Podcasts, Projects

Ditch Diggers #69: Con Accessibility with Elsa Sjunneson-Henry

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:06:04 — 48.1MB)

Subscribe: Email | TuneIn | RSS

  • Matt and Mur come to you live from Jeff Goldblum’s Seattle-based CPAP Emporium with special returning guest, Hugo-nominated writer, editor, and disability activist, Elsa Sjunneson-Henry
  • The Ditch Diggers explain the incredibly inside-baseball location of today’s episode.
  • Elsa answers a listener’s question about networking as an author with a disability, particularly at conventions, and con accessibility.
  • Self-rejecting as an author (or other creative) with a disability, and how to deal with writing disability-forward fiction in the current marketplace.
  • Elsa explains ME BEFORE YOU to Matt, who was unfamiliar with both the book and the movie, and her issues with it.
  • Elsa and the Ditch Diggers discuss sensitivity editing.
  • Matt is still upset Mur looked better in the hats given to winners at this year’s Hugo Losers Party (plus George’s Chicken Hats. You’ll find out.)
  • Listener Q&A! Topics include tie-in novelization writing and including LGBTQ characters in your fiction.
Mentioned in this episode…
Podcasts, Projects

Ditch Diggers #68: Worldcon debrief, post-win turmoil, and Q&A

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:11:17 — 51.6MB)

Subscribe: Email | TuneIn | RSS

  • Mur and Matt come to you live from Jodie Foster’s Hurricane Florence Relief Center.
  • It’s been a little while since the Ditch Diggers hit you with a newly recorded episode, and they explain why.
  • Matt and Mur talk about their WorldCon 76 experiences, including (winning at) the Hugo Awards, the Hugo Losers Party, and staging Ditch Diggers Live!
  • Matt talks about losing his marketing writing job after the agency unexpectedly closed its doors, and what’s happened since.
  • Mur talks about post-WorldCon turmoil. Family vacation, finishing another unannounced secret project, the release of SOLO, her Star Wars movie novelization, and a freaking hurricane.
  • Mur talks about depression and imposter syndrome and sudden realization and working on your internal life.
  • The Ditch Diggers discuss how your goals change after you’ve achieved many of the big professional freelance writer benchmarks, and what goals mean when you’re an author.
  • Matt and Mur catch up on some listener Q&A! Topics include signing with agents, the differences between writing fiction and non-fiction, and starting new projects.
  • Mentioned in this episode: Matt’s WorldCon vlog, including the Ditch Diggers’ Hugo acceptance speech: https://youtu.be/YLFRKUPb40Y
Podcasts, Projects, Travel

Ditch Diggers #67: Live from WorldCon

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:36 — 62.9MB)

Subscribe: Email | TuneIn | RSS

  • The Ditch Diggers come to you from San Jose, California for their 4th Annual Ditch Diggers Live! from WorldCon 76 with special guests, authors KM Szpara and Margaret Dunlap!
  • Matt and Mur put Kellan and Margaret through the first ever Ditch Diggers’ Choose Your Own Publishing Career, forcing them to assume the roles of an aspiring fiction writing team building their publishing career from the ground up (with the audience’s help in determining their fate at each decision point).
  • Live Q&A with the WorldCon 76 audience, including a special guest appearance by Mur’s agent (and podcaster herself), Jennifer Udden of Barry Goldblatt Literary!

(Spoiler, we won the Hugo.)

Podcasts, Projects

Ditch Diggers #66: Feedback

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:02:00 — 45.7MB)

