Wow! Thanks for all of the news on cons... I am excited to get going to more and continue both learning and networking. Any more suggestions are welcome!

On queries:
Wow, I have to say I would never send a query out first to a 'low on my list' agent. While you are not obligated to go with them, if they do say 'ok', then you have set up a difficult situation. Do you now say 'nevermind' and not only turn your back on a professional in the field (it is a close-knit community), but perhaps (you don't know yet) the only person who wants the book? Or do you go with them and never get a chance to try your first choice?

Otherwise, yes wait on the query. You need to be ready, and I seem to recall you mentioning that the first five pages were polished. If your query comes back positive, they may ask for the whole thing or they may ask only for the first 2-5 chapters, but they are unlikely to only ask for a few pages.

On critique groups:
Yeah, critique groups are tough. There are many more bad writers out there than not. That said, if you take a look at the writing the other folks in the group are doing, you can get a good idea of whether it is worth investing your time. I know I was on writerscafe.org for a bit, and just decided that I wasn't getting many useful critiques. I was also reading so much really bad work it was ridiculous, and I felt like to do myself justice I had to give a good critique - but bad writing is a lot of work to do that with. I just gave it up.

As mentioned, groups can be of wide ranges - not just in skill and craft but also in life experience, age, etc. But you don't know anything at all about your local groups until you try. (Or until you set one up yourself. From what I've heard, Barnes & Noble is very receptive to hosting and advertising local writer's groups.)

Interesting... ok, that makes me feel a bit better. You have set a pretty high goal for yourself - 1.5-2k words per day is, from everything I've read, considered ambitious. So good for you!

I usually run on 500/day, but have modified to 5k per week. Going well so far. I usually get stopped up by research, but I've been pretty good about just putting things like <rank insignia> in that I can follow up on later.

Hi all!

Meant to post this a while back. Went to DragonCon, it was awesome, and by the way when did Jim cut his hair? Threw a bunch of people off!

Anyway, spent a lot of time on the writer's and sci-fi lit tracks, so I thought I would post my notes.

The ones listed with "Session <Roman Numeral>" are from Michael Stackpole's sessions. The others are varied, and I've tried to include the names of the panelists in each document.

Regardless, even if not everything is useful, there are a few good pieces of info strewn about. Hope the notes are helpful!

(Please forgive the clutter - this is just a junk home page for other things I'm doing. Document links are in the center of the page.)
http://www.novusimperia.net/

LOL - True indeed.

Although I hope that the appropriate comment isn't really "Fools flock together". :-D

Edit: Ok, I usually just use that in response to the "great minds", but in this case I don't want to imply that favorite published authors are fools! <G>

Aye, good luck. At the same time, you can often find writer's groups and critique groups in your local area.

My sig has the link to my local group's online presence. Take a look at how we do it if you like.

Faceless cogs really ought to work, but make sure that it all ties in tightly so it doesn't look like an obvious distraction. Even if the 'cogs' are all killed off, for example, they still have to have a clear motivation for having been involved at all.

On the 'setting the setting' part, sci-fi and fantasy readers are generally somewhat more willing to give you some time when they first enter your world. While I do think that you need to move it along pretty quickly and get the cogs out of the way, you can pack a great deal of setting information into one or two chapters. If you only have one main character (depending on POV and such) you may not need much more than that to hit the key points of your setting as well as key character traits.

So where a non-familiar reader gets tripped up, key words quickly build structure in the mind of someone familiar with the genre.

"As a partner, he was a pain, and if I didn't feel so bad about the first time, I'd have killed him again." Is an example of a phrase that has a bunch of info, both character and setting-wise.

Ok... I'm getting off track. Anyway, I think it should work fine. Just get it moving quickly.

Thanks for the info - they finally got the grids up. That's a shame about them not being too helpful. There is clear representation from the big gaming groups, but indies should really have a solid representation, particularly at something like this. Wish I could make the panel.