General News

[lydamorehouse]

 Shawn and I have a notebook full of allegorical names for a farcical mystery we are never going to write. These are names like Scott Free and Helena Handbasket. I wonder if General News is in the list? I should check. It's been a while since we added a new name.

But, on to the actual general news (as opposed to the allegorical one.) I don't think I have a huge amount to catch you up on this week, but it's been a while so I thought I'd catch you up on the goings-on arounds these parts.

Tuesday ended up being a skip week for the podcast. While my co-host tested negative for COVID, he did come down with something nasty enough to keep him off the air. What was ironic about that, is that I had Shawn reschedule her pre-op appointment because it had conflicted. Then, suddenly, neither of us had anything to do at that time. (Well, I mean, Shawn went to work, but it was a very, "Damn it, we coulda..." sort of thing.) It has been, I think you'll see, a week like this.

Wednesday, I was scheduled to record with Cheryl Morgan--my editor and publisher over at Wizard's Tower--for her podcast. That went really well, but it was funny the extent to which I'd forgotten a lot of the plot of Resurrection Code. 

Yesterday, I had both an in-person Wyrdsmiths (my writing critique group) and I hung out with my friend jiawen for a couple of hours, which was nice. We talked about everything from WisCON to the recent presidential debates, volcanos, and our various lives and such. Good times. 

Then I went for a very short walk and now I'm hot and tired. Dang exercise, making me sweaty!

Comments

[lydamorehouse]

You are not going to like the answer to how I found my writers groups. I created them--both of them.

So, the story of Wyrdsmiths, which I founded with my friend Harry back in 1991 (or thereabouts), is that he and I took a class on writing science fiction and fantasy where, as part of the class, we did peer critique. That group was really great, so we got permission from the instructor (this was a Loft class, which is basically community education, not a college or university class) to take up 5 minutes at the end of the last class and invite people to a meeting at a local Pizza Hut to continue the work of critiquing. We have been an on-going writers' group ever since. We all started as nobodies with no writing credits to our name and now there more traditionally published books between us than... well, a lot.

But, so I am the wrong person to ask, because also once you've published it's easy to ask people if they want to join a group with you. :-(

I'm not sure how you start a critique group now-a-days. I did see a sign up for a science fiction/fantasy critique group at my local coffee shop, so it's possible that might work. You stick up signs and hope you get good people? I don't know. I wish I had better advice.

[rafiwinters]

Thanks for telling me how you did this. I can always start by Googling for "writers groups near me." I'm curious to see what that would bring up. Anyway, thanks! :)