Archive for September, 2010
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Ralph Vicinanza
Tomorrow morning, very early, I will fly off to New York for Ralph’s funeral.
For over 15 years, Ralph was my literary agent. He died very suddenly last weekend, at the age of 60, of a brain aneurysm. Gone, just like that.
Ralph Vicinanza changed my life. There are not enough pixels for me to explain that statement completely. But a rough summary is that Ralph was responsible for the ‘creation’ of Robin Hobb. If he had not become my agent, I do not think I would have written the books I wrote, or if I did, that they would have reached the audience they reached. I could always count on his honesty, in all aspects of my writing life.
So, here I am, taking time in the middle of my very busy life, to go to his funeral. And I am angry with myself, because I never just decided to take time out from my very busy life to fly to New York when he was alive. Our face to face meetings were very few, usually when a convention or other gathering brought us together.
Most of our work was conducted via telephone calls and email. But I really enjoyed the times when we got to talk face to face. So why didn’t I go out of my way to create more of those?
So, do me a favor. Think of those people you really enjoy and make more time for them.
I didn’t much like the last piece of advice he gave me. And I was putting off discussing it with him because, in retrospect, I already knew he was right and he would ‘win’ the discussion. Now I wish I’d called.
But, as I ended up doing with every piece of advice he gave me, I will be following it. More on that in a few months.
Robin
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Tail Wagging Ending!
Tonight, Bandit the German Shepherd pup is safely home with his family!
We loved having a puppy in the family for a while, but are glad he is home and happy.
Robin
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Just my month for critters
First, Giles brought me the injured flicker. We sent that one up the big tree in my back yard.
Then it was the bat in the coffee cup.
Off to the plum tree for him, and since then to parts unknown.
Now it’s a ‘teenager’ German Shepherd pup, rescued from traffic on Orchard and N. 30th. A very handsome pup. The vet estimates age at 9 months. Black collar, no tags, no microchip. And the not-so-little fellow desperately wants to go home. We’ve put up flyers and an ad on Craig’s List, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone looking for him. But there MUST be: he’s so gentle, so well behaved, partially trained to sit, etc, and so unhappy at not being with his family. Our dogs and cats have been very forebearing with him but he really needs to find his people . . .
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Bat in your coffee?
So. How did your day begin today?
Mine started when two of my grown offspring showed up with a gift for me.
A bat in a paper coffee cup, with a napkin on top.
They had rescued him from Satellite Coffee here in Tacoma. He’d become disoriented and ended up on the roof there, shivering and showing his tiny bat teeth to anyone who threatened him.
So of course they gathered him up in the coffee cup and brought him to my house.
I took him outside and carefully hung him up in the mock orange bush. After a brief recovery time, he clambered to the edge of the bush and took flight to the plum tree, where the foliage is even more dense.
Pi sniffed the now empty coffee cup and said that if she’d known Satellite was serving Bat Lattes, she would have become a customer long ago.
Robin
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Off to College
There are many difficult parts to sending the youngest child off to college.
One of those is trying to explain to the Princess that she is not going, too.
Robin
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PAX
Not the meaning that might first come to you!
I went to PAX on Saturday. Penny Arcade Expo, the largest gaming oriented gathering in the US. It was at the Seattle Convention Center.
Most of you know I don’t game. I went because Journey Quest, a webisode movie, was getting its first screening there, a sneak peak at the first 3 episodes.
Journey Quest is brought to us in part by The Dead Gentlemen, the same fine folks who brought us The Gamers and Dorkness Rising. It is also (ahem! Parental brag warning!) co-produced by my daughter Kat Ogden. So we obtained passes and went up to view the preview, and to tour the convention.Regarding the convention: I am OLD! Incredibly old. I was probably almost the oldest person there. The demographic was about 65 to 75 percent male, and went from teens to 30′s, for the most part. They were dedicated gamers, and there was a ravening horde of them. It was a veritable anthill of gamers. I will also mention that they seemed to be a notch up in courtesy from the more recent cons I’ve attended. People waited in line patiently, chatting and gaming on their phones and other devices. They took turns without complaint. They assisted clueless people (like me!) It was a very enjoyable gathering.
Gamers, I observe, are much more singled minded than the fans at SF conventions. There were some gaming related costuming, but not much. I saw one rack of wooden swords for sale. T-shirts and hats were swag, and lots of buttons. But by and large, the whole gathering was about games. Tabletop games, computer games, LARP’s, console games, on-line games, gaming in every possible form. It was going on everywhere, in every available space. I had my 5 year old grandson with me, and he was intent on trying every game that he was allowed to try. So he did KUNG FU LIVE! In which they mapped his body, and he appeared as himself on the screen, leaping and kicking and punching the bad guys. The stunning young woman and the fellows running the booth were very good-natured about the difficulties of body-mapping a five year old in an area seat up for adults. My grandson quickly caught on to striking the forms so the mapper could find him. And then the fight was on. He did, of course, conquer the bad guy, to a great deal of good-natured cheering from on-lookers in the area. He walked away feeling as if he were 7 feet tall.
Then we went on to test drive the new Sonic game. There, he was having a tough time with an unfamiliar controller. No one got impatient. Instead, a young man leaned over and without attempting to take the controller from him, walked him through the moves so that he could complete the level. How cool is that?
And PAX had a great DS area for winding down. It was a large lobby, carpeted with beanbag chairs. Bring your own DS, hand over your grandmother’s driving license as collateral, and try out any DS game they had there. Great fun and a wonderful way to know which games to buy.
As Journey Quest was a late addition to PAX, the showing was not in the exposition booklet. So we had hundreds of postcards to hand out that not only advertised its debut but its upcoming release FREE on the internet. So as we wandered about, we were accosting people and thrusting postcards at them and saying, “Free movie tonight! It’s not on the schedule! Wander up to the Unicorn room at 9.”
At 8:30, we went up to the Unicorn room. I was nervous that we wouldn’t have any viewers,but 300 people showed up! The preview went very well, there was much laughter in all the right places, and my grandson was extremely proud of ‘my mom’s movie.’ (Of course, in his mind, she did it all, you know.) And afterwards, there was a panel for question and answers. People were interested, the session was lively, and I managed to spirit my grandson away before he collapsed from exhaustion.
Plus, I had the final pleasure of running into an old friend that I hadn’t seen in 16 years. It was great to see that Tracy is doing well and is a real, live grown up, with a 16 year old of his own now. So, that was the frosting on the cake that was PAX.
My younger daughter and one of her close friends attended PAX and gave it very high marks in all areas. They are both enthusiastic gamers and found the expo very much to their liking. I undestand that PAX EAST will be in Boston soon. If you game at all, I suspect you would greatly enjoy it. The energy and vitality of the gathering was contaigious,even to someone like me. It made me aware, yet again, that gaming is something I’d love to do . . . if I dared!
I had to firmly remind myself that I already had an obsession, and that mine comes with deadlines!
Robin