Subscribe: Email | TuneIn | RSS

  • Mur in September apologizes for Mur and Matt back in July when this episode was recorded. There are reasons, and lots more new episodes are coming soon!
  • Matt and Mur come to you live from Jeff Goldblum’s Thirst Fountain.
  • Matt explains Jeff Goldblum thirst tweets to Mur.
  • Before segueing masterfully into the topic of the show, Matt and Mur catch up.
  • Mur’s stressful day, deadlines, daughters, dogs, and teaching at the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing where Mur once earned her own MFA.
  • Matt talks about being a professional tagline writer (or, as he puts it, “one of those assholes”), coming full circle, balancing a full-time marketing job with fiction writing, and all-day dogs.
  • The topic of the show emerges! People ask us questions! Often! And thus do we dedicate the rest of the episode to answering those questions!
  • If you befoul Jeff Goldblum’s thirst fountain with lies it runs with blood.
  • Matt and Mur answer Twitter questions (thanks to everyone who uses the #DitchDiggers hashtag). Topics include whether to continue revising a work or move on and examples of resources and advantages of working with a traditional publisher over self-publishing.
  • Matt and Mur have the same birthday (it’s July 25th. Send belated presents) and what they’re doing for it this year.
  • Email questions! Topics include whether it’s easier to sell novels or novellas, publishers and sensitivity editors, whether getting a copy of an author’s book from the library helps the author, and money.
  • Mur wrote the SOLO movie novelization and in July it was coming out in September which means it’s out now!
  • The customary end-of-episode shilling.
Meta

ALL the updates! Hugo! Solo! Florence!

Matt Wallace and Mur. Hugo-winning Ditch Diggers, bitches.

You know when you’re distracted from something and then you don’t do the thing you usually do? Blogging, podcasting, whatever? And then more time goes by, and then you’re not doing it because doing it will shine a light on the fact that you HAVEN’T done it and your paralyzed and never create again and hope the world will forget about you instead of remember how you dropped the ball?

OK I’m exaggerating a little, but that’s what’s up.

In my defense, my last month has been: Worldcon–>Family vacation–>Grinding on intense deadline–>School started–>Launch of Solo–>weekend-long Bookburners meetings–>OMG Here comes a big hurricane–>OMG a big hurricane is here–>OMG I haven’t blogged or podcasted in a REALLY LONG TIME.

So let’s get to the news, starting with the most recent thing first:

  1. Florence: We are fine. Hurricane Florence hit North Carolina and South Carolina last weekend, and wandered slowly through the state, dumping lots and lots of rain. The flooding was catastrophic. Oddly enough, when we thought our area would get hit with the eye, the storm turned and moved south of us, then turned north. We got wind, rain, Fiona’s school lost a big tree, but our area is largely unscathed. We did have some excitement yesterday when the last tail end of the storm whipped around and smacked us, letting Durham get a taste of the flooding and tornadoes that the rest of the state has suffered, but that didn’t last too long. If you can give to hurricane relief to help the eastern part of the state, please do.
  2. Bookburners Season 5 has started production. We had our yearly meeting and worked out the story beats for the final season, and got outlines done.
  3. Solo! My Star Wars novelization came out to excellent reviews, and I’m thrilled at the whole experience. It’s still available, naturally.
  4. REDACTED Deadline: I finished another big project, but as it hasn’t been announced yet, I can’t say anything. Dangit.
  5. Burying the Lede- Ditch Diggers won a hugo! WorldCon in San Jose was amazing, and I was so thrilled to win Best Fancast with Matt Wallace. I’m not as good at con write-ups as others, so I’ll post some pictures and call it good. (Also it’s a month old so it’s not as timely anyway.) Thanks to everyone who voted for us! — Also, in case you’re wondering, I was neither surprised nor upset to lose the other two categories I was nominated in. I got to see N.K. Jemisin make history that night. I did attend the Loser’s Party, but had to wear a shameful hat even though I lost 2 of 3 Hugos. (I’ve never been so happy to be booed.)
Jim and I are always the picture of class.
Ursula Vernon, Kevin Sonney, and I are never the picture of class.
Bill Hutson of clipping., me, composer Micaela Tobin, and editor Navah Wolfe. The chicken hat is for shame because I showed up to the losers party.
Close up of chicken hat, and close up of Gail Carriger, godmother of Ditch Diggers.
Books, News, Projects

Solo is out today!

[Note, I am notoriously bad about keeping up with blogging, and it’s a terrible time for me do that, what with travel and Hugo and all, but I came home from WorldCon and had to jump headfirst into a deadline which is eating everything else. I will be blogging the Worldcon recap later this week, promise.]

Solo cover
That’s my name right there!

It’s release day for Solo: A Star Wars Story!

Did you see the movie and go, “I wonder what went wrong for Han before the opening of the movie?” or “Where DID [REDACTED] take the [REDACTED] at the end of the movie?” or “What happened to Han during the four years after Corellia? What happened to Qi’ra, for that matter?”

