X. Ho Yen's Author Newsletter (19 Aug 2024)
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* AAR: World Science Fiction Convention, Glasgow, 2024
* Reading Report
* Standard stuff — How to Help
=== After Action Report: WorldCon Glasgow ===
We’ve been wanting to travel again (it’s been a decade!), so WorldCon 2024 being in Glasgow became an excuse to spend the money.
The hope was to find ways to reach out to readers at the con. Unfortunately, the con decided not to assign me to any panels, and my brilliant ‘writer’ vest idea completely backfired. (If folks recognized the ‘Castle’ reference, they assumed I was cosplaying Castle! If they did not get the reference, somehow the message they got was that I’m about military stories, confirming their autonomic ‘judge a book by its cover, seeing a white male writer’ reaction. Argh!)
Nevertheless, the sessions I attended in person or via replay of recordings were valuable, and usually fun.
Here’s my sessions list:
* Fighting Fungi in Space
* Vegetables in Space (e.g. which you'd need for space ships or colonies, and why)
* Magnetic Technologies
* The Expanse
* It's Life, Jim, But Not As We Know It (what is life, how could it be remotely detected, what's likely to be found in our solar system and on exoplanets, ...)
* "Another Castle" Finnish Geek Women's Choir performance
* Hopepunk Meetup
* The Awesome Scottish Space Sector
* Nanomedicines
* All of Biology in Less Than 60 Minutes (the overall theory of biology)
* Inadvisable Rocket Science
* Is There a Dragon in Your Garage? (cognitive biases etc.; the title comes from Carl Sagan’s “The Demon-Haunted World”, required reading!)
* Neurodivergent Approaches to Stories
* The Case of Frankenstein 2.0 (or, life from a bag of chemicals, or life from a network of systems, or sf as science's/society's ethics horizon?)
* Low Earth Orbit Space Stations - What does the future hold?
* Are You Smarter Than A Monkey? (on science literacy)
* What Makes Childhood Books Memorable?
This is the difference between a WorldCon and a regular, local sci fi convention. A local convention might, if you’re lucky, have one panel along these lines, maybe two, maybe a few, and that’s assuming it’s not a local con that’s focused entirely on autographs and photo ops (or on fantasy and romance). And this list is only the ones I’ve partaken of, not the full list. Among WorldCon attendees, there’s true appreciation for real science and exploration as well as the arts and diversity.
I met a few fellow writers and have reached out to several panelists, but it’s easy to be cynical about that. The panels were worthwhile, though.
Let me speak of Scotland. This was our first visit. Everyone we encountered was awesome.
Before the con started, we hopped a train from Glasgow to Edinburgh and superficially toured the city. After the con ended, we had a bus tour out of Glasgow up to Loch Lomond (of “you take the high road and I’ll take the low road” fame), Inverary, Oban, and Glencoe, which was awesome. We saw highland cows up close, and we saw “Castle Argh” of Monty Python and the Holy Grail fame. Alas, a visit to “Castle Anthrax” was not in the cards.
Edinburgh is Scotland’s capital. Its large, main train station is named Waverley Station after a series of NOVELS.
Edinburgh also sports the coolest looking monument I personally have ever seen, the Scott Monument, built for a WRITER, Sir Walter Scott (of Waverley fame). Scott is credited with inventing the historical fiction genre.
The Scott Monument (1844) looks like some kind of Gothic rocketship.
Centered under it is a statue of Scott in a moment of reflection while writing, with his dog at his feet.
I can’t express how wonderful it was for me to see a capital city’s main train station named after novels, a gothic rocketship monument honoring a writer, and a statue of the writer including his dog, in contrast to endless castles, cannons, and statues of military men. Oh, there’s plenty of war in Scotland’s history, but that fact renders these things even more special, and speaks to the depth of Scottish culture.
Unfortunately, the timing was the worst. Apparently, the first three weeks of August are about several big festivals, so the number of visitors and the associated tourism peddling activities both shoot through the roof. The loud buskers made being in thick crowds very uncomfortable. It felt a lot like being in Las Vegas, at least down on the Royal Mile and near Edinburgh Castle. My pic from the upper level of the tour bus was in a relatively less crowded area up on Princes Street by the monument.
(pic courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
my pic of a gothic rocketship
Nevertheless, we very much enjoyed our hop on/hop off bus tour of the city, and our tour of the castle. For me, the highlights of Edinburgh were Edinburgh Castle (for its physical layers of history going back to the 1300s), the Scott Monument (gothic rocketship for a writer!), and The Real Mary Kings Close (subterranean!):
https://www.realmarykingsclose.com/
The Glencoe tour was fun and informative. Our driver/guide, Tom, was a funny guy and full of information. Inverary and Oban were tourist stops (to me), but Glencoe canyon and surrounds were astonishingly cool (and I’ve been in the Grand Canyon). Pictures don’t do it justice. The fact that it was rainy with a cloud base just at the tops of the mountains made it even more Scottish! The volcanic origins of Scotland are evident everywhere.
They blended our pic with one of theirs that included 'the plague doctor'. In hindsight, I should have requested the raw shot.
Glencoe and its resident Highland Cows
We have house exterior work being done and another couple of trips this year. We’re unaccustomed to spending so much money!
