Official Philcon Schedule

It’s that time of year again! Philcon! I will be there, as usual, and here is my currently official schedule:

Fri 7:00 PM in Plaza II (Two) (1 hour)
DYSTOPIA IN YOUNG ADULT FICTION  [FAMILY FRIENDLY] (1422)

[Panelists: Rebecca Robare (mod), Gil Cnaan, E.C. Myers, Christine
Norris, Aurora Celeste]

Dystopias have long been a part of science fiction, dating back to
Huxley, Orwell, and other classic authors. In the 1980s, Young Adult
authors like H.M. Hoover and William Sleator explored dystopic
futures. Today, with the recent explosion of Young Adult science
fiction and fantasy, dystopia is all over, from Scott Westerfields
“Uglies” to Suzanne Collins’s “Hunger Games.” This panel will
explore the use and meaning of dystopia and its special role in
Young Adult fiction

Sat 4:00 PM in Crystal Ballroom Two (1 hour)
THE SCIENCE OF STEAM PUNK (1502)

[Panelists: Christine Norris (mod), Neal Levin, Fran Wilde, Thomas
Willeford]

There are plenty of stories (mostly set in a fantastic Victorian
age) about incredible giant machines run on the POWER OF STEAM!  But
just how plausible is it? And if it IS plausible, why didn’t it
happen

Sun 10:00 AM in Plaza III (Three) (1 hour)
USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO PROMOTE YOUR CAREER (1543)

[Panelists: KT Pinto (mod), Christine Norris, Alyce Wilson, D.H.
Aire]

Whenever a writer is on Facebook, he or she is not working on their
writing.  What are the potential advantages and distractions of
social media

Sun 2:00 PM in Crystal Ballroom Three (1 hour)
THE BUSINESS OF WRITING (1621)

[Panelists: Steve Miller (mod), D.H. Aire, Christine Norris, Alex
Lidell]

Everyone talks about the craft of writing, but what are some of the
hidden pitfalls from the business side of… well… the business?
From contract basics to handling taxes, published professionals will
talk about what you need to know, and what traps are out there for
the unwary

I will also be around off and on during the weekend in the dealer’s room. I WILL have books available, including copies of the NEW edition of The Talisman of Zandria. Stop on by the Dark Quest booth!

New life for an old title — Book (re) Birthday!

I think I’ve mentioned a time or two that I was working on a new version of my first book, The Talisman of Zandria.  It’s finally here! What’s new in this edition? I didn’t want to change the story, it was a nice storyline just the way it was.  What I did was apply all of the stuff I’ve learned about writing over the last decade to this nice little story. It is SO much better. I don’t know that I would necessarily written a story like this now, in today’s market, but I have enough kids that buy it that I thought it deserved a second chance.

It’s got a shiny new cover:

And a shiny new cover blurb:

Ivy Peterson is Less-Than-Ordinary. She’s so very Less-than-Ordinary that sometimes she feels invisible. She is also Not Very Brave. 
But part of her wishes she could be something More, that something Extraordinary and Completely Unusual would happen. What she forgets about wishes is that they do sometimes come true. 

Ivy accidentally falls into Zandria, a magical world that exists just outside her own. And she’s trapped there because someone has stolen the Talisman of Zandria, a magical amulet that controls the five gates the worlds. She and her new friends—the wizard Arden, his young apprentice Connor, and a pair of fairies—set off on a quest to recover the Talisman, a journey of discovery that will change Ivy in ways she never could have imagined.

And it’s expanded and revised! EXPANDED! REVISED! I think the original version clocked in somewhere around 50,000 words. This new edition is just a teensy bit longer, around 58,000 words. And you get A LOT for those 8,000 words. Cuts made for unnecessary dialogue tags! Expanded dialogue instead of description! (My favorite new part is the conversation Ivy has with Balthasar, the Dragon Prince) I have to dig out the old version and do some comparison posts. 

You can get a copy (or a new copy to compare to the old one if you bought it when it first came out, yanno EIGHT years ago), you can get one in Kindle , Nook or Paperback .  Hey, the old reviews are still up there, and I think they all apply.

If you’d like to add one, please feel free! I will warn you that the preview on the paperback (the ‘look inside’ feature) still has the old edition. BUT the Kindle edition has the current version if you’d like to take a peek.