Visiting as a Guest Speaker
I had the privilege yesterday of visiting Dona Cady's science fiction course at Middlesex Community College. The class sounds like something I would have loved to take as an undergrad: they study the hero's journey, talk about myth and literature, read a lot of really excellent books, watch some great movies, and are required to play Warhammer as part of the course, using that character as the voice for a travelogue that takes them through the hero's journey as a creative writing project. Amazing, right? Dona has a real passion for her course material, and is really dedicated to giving her students a really good picture, not only for what the academic/critical side look like, but also for what the industry looks like. That's where I came in. She has several other guests coming, including Christopher Golden, and all of the guests talk about their career and their writing.
For me, that meant telling the story of handing out business cards, getting my first gigs through EnWorld, and talking about Dungeons and Dragons. Most of the students weren't tabletop gamers, but a couple who were asked some really great questions. More of them were familiar with the Forgotten Realms through the fiction, so we talked a little bit about the way games and comics do ret-cons, and I discussed not only the Spellplague (more of a reboot than a ret-con), but also taking over Cowboys and Aliens II from a different team, and thinking about what details (sometimes culturally and historically incorrect) we felt we had to keep to prevent ourselves from doing a ret-con. It was overall a great experience, and there are things that I'll do differently when I return to the class next year, hoping to get a little more cross-talk instead of Q&A. But we'll see--I studied in a very conversation based environment for all of my undergrad classes, so I acknowledge I'm a little more on the everyone-talk-around-the-table side of things than the lecture side.
That said, sometimes Q&As are great on their own. devonmonk did a great Q&A on her blog the other day and addressed one of my questions about online presence (since I've been thinking about that since Monday). I loved her thoughts on the topic (and they reassert my opinion of her as a genuinely sweet individual). The online presence and how it impacts how people read your fiction is definitely I'll continue to explore--not only because it's relevant to me as a writer, but because there's something really interesting going on with virtual worlds and how we create ourselves. According to Professor Cady, there's a correlation between virtual worlds and Asian philosophy, and that's a paper I'd love to read once she has it published.
Thanks again to Shelley/Dawnsister, one of the original New England Browncoats, for the introduction and encouragement to come up. She's another person I'd only known virtually until yesterday, and it's lovely to put a face to her online identity. :)
For me, that meant telling the story of handing out business cards, getting my first gigs through EnWorld, and talking about Dungeons and Dragons. Most of the students weren't tabletop gamers, but a couple who were asked some really great questions. More of them were familiar with the Forgotten Realms through the fiction, so we talked a little bit about the way games and comics do ret-cons, and I discussed not only the Spellplague (more of a reboot than a ret-con), but also taking over Cowboys and Aliens II from a different team, and thinking about what details (sometimes culturally and historically incorrect) we felt we had to keep to prevent ourselves from doing a ret-con. It was overall a great experience, and there are things that I'll do differently when I return to the class next year, hoping to get a little more cross-talk instead of Q&A. But we'll see--I studied in a very conversation based environment for all of my undergrad classes, so I acknowledge I'm a little more on the everyone-talk-around-the-table side of things than the lecture side.
That said, sometimes Q&As are great on their own. devonmonk did a great Q&A on her blog the other day and addressed one of my questions about online presence (since I've been thinking about that since Monday). I loved her thoughts on the topic (and they reassert my opinion of her as a genuinely sweet individual). The online presence and how it impacts how people read your fiction is definitely I'll continue to explore--not only because it's relevant to me as a writer, but because there's something really interesting going on with virtual worlds and how we create ourselves. According to Professor Cady, there's a correlation between virtual worlds and Asian philosophy, and that's a paper I'd love to read once she has it published.
Thanks again to Shelley/Dawnsister, one of the original New England Browncoats, for the introduction and encouragement to come up. She's another person I'd only known virtually until yesterday, and it's lovely to put a face to her online identity. :)