Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

I Have Arrived

Yeah, I know it's been a couple of weeks since WindyCon, but I did take a lot of pictures and I was on a lot of panels, so I am going to cover this. (And get back to covering the WorldCon, too.)

I had hoped to get out of the office straight after my 1pm class. But... I had some paperwork that needed to be done, getting quizzes together for my graders. So by the time I left, I knew that I'd not arrive in Lombard in time for the Opening Ceremonies at 7pm CST, durn it, but by the time I arrived, checked in, got a bellman to haul my gear to my room and go through Registration and get my badge -- there was still time to see part of:

Fri 8pm SpaceTime Theater
The SpaceTime Theater comedy/improv troupe returns to the Windycon stage with Rook and Archer: Private Investigators, a show that combines a scripted murder mystery with an occult twist, and their usual hilarious brand of SF/Fantasy improvisation. It's fun for the whole family and you never know what will happen next.
B. Roper, G. Roper, S. Paris, B. Jones, J. Corrigan, S. Salaba, D. Kuczwara
Junior Ballroom BC


I believe this skit, which involved calling "opposites" from time to time, involved a princess in Mordor -- the creature at the right is the closest thing to a horse they could find for her. A "h'orc", of course. (Smells ba-aaaad.) (Click on photo for larger.)

And yes, I really am working on a humorous short story entitled "A Princess of Mordor" -- how could I not after watching this?

Afterward, I wandered over to the ConSuite. I ate on the road to Chicago, but there's always time to have the traditional white bread, peanut butter and jelly ConSuite Sandwich™. The jelly was in little prepackaged tubs and there weren't any utensils around, but they were flexible enough and the commercially processed jelly jelled enough to push it out from the bottom. Nearby was a cooler with jugs of milk. Yup -- totally terrible and just hit the spot. (grin)


Almost never does anyone ever think to bring a long handled, heavy duty and non-breakable/non-flexible serving device for peanut butter -- or jelly if it's in a jar. Somehow I managed to make my sandwich without gooking up my hands with peanut butter. (Click on photo for larger.)

Up "Early"

Though my first panel on Saturday was for 11am, I got up early to make sure I could get to:

Sat 10am Firefly Wedding
No power in the Verse ...
Can stop these two souls ...
Not the Alliance, Not Reavers, and Definitely NOT Zombies ...
From uniting their crews and hearts this day
Come and watch Alex and Tracy get married in Firefly style.
Junior Ballroom BC

Not that I know this particular couple, but come on -- it's a Firefly wedding (for reals) at WindyCon. These are my people, so to speak, so I felt an obligation to witness their union. First time I attended a wedding at a con, though I know there have been some others at cons I've been at.


The ceremony was a mix of genres, Firefly with some Star Wars and Star Trek thrown in. But the wedding party was all dressed in Firefly. (Click on photo for larger.)


The vows took a while. Things like "Will you annoy your spouse?" "Probably." "Is that your intent?" "Nope." Which actually, was rather sweet. Too many wedding vows are sickly sweet aphorisms and don't deal with the real issues of two people getting onto each other cases and surviving for better or poorer, in sickness or health, etc. (Click on photo for larger.)


I had another camera person stand up and so missed the actual clench. But this is rather nice anyway. (Click on photo for larger.)


The armed guards at the back of the ballroom to keep the groom from running were a nice touch. (grin) (Click on photo for larger.)

Next... on to the serious programming.

Dr. Phil

I'm Here

Arrived Friday night and checked in. Saturday was my busy day, with three panels and a reading.


Actually I'm rather impressed with this self-portrait -- centered and all. This is the second shot -- the first had a grim looking face as I concentrated on lining up the lens and... forgot to smile. Yeah, that's a little wry grin. (Click on photo for larger.)

About That Reading


I did read my zombie murder mystery police procedural... (Click on photo for larger.)


... to an empty room. (Click on photo for larger.)

I expected this, or at least anticipated it. Readings were scheduled late and weren't in the Program book -- and I'm not a Mike Resnick, whose 4pm reading sounded pretty full. (The door was shut.) There was no 5pm reading, so I couldn't even watch an audience file out on me. (grin)

And for the record I DID read my story. Found two missing words, so it wasn't totally unproductive.

The Zombie Steakpunk Dinner

The three people I'd expected for dinner couldn't make it, but I'd made a reservation at Harry Caray's for four at 7:30pm anyway. But without an audience I couldn't even invite anyone -- still I wasn't going to miss my steak dinner. I can dine alone.

