This weekend, in gorgeous snow-capped Timonium, science-fiction fans will gather for Farpoint.
Headlining guests this year are the winsome Felicia Day (The Guild and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog) and Mira Furlan (Babylon 5). (Matt Frewer, whom I was really excited about, has canceled; actors have to work, after all.)
There are going to be lots of other fun and interesting people there, too. Check out the complete list here.
Amongst those other people? Me. 🙂
My schedule this weekend looks like…
Saturday
- 2009 Comics In Review
Saturday 5 pm — Chesapeake 1
Panelists: Peter David, Keith R.A. DeCandido, Allyn Gibson, Bob Greenberger and Glenn Hauman
Which comics were good in 2009? Which were great? Which were glossy toilet paper?
- Comics to Movies
Saturday 6 pm — Chesapeake 1
Panelists Peter David, Keith R.A. DeCandido, Allyn Gibson, Bob Greenberger and Glenn Hauman
From the colored page to the silver screen. Making comics into movies.
Sunday
- Blogging
Sunday 10 am — Ridgely 2
Panelists: Peter David, Allyn Gibson, Glenn Hauman
Blogs. From tedious to genius, they run the gamut. Here’s a panel with people whose blogs get read.
- Sherlock Holmes
Sunday 2pm — Dulaney 2
Panelists: Allyn Gibson
The sage of Baker Street lives on. What is the appeal of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective, and what does the future hold for this sleuth in film, television, and print?
I may add a panel. 😉
There are some interesting panels this year that I might go and see. There’s a panel on beer on Friday night at 11 o’clock. Saturday night at 8 o’clock there’s to be a reading of The Eye of Argon that will also be recorded!
And I’ll also be taking a spell at the autograph table, but I don’t know when as yet.
Fortunately, I’ll have things to autograph! In addition to copies of Star Trek Magazine with my article on the Borg, I’ve produced two chapbooks expressly for the convention. The first, The Dream I Weaved Today, is a collection of some of my short fiction that ranges from the mainstream to the completely frelling mental. The second, The Scientific Use of the Imagination, is a collection of Sherlock Holmes pastiches and scholarly ponderings that I’ve written over the years.
Hopefully, I’ll see a few of you there this weekend!
Saturday night at 8 oclock theres to be a reading of The Eye of Argon that will also be recorded!
AWESOME!
We need to think about something similar for Shore Leave. The Death Wave?
Are said chapbooks composed of your own material, material compiled from elsewhere, or a combination of the two? I’d be interested in possessing a copy of each if at least some of the content is certified original Allyn.
Both chapbooks are material I’ve written. Some of it is material I’ve posted on here on the blog, and some of it is original material.
The Dream I Weaved Today has a ghost story (written for an anthology that ultimately didn’t happen, and I just haven’t tried selling it elsewhere), two “contemporary” mainstream stories (one of which was submitted to Strange New Worlds, a fairy tale, the Hemingway parody I wrote for Peter David’s Potato Moon project, and an essay (revised and expanded from what I wrote here on the blog, to make it more standalone-ish) about a hypothetical 1970 Beatles album.
The Scientific Use of the Imagination is a little more fanzine-ish, in that each story is a Sherlock Holmes crossover with something else. It has five short stories, plus a novel outline. One of the stories is “The Adventure of the Golden Ring,” which was a little piece I threw together years back that reimagined The Lord of the Rings as Watson might have written it. There’s also my first Star Trek: S.C.E. outline, which I hadn’t looked at since early 2002, and two new short stories that I wrote within the last month.
If you’re interested, I’ll set aside a copy of each, though I won’t get them to the post office until after the con.
How did you construct the chapbooks (template, from scratch, etc.)? I’ve been thinking of doing something similar, but teh stuff I’ve found so far online has been rather “blah.”
Thanks, Allyn. You know where to find me about the details and whatnot, whenever it is convenient for you.
Dayton, getting it up and running in Microsoft Word was pretty simple once I figured out how best to go about it.
I stitched a couple of Word docs together. I created a basic contents page, put in a section break, did a copyright page for page two, another section break, and then added a couple more files after that, separating each with a section break.
Then, I went to Page Setup on the File menu. On the Margins tab, about halfway down, there’s a subsection that’s called “Pages.” The first option is “Multiple Pages” and it has a dropdown. Select “Bookfold.”
This will reformat the entire document, because it’s going to change your margins all over the place. I then did a “Select All” on the document and went back and changed the margins again:
Top: .75″
Bottom: .75″
Inside: 0.4″
Outside: 0.6″
Gutter: 0″
Also, I changed the tabs down to 0.3″ instead of the default 0.5″.
Then, I went through and added blank pages to get to a page count divisible by four. If you do a two-page view in Word, remember that it’s showing you the right page on the left and the left page on the right.
Then, I completed the contents page.
You need to use a double-sided printer. I did a test print to produce “galleys,” proofed that, and once I was satisfied, I did a printing.
Doing the cover worked the same way. The front cover went on page one. The back cover went on page four. When I did the printout, though, I printed it to a PDF, and then printed just the first page (which had the back and front, reading left to right) on cardstock.
You’ll need a booklet stapler. I got a nice one at Office Depot for thirty dollars. (Though when I opened it, I accidentally put a staple through my thumb. I couldn’t even tell a day later; gotta love puncture wounds.)
One afternoon putting the files together, and another afternoon of folding pages and stapling for each chapbook. The major costs were the time spent, the stapler (a one-time purchase), and the cardstock paper for the covers. The end result is something that’s pretty much exactly like a classic fanzine, except with nicer typography and better layout. 😉
As I’ve said to some friends, if I sell a couple of each, that’s beer money for the weekend. 🙂
Jon, I’ll touch base with you after the con. 🙂
How about I skip the book and just buy you a beer? Kidding! 😉
Looking forward to seeing you again, sir. Too bad your panels are running at the same time as the Luna-C show. I would have enjoyed hearing your thoughts on comics and I think you would like some of the stuff we’ve cooked up this time around.
Thanks for the tips. I’m sure I’ll find some way to jack it up, but not for lack of info. 🙂