Unfortunately, I won’t be joining J.H. Glaze in Louisville, KY, for IMAGINARIUM 2015. I just know it’s going to be fantasmagorical! If you’re going, stop by his table and give him a hug for me. 🙂
Program cover designed by J.H. Glaze
Everyone is screaming for Imaginarium Con (except the unicorn).
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#JHGlaze tour heads for the #AtlantaComicConvention this Sunday — $5 gets you in the door
Two years ago, I issued offered to write an exclusive story for any who would reply to my proposal. Immediately, I received a challenge from AO Bibliophile.
Horror Challenge Topic: A Story of Historical Fiction
Just Add Water, by JH Glaze
In the last years of slavery, a Spanish slave ship named Trouvadore made land in São Tomé, a Portuguese colony off the coast of Africa. The year was 1841. When the ship again set sail, their cargo manifest included some treasures of gold, artifacts from the region and 280 slaves. This is their fateful story.
The natives from the kingdom of Kongo had been brought to the island weeks earlier after being captured by roving bands of slavers. They were awaiting a ship from Spain whose purpose was to transport the captives to Cuba. There they would be put to work on the Cuban sugar cane plantations.
Two weeks into captivity, this group was proven to be defiant. Led by the Priestess from one of the villages where the captives had lived, an uprising threatened to destroy the operations on the small island. The ruler of the island, Armando De Principe, gave the command that any dissident within the population found to be causing trouble must be executed and burned in view of the other captives. An example was to be made in order to regain control, and this would achieve the desired result.
On a clear night in the midst of unrest, the Priestess was detained. A bonfire was built from fallen palm trees and driftwood gathered from the beach. The captives were forced to watch as their Priestess was bound and thrown into the flames. In her dying moments, she screamed out a curse in a language her captors could not understand.
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Ahhh, Fandom Fest! There was a lot to love, and some things that could have been much better. I can only share from my experience, though I won’t voice my complaints here.
The drive up was as good as could be expected. We loaded up the car on Wednesday night, and left around 8:30 ET on Thursday morning.
Nothing much out of the ordinary, except we did see a burning car along the way. We’re talking flames.
We arrived early enough to set up that evening. We did not bring a table cover so Jeff rustled one up from the event organizers. (Some vendors knew to bring their own. Others had to do without or bring a bed sheet from their hotel room.) Fortunately, Jeff has run his own events before and he was not afraid to ask. In the end, our table looked fantastic.
I enjoyed getting to know the authors, publishers, and artists in our vendor area. It was nice to greet some I had only met on Facebook. One person had attended our Rune Launch Party just a few days before. Jeff was assigned to several author panels. Some he moderated, and at others he was a panelist. That meant I needed to learn quickly how to greet the gawkers and the walkers who might otherwise have walked right past our table on their way to get an autograph from some of the lesser celebrities set up in our room.
J.H. Glaze is terrific on the convention floor, and has recently published some tips on his blog. However, since he was frequently missing from the table, I’m glad I had Amy McCorkle at the table next to me. She cheerily called folks to her booth and immediately developed rapport. I tried to match her spirit. I’m sure I was a weak imitation, but I think I gained my conference legs as the weekend progressed.
Speaking of Amy, she was launching her Gemini Rising series and invited us to her launch party on Saturday evening. The whole conference was running late due to disorganization, so the whole party had to wait outside the room while Stan Lee finished up. Only trouble was that the food for the launch party was locked inside that room. You can read Amy’s blog to find out what happened.
Beyond our small piece of real estate in the vendor’s hall, I met artists and jewelers. I have a small project I’m working on and valued their input. From the artist behind Akumu Ink, I bought a signed t-shirt. I put it on Sunday afternoon and, from then until the time I got home (a 7-hour drive), I must have gotten at least a half dozen compliments on that shirt. Two people asked about the shirt when we stopped to eat.
All in all, I am left with somewhat of a bittersweet aftertaste. Fandom Fest organizers proved themselves to be disorganizers. Many people are angry and disappointed. Vendors, attendees, and even volunteers have joined a Facebook group called, Fandomfest Louisville 2013 was a fiasco! You can join there if you want to know what they are saying about the event. Some are even threatening legal action.
As for me, I am ready for the next convention J.H. Glaze wants to attend. DragonCon is right in our backyard. We will not attend as vendors, but as gawkers and walkers taking pictures of all of the cosplayers. That’s where those guerrilla marketing tips at the end of Jeff’s blog come in handy.
You can get a glimpse of Fandom Fest as I experienced it from our table.