Half order of calamari (part of their secret is that they marinate the calamari the day before), 9 oz. filet encrusted with Gorgonzola, asparagus. First two... perfect. Alas the asparagus was grilled and I didn't like it. Wasn't going to have dessert, but they had key lime pie. Came with candied shavings of lime peel -- really intense flavor. And the manager bought it for me, as I'd been "stood up". (grin)

Y'all missed a great steak dinner.

Dr. Phil

WindyCon 39: Zombies
November 9-11, 2012
Lombard Westin

In just two weeks, WindyCon 39 opens at the Lombard IL Westin. And this year, barring any new disasters, I should be able to go. It's not as big as a WorldCon, but it's a decent con. And the theme this year is Zombies, so bring your cricket bats.

Anyway, got my preliminary schedule the other day for panels. There was a lot of crossover between the people running Chicon 7 and WindyCon, so they got a late start. (grin) Still have to schedule readings.

So I have five panels -- and moderating two:

Saturday, 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon: Choosing the Right Technology for You
Lilac C
Every few months, the newest, best, and shiniest new gadget is introduced to the market, but how do you determine which is right for you? Is it better to have the latest bells and whistles or a simpler device that does just what you need it to do? How do you separate the hype from the chaff?
P. Kaldon (M), F. Salvatini, R. Martinek

Saturday, 1:00 - 2:00 p.m.: Living in the Post Scientific Era
Lilac D
Polls show that increasing numbers of Americans are scientifically illiterate. What does this mean for the future? For science fiction?
J. Helfers, P. Kaldon, J. Plaxco, D. Burkhard, K. Strait

Saturday, 3:00 - 4:00 p.m.: What Everybody Knows Is Wrong
Lilac A
We all have preconceived ideas about science, but often what we know is wrong. Not just on the big things, but on the little things too. Sometimes this is caused by oversimplifications presented to the laity, and other times it is because knowledge has changed since we learned it.
P. Kaldon, J. Nikitow (M), R. Martinek, R. Garfinkle

Sunday, 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon: Is the Internet Making Us Dumber?
Lilac C
As more knowledge and information are available online, are we thinking less? Some studies indicate that the Internet may be shrinking our attention span, and our ability to create and follow complicated logical thoughts. Is this true? Or is it developing different parts of our brain that we didn't use 100 years ago?
K. Hughes, N. Rest (M), P. Kaldon, R. Martinek

Sunday, 1:00 - 2:00 p.m.: Why Is Your Protagonist a Straight White Male?
Lilac C
Writers, fans, and readers have so often bought into a common default that they don't even realize there is a question to ask.
P. Kaldon (M), M. Ryan, D. Burkhard, R. Martinek, E. Hull

Zombie Steakpunk

So back in 2009, I arranged Steakpunk at the Westin's Harry Caray's Italian Steakhouse (DW), following my Saturday reading. I hope to arrange a similar dinner assuming I get a 5 or 6pm Saturday reading for my Zombie murder police procedural I've been working on for a while.

I have to say, the steaks I've had at Harry Caray's have been some of the best I've had anywhere -- and the kitchen can accommodate a wide range of dietary issues if you ask.

This time, though, I'll make a reservation -- so let me know if you want to have dinner 6:30-7:30-ish on Saturday 10 November 2012. That's the Marine Corps birthday, by the way, so a toast to the Corps is always in order. (I've an uncle who's a retired Marine colonel.)

Dr. Phil

Sabbatical 1.34 Report -- October 2011

In the last month since I reported on my sabbatical progress, I've made 27 submissions -- 83 since I officially started Sabbatical 1.3. Currently, two days into November, I have a staggering 30 stories out to market -- a new personal record -- including 1 new story. If editors aren't reading it, they can't buy it.

Working on some new writing, of course, but though the conceptualizing phase is going great on all these things, I wish I had more words written. Still, I know of at least two or three stories under consideration. And actually, I've been getting more rejections with comments, even from markets which haven't sent comments before. So this massive sending of stories is certainly not a wasted effort, even though nothing's sold. Yet. (grin)

Next weekend is WindyCon 38 in Chicago (Lombard IL) -- 11-13 November 2011. As of right now, I'm on one panel:

How Not To Get Published
Sunday, 11:00 am–Noon, Lilac D
Mike Resnick, Bill Fawcett, Phil Kaldon, Jim Hines, Steven Silver

This should be a great panel, and if you're a new writer, or have thought about writing, you need to come to this one. Mike Resnick is a powerhouse and tells excellent stories and knows the publishing business. Jim C. Hines is a wise, wise man, who is also a terrific writer.

