Tips on Working a Room

While discussing how to have a successful convention with some other writers, I suggested these basic tips for "working a room."  Most of the other writers had never heard these.  So here they are:

1) At most of these events, you will be given a name tag.  Which side do you stick it on? Answer: your right.  When you hold out your hand to shake hands with someone, that person has to look at your hand.  By putting your name tag on your right side, you allow their eyes to travel easily upward from your hand to your name tag.  It's a subtle effect, but a real one.

2) If you are holding a drink, keep it in your LEFT hand. (I'm assuming you're not a Muslim or in a part of the world where the left hand is considered unclean.)  Shaking hands with someone who has a cold, clammy, damp grip is unpleasant - and it really doesn't matter if your hand is wet because you're nervous, or because you just had a cold beer in that hand.

3) Finally, to insure you don't get stuck talking to just one person in a room full of people you should meet, try this old politician's trick: have the bartender fill your glass just one-quarter full.  Then, if you get buttonholed by a bore, you always have an excuse to leave.  Just down the liquid in your almost-empty glass, then say, "excuse me - I need to go refill my drink!"

Have a successful convention experience.  And remember - you're not there just to have fun.  There's a reason it's called WORKING a room - unless you're a natural-born gladhander, it really is work.

Ready to Play Some Hnefatafl? It's Hneat-O!

Some years ago, I co-wrote a quiz which ran in every issue of an airline in-flight magazine.  Not only did the quiz have to be interesting, but (in theory) each of the ten questions had to relate to one of the destinations the airline flew to.  Plus a bonus question!

This was back before the internet came into its own.  In fact, it was so long ago that the magazine actually employed a fact checking department.

Yes, children, once upon a time there were learned men and women who made sure you didn't fabricate your articles.  They checked every fact, every single time!  Life was more difficult back then.

The editor also had to approve the topic for each quiz.  One of the quizzes was to be on games.

Matching the countries to which the airline flew with unusual games proved to be difficult.  I was dredging up games little-known in the USA, such as senet (Egyptian) and tablero de Jesus (Andalusia, Spain).

Tonight on the PRI radio show The World I heard of another game, called hnefatafl.  The name apparently translates as King's Table.  Supposedly, it dates back to the Vikings, although the hnefatafl world championships are now played in Scotland.

It's a board game, of interest because it's a two-player asymmetric game.  One side starts out surrounded  and outnumbered two-to-one.  That side's goal is for it's King to escape the encircling horde.  The encircling side wants to capture the King.  Interestingly, it takes two soldiers to kill a single opposing soldier, which is a rarity in board games.

It sounds interesting.  And it sounds like a perfect game for zombie fans.  Can you escape the ravening horde of encircling zombies?  Practice your moves with a round of hnefatafl!

Good Writing, Bad Week

Last week wasn't fun.  My mother was in the hospital, and my car needed a new starter motor.

But at least it was good for my writing.  I had two short stories accepted for MAIN LINE VOICES, an anthology set in the Philadelphia area.  And a story of mine, "Bustles Went Out of Fashion in 1905," was accepted by LINGUISTIC EROSION.

Finally, my flash fiction story called "Potemkin" just went online today on THE RUSTY NAIL site. I've read that story to audiences at several bookstore and library events, and it's always gotten laughs in the right places.  So I'm glad to finally get it published.

But I'm not sure the victories balance out the defeats.  Or maybe that's just my anhedonia talking.

Dead Flight

I knew about what is called "white flight."  And "black flight."

But "dead flight" was a new one on me.

Today in The New York Times, on the op-ed page, there is a piece by former New York Times correspondent Charlie LeDuff.  The piece, Come See Detroit, America's Future, is about Detroit's dire financial straits, and how other American cities may face the same problems.

In the article, he notes that Detroit suffers not only from white flight and black flight, but dead flight as well. He defines dead flight as when "people routinely disinter their deceased and relocate them in the suburbs."

