Steven Savage – Page 364

Hello everyone, hope all is well! Been a bit of a crazy few weeks with a cold and whatnot, but back and it and going! So where are we?

Speaking

I hate to leave people hanging, but I’m still sorting out my fall schedule. A lot of cons plan panels last thing, which means of course *I* find out last thing. I’m seeing what I’m doing for Kraken-Con and Con-Volution right now.

One of the most interesting additions will be, believe it or not, Yaoicon (unfamiliar with Yaoi in anime/manga fandom, think of it as stories of good looking men who like men, but the stories appeal to women and you get the idea). I’ll be doing both careers and a cooking panel there since they want to cover future professionals and more Japanese Culture. I admit it’s unexpected, but should be interesting. I’m getting a confirmed schedule.

Coaching

Starting to do some coaching again. My time is limited, but you can always ping me if you need help!

I plan to try out some new creative coaching/speaking in October!

Writing

A few upcoming writing plans outside the books – stay tuned . . .

Sailor Moon Book

Interviews are about at the 50% mark, which means we can start planning some of the book structure next month as we have enough to get the basic pattern. That may sound great, but we’re looking at an all day jam session, so it’s gonna be a bit trying – but it’s best to knock it out all at once.

The structure as I noted pretty much has changed from what I expected. At the core we found a lot more common experiences than expected – it’s as if most people’s Sailor Moon experiences and attitudes are about 70% alike with a few exceptions – and the exceptions still touch on “core” experiences. Then there’s more “peripheral” experiences where we find one group has experience A, or one group has personal attitude B, but it’s not as commonplace.

I’ve learned a lot working on it so far. I can say without reservation I had severely underestimated the impact Sailor Moon has had on people – and this is me.

The interviewees are, as expected, awesome and very helpful. I’ve also met a lot of great people I hope to keep in touch in – in fact, I may be doing even more cons in 2016, so perhaps I’ll be seeing some in person!

Way With Worlds

Well this is a bit of a poster, so let’s dive in.

When I rewrote Way With Worlds, I eventually intended it to be a book, but as I was rewriting columns from 15 years ago I also added a lot, did different voices, small series, etc. Now I’ve got to get it back into a book.

What I’m finding is that the quality was – frankly – erratic. Sometimes its precise (I’m proud of some of my columns on Magic and Technology), other times it kind of meanders, and a few times I somehow avoided the point (like my discussions on Race and culutre). I think at times it was turning a braindump of 15 years ago into another braindump – and other times it was polishing and precision.

A few of them make me go “Did I publish that unedited?”

So editing is a lot more work than I expected. Things get cut down, rearranged, rephrased, and in one case I actually am having to reverse a previous conclusion.

The plus side is I think when it’s done it’s going t be a seriously great book on Worldbuilding. I’ve already got some semi-sequels in mind for smaller books focusing on specific issues.

That’s it for me. What’s been up with you?

Respectfully,

– Steven Savage
http://www.musehack.com/
http://www.informotron.com/
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/

The Sailor Moon book, on female fans in North America, proceeds apace. More and more interviews as always – we’re about 2/3 where I want to be, so I expect we’ll be doing these into October.

Even at this stage, the major themes are very clear, so Bonnie and I need to review the structure in a month or so. What’s actually surprising is the lack of surprises at times – how certain patterns pop up again and again (no, not spoiling yet, I want to get further on). There’s some larger phenomena in this fandom that are worthy of exploration – something we hope this book will encourage.

We haven’t done as much historical research lately and probably need to do more – but we’re getting some good information from our interviews, including fan history. Sites that vanished or reappeared, impacts of shutdowns, and so on. I hope we can present a pretty good timeline as part of the book.

My latest schedule review still puts us at releasing a little under 12 months from now, so you still have to wait, but we will probably create a great gift for Christmas 2016 . . .