It’s a busy and disruptive time (remember all that medical stuff earlier in the year?). But I have confidence that I’ll continue to make progress on my puzzle book through this solar orbit and into the next. It’ll be a unique work, “very me”, so I also have confidence that it’ll be difficult finding its audience. Yet in ironical parallel I have confidence that I could be wrong because I’ve been wrong before — can anyone say “writer vest”?
I continue to seek creatives outside of the white-cishet-male variety for cross-promo on “Space Autistic Author”. I simply can’t continue to give the impression that I’m a club member. So Log 3 won’t happen until I find them!
=== Reading Report ===
After reading “Tales of the Incorrigible — Flummox or Bust!” by Kevin Bowersox, which I reported on in the last newsletter, I immediately proceeded to book 2, “Tales of the Incorrigible: The Ouroboros of Oon”.
What’s to say? It’s just as fun and smart as “Flummox or Bust!” and still has heart. The plot is impressively well thought-out and will surprise you.
Give it a try! For half the price of a matinee ticket, rediscover the joys of good, fun science fiction that has much more to it than a movie! These are quick and easy reads, and remember, I say that as someone who considers himself a slow reader.
The third book in the series released just this week!
=== Standard Stuff === How to Help ===
Why help? Since I subvert pop genre expectations instead of pandering to them, and because of my autism and other isolating factors, it’s extremely difficult and expensive for me to reach out into the world to find my audience. I don’t have a team helping me. Just writing newsletters like this is an exercise in self-esteem suspension of disbelief (swirly thing alert!).
I truly rely on word of mouth and grassroots support. In case anyone assumes this is some kind of gravy train side hustle, I’m still thousands of dollars in debt on this, and every convention adds more red to my ledger. I’m in this for the long haul, but I must keep reaching out and pushing. This is not “write it and they will come”, that’s the erotic fantasy romance section (which sells itself).
How to help: Reading my books, writing reviews (if you liked them :), and passing the word would be great. If not that, then one could post my one-page ads (see below, or on each book’s page on the web site) on appropriate billboards and tell people about my web site, https://XHoYenAuthor.com .
But here’s something very nice that anyone can do to help — request that “Minimum Safe Distance” be carried by your local library!
It’s usually as simple as going to your library system’s web site and searching for “suggest a purchase” or “submit a suggestion”. Usually, there’s a special page for that, and often it’s at the front of your dashboard.
They will want information like this:
Title: Minimum Safe Distance
Author: X. Ho Yen [please get the capitalization and spaces right, one after the period, another after ‘Ho’]
Publication year: 2022
Format: Book/Paperback
# of pages: 396
ISBN: 978-0-9766158-1-1
Publisher: Grand Unification Monastery
Audience: Adult
Language: English
Notes:
Good professional editorial reviews, including Kirkus:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/x-ho-yen/minimum-safe-distance/
“…Ho Yen’s descriptions of advanced technologies should please fans of hard SF, but what really makes the book work are the questions it raises about what it means to be a person and a member of a species.” Our verdict: Get It
Carried in Arapahoe County Library System:
https://arapahoelibraries.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S115C2180350
and the Colorado State Library Book Club Resource (https://csl.catalog.aspencat.info/Union/Search?view=list&lookfor=minimum+safe+distance&searchIndex=Title&searchSource=local),
and Biblioboard (https://library.biblioboard.com/content/a3f3fc17-626b-428b-b6a2-5b5a9a44a494).
Author web site: https://XHoYenAuthor.com
This process usually takes only a few moments once you find the book suggestion/recommendation page. Thanks! Put a reminder in your calendar right now!
I haven’t been emphasizing “Custodians of the Future” as much as MSD, but only because MSD has more kudos (which is because I spent a lot more money on MSD, which is unsustainable). I’m hoping that interest in MSD will lead to interest in my other stuff.
Space Autistic Author
If you haven’t watched “Space Autistic Author”, Logs 1 and 2, yet, do check them out. They’re only a few minutes long, but they’re fun! Log 2 demonstrates how SAA allows cross-promotion with other creatives without requiring anyone to vouch for anyone else’s work. Pass the word!
While you’re there, check out the other videos on my channel, especially the Galacticon ‘23 video (in 2 parts). That one’s longer, but it shows why my pen name is not cultural appropriation, and gives a fun overview of Mars exploration (since the late 1800s) with details of my participation in it, mostly on the Mars Global Surveyor mission.
https://XHoYenAuthor.com/videos
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All purchase options can be found here: https://XHoYenAuthor.com/books. Both sites include links showing how several of the big vendors allow you to gift eBooks.
Thanks for sticking with me! I hope it’s at least mildly entertaining to watch this author second career thing come together.
Please do share my page with fellow realism-based sci fi fans, especially anyone who enjoys Corey’s The Expanse, Older’s Infomocracy, Card’s Speaker for the Dead, Mandel’s Station Eleven, Suarez’ Delta-V, or movies like “Arrival” and “Don’t Look Up”. I'm convinced my books would appeal to the same audience, because I wrote them for me and I'm in that audience.
Thanks for your support!
XHY
https://XHoYenAuthor.com