Future Friday: All of yesterday's tomorrows...

A bit of news to kick off our Futurific Friday post: I accepted an invitation to The Brass Screw Confederacy (brass-screw.org) in May. Brass Screw is a Steampunk event (not a convention) that takes over the idyllic seaside town of Port Townsend from time to time and has made the town a steampunk destination of sorts.

I'll be presenting a workshop on where ideas come from. The workshop, you might be amused to know, arose from a popular blogpost I wrote here called "Drinking from the font of ideas (Also Lasersharks!)" and takes participants through all the surprising ideas that can be culled from a single day's news feed and seeks to finally answer that persistent question: "Where do you get your ideas?"

Oh, I have hatched a thousand elaborate

heist scenarios dedicated to liberating

this sofa from its home at the Seattle

Museum of History & Industry...

"But wait," I hear you cry. "Howard Carter isn't really steampunk is it? Also, what does this have to do with futurism, Scott. This is Future Friday, so get cracking with the jetpacks and flying cars. I want to hear you rip on Elon Musk for nixing flying cars!"

Not a chance. Musk is basically right about the flying car thing and it depresses me to admit that, so today we're going to talk about Steampunk, and the tomorrows that we dreamt about yesterday.

Because that's what Steampunk is: futurism through different foci. We get so caught up in the trappings of the genre sometimes that I think we forget that part of things.

One important thread of Howard Carter Saves the World is the trouble wrought by a misbehaving family of time travelers whose Victorian meddling accidentally created the modern world as we know it. Their efforts to repair the timeline set up much of the plot that Howard and his friends become tangled in. The modern world as we know it is wrong, they cry. They want their tomorrow back and they're going to get it no matter how badly they mess up our present.

It's a subplot that burbles quietly in the background and will be more thoroughly examined in future stories because nothing fascinates me more than the difference between how we imagined the future and the future we ended up with.

So is it Steampunk if the setting isn't Victorian?

I'm not a big fan of genre restrictions, so for the most part I honestly don't care. However, for my money Steampunk shouldn't begin and end with the reign of Queen Victoria. The interesting bit to me isn't the airship pirates and top-hatted chrononauts. The thing that makes steampunk interesting to me is the idea of imagining a different past, a better past in which the wonders of technological advancement and inventive enthusiasm weren't saddled with the most shocking sexism, racism, and colonialism (among other appalling isms).  And then -- this is the important part for me and my story -- imagining the world of today that would have arisen from that better yesterday.

Because at some point, as storytellers, makers, and musicians, we should to move beyond the dreamy supposition of "What if the Victorians had steampowered iPhones?" and ask what a world would look like further along that timeline. So they had aetheric cell phones and flying ships and snazzy brass goggles... tell me what future that gave rise to. Because I'm not convinced that a more inclusive, more inventive version of our past would necessarily give us the dystopian worlds that most of my dieselpunk friends envision. (Dieselpunk being commonly anchored by a re-imagined World War One...)

Maybe it would. Maybe the chaos and war of the modern world was inevitable and the power of the aetheric phlogistonic manipulator arrays would inevitably give rise to a war machine that would lay waste to the world. Maybe. But one essential elements of imagining yesterday's tomorrows was the optimism that those dreams were based on. And I, for one, hold on to that. Because if you know anything about the real batsh*t crazy inventors of the actual Victorian age, you know that they were generally trying to make the world better, not tear it apart.

And I, for one, prefer that scenario.

Napkins, brain cells, writers, and clowns :: PNWA Wrap-up

When I got home from the PNWA conference on Saturday night, I emptied my pockets onto the top of my dresser. The usual wallet, keys, spare change, and pen knife were buried by the wads of napkins and envelopes, each of them covered in my handwriting.

Mind you, I had a Moleskine in my jacket pocket, two legal pads in my satchel, and my laptop.

And yet, I'm overcome by a desire to scribble on napkins.

There were a lot of napkin ideas this weekend. Enough to keep me busy for awhile.

We few, we happy few...

