Category Archives: Networking

Barbie Queen of The Prom: A Cautionary Tale

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The Barbie Queen of The Prom board

I’ve always been a big fan of board games.  Although my taste in board games has become more refined with the likes of Dominion, 7 Wonders, Agricola, Age of Empires III and more, I had to start somewhere. And I started with Barbie Queen of the Prom (BQP).

First, some background. Growing up, I primarily lived with my dad and my brother. I had to sit through countless hours of He-Man, college basketball, pro basketball, G.I. Joe, golf, and occasionally baseball. While I do appreciate all of these things, let’s just say I paid my dues. So every now and again, my dad and brother let me pick out which board game I wanted to play, and I would almost always choose Barbie Queen of the Prom. And I’m just going to write it now so the embarrassment for them is over quickly: my dad or my brother almost always won. They always got to be queen of the prom! *Folds arms, grumpy face*

The dreamboats.

Anyhoo, something funky was going on with BQP.  I had the re-boot version of the 1960’s board game, and apparently the rules weren’t any clearer in the 90’s than they were back in the 60’s (kind of like actual prom – ZING!). The basic premise is this: you start out with some Barbie bucks and with those you accumulate a dress, a hairstyle, a ride to the prom, and a boy to take to the prom (you didn’t have to pay for the boy, thank goodness). Then, when you got to the prom, you spin (sometimes over and over and over) until somebody gets to be prom queen.

But here’s the weird part – when you got to prom, if you landed on a friend tile (a token with one of Barbie’s friends on it), you picked it up. But the rules were extremely vague about what you actually did with this token. Before this point, every token accumulated was used in exchange for something. After some careful speculation, my dad, brother and I could come to no other conclusion but you could trade in one of your friends for an extra spin – that is to say: another chance to become queen of the prom.

What. The. (Youknow.)

All social conditioning from the first part of the game aside, what’s up with this trading in your friends thing?! That’s so not cool, man.

The moral of my story is this: when things aren’t clear, people can’t help but assume. In writing and in life, if you don’t make things clear, things will start to go awry.

Also, if something doesn’t ring true, people will notice.

All games take a bit of imagination and fantasy in order to come alive. Make sure that whatever you develop rings true and leads the audience in exactly the direction you want them to go (even if that direction is misdirection), or they may just start trading in their friends for a chance to be queen of the prom.

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Kristin Luna is a Marketing Consultant by day and writer by break of dawn. She prefers to wear t-shirts. Kristin, a descendant of the infamous Dread Pirate Roberts, is currently working on a Young Adult fantasy trilogy. When she isn’t contemplating marketing campaigns or writing, she’s crocheting, playing board games, figuring out yoga, teaching her cats sign language, reading, or getting in cabs saying, “To the library – and step on it!”. She is kidding about only two of those hobbies.

Everything I learned about the business of being a writer I learned at Superstars Writing Seminar . . .

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supserstars button

Three years ago my life changed.

Before dismissing that statement as being melodramatic, just hear me out.

It was 2010 and I was thinking that I might actually be interested in maybe someday pursuing a writing career. I was receiving Dave Farland’s Daily Kicks, and he mentioned he was putting together this seminar-thing (okay, he was far more eloquent than that) with a bunch of other top-notched and top-selling fantasy writers about everything you needed to know about the publishing industry, but no one was willing to tell you. The other instructors–Kevin J. Anderson, Eric Flint, Rebecca Moesta and James Owen–all have equally impressive resumes. The seminar-thingy was the Superstars Writing Seminar. I figured what the heck, I’d been going to “skills” seminars for about five years now, maybe it was time to get an insider’s look at the industry I wanted to be part of.

Best (professional) decision of my life.

Why?

The information and insight into the publishing market, including the self-publishing v. traditional publishing debate, was invaluable. Knowing the risks inherent for a publisher in taking on a new writer, I understood (and could work to circumvent) the barriers to publishing.

The time with the instructors was unprecedented. Remember that I said I’d been attending seminars for five years. Even with instructor-intense workshops, there wasn’t a whole lot of out-of-class time with the instructors. Superstars blew that distance out of the water. We went to lunch with the instructors. We went out drinking with Kevin Anderson. If you wanted a few minutes of their time, all of them where happy to oblige.

The instructor time ties in with a very important point.  They are some of the nicest and most open people you could ever want to meet. They genuinely want to help other writers succeed. They are James Owen and Iinvested in helping them do so. They have a wealth of information on many disparate topics and are more than happy to share that knowledge, whether it’s publishing, queries, hiking, micro-brew beers, mafia, European history or whatever.  For the price of asking, they gave us hours of their time to help us Superstars attendees move forward in our careers. And the guest speakers are just as open and wonderful as the regular instructors.

Then, of course, there’s the connections you form with the other attendees. The Superstars attendees are as amazing as the instructors. A group of the 2010 Superstars alums formed the writing group that grew into Fictorians. The picture to the right is of some of us at World Fantasy 2012. In addition to Fictorians, Superstars alums have an active Facebook group. We encourage and commiserate with each other. We are our own best cheerleaders. That network of people going through exactly what you are going through is invaluable. It’s also how I found my publisher.