The Double-Edged Sword of New Stories

I mentioned above that I churned out one new story in October. I wanted to get in one more submission to an anthology which closed in the U.K. on Monday, but I needed another near-term SF story. The good news is that between Clarion and the WOTF workshop's 24-hour story challenge, writing 4600 words in a little over a day is quite doable. The downside is that it was pretty much one writing and one editing session. The danger in shipping a Version 1.00 of a story, is that I always feel like it's 80% there. That is all the major components are there, but surely it would benefit from a rewrite or two, pumping up the conflict, etc. On the other hand I've sold first versions of stories, so what do I know? Mrs. Dr. Phil is just now reading it, so it didn't get the benefit of my first reader/copy editor. (grin)

We'll see.

Classes Looming

I've picked up a second class starting in January -- so I'll have PHYS-1000 for the 1st time and PHYS-1070 for the 24th time. Something old and something new.

I've been printing out worksheets of my sabbatical progress about once a week. Just printed out the 13th set. Hard to believe that there's just two months left.

Dr. Phil

Twilight Of The Sparkly Midnight New Moon

Say what you will about Stephenie Meyer and her Twilight books, but they are popular. And the two movies? Huge.

To give you some idea, let's point out that the Grand Rapids area biggest line this week was not at the Barnes & Noble bookstore at Woodland Mall. No, we're talking about the midnight showings for Twilight: New Moon.

Long considered the staple of SF/F and Star Wars and Star Trek geeks, the midnight showings locally were taken over by a largely female crowd of all ages. Only a teen phenomenon? Oh, puh-leese. Pictures on the local news and in the Grand Rapids Press showed many middle-aged women who were not all mothers chaperoning their teens or pre-teens.

When Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace opened on 19 May 1999, Studio 28 had a midnight showing in Theatre 1, then had it running in 3 other theatres for the first 24 hours. Fast forward to 2009 and while Studio 28 is gone, the same chain's Celebration North mulitiplex opened New Moon in all 17 non-IMAX theatres at midnight -- over 3500 seats -- and sold out. Systemwide, they sold something like 14,200 midnight tickets, exceeded only by one of the Harry Potter's at 14,600 (and Celebration North opened it in 14 theatres at midnight).

While some of this is marketing and choosing to open extra theatres and offer more seats for the midnight showings, one needs to point out another set of interesting factoids about West Michigan: (1) this was on a school night and (2) with (most?) West Michigan schools on trimesters, final exams start like on Friday. And still the teens contributed to the surge.

The Inevitable Complaints

Last Sunday, I showed up for part of a 10am panel at WindyCon 36 on "Rowling and Meyer" and what young readers are reading. J.K. Rowling's writing poor and predictable? Stephenie Meyer can't write either and her vampires aren't (sniff) canonical? Does not seem to be hurting the sales, folks. Even the NPR news quiz show Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me on Saturday tried to argue that all these Twilight fans are going to be unprepared to go up against real vampires. (grin)

Look, I haven't read any of the Twilight novels or seen the movies. And I know some people who have and their heads didn't explode -- some of them really like them. But they are successful and I won't begrudge either writer, stars or studio their success. Did I mention that Mister Werewolf in New Moon is a local boy from Michigan? (grin) While not all these readers and moviegoers are going to become lifelong SF/F fans of all genres, there will be some who go on to read more books and see more movies.

A rising tide raises all boats. Wrestling a tsunami is a little harder. (grin)

Dr. Phil

Friday The Thirteenth

Continuing on with my coverage of WindyCon 36, I had planned on leaving West Michigan around noon EST, with 2004 Clarion and WOTF XXIV classmate albogdan Al Bogdan driving over from East Michigan. But that would suppose his car was working. He told him me to go on without him. So I actually got out of town by about 12:30. (grin)

Last year I ran smack into a massive construction rebuild project on Chicago's I-88 Reagan expressway (East-West Tollway) -- in the rain and at rush hour. Crawled the last four miles or so. This year I was running early. Now WindyCon's planners decided to route all the directions away from I-88 and Highland Avenue. But given we're across Lake Michigan from Chicago, I've got WBBM-AM News Radio 78 (and WGN Radio 720) on presets. So I was able to get traffic info every ten minutes and they kept saying no delays on the Reagan. I-290 near Austin was, as usual, more of a bottleneck. No further problems and I arrived at the Westin Lombard around 4pm CST. Also heard from Al, he'd gotten ahold of a vehicle and was driving all the way in from metro Detroit.

