Archive for Personal

Personal

Ghost Train to New Orleans nominated for the Manly Wade Wellman Award!

In today’s OMG Gazette, I’ve been nominated for the Manly Wade Wellman Award for Ghost Train to New Orleans! It was a huge thrill to win last year for The Shambling Guide to New York City, and I was super-surprised to get another nomination this year! The other nominees are:

  • Ghost Train to New Orleans by Mur Lafferty
  • Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by A.J. Hartley and David Hewson
  • The Sea Without a Shore by David Drake
  • Reign of Ash by Gail Z. Martin
  • Bad Wizard by James Maxey

This award was created to recognize outstanding achievement in science fiction and fantasy novels written by North Carolina authors. It’s voted on by the combined membership of North Carolina science fiction and fantasy conventions (illogiCon, ConCarolinas, ConTemporal, and ConGregate). It will be given out in July.

Thanks to everyone who nominated me!

Books, Personal, Projects, Travel

Phoenix Comicon, status of me and podcastland

I’m heading to Phoenix Comicon tomorrow (would be there today but I have a family obligation here at home) and will be on panels tomorrow and Saturday. Here’s my schedule!

I’ve been depressed lately, and it’s been the evil stealth depression that I couldn’t see until I started to come out with it. Needless to say, my creative output, both writing and podcasting, has been low. I’ve hit my Bookburners deadlines but not much else. I’m doing much better and will be recording a lot today.

There will be things to announce in the coming days. Watch this space.

Personal

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Southeast Reading Series – TONIGHT

Date: Friday, April 24, 2015
Time: 7:00pm
Location: Edge Workshop Room, Bostock Library

Tonight I’ll be appearing at Duke University with several other area SFF writers for the Southeast reading series. Should be fun! It’s free, so drop by if you like.

The SFWA Southeast Reading Series will present a panel on science fiction and technology with authors Mark Van Name, Mur Lafferty, Richard Dansky, Jay Posey, Justin Achilli, and (via Skype) Tiffany Trent. The panel will be moderated by Hillsborough author and editor M. David Blake.

The panel will be followed by a question and answer session, and a chance to mingle with the authors.

Personal, Projects

Stretch Goals!

I think I will put on my tombstone: Mur Lafferty: STRETCH GOAL. I love helping out friends on Kickstarter projects, and currently I’m a stretch goal on two!

One is the JR Blackwell photography project, In Their Own Worlds. I’ve mentioned this one before, but I want to mention again cause dammit, I’m a high stretch goal and I really want to do this project! I love JR and her work! It’s funded, but not to the Shambling Guide level yet! [NOTE- As of April 26, halfway there!]

[NOTE- Stretch Goal Made!] The second is from my good friend Dave Thompson, former co-editor of Podcastle, who is putting together a short story collection called And Welcome Back, Stories. It’s close, but not quite close enough to the $2000 stretch goal of the guest author chapbook (including Matt Fn Wallace and Ann Fn Leckie, winner of ALL the 2014 awards.)

Personal

In Their Own Worlds Photography Project

I’ve worked with J.R. Blackwell for years, I’ve hired her for covers, I’ve modeled for her, I’ve purchased her photographs, and have always, always been impressed with the way she sees the world. When she came to me a few months ago with this idea, throwing authors into their own worlds for a photography project, I was 100% on board.

JR Blackwell took this one!
JR Blackwell took this one!

Putting me in Central Park with a whole bunch of monsters is a stretch goal here, and a high one, but there are some other amazing authors in the project, and I’m hoping we can work to unlock some more photo shoots for JR to do. She’s amazingly talented and I am really hoping for this to fund. So check it out!

Personal, Travel

Podcast Hall of Fame! w00t!

I’ve been sick for a few days with a cold and major migraines, so pardon my delay in, well, everything. I have stuff recorded, and it should go up shortly.

So, news! This July, I’ll be inducted into Podcast Academy’s Hall of Fame! I’ll be going to Fort Worth, TX, for the ceremony, and I’ll be there with my friend Scott Sigler. I can’t wait, it’s a real honor, and I’m excited to see Scott. I’m still a bit stunned.

—

Interviews: I gave a video interview to Buzzy Mag last November, and that was recently posted.

Family, Personal, Projects

Game of Thrones night at the Durham Bulls! #sansaball

Wherein I started a bizarre fanfic two years ago that suddenly got attention:

Two baseball seasons ago, I had a silly thought: What would happen if I live-tweeted a Durham Bulls game as if I were the young, innocent Sansa Stark (A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones) attending a tournament? So I went on about my hair and the Hound and Joffrey and lemon funnel cakes and calling all of the players “ser” and “the Bulls of House Durham.” My daughter became Arya*. I tagged it #sansaball and ended up enjoying the game a great deal.


