Chris Howard's Writing & Art

Boskone schedule --preliminary

Boskone runs Feb. 13 - 15. 

Guest of Honor: Jo Walton
Official Artist: Stephan Martiniere
Special Guest: Irene Gallo

Check out all the con details here:  http://www.nesfa.org/boskone/

Here's my preliminary schedule:

Friday 13th 10:30pm    Reading

Saturday 14th 10am       Men Writing Women

   What is it about "strong female protagonists" that appeals to so
   many male authors? ...

Saturday 14th 12noon     New Publishing/Marketing Technologies

   A discussion of what kinds of new technological breakthroughs
   are available to authors today, their advantages and disadvantages...

Sunday 15th 10am       Clothing Design in SF and Fantasy Art

   Can you be an artist and not care about clothes? Which artists shine
   at depicting fabrics, textures, and modeling? ...

Sunday 15th 12noon     Drawing With a Mouse

   In brief, two main questions: Is it really art?  How is it done?

Sunday 15th  2pm        Autographing

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Happy last day of 2008!

Hope everyone is having a fine day, hope this year was good, and next will be better! 

I don't usually make resolutions, but I will say what I'd like to accomplish in the next year:  get another novel under contract--hopefully more than one.  Sell more short stories, and I'm really going to try to get some art published.

Anyone planning/hoping/resolving to complete novels, stories, or art, and get them published in 2009?

Cheers!

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Blogging for four solid years

I started blogging in October of 2004 with something custom on an old web site, but quickly--a couple months later--jumped on a subscription to Typepad.  I've been here ever since.  (I actually kept an online daily journal of my son's premature birth and 2 1/2 month journey through the NICU at Valley Children's Hospital in 1996, but that wasn't quite blogging because there was no such thing as RSS).

What's weird is looking back and realizing I hadn't published a thing then...nothing, not one story.  But I was trying.  My first post was about a reject I'd just received from Strange Horizons.  I was finishing up the novel Nanowhere, which I eventually posted complete online. 

I've completed three more novels, and at least a dozen short stories since I started blogging.  One novel has been published, and a handful of shorts have appeared in various zines, mostly online.

Looking back gives me a sense of how much time it actually takes to get things from my head into print.  Years.  I started writing about Kassandra and the Seaborn in 2003! Juno Books picked it up in 2007, and it went on store shelves in July 2008.  I posted quite a bit about finding an agent and submitting manuscripts.  I have an agent now.  I used to post my rejects.  I have so many now, that I don't bother. 

I don't think my posting volume has changed, but I think the subjects have changed.  I used to post a lot more about Aritstotle and Aristotelian philosophy--a hobby of mine.  I certainly post a lot more art now than I did back then.  I've started another blog around a graphic novel project of mine, Saltwater Witch.

Wonder what this blog will look like in 2012?

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Help out an author

John Scalzi, SF author extraordinaire, is helping out SF author and publisher Vera Nazarian by posting his short story "The State of Super Villainy" on Whatever and asking for donations through Paypal.  What's extra cool is that Bill Schafer of Subterranean Press will match your donation up to a $1000 when you donate through the link in John's post. 

Go read and help out Vera!

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About page

I updated my about page with photos, links to other spaces I inhabit, cover art, and ways to contact me or my agent. Why update?  One, it needed updating.  Two, I wanted to get a better author photo into circulation.  The one inside the back cover of Seaborn is over-exposed and makes me look, well, in the words of a friend of mine, "like a drag queen"--a dismal looking drag queen, too.

http://the0phrastus.typepad.com/the0phrastus/about.html
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Garth Nix the World Fantasy GoH in 2009

I'm there!  And it's in San Jose, my old...not really stomping grounds, I don't remember doing a lot of stomping.  Lived south of SJ.  Started a company or two there.  Now that I'm thinking about it, we really got our a$$es stomped there.  Looking forward to getting back for World Fantasy next fall. 

I was just messaging someone on Shelfari that Garth Nix's Sabriel (as well as Lirael and Abhorsen) would definitely be in my books to have on a desert island list.  If I had a party for fictional characters, Sabriel would hit the top of the list.

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In Creative Commons news!

How cool is that?  The service I've spent the last year designing and developing--Ozmo--has a nice big post on the creative commons blog along with a description and links to the genius behind the Ozmo video, Ryan Junell.

http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/10832

Ozmo provides commercial licensing services for bloggers, photographers, illustrators, anyone with online content.  We're out the door with support for text and image licensing, and we'll be following up with video and audio (music, podcast).  We play well with Creative Commons, using CC+, so you can create a CC license along with your Ozmo license.

More: www.ozmo.com
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Google hosting LIFE image collection

Millions of photographs, most of which have never been published.  Check it out: http://images.google.com/hosted/life

Love this shot.

Make your own anitimatter

Billions Of Particles Of Anti-matter Created In Laboratory

"Take a gold sample the size of the head of a push pin, shoot a laser through it, and suddenly more than 100 billion particles of anti-matter appear. “We’ve detected far more anti-matter than anyone else has ever measured in a laser experiment," said Hui Chen, a Livermore researcher who led the experiment..."Chen and her colleagues used a short, ultra-intense laser to irradiate a millimeter-thick gold target."

Very cool.  Full article on Science Daily.

Mention on the Radio

A friend of mine just heard my name on the radio!  On 104.1 WBCN The Rock of Boston--they're talking about the book signing at Pandemonium Books on Thursday the 20th.  I'll be there with Joe Haldeman and Jeff Carver.  How cool is that?

On the radio...

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