Checked in and hit my first panel at 5pm, "So What Is Steampunk?" (see picture of panelist James Ballard Smoot here), then 6pm, "I Could Kill You With My Mind", started with River Tam from Firefly and talked about morality and moral codes about killing -- and insanity.

Meat Up With Mattw

7pm, Opening Ceremonies. Some people like them, some people don't. If I'm there, it's fun to see the various con invited guests. Afterward, the 8pm presentation was the "Gaslamp Fantasy" Girl Genius and "Revenge of the Weasel Queen", projected artwork by the Guest Artists Phil and Kaja Foglio and voices by the same bunch of crazies who did the little play at last year's Opening Ceremonies. Then at 9pm, former Hubble Space Telescope worker Christian Ready did a lovely presentation on the Electromagnetic spectrum and the various space telescopes searching the various bands. (Really hard to do a Google search on "Christian Ready".)

Amongst all this, I heard someone behind me say, "Dr. Phil" and fellow UCF member Matt came up. He was even wearing a UCF logo T-shirt. (grin) Naturally, I thought I'd commemorate this meat-up, but holding my little Sony out in front, there was no flash. No picture?

Camera was firing, but no flash -- because of the very bright indirect lighting of the ceiling.

Dr. Phil: "Uh, is this thing working?" (FLASH!)

Matt and I talked, and then I went up to the room to see if Al had made it. Actually, he was coming out of the room just as I turned the corner from the elevator. So we went in the room and talked a bit, then we headed down to see if I could still grab a hamburger or something, having not had dinner. Alas, as 10:20pm the kitchen had closed. So we went by the ConSuite, where I had a traditional con peanut butter & jelly sandwich (with Ruffles potato chips) and a Coke. (extra special grin) Such is con life.

Saturday 14 November 2009

The Westin's hotel restaurant is superb -- Harry Caray's Italian Steakhouse / Holy Mackerel -- and they do a more than complete breakfast service. Pancakes it is. (triple-stack-grin) On to panels!

10am, "Baen is for Men, DAW is for Women". Eric Flint (Baen Books) started out by reading the title as a question, then saying, "Yes." But of course he wasn't serious and it was all more complicated than that. Jim C. Hines was supposed to be on the panel, but was double-booked with the writers' workshop and only showed up at the end. The panel seemed to feel that the perception of the title was more on the reader than the publisher, though Baen covers were thought be recognizable from across the room. 11am, "Doing the Science in Steampunk", was similar to the panel I was on for Sunday on Alternative Tech in Steampunk, and it has a lot to do with a consistent vision by the author. Because armored zeppelins ain't never gonna fly. (steel-plated-grin)

Quiet lunch by myself in the restaurant with a turkey club sandwich and a coke (Pepsi). This year the restaurant also was offering a lunch and dinner buffet by the con itself -- buffet lunch was $13, dinner $15. My lunch in the restaurant? Exactly $13.00. (smile) 1pm, the Christian Ready show continues with a presentation and half-hour video of May's fifth and last Hubble Space Telescope's repair and upgrade mission. Interestingly, today NPR was reporting that the Wide Field Camera 2 pulled from HST is now on display at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum.

Take A Break

SF cons, Physics and Chemistry conferences -- I can usually fill up the whole day with sessions. But sometimes you need to take a nap and definitely take some time to regroup before you're up. With say a reading, perhaps. So I wandered back to the room and caught the last 30 seconds of the Northwestern game (NU beat Illinois, they're 7-4 and bowl eligible!), the last 3 minutes of the Michigan State game (MSU beat Purdue right at the end), saw that Michigan got beat up by Wisconsin (snort), and turned off the Ohio State-Iowa game after it started. Took a nap for a while. When I woke up, it was 10-10 in the 3rd quarter, and I told Al, who'd also come in for a nap, that we hadn't missed anything. OSU won in OT, completing a brief survey of Big Ten football on the room's decent LG HDTV.

Read through my story one more time, then headed downstairs...

Next up: Dr. Phil's reading and Steakpunk!

Dr. Phil

Blue Sky, As Blue As... Blue Skies

Glorious ride into Kalamazoo today. Bright blue sky with just a few high hazy clouds to remind you how big the sky really is. Too bad tomorrow's weather is not going to be quite as sunny, as I head off after noon to Chicago for Dr. Phil at WindyCon.