After a few games, I made some ground rules for myself. In the books and TV series, Sansa’s story (well, everyone’s story) goes a bit (a lot) dark, and #sansaball would only be fun if I presented as the Sansa who was innocent and had a perfect view of noble knights and perfect royalty. The Sansa who was forced to watch [REDACTED] and then marry [REDACTED], etc, was not someone who would delight in a home run. Speaking of REDACTED, I didn’t want to spoil anyone on the later books, either. (Although I admit it would be fun to try to tweet as Sansa’s evolved character by the end of book five. Her tone would be a bit different. OK, I just spoiled that she’s alive through five books. I FEEL TERRIBLE.)

It turns out that the guy who runs the Twitter account for the Bulls is a Game of Thrones fan and he jumped into #sansaball, talking about how the Greyjoys sponsoring the Norfolk Tides. We decided their mascot was the drowned god, by the way. People who didn’t even like baseball were following the tweets, and I was invited to DetCon in Detroit so I could attend a Detroit Tigers game and tweet as #sansaball (I really wanted to, but schedule didn’t work out.)

The marketing branch of the Durham Bulls are big time geeks, apparently, and last year they had a Star Wars day complete with themed jerseys (auctioned for charity), light sabers for the kids, and Darth Vader doing a force choke on the Bulls’ mascot.

Now we’re at 2015 and opening day is 22 days away. The Bulls recently announced another geek themed day, a Game of Thrones theme, with special jerseys again and more fantasy fun. I’m excited to be mentioned as a part of it, as they pointed out #sansaball in their announcement. But today, Entertainment Weekly did a small piece on it, and covered #sansaball extensively. I’m a bit stunned.

But BASEBALL IS COMING. We have our tickets for Game of Thrones night at the Bulls, complete with #sansaball. So follow on Twitter if you like, it’s a lot of fun!

got-baseball-jersey* Wasn’t sure how to refer to Jim. He’s pretty much better than all the men in ASOIAF – perhaps he’s like Ned Stark but he’s not terminally stupid. And Ned is Sansa’s father, anyway. Ew. Otherwise, Sansa doesn’t have good taste/luck with men. I couldn’t call him the name of the sadistic prince or the whoring, drunkard dwarf** or the burned murderer or the master of lies or the totally gorgeous-but-gay knight or the creepy-ass kid who wants to be an Oedipal complex when he grows up…
** I know Tyrion is a fan favorite. I like him too. But still, some of his most notable qualities that are fun to read about are not something you look for in a spouse.

 

Personal

Imaginary Faceless Time Traveling Haters

I’ve been afraid-a lot-in my life and career. It comes and goes, there are peaks and valleys. I’m sitting here now, grumpy and afraid. And I realized that I’m afraid that people will Find Out.

Imposter syndrome is not just you thinking that you’re not good enough to have achieved what you have. It’s not just feeling that your success is a fluke. It’s worrying that those things are true and everyone is going to find out. You’re only able to fool people for so long, and then it will be on the front pages. And by you, I mean me.

MUR LAFFERTY: LYING IMPOSTOR WHO LIES. COMPLETE SHIT WRITER. LIKE, SERIOUSLY, YOU GUYS. YOU HAVE ALL BEEN FOOLED. 

And the people who reveal this, the ones who break the story and blow the whistle, they are going to be outraged and furious and come and take away your awards and erase your good reviews and go to the house of everyone who has purchased anything from you and tell them to demand their money back because you’re just not worth it. You’re giving these faceless people power over you, power to cancel your achievements, power to erase the fucking past. 

That’s a whole lot of power. And if someone had that kind of power, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t go back in time to fuck up your (my) career. Come on, we have Hitlers to kill and stocks to short and famous people to hang out with before they become famous and we can say we Knew Them When.

So I want to remove that power from the imaginary faceless time traveling haters. And I’ll do so by the simple matter of confessing, removing the ammunition from their time travel hater gun.

  • I don’t know what I’m doing. I write silly or weird shit. People sometimes like it.
  • Sometimes when good things happen to me, I’m so confused about it-how did THAT happen?-that I don’t immediately have what most people consider the proper response. And if something good happens, but not what I expect/want, it’s even harder to process.
  • I have an ambitious indie project I want to do this year. It is scaring the shit out of me. It scares me because I’m afraid that I will get shell shocked by attention, depressed by lack of attention, or delayed because of other projects, and quit in the middle. (it’s serial fiction, can’t write it all and then release it because of reasons and baseball.)
  • Sometimes when I actually think about the fact that people are actually listening to my podcast, I get panicky and my mind goes blank and I can think of absolutely nothing to say. This causes podcast delays.
  • I have written fanfic about a video game. This makes me feel delicious that I have gotten away with something, and worried I am unoriginal.
  • I secretly feel like the vehicle that is my career is a stuttering, choking, rusty jalopy while every one of my peers is driving a sports car. Logically, I know this is untrue. We all struggle. Emotionally, I’m a pig in the mud and everyone else is a soaring hawk.

I’m sure there are more, but I have things to do. I have a 2015 writing schedule to make up and a freelance project to finish. I have fears to get over and time machines to break.

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