Great Stuff Happening: FOGcon and Lit Camp

There are a couple of Bay Area events happening next spring that I've already started getting excited about and planning for.

→ Registration just opened for FOGcon, the speculative literature convention that I had a great time at last year and this year. FOGcon 2013, with a theme of Law, Order, & Crime, will be held March 8 to 10 in Walnut Creek (east of San Francisco and Oakland).

This is a convention for readers who enjoy science fiction, fantasy, horror, and related genres. Many of the attendees also write, so there are some events aimed at writers, but the main audience is fans -- people who like to read and think deeply about stories. The con activities are mostly panel discussions, some about the theme topic and some not. Now that the con is in its third year and growing in size, I expect the schedule will be fuller than ever.

I'm looking forward to my third FOGcon. I hope to see many friends there again and to recruit some new attendees! Register before November 15 for an early rate of $60.

→ Perhaps I shouldn't tell anyone about Lit Camp, because this new writers conference is juried, and the less competition for the 40 spots, the better my odds will be. I'm submitting a writing sample to apply for the conference, which will take place April 4 to 6 near Calistoga (north of San Francisco and Santa Rosa).

I have no idea what my chance of acceptance is, but I'd love the opportunity to attend this event organized by Litquake and the San Francisco Writers' Grotto. The faculty are writers and editors from a variety of publications who will lead workshops and panel discussions for the lucky selected attendees. (To be clear, after acceptance, there's still a rather sizable cost for the conference and accommodations.)

The submission deadline is December 31, leaving plenty of time to procrastinate, but I plan to get my application ready well before then. Next week I'll be pausing in the forward progress of my revision to go back to my first chapter and polish it as thoroughly as I can. After that, fingers crossed!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Juliette Wade offers a helpful explanation of techniques for writing in deep point of view: "Avoid ... putting extra words into your sentence that remove the reader from the experience of the character. When you go through your life you probably don't think distantly about what you're perceiving. You hear a car horn and you don't think, 'I'm hearing a car horn.' You think, 'Hey, that's a car horn!'"