Saturday 6pm CST - Willow Room

Finished my story "Z.P.D. (Zeppelin Police Department)" Version 1.01 late last night. It came in at 6900 words by Microsoft Word's count, or about 7900 words in 32 pages by the 250 words/page method. I was shooting for about six thousand, so it is properly long by Dr. Phil's standards. (grin)

This morning I read it aloud -- amazing how useful that is for catching word errors -- and it clocked in at about 32 minutes. I've been told that a good reading is about 20 minutes, but I'd like to be able to read the whole story to whomever shows up. And if no one does, I'll still read it. It's good practice. (grin)

I'd finished Version 1.00 just before dinner last night, printed it out as a 2-up on the LaserJet and did a quick read-and-edit. Then worked on Version 1.01 with the edits and a bit more. One thing that's funny is that it was only in finishing it up, in like the last three paragraphs of Version 1.01, I suddenly revealed an interesting side to a main character that I hadn't seen before. And after reading it this morning, I emphasized that twist a bit more, so I am pretty pleased with this story.

Of course none of the markets I would send "Z.P.D." to first are available to me for submissions at the moment -- either closed or they have a story from me right now -- but this will be sent out as soon as I can.

But if you are at WindyCon and can come to my reading on Saturday evening for "Steakpunk", you can be the first to hear "Z.P.D." And maybe hang around for a good dinner, too.

Dr. Phil

So Yesterday Was A Silver Anniversary

Yeah, me and Mrs. Dr. Phil had a lovely wedding ceremony in Bond Chapel on the campus of the University of Chicago twenty-five years ago on 27 October. So naturally I didn't go straight home last night after Exam 2, but went off to Schuler's Books and Music on Alpine Avenue for a quick bite to eat, and then a reading and book signing by Jim C. Hines.

What? Don't look at me like that. (a) The 27 October 1984 was our second wedding ceremony. The first was back on 12 January 1984, where we got married before a Cook County (Illinois) judge who didn't see us***, in the midst of moving to the U.P. (2) We've got another GVSU special wine pairings dinner scheduled for 12 November with a wonderful menu, so we'll celebrate just fine thank you. (III) Hey, Mrs. Dr. Phil got a signed book out of the deal.

Second Exam

I was pretty worried about that Exam 2 in my PHYS-1060 Stars and Galaxies class. So many people were down with the flu. But they came through. 115 out of 124 people showed up for the exam, and just about all of the 9 who didn't managed to drop me a line or a phone call. So I think it worked out all right. Chose not to hold class after the exam, and made it 50 instead of 30 multiple guess questions. Managed to finish well before the end of the class time, get the tests boxed up for the grad student to run to the Scantron center. And I made it to Schuler's by 6:02pm, and by 6:28 I'd hit the bathroom, bought five copies of Jim's new book to sign, and had just been served my salad and half roast beef with horseradish sauce sandwich on French bread.

And Then Much Madness Pursues

Jim C. Hines is a Michigan author whom I've known from cons and the web for a couple of years. We've been on some panels together and he's a WOTF winner and author of a series of Goblin books and now kick-ass Princess books. The Stepsister Scheme was launched at ConFusion in January and now it was time for the second adventure, The Mermaid's Madness.

He's also a charming speaking and great teller of tales. Rather than read from the new book, he chose instead to read from his Muppet-inspired werewolf story, The Creature in Your Neighborhood from the anthology Strip Mauled. It's written as a TV script and Jim did a lovely job of voicing the different memorable characters and provide some sound effects, including deleting certain words not suitable for children's hearing using a squeaky toy. A Mr. Happy Fun Ball, I think he said it was. (grin)

There were perhaps a dozen people in attendance, though most were Jim's family and friends from the Grand Rapids area. Even at that it was quite a successful event, plus Jim's books got some nice featuring in the front of the store and in their monthly news flier.

Jim's note for the future: Yes, it is a good idea to bring more books with you to make sure the bookstore has books to sell. But if you have a series, don't bring the same amount of each. Bring LOTS more of Book One. Because you won't sell the later books in a series if the first one isn't there. (wise grin)

I love Jim's clever and funny writing style. Go buy his books. And if you are at WindyCon 36 in mid-November, you could meet Jim C. Hines there as well.

Dr. Phil

*** The judge was blind. Married by Blind Justice on his lunch hour -- what could be more symbolical? Well, it's worked for a quarter of a century plus.