Most of all, what Superstars did for me was give me the confidence to say, “I am going to be a professional writer.” It’s not a crazy dream. It’s a goal. Superstars gave me an understanding of the business side of the industry that I couldn’t get anywhere else.

Seriously folks, if you are interested in a writing career or maybe you’re already pursuing one, you are doing yourself a disservice by not attending Superstars. I highly recommend you attend Superstars Writing Seminar, which will be held May 14-16, 2014 in Colorado Springs, Colorado this year. Prices go up on  May 1, 2013, so sign up now.

I hope to see you there.

If you’re still on the fence, check out another great posts on this site about the Superstars Experience:

Q&A with the Superstars: Part I

 

 

 

 

 

 

Still Holding Hands: A Fictorians Retrospective

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In March of 2010 a number of aspiring writers, including myself, attended a seminar that inspired us in ways we’d never expected. I met a number of amazing people at the Superstars Writing Seminar. People whom I will consider close friends for the rest of my life. When Clancy asked if I’d like to stay in touch and handed me a piece of paper, I added my name to the list. I never imagined how that would change my life.

Every week for a solid year the Superstars Goal Group, as we called ourselves, sent emails to one another listing our accomplishments for the previous week and our goals for the following week. Kylie spearheaded the group during that time, making sure the email never skipped a beat. It was a great motivator for me, and I think it served a similar function for the rest of us. As we went along, I also noticed that when anyone had a question, with our combined resources and experience, there were always at least two or three people who had useful answers. Though most of us were unknown at that point as writers, as a group we had something to offer.

In one of those goal emails, on March 7, 2011, I posted this as an afterthought: “Has anyone ever considered putting together a blog of some kind? If everyone contributed and we only did weekly posts then it wouldn’t take up much of our time. We could do spec fiction, book reviews, or aspiring writer helps-talking about workshops, retreats, conferences, local writing groups, how we manage our various obstacles for our time… etc.” As you can surmise, the response was positive.

We invited a friend of mine, and very talented writer, Heidi Berthiaume to join our group. She didn’t stay for long, but she orchestrated much of our web design and helped us with initial formatting. As we searched for a name, a few of the more interesting suggestions were:  FlingingWords, respiringwriters, FlyingAuthorSaucer, and GeekAndYeShallFind. (P.S. Demian ran the e-vote and did the initial setup for the blog, and Rich came up with the name we eventually chose-Fictorians). Heidi set up a calendar page to keep us all on track, and Matt has always jumped up with technical assistance when those of us who don’t understand computer code need a little help.

I believe our first post, March 30, 2011, was by Nancy, “The Benefit of Holding Hands,“ and that summarizes the reason for all the name-dropping I’ve been doing for the past few paragraphs. What I love most about our Fictorian community is that we really do hold hands. We’ve critiqued one another’s work on occasion, we’ve written blog posts together, and we’ve cried and congratulated together during the most difficult and most successful points in our careers. From the blog’s inception, we’ve worked together in a way that I believe is rarely seen. And not just two or three people. Take a look at the Fictorian list, guest post bloggers, and the entire community. Even those who have been pulled away by other commitments remain guest posters.

With Evan as the moderator, the active Fictorians have had an annual conference call to supplement our email conversations and make the big decisions. In everything we’ve done, we’ve decided it together. The votes aren’t always unanimous, but they are always amicable. I feel supremely privileged to be part of this group, and look forward to another year as we strive to achieve our main goal of helping other writers.

In Conclusion…

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Hey all,calendar_25

We’ve had a great time talking about conventions, conferences, workshops, and seminars throughout the month. We hope you’ve enjoyed the ride. I wanted to take a minute and summarize our posts for the month as well as mention a couple of venues that didn’t quite fit into our schedule:

Some local conventions:

The big babies:

Workshops and seminars:

  • Superstars Writing Seminar (mention fictorians when you sign up and receive a free, autographed copy of one of Kevin J. Anderson’s books)-Colorado in May
  • Caravel Writing Workshop (6-day cruise with David Farland, Kevin J. Anderson, Rebecca Moesta, and Grammar-girl Mignon Fogarty; from Vancouver B.C. to San Diego)-October
  • David Farland’s Writing Workshops (mention fictorians when you sign up and get $20 discount or dinner with Dave)-throughout the year, most in Utah, but not all
  • Dean Wesley Smith Workshops (online also available)-Oregon, varying dates

These aren’t all the workshops and conferences in existence. There are many more. But these are the ones fictorians members have either attended or heard good things about. As you plan your year, and plan your goals for the year, we hope this list can help.

Stay tuned next month as we talk about romance in writing: levels of heat, as a main plat and a sub-plot, where to get information and instruction, writing different types of relationships, relationship conflicts…. It’s going to be a good month.