Posts Tagged ‘Conroyverse’

Awards Eligibility – # buffalito #tlh #klingon

2 comments Written on January 27th, 2012 by
Categories: News
Tags: ,

The nominations deadline for the Nebula Awards is February 15th, 2012, at 11:59pm PST.

The nominations deadline for the Hugo Awards is Sunday, March 11, 2012, 11:59 p.m. PDT.

And this is my official statement of what I have that I hope you’ll consider nominating so that I might land on a ballot this year.

I seem to be building up some credibility as a champion of small press, both as a publisher and because almost everything I’ve written lately has come out through small and micro-presses. Such stories have to work harder to get on ballots, but as the Hugo ballot a couple years ago revealed, it can be done. Ready? Here we go then.

SHORT STORY (Nebula and Hugo eligible):
“Yesterday’s Taste.” I wrote this short story at the request of Colin Harvey. He bought it for the anthology TRANSTORIES which was published posthumously two months ago by Aeon Press in Ireland. It’s another in the series of Amazing Conroy stories, so it’s intended to be somewhat light and humorous, but to me it will always be somewhat bittersweet because it’s the last thing Colin and I ever talked about. Coincidentally (no, really), I posted this to the Freebies section of my website just yesterday. Follow that link and you can download or read a PDF of the story.

NOVEL (Nebula and Hugo eligible):
Buffalito Contingency, my second published novel, came out last March. I believe it is the best thing I’ve written to date, but because it came out from a small press (Hadley Rille Books) not very many people have heard of it, let alone read it.But publishing is changing — for the better, I think — and having small press novels making some of the awards ballots seems like a good thing too. Assuming of course that you like it enough to nominate it.

FANCAST (Hugo eligible):
And finally, I only recently realized that DaHjaj Hol, the daily Klingon Language podcast that I did in 2011 (yes, every single #$%^& day) is eligible for the Hugo in the “Best Fancast” category (this link that will take you to the vast selection of podcasts). Mind you, I think you should also be nominating the brilliant podcast “Writing Excuses,” and I hope they win this year, but I certainly wouldn’t turn down a shiny rocket ship pin if my podcast makes the short list So, if you think it’s past time that Klingon is properly represented on the Hugo ballot, feel free to nominate DaHjaj Hol. Warriors everywhere will praise your name!

Thank you for your willingness to read my words. May they bring a smile to you.

Buffalito Winter Freebie!

No Comments » Written on January 26th, 2012 by
Categories: Freebies
Tags:

You know, it’s been a while since I posted a Freebie. Time to rectify that.

If you head over to the Freebies section of my website (http://www.lawrencemschoen.com/schoen-freebies/), you’ll find a new addition, a PDF of a recently published short story entitled “Yesterday’s Taste.”

This is a Conroy and Reggie story that I wrote for Colin Harvey. He was putting together Transtories, an anthology for Aeon Press in Ireland, and asked me to send him something. The gimmick of the anthology was to base some aspect of the story on a word that began with “trans.” It seemed like a fun challenge, and the result was “Yesterday’s Taste. Colin accepted the story less than 24 hours after I emailed it to him. Tragically, Colin died of a stroke in the summer of 2011, two and a half months before the book’s release.

I’m very fond of the story, and I hope you like it.

I’ve been writing lately

No Comments » Written on December 6th, 2011 by
Categories: News
Tags: ,

November was pretty good to me, from a writing perspective. I finally got myself back in gear after what has been quite the roller coaster ride in my personal life and things are finally settling down.

This meant I wrote most every day in November, yes even while I was away in Toronto at SFContario, and yes, even during Thanksgiving. As much better and more experienced writers have told me, writers write. It’s as simple as that, folks. I hope you’ll accept my lapse; somehow I managed to lose sight of this simple fact.

While lots of folk engaged in the annual headrush that is NaNoWriMo, I took a different direction this year. Instead of working on a novel in November, I wanted to write a novella. More specifically, I wanted to draft, edit, rewrite, and polish a novella within the span of the month. And I did. “Barry’s Tale” clocked in at a bit over twenty-thousand words. It’s been sent out to the handful of writers I’ve bandied critiques with for the last many years, and I’ll be receiving their careful considerations later in the month. I’m very much looking forward to it.

