Podcasts, Projects

Ditch Diggers #15 – Freelancing with Mikki Kendall

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 59:47 — 55.4MB)

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We welcome Mikki Kendall, writer of fiction, nonfiction, comics, and unintentionally viral social media tags (#solidarityisforwhitewomen) to the show to talk the freelance life, when to go pro, and what kind of baked goods gets you jobs.

HEY- don’t forget Matt and I will be at WorldCon, with a LIVE DITCH DIGGERS coming Thursday at noon! Those of you playing at home, there may be video.

Show Notes:

– Recording in Morgan Freeman’s apiary and why you never upset Morgan’s bees.
– An overview of Mikki as a freelance writer.
– How Mikki landed her first comic book writing gig using social media, cupcakes, and very apparent writing ability, and how the comics writing process works.
– Creating the hashtag that propelled Mikki’s social media presence.
– The nuts and bolts of using social media to build a platform (which, in addition to complex sociopolitical issues, can and does include live-tweeting VH1’s “Love & Hip Hop” every Monday night).
– Dealing with the inevitable trolls across your social media presence.
– Moving forward once you blow up on social media.
– Dealing with editor’s notes (Mur tells her infamous “choad” story).
– Mikki agrees with Matt about the philosophical cross-applicability of the 1980’s Patrick Swayze classic ROAD HOUSE.
– Mikki’s decision to go freelance full-time, the logistics of how she and her husband arrived at that decision, and how she built up her freelance writing portfolio and presence beforehand.
– How to build a platform from scratch now in a post-social network age.

Where to find Mikki on-line…

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Travel

Last WorldCon Post – Wrun With Writers

I haven’t said enough about Wrun with Writers. Adam Rakunas and I were chatting about going for a run at WorldCon and we thought it might be fun to get others involved. Suddenly it was a 5k run (run, not a race) with ribbons as the reward. I’ve been training.

Sign up here (just so’s we know who’s coming!)

—

Other WorldCon news, I’m liveblogging the Hugos again (yeah, that should be interesting), my Kaffeklatch is full (cue astonishment), and I’m arriving tomorrow midday. Ack. Too much to do. In case you missed it, my schedule is here.

Meta

Reminders – Superhero Bundle! WorldCon! More!

I don’t blog enough, I know, so I need to occasionally reiterate stuff I blogged a while back. Because important stuff, yo.

FIRST- PLAYING FOR KEEPS is part of the Superhero Bundle! Get lots of awesome books and help a charity all while paying what you want! Pay $12 or more and get the bonus, including my Parsec-Award-Winning Playing For Keeps! Nine days left. Hurry, go get it.

bundle

SECOND- Worldcon is next week! I’m totally not panicking at all. Nope. Just come see me. Live Ditch Diggers! Reading! Game show!

And now we are having plumbing problems so I’m just going to hit publish. Dammit.

Podcasts, Projects

Ditch Diggers #14 – Comics and Shawn Pryor Interview!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:02:18 — 57.7MB)

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Matt and I talk to our friend Shawn Pryor about comics, minorities, and ways to move forward in the industry.

Show notes! For real! Compiled by Matt!

  • Awful direct-to-DVD Morgan Freeman movies
  • How Bang! turns you into the worst town sheriff in the old west
  • How Shawn got into creating indie comics at cons and how those are helpful for networking and getting started
  • Running successful Kickstarters for indie comics
  • Starting an indie comics publisher from the ground up
  • The politics of comic book stores and comic book distribution
  • Race and the lack of writers who are people of color in mainstream comics, particularly Marvel

Links…

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Books, Projects

Playing For Keeps is part of the Indie Superhero Bundle!

My 2007 novel about superheroes with crappy powers, Playing For Keeps, is now part of the Indie Superhero Bundle! You can get several indie books (all listed below!) through this bundle, and help a charity like Girls Write Now! Pay what you want, but if your purchase price beats $12, you get Shero by Jack Wallen, The Strike Trilogy by Charlie Wood, Supervillainous by Mike Leon and Playing For Keeps by me!

 

Personal

42

6x9Hullo 42.

Hullo, Mur.

I’ve been looking forward to you. Big dork, big fan of Douglas Adams, etc.

You should. I’m awesome.

Cool. So before we get into the introspection, I’m going to tell you what’s been on my mind right now. See, I bought this awesome tshirt with a unicorn on it, to represent nerdy girls. It’s a white shirt, and not very bulky. In fact, it’s so see-through that you can see my skin tone and my tattoos through it. I put a tank top under it, and that helped, but now it’s obvious I’m wearing a tank top and then the white shirt, and I feel self-conscious.

… are you fucking kidding me? 

Uh, no.

Because you have got to be kidding me with this bullshit. You just wasted a minute of your year of being 42 writing that paragraph up there. And gawd knows how long you spent fretting about it before you wrote it down.

One question: Do. You. Like. The. Shirt?