The book will answer those questions.

Amazon | Indiebound | B&N

I was allowed to take the script of Solo and turn it into a book, adding scenes to lengthen it, looking at familiar scenes from an unexpected PoV, and giving some of my favorite characters more time to shine.

I’ll be doing a podcast soon, when I dust the mic off again, about the process of writing the novel, and the challenges I came across. Some were unexpected: like me disagreeing with the movie about which lines were meant to be humorous. I expected other challenges, like knowing the train scene took hours to write and still being frustrated when it was mere minutes on the screen. (I got new respect for movie people – especially special FX people – right then, since I know the scenes took even longer for them.)

I’d like to hint at other questions the book answers, but I don’t want to spoil anything. Regardless, reviews are coming in praising the book for giving more time to characters people wanted to know more about.

L3-37
Hint.

And it was a lot of fun to write.

And holy crap I wrote a Star Wars novelization.

 

Personal, Travel

WorldCon 2018 Schedule!

Who wants my WorldCon schedule? I got one! It’s busy! It includes running and recording! Come see me!

Patreon people, I will be coming up with a meetup time! Stay tuned!

Friday

Wrun With Writers
Friday 08:00 – 09:00, Lower Level Plaza (San Jose Convention Center)

Strolling with the Stars is a Worldcon tradition. But what about those of us who want something a little faster? A little sweatier? A little runnier? Join authors Mur Lafferty and Adam Rakunas as they lead you on a 2-3 mile no-drop run/walk/skip/wheel around Downtown San Jose. Everyone is welcome, no one gets left behind, and all participants will get an exclusive ribbon and bragging rights. (Mur Lafferty, Adam Rakunas)

The Book Bin Autograph Sessions
Friday 13:00 – 14:00, Dealers (San Jose Convention Center)

The Book Bin will be hosting autograph sessions in their booths (R4-R5) periodically during the convention.

Autographs
Friday 14:00 – 15:00, Autographing (San Jose Convention Center)

Robert Silverberg, Joe Haldeman, Mur Lafferty, Yasser Bahjatt, Heather Rose Jones, Christopher Paniccia, Marc Scott Zicree

Saturday

Escape Pod – Live at Worldcon
Saturday 10:00 – 11:30, 210DH (San Jose Convention Center)

Alasdair Stuart (Escape Artists Inc.) (M), SB Divya, Marguerite Kenner (Escape Artists Inc.), Benjamin C. Kinney, Norm Sherman, Setsu Uzume, Mur Lafferty

Reading: Hugo Finalists – Best Novel
Saturday 13:00 – 14:00, 211A (San Jose Convention Center)

Listen to some of this year’s Hugo Novel finalists as they share their work. (Ann Leckie, John Scalzi, Mur Lafferty)

Writing For A Galaxy Far, Far Away
Saturday 17:00 – 18:00, 230 (San Jose Convention Center)

What are the challenges and rewards of writing for one of the biggest franchises of all time? Join Lucasfilm Executive Editor Jennifer Heddle and Star Wars authors Mur Lafferty and Lou Anders as they discuss the special handling that comes with developing stories for iconic pop culture characters. (Jennifer Heddle (M), Mur Lafferty, Lou Anders)

Sunday

Ditch Diggers podcast
Sunday 11:00 – 12:00, 210DH (San Jose Convention Center)

Join Mur Lafferty & Matt Wallace for the Hugo-nominated Ditch Diggers podcast, “Live and In Person!” (Mur Lafferty, Matt Wallace)

Monday

Bringing Up Geek
Monday 11:00 – 12:00, 210E (San Jose Convention Center)

It’s never been easier to bring up the baby in geek! Sharing your old nerdy toys and TV shows is just the beginning. At what age do you start them on Star Wars or Doctor Who or D&D? What order? What are the smallest sized in geek fashion? When do you have the talk with them about how problematic the fridging element is in Kyle Rayner’s origin? Our panelists talk about bringing up the baby. (Mur Lafferty (M), Chris Castro, Alison Stern, Bruce MacDermott, Greg Bear, Janice Marcus)

Kaffeeklatsch: Mur Lafferty
Monday 14:00 – 15:00, 211B1 (San Jose Convention Center)