Black Words-White Pages Teen / Young Adult Blog
I promise not to re-blog every J.H. Glaze post, but I thought you might like this one.
In case you missed the launch party for Rune, my new serial novel written with mature young adults in mind, you can watch the interview videos we made here. First, the welcome:
A little bit about Fandom Fest:
A little bit about why I chose to write young adult fiction, albeit Mature YA:
A behind the scene look into our writing and editing process:
I talk about Rune and try not to give away any spoilers. Susan tells about her reaction to the cliffhanger at the end of episode 2:
I talk about Compendium, Mostcool Media, and Susan begs for followers on her blog and fan pages:
Just in case you hadn’t heard…
If you haven’t started the Rune series yet, man, you better get going. The second episode in the series has been released. Get Rune, episode 2 (Nemesis)on Amazon.com, and leave me a review. Thanks!
You can tell by looking at the number of followers I have here and on my Facebook page and my new Facebook public profile that I am new to the world of social media marketing. So far, I find the experience to be challenging, stimulating, and humbling. There is always someone who is– or in my case, many people who are far ahead of me. Some have thousands of followers on many pages, blogs, and accounts that I never even heard of. I have a lot to learn. Some are patient while I figure things out, others treat me like that driver in front of you who is going way too slow. They honk and gesture and swerve as they pass me impatiently. Sorry! I mouth as they pass me by. Then I turn up the radio and try again to do better.
It began some years back when my daughter and my sister were the only people I knew using Facebook. My sister kept urging me to log in and see what I was missing. At the time, she often had important news from my daughter before I did. My first attempt to set up Facebook overwhelmed me. I had left my childhood hometown at the age of 17, lived in three other locations before moving to the Atlanta area. I figured if I had gotten along all that time without catching up with my grade school friends, I probably did not need to find them on Facebook. I vowed never to join. And once I learned about Twitter, I said, No way! What’s the point?
Finally, I joined Facebook and set up my personal profile. I was delighted to catch up with cousins, nieces, great-aunts, and, yes, childhood friends. It was a joy to me to re-connect and I wondered why I had waited so long. Meanwhile, my husband was on Facebook, building a fan page, having Facebook events and parties, and networking with other authors. I stayed out of it. I was enjoying my newly engaged social network and using Facebook to discover pages that appealed to my interests – healthy habits, green living, and political and spiritual interests that aligned with mine.
Little by little, J.H. Glaze was spending more time and energy on writing and promoting his books. I had been editing his books and leaving him to manage the rest. Once I came to realize what he was up against as an independent self-published author, I knew he needed my help. Maybe with two of us working together we could move the marker just a bit further ahead. Having no idea what I was getting into, I jumped in with both feet and hit the ground running.
Oh my goodness. There is so much to be done, and so much to learn. I have a long way to go now. I have some things in place, but I have a slow process of introducing myself to a vast network of people who are all about writing, reading, promoting and reviewing books. I have “met” many wonderful people so far. Some are so willing to give a hand up to another author struggling to get his name out, and some, God bless them, take time to read and review every J.H. Glaze book that comes out. I would love to return the favor and am working with that as one of my goals.
My first priority is to make sure I am helping and not in any way hurting the progress that Jeff is making. He is currently writing the next episode of Rune, the next novel in the John Hazard series, and a new novella. We will soon put out the Kindle version of Compendium with bonus material. We have prepared enough swag for all J.H. Glaze books to open a store– slight exaggeration, but still! We have recently redesigned the website, reactivated Jeff’s blog page, and started mine.
In the past month, we have launched the Rune series, with the 2nd episode recently published. I don’t even think I have covered the massive amount of writing, editing, networking, graphic designing and re-designing, tweeting, posting, pinning and blogging we have done. I feel good about our progress, but the road is L-O-N-NNNG, and we are just getting started.
I have probably bored my handful of followers with all this, but this is where I am.This is who I am. I am excited to go forward. I love a good challenge. A few stumbles here and there, I get up and brush off my knees. Leave the difficult and insecure people behind, join together with those who, like me, are just happy to be here. Now let’s see what we can do!
Website: www.jhglaze.com
Amazon: amazon.com/author/jhglaze
Facebook: facebook.com/JHGlaze.author
, facebook.com/mostcoolsusiepage or facebook.com/mostcoolsusie
Twitter: twitter.com/Themostcoolone, twitter.com/mostcoolsusie
Goodreads: goodreads.com/JHGlaze
Blogs: www.jeffglaze.wordpress.com , http://www.mostcoolsusie.wordpress.com
Pinterest: pinterest.com/jhglaze, pinterest.com/mostcoolsusie, pinterest.com/mostcoolmedia (personal pinterest page)
Maybe you’ve noticed one of the trademarks of a J.H. Glaze story. Animals. Animals play an important role in nearly every one of his books. In Forced Intelligence, of course, the animals have a starring role, but let’s take a look at the others.