But that was November, and because writers write, I can’t just sit around congratulating myself for doing what I’m supposed to be doing. Nope, I need to move on to the next project. In this case, it’s another Amazing Conroy story, “Trial of the Century.” This is something of a necessary story, because it fills in some missing pieces that need to have happened somewhere between the end of the first novel, Buffalito Destiny, and the start of the second novel, Buffalito Contingency. It also features the return of the Arconi, the alien race from the very first Conroy story, the ones who can look you in the eye and know whether or not your telling the truth. The people that Conroy stole his original, fertile buffalito from, and they still don’t know how he did it. In “Trial of the Century” all this will be revealed, and more!

Like “Barry’s Tale,” “Trial” is intended to be one of the new, never-before-seen stories to go in my next book, a compilation of all the short stories about Conroy, so that readers will have them all in one place (which is especially good as several of the original sources are now out of print). The plan is to launch this book with much fanfare at the Worldcon in Chicago.

And now that I’ve brought you up to date, please excuse me, I need to get back to work.

Kudos to Michael Oetting!

No Comments » Written on October 31st, 2011 by
Categories: News
Tags:
Michael Oetting

Michael Oetting is a poet, a well-intentioned Klingonist, and a fan of my writing. He’s taken it upon himself to compile notes on every person, place, and thing in the universe of the Amazing Conroy, and along the way has pointed out patterns that I was unaware existed among my own creations.

He’s also very generously passed along his notes, and they are being used to form the foundation of the Conroyverse Index.

Thank you, Michael. Your support of my work is greatly appreciated.

Introducing the Conroyverse Index: Not a wiki

No Comments » Written on October 29th, 2011 by
Categories: News
Tags:

Right. First things first. It’s not a wiki.

I gave it serious consideration, but a wiki is unnecessarily complicated for what I need, which upon further review (and after some helpful suggestions from both my webmaster and total strangers on Google+) turned out to be a fairly small number of pages.

It’s conceivable, probably even likely, that at some point I’ll outgrow the current version of things, and so this index might indeed one day need to become a wiki after all, but that time is not today.

Browse your way over to: http://www.lawrencemschoen.com/conroyverse/, and you’ll find links to the assorted pages of things to be discovered within the Conroyverse Index, including the Additions page where you and other readers of the adventures of Conroy and Reggie can go and add your own stubs or entries. A moderator will go through these “comments,” edit them as needed, and add the results to the appropriate page.

So if you consider yourself a Buffalito Wrangler — or you’ve always wanted to be — this is your chance to help build the online databank of all things Conroy!

WANTED: WEBMASTER

No Comments » Written on July 26th, 2011 by
Categories: News
Tags: ,

WANTED: WEBMASTER

I need to find a Webmaster familiar with WordPress to upgrade my website (current webmaster having gone AWOL due to “life”).

Skills should include setting up Conroyverse wiki and bibliography pages within WordPress.

The ideal candidate should be willing to work in exchange for Klingon lessons, free books (not necessarily limited to mine, as I’m thinking of purging much of my personal library), tuckerizations, long-winded pontifications, and/or gourmet meals (assuming I can convince my wife to produce same).

Buffalito Contingency Release Day Coming Soon!

No Comments » Written on June 25th, 2011 by
Categories: Plugs
Tags: ,

Despite what it says over at Amazon.com, the “official” release date of my second novel, isn’t until Monday, June 27th.

Buffalito Contingency

Author Magazine reviews BUFFALITO CONTINGENCY

No Comments » Written on June 17th, 2011 by
Categories: News
Tags:

Over at authormagazine.org, Kevin Lauderdale has posted his review of my second novel, Buffalito Contingency

Most of the review is a selective summary highlighting various hijinx that appear to have really caught his eye. He’s not gushingly blown away, but he’s happy enough I think. Here’s the big quotable bit:

Schoen mixes inspired and occasionally anachronistic silliness
with well-designed aliens and hard science fiction tropes admirably.

Yeah. I’m good with that.


Buffalito Contingency “officially” goes on sale on June 27th.