
Looking for people to give me feedback on my first novel…
Some site changes
I’ve updated the site a little bit: downloaded the older version of this template, since the newer one has a bug that won’t let me put widgets on the sidebars. It’s back down to one sidebar, but I think that that might simplify things and make it better. I don’t believe in cramming tons of widgets together in haphazard ways, but I would like to have a little more flexibility, so hopefully this will work.
Brandon Sanderson introduces a new story he’s working on
Yeah, in our English 318 class on Thursday Brandon started talking about this novel he’s thinking about writing after he finishes the 12th book in the wheel of time series. Since blogging is always a frenzy of people trying to be the first ones to break news, I thought I’d join in the general pandemonium and write about what he said…
Thoughts on The Little Mermaid
I had this great idea for a story the other day, and it sounded a lot like Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid, so I decided to read it (the original, of course) to see what the story is like. Having read it, I can definitely see why it is considered to be a classic–and how it could motivate people to build a statue in honor of it…