In The Life We Dream, a deer adds a pivotal element to the story, and another one in the opening scene of NorthWest foreshadows the drama that will unfold later. In Send No Angel, some animal-type creatures play quite a supportive role as well. The new YA thriller series, Rune, casts a beautiful Labrador retriever to guide and mentor the main character. Even in Glaze’s new “secret story,” he has decided to launch the tale with yet another animal.
I think there are two things going on with this. J.H. Glaze takes a cinematic view when writing his stories. Perhaps he’s a frustrated screenwriter / director. When you read his books, you should not simply read them. It is better if you view them. See the screen in your mind. Follow Glaze’s lens. He is not simply writing paragraphs and chapters, but camera angles and scenes. Animals can help him set up a scene, or set the mood. The new story, for instance, will start low to the ground close up on the animal before panning up for the opening sequence. I won’t say any more about that before it is published, but you get my point here.
The second reason J.H. Glaze refers to animals so 
often, I believe, is that he become quite attached to our family pets and backyard animals. For instance, he stresses over their food quality making sure the birdfeeders are full of high quality seed, our fish and birds are very well fed, and the dogs… well, Harley and Jake are in a league of their own. Glaze cooks them up chicken and beef batches at a time and stores portion sized packages in the freezer. Believe me, it is quite a production. Each evening, he opens the freezer door while Harley, our sturdy little mixed breed helps him choose what the meal of the day will be. He serves it up with a side of chopped vegetables. Spoiled little beasties!
This morning, as the dogs headed out for their morning walk, they strained against their leashes to get at something in the road. Jeff headed down the driveway, and as he got closer, he could see that it was a turtle in a splat of guts. Poor thing must have been hit by a car, he thought. Considering it best to remove it from the road, he got right up to it and realized that the turtle wasn’t dead or even injured. It was chowing down on some roadkill… a flattened splat of frog.
Is that the end of the story? Oh no. Glaze picks up the turtle and sets him safely off the road. Then, he finds a stick, scrapes up the frog meat, and sets it next to the turtle. Something about that makes me melt just a little. So touching. Ha! So typical Glaze, a little sentimentality mixed with a little gore.
Funny, just as I was writing this post, J.H. Glaze was posting this: The Great Equalizer
If only life had an auto save setting. I mean, when you are in the middle of having one of the best days of your life, and then something happens to send you crashing into the blue screen, you’ll remain calm because you’ll know that you will be able to recover the temp file.
Yesterday evening, I wanted a little something to snack on. It might sound weird, but I decided to toast a tortilla. Turns out, I had to substitute a yummy gluten-free multi-grain wrap. After setting my toaster oven for 5 minutes, I went back to work on the web site redesign for jhglaze.com (should replace the old design by Sunday, July 15, 2013). A few minutes later, I hear a **Whoosh!**
I looked over to see smoke billowing out of my lovely little oven, and my husband waving his arms around as he is trying to pull it out from under the cupboards. Suddenly, there are flames, real honest-to-goodness FLAMES!
I run for the spray bottle filled with water that I had sitting on the counter, while Jeff is frantically trying to unplug the burning toaster. As you can imagine, the smoke alarm was sounding, and our dogs were running for cover.
This is NOT My Burnt Wrap – Click to read more about this one.
Nothing could save my blackened wrap, of course, but my toaster oven miraculously survived. I cleaned up the mess and polished it up good as new. Then, I snacked on a banana and went back to work.
After the smoke cleared, J.H. Glaze sat down at the table to begin writing a new *secret* story (probably a novella by the time it is finished). We worked side by side in creative reverie, a silence broken only by the writer’s need to read aloud the words he was weaving. It seemed we were both “in the zone”.
All at once I hear Jeff yelling, “!@-supply your own expletives here-#@!.” His beloved netbook had shut him down for an update without warning. Three pages of inspired prose lost. No recovered temp files. He had been so focused on the story flowing from his fingers to the screen that he hadn’t saved the file. No, his software wasn’t set for auto save (you can be certain it is now), hence the title of this post. If only we could reboot this evening and find the recovery file…
J.H. Glaze starting a story so secret that I can’t even tell you the title!
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Editor, Tweeter, and Warrior for J.H. Glaze and Mostcool Media, Inc
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MOSTCOOL SUSIE 