Amazing.  Of course, I'm not the kind of dutiful son who visits the graves of his ancestors.  I do enjoy visiting a graveyard occasionally, but - as long as it's pretty - I feel that one graveyard is as good as another for a visit.  So I never would have imagined that Americans would do this.  (At least, I didn't imagine that non-Chinese Americans would do this.  I know that people whose traditions include what we blithely call "ancestor worship" will move the graves of the departed.)

But it's an interesting phenomenon, and I'd like to write a nonfiction article about it.

And, though I'm generally not interested in writing vampire or zombie fiction...if someone's willing to PAY me for it, I'll happily write a story titled Dead Flight. 

Different Opinions

Last night, I had 3,500 words (about 15 typewritten pages) of my latest work in progress critiqued.  Eight different writers read my work, and the comments were generally favorable.

The interesting parts were the places where they disagreed.  Not just sections that some readers liked and some readers hated.  No, what's interesting is where readers drew wildly different conclusions from the same paragraph.

For example, in one section, the protagonist (a homeless youth) slips a five-dollar bill out of the wallet of a drunk, hung-over lawyer.  Then he goes and buys donuts and milk and brings them back so both of them can have breakfast.

Some readers didn't like the fact that the protagonist stole money, even though he spent part of it on breakfast for both of them.

Another reader felt that the fact that the protagonist only stole five dollars (when there was more in the wallet) showed the protagonist's depth of character.

But this work takes place in 1963.  Five dollars went a long way back then.  You could buy an entire sit-down meal in 1963 for a dollar, let alone a few donuts and a bottle of milk.

What I'd intended to show was that the protagonist stole enough money that he'd have several dollars left over, even after he purchased breakfast.  He knew he had to deal with this lawyer when the man sobered up, and he didn't want to alienate him by emptying his wallet.

Ah, well.  That reader was too young to have known what prices were like in 1963.  I was a child back then, but I remember getting a five-spot most years for Christmas or my birthday.  When comic books were only 12 cents each, a fiver could buy a lot of comic books!

The Only Writer I Know....

Photo by Liars Club member Don Lafferty

At today's monthly meeting of Philadelphia-area writers - an event known as the Writers Coffeehouse - local writer Jonathan Maberry announced that he and his wife are leaving the area to move to San Diego.

Now Jonathan (in the above photo, he's the big bearded guy sitting underneath the red-and-gray poster of The Sound and the Fury) is the driving force behind the Writers Coffeehouse.  They grew out of meetings he started, and he chairs them better than anyone else.  He's not the only one who does so, of course.  The Writers Coffeehouse meetings are the responsibility of a group of professional writers called the Liars Club of Philadelphia.

But the meetings won't be the same without Jonathan.

And he's an inspiration to the rest of us.  He writes 10,000 words a day.  He comes out with three novels a year.  Most of the professional writes I know need a second income to survive.  But Jonathan is not only a full-time writer, but he the only writer I know who makes a good living at it.

I consider him a mentor.  Earlier today, when I mentioned that I'd been offered the chance to do a movie novelization for $2,000, he told me, "Tony, Tony, Tony.  Don't work for that kind of money.  You can't make a living at it."  He's right.


So we're all going to miss not seeing Jonathan once a month.  Our loss is San Diego's gain.

If you're interested in his work, please visit his website.

Two of his recent books are pictured below.  I've read them both, and they're a lot of fun.

Perks

Almost 30 years ago, I heard someone ask Czeslaw Milosz, "What's the best thing about winning the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature?"  Milosz, who taught at the University of California at Berkeley, said it was getting his name on a parking space at the university!

Today I listened to the show "Science Friday" on WHYY-FM.  The host, Ira Flatow, asked guest Saul Perlmutter what was the best thing about being co-winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics.  Perlmutter, who also teaches at UC Berkeley, said essentially the same thing as Czeslaw Milosz: the best thing about being a Nobel Laureate was that he got a personal parking space in the middle of the campus!

Apparently the parking in Berkeley hasn't improved in the past 30 years.