Officially Cataloged

BLOOD ORBIT, my pseudonymous Science Fiction novel, now has an official catalog listing.

Season’s Greetings (Bow-Wow-Woof edition)

Have yourself a Merry Little Dogmas, and read this clever post about dogs pulling christmas trees on sleds (no dogs were injured or abused, they’re working!)

New Book–finally

Well… I guess I will have a book out May 8 2018 under my SF pen name K. R. Richardson. Originally submitted as Scattered Objects, my SF police thriller will be released under the title BLOOD ORBIT by Pyr. (cover and websites to come in the new year.)

Indigo Reviewed

Indigo got a nice review at Superhero Novels, which included a line I wrote. It’s nifty!

Books Being Given Away.

Tor.com is giving away a pile of books by all ten authors of INDIGO–the cooperative novel I worked on last year, which will be released June 20 by Macmillan. You know you (or some friends or family) want some of these, so go to the Tor.com Indigo Sweepstakes page and sign up!

Top o’ the List

The Greywalker novels are the first mention on this nifty list of Seven Great Urban Fantasy Occult Detectives!

Norwescon Schedule, ho!

I now have my schedule for Norwescon, at the Seattle Airport DoubleTree Hotel over Easter weekend. It’ll be my first NWC in… Uhh… 5 years? Anyhow…

Friday
Failing Upward
1:00pm – 2:00pm @ Cascade 5&6
Kat Richardson (M), Lisa Mantchev, Jack Skillingstead, Scott James Magner

Raising the Stakes
2:00pm – 3:00pm @ Cascade 11
Mark Teppo (M), PJ Manney, Kat Richardson, David D. Levine

Shady Characters
4:00pm – 5:00pm @ Cascade 11
Raven Oak (M), Kat Richardson, Tod McCoy, PJ Manney

Dialects in Fiction
6:00pm – 7:00pm @ Cascade 10
Dean Wells (M), Nisi Shawl, Scott Hamilton, Kat Richardson

Saturday
Deconstructing the Hero’s Journey
1:00pm – 2:00pm @ Cascade 5&6
Dean Wells (M), Evan J. Peterson, Kat Richardson

Autograph Session 1
2:00pm – 3:00pm @ Grand 2

Worldbuilding: Layer like an Onion – Writing Workshop
4:00pm – 5:00pm @ Cascade 12
Kat Richardson (M)

Reading: Kat Richardson
5:30pm – 6:00pm @ Cascade 2
Kat Richardson (M)

(I do have a session on Sunday, but it’s a closed crit for Fairwood Writers.)

Sold!

My pseudonym, K. R. Richardson, has had a good day. This turned up on Friday at Publisher’s Marketplace (I’m told–I didn’t see it) and a shorter version appeared today at Quill & Quire:

K. R. Richardson’s novel SCATTERED OBJECTS, a gritty cop drama set in a futuristic, multi-layered and multi-racial society, where an idealistic rookie from a powerful family and the planet’s first cybernetically enhanced forensic investigator from an ethnic under-class must solve a brutal crime, to Rene Sears at Pyr Books, by Sally Harding at The Cooke Agency. (World English)

Workshop Still Open

March 5, I’ll be teaching an intensive one-day Character development workshop for Clarion West in Seattle. Great characters don’t spring from the Character sheet; you fill the character sheet as you explore and discover great characters by writing. I’d love to see some of you guys there.

Down the Executive Orders Rabbit Hole

Just because I wanted to know, as of 17:30 Eastern Time yesterday (Saturday, January 28, 2017) Trump had signed 15 Executive Orders (“EOs”). That’s a first-week-in-office record, but not by a lot (Obama held the previous record with 13 in his first week.) [per Tamara Keith at NPR http://www.npr.org/2017/01/28/512055554/trump-signs-a-record-number-of-executive-actions-but-nothing-about-ethics ].

Executive Orders (also called Proclamations, Memoranda, and Letters depending on their scope and focus) are weird beasts. I’ll quote the Washington Post for a quick-and-dirty explanation: “Basically, an executive order is an official statement from the president about how the federal agencies he oversees are to use their resources.” [per Aaron Blake, The Fix, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/27/what-is-an-executive-order-and-how-do-president-trumps-stack-up/ ]. Although they aren’t specifically named, they are derived from Article II of the Constitution, describing “executive actions.”

I had labored under the assumption that EOs were a late-coming development, but, no, George Washington started them with his April 22, 1793 instruction to federal officers to prosecute any citizens interfering with the war between England and France. (Congress was out of session, so Washington was empowered to act “in emergency.”) And they’ve been with us ever since. HowStuffWorks.com has a pretty clear and simple article by Dave Roos about EOs, their origins, and how they work (or don’t) here: http://people.howstuffworks.com/executive-order.htm

There’s a complete record of Executive Orders at the Presidency Project Online (compiled by John Woolley and Gerhard Peters and hosted by the University of California at Santa Barbara) at: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/orders.php This is updated on the 20th of every month, so it doesn’t yet list Trump’s EOs, but you can find those published through January 28 here (but does not yet contain the Ethics Memorandum mentioned by NPR and referenced at the top of my post): http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/28/politics/trump-executive-actions-orders/index.html

And there you have it: Executive Orders and Trump’s EOs, as of Sunday January 29, 2017, to the best of my reportorial ability to ferret out weird facts. (I feel the need to break out my mad Journalism skillz once in a while.)

Upcoming

I’ve been putting things on my calendar for 2017, so here’s a quick list of the conventions, retreats, workshops, and other writer things I currently have scheduled:

Rainforest Writer’s Retreat (first session), Feb 15-19, (Rainforest Resort, Lake Quinault WA–sold out) I’m attending, not teaching.

A Matter of Character, Character-development Clarion West One-Day Workshop, March 5 10-4pm (Seattle WA) I’m teaching!

Norwescon, April13-16 (Easter Weekend), Seattle Airprot DoubleTree Hotel, (Seatac WA) I’ll be doing crit and other writer’s workshop stuff as well as general and topic panels.

SpoCon, Aug 11-13, City Center DoubleTree Hotel (Spokane WA) I’m the writer Guest of Honor!

Bouchercon, Oct 12-15, Sheraton Center (Toronto ON Canada) I’m attending.

Waywords at the Wayward write-in/writer community gab-fest continues every First and Third Tuesday 6-10 pm (Wayward Cafe, Seattle WA) Just hanging out with writers.

Other things may be added, as I know of them.

Award-related Self-Promotion

Because it’s that award-nomination time of year (though I doubt I’ll make any lists) here are my 2016 publications:

“Spite House” with C. E. Murphy in Urban Allies, Edited by Joe Nassise, Harper Collins, July 2016 (urban fantasy)

“Peacock in Hell” in Shadowed Souls, Edited by Jim Butcher and Kerrie Lynn Hughes, Ace, October 2016 (urban/dark fantasy)

“Valley Girl” in Fast Women and Neon Lights: 80s Noir, Edited by Michael Poole, Short Stack Books, October 2016 (crime/mystery)

“Drafty as a Chain Mail Bikini” in Upsidedown: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling, Edited by Monica Valentinelli and Jaym Gates, Apex Books, November 2016 (fantasy).

Hope I didn’t forget anything….