PNWA wrapup... I'm trying to get back into the groove of my real life. It's so cool to dive into a crowd of people who think and talk in the same terms you do and realize that as much of a wonk as you are, there are other people out there caring just as passionately about the same obscure topics you care about. A convention of like-minds. By comparison with the rest of society, writers are an odd lot. A happy band of rivals that are simultaneously competing for the attention of the same few agents, jockeying for the ever-decreasing number of slots available on a publisher's press... yet always happy to help another writer out. From the New York Times bestsellers who walked among us to the most gobsmacked first timer (cough-like me-cough) there was never a hesitation to help. We shared our pitches, advised others on word-choice and phrasing and honed our ability to pack a lot of information in a tiny paragraph that we could shoehorn into a conversation with any agent or editor that crossed our paths or (poor souls) walked into our elevator. I cannot lie... I joined the Pacific Northwest Writers Association because it was my local writer's association and attended this conference because it's close-by. Turns out it's one of the largest writing conferences in the country and one of the best by reputation among the pros (or so the pros told me). Writers, agents and editors are turned away every year. And there I was. You already know that the keynote was delivered by Terry Brooks. There were also amazing talks given by Joe Finder and James Rollins about getting into the biz and writing thrillers and pull back the curtain on agents and publishers. Robert Dugoni and Sheldon Siegel deconstructed their genres. The often circuitous path these guys took to get to where they are today is heartening to those of us who are too far along the path to turn back, but not far enough to see the heights ahead. The closing address was given by a guy named Chris Humphreys, who is a British/Canadian writer of historical fiction and young adult books. He's a Shakespearean actor and fight choreographer and spoke passionately about authenticity in historical fiction, voice, research, what to put in, what to leave out and his fascination with reenactors. He wrapped with - I kid you not - the St Crispin's Day speech from the end of Henry V ("We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...") which garnered a standing ovation. What amazing, funny speakers, writers at the height of their powers. Writer's conferences are a bi-polar experience filled with amazing enthusiasm and a great deal of frank and daunting honesty. Lots of emotional highs and lows. Incidentally, a comment I made in one of the sessions had what seemed like the whole conference debating how I should overcome the fact that there are so many Scott Perkinses out there, one of whom is already a writer. (The general consensus was the same that I have already arrived at, which is to say using my middle name and first initial) But the funny story of discovering that not only could I not get scottperkins.com but that there are two Facebook groups devoted to getting the Scott Perkinses of the world to coalesce into one super Scott Perkins caught people's attention and I was constantly hailed in the halls "Hey! Scott Perkins!" which was an interesting experience. Anyway, I'm still a bit high from it all and trying to focus on giving my manuscript a final polish before sending it off. I'll take a page from Chris Humphrey's and wrap this with a bit of Shakespeare from the beginning of the same play. The prologue of Henry V has always whispered through my head as I begin a project or when - God forbid - I am struck with the sort of self doubt that whispers that my subject is too big for me to encompass in my pages. "... but pardon gentles all, the flat unraised spirits that have dared on this unworthy scaffold to bring forth so great an object: can this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France? or may we cram within this wooden 'O' the very casques that did affright the air at Agincourt?"

-Henry V, prologue

-- Scott Walker Perkins writes literate thrillers and novels of suspense, set in the modern era but woven from the threads of history. You can read more about his current projects here or at swalkerperkins.googlepages.com.

Day One - Laughter & Lessons Learned

Had trouble with the wireless today, so live updates many not be possible. This is all very different from what I expected and so very different from what my internet researches led me to believe... -Scott Three important things I learned today...

1. The "One Sheet" that so many websites claim are an imperative for selling your novel or book proposal are anathema to the agents... at least the agents at this conference. They arrive by plane and depart the same way. I suppose that carrying a ream of paper in your carry-on bags isn't a desirable thing and the airlines charge through the nose for weighty bags these days.
2. Same goes for business cards.
3. Have two good pitches, both of them short and sweet. One for the halls and elevators and one for the table. This is all you get to sell your idea to an agent or editor.

I can't say as other conferences or agents on another coast feel the same way, but everyone repeats the mantra "Don't hand them anything, it's an imposition and they don't want it". Interesting how different the research can be from the application... Oh! And #4. Terry Brooks is a riot. (Incidentally, so is James Rollins, who was there to introduce him.) Terry had us rolling in the aisles and my wife nodding along as he talked about how weird we writers really are. And when I jotted down my favorite quote from his talk, Terry was nice enough to sign it. Once I find my download cord, I'll take a picture and post it for your amusement.

PNWA

THIS WEEKEND!!! (Wow! That got here fast!) This weekend (starting tonight actually) I will be at the Pacific Northwest Writer's Conference. Meeting new friends, sitting down with editors and agents to pitch my novel. The docket is full of the usual meetings on time management, platforms and writing groups. Tonight is the kickoff event with keynote speaker Terry Brooks. I'm kinda nervous about the whole thing. I've been to plenty of conferences in various capacities, but this is my first writing conference and my first attempt at pitching my novel face to face. I'll be liveblogging as much as I can when I can find a wireless signal... assuming my battery holds out or I can find a plug, of course. Wish me luck!