Well, yeah.

Then fucking wear the fucking shirt. You are forty two fucking years old. You don’t need to explain anymore. You don’t need to apologize anymore. If anyone looks at you and thinks, “gee, that shirt is see-through, she ought to-” AND IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT THEY THINK AFTER THAT BECAUSE THEY DO NOT FUCKING COUNT IN YOUR WORLD. Any time anyone says “she ought to” then stop them right there. You’re done with that. You’ve paid your dues. No more explaining. No more apologizing. Wear that shirt. Write that book. Play that music. Wear goddamn technology on both wrists because you fucking love gadgets. 

Listen, when they are thinking “That Mur ought to…” that is mental energy they are wasting when they could be making themselves more awesome. You should feel sorry for them, projecting so much energy in a direction that is going to just keep on going being awesome no matter what. Haters gonna hate, lady. Poor bastards. You don’t worry about them and their “oughts.” You worry about yourself and your awesomeness.

You let Douglas Adams himself wander away when you had a chance to meet him. You were too shy, you were too worried about “oughts”. Then he died. You promised yourself not to let opportunities go by. Where is that moxie?

You’re 42, dammit. Act it.

You’re right. Dammit, you’re right. Unicorn shirt on. I’m going to the comic book store. Thanks, 42.

I’ll be here all year.

Meta

Short Story-arama #3 – Humble Bundle features HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!

I contributed a story, “SAVE THE PHOTOPHOBIC HEMOGLOBIVORES WITH THE SANGUINE RESERVE!” to John Joseph Adams’ Kickstarter anthology, HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY! a while back, and now that ebook is available via Humble Bundle, along with a lot of other awesome books. You can get this bundle until July 29.


From the press release:

Kickstart your book collection! The biggest books on Kickstarter are now available in a bundle! Name your price for To Be Or Not To Be, God Hates Astronauts, Imagined Realms Book 1, Hollow World, and Help Fund My Robot Army. If you pay more than the average price, you’ll also get The Big Feminist BUT, A Hero at the End of the World, The Great Way Trilogy, The Sleep of Reason: An Anthology of Horror, Steampunk World, and Nightmare Magazine #33. If you pay $15 or more, you’ll receive all of the above plus Code Monkey Save World, Ava’s Demon, The Warden and the Wolf King, and MOTHER RUSSIA.

Pledge what you want. The contents of this bundle would cost you up to $165 if purchased separately, but here at Humble Bundle, you pay what you want.

Read Anywhere. These comics and books are available in multiple formats including CBZ, PDF, MOBI, and ePub, so they work on your computer, e-readers, iPads, cell phones, and a wide array of mobile devices! Instructions and a list of recommended reading programs can be found here for comics and here for books.

Support charity. Choose where the money goes — between the publisher and two charitable causes (EFF and First Book) via the PayPal Giving Fund. For details on how this works, click here. If you like this bundle, feel free to drop something in the Humble tip jar.

Books, Projects

Short Story-arama #2 Electric Boogaloo* – Onward, Drake!

Last year I was pleased to be invited to an anthology to honor the writer David Drake. While we both do the same job (one of us is much, much more successful than the other), I know Dave more on a social level, as we met through a mutual friend at a comic book store. We met years and years ago, and he’s been inviting me to his huge annual parties ever since. Dude throws a HUGE 4th of July party. I like him a great deal and admire him as a writer, as one of the most honest people I know, and as a generous and welcoming man.

So Mark Van Name, who once was a cookie mule for me**, asked me to contribute a story to his anthology for Dave called Onward, Drake!. I fretted for MONTHS until I remembered Mark invited me to write a story inspired by Dave, not a story just like Dave. He could have gotten Dave to do that. (And he did, actually. Dave contributed two stories to the anthology himself, including a brand new Hammer’s Slammers story. But I digress.) So I thought about the conversations Dave and I have had over the years, and one stuck in my mind about history.

So I wrote a story about a fairy historian who has an unexpected welcome when he visits the human plane of existence. The title is, “The Crate Warrior, the Doppelgänger, and the Idea Woman.” I had a lot of fun writing it, and am so happy to be in this book (I’m on the cover, even! I’m in a book with GENE FREAKING WOLFE.) to honor my friend.

Onward, Drake! is available in October. Read what editor Mark Van Name has to say about it.

Here is a tidbit from my story:

And fairies, like us, make movies.

When we discovered this, cultural anthropologists shit themselves, wanting to know how such media technology evolved alongside our own. Film students began studying every piece of fairy film they could get their hands on. And Hollywood, of course, wanted to know how to monetize it.

* Yes, I am a child of the ’80s and yes, when I have an opening I will throw “electric boogaloo” into any sequel I can. Except for perhaps my own books. I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed to do that… I should check.
** The real story is less interesting than calling Mark a cookie mule. Someone asked him to carry some gift cookies for me across the country. He was kind enough to do so.