Weekly Plugs for 8/16/07

I'm posting this from the road. All summer I had been planning on taking a trip to the NYC/NJ area at some point. Well, the summer is going by very rapidly, so after we got back from Pi-Con (which was a blast, btw) I checked my calendar and discovered that this was the only week I had available for the trip.

So here I am posting the weekly plugs from my aunt & uncle's place in Caldwell NJ. No Weekly Virtual Writing Session on Tuesday because I was traveling (which is also why this was a day late). There will be a new Zephyr & Reginald: Minions For Hire cartoon posted later today. The report on the Pi-Con trip will be delayed to early next week, when I also hope to have some photos from this trip.

In the meantime, though, I have some plugs for people we met at Pi-Con, plus some other items worth checking out.

Plugs From Pi-Con

This was my first time seeing Voltaire perform. I'd describe his music as "hardcore filk". Voltaire gave a great performance of his goth-flavored songs. Highly amusing stuff. You can sample some of his music at his site. Not for children, though.

Speaking of things that are not for children, Voltaire's Friday night performance was followed by the Come Again Players doing their live-cast Rocky Horror Picture Show. Great performances, and a really fun pre-show including a hillarious performance of "The Internet is for Porn" from Avenue Q. The Come Again Players do their thing every Saturday at Midnight at the Tower Theaters in South Hadley MA. Their 200th show is coming up on September 29.

Pi-Con hosted three great webcomic creators, The Ferret from Home on the Strange, Jeph Jacques from Questionable Content, and Randall Munroe of XKCD.

Sponsors of the con included Phoenix Games, located in Sunderland MA, and the online collectibles store Mike's Comics.

Other cool people I got to meet were author Sara M. Harvey (who got engaged at the con!), Comic writer/artist and radio personality Mike Luoma of Glow in the Dark Radio, comic artist E.J. Barnes, and Mike Kabongo of the Onyxhawke Literary Agency.

Other Plugs For This Week

Zen Gems - This is a new computer game from Fresh Games that game designer Sean Patrick Fannon worked on. You can also find it on MSN Games. Sean also posted a blog entry with a 25% discount offer. Sean is also the creator of the Shaintar: Immortal Legends roleplaying setting.

Writer Jeff Houser has a short story, "The Rum Runners" in the new nautical fantasy anthology Sails And Sorcery from Fantasist Enterprises. For more pirate goodness, check out Black Sails from 1018 Press, which includes Michelle Klein's new story "His Mother's Son". Michelle is also the writer for the Pirates Set 2 in the Gamescape Story Cards line of roleplaying supplements from Talisman Press.

Realms - This upcoming anthology collects the first year of speculative fiction from Clarkesworld Magazine.

Upcoming Events

Information is already online for next year's Pi-Con, August 22-24 2008 in West Springfield MA. We are tentatively planning on attending.

Next year's SPACE (The Small Press & Alternative Comics Expo) is scheduled to return to the Aladdin Shrine Center in Columbus OH on March 1-2, 2008. We are in the process of getting a table for this event. We should have it confirmed in time for next week's plugs.

Coming up sooner, we are looking into the possibility of attending the Labyrinth event put on by Wicked Faire September 28-29 in Edison NJ. I'm actually meeting with the promoter, Jeff Mach, later today.

Plugs For My Stuff

I write comics. My latest is Zephyr & Reginald: Minions for Hire #2, illustrated by my wife, Gynn Stella.

I also write an ongoing fiction serial at The Edge of Propinquity, which appears each month along with four other stories by very talented writers. A new issue is now up! Go read my new story!

I have three stories appearing in the upcoming Finis collection.

My personal zine is Caravan, which appears in the Phoenix APA. The new issue of Phoenix arrived in my mailbox a couple of days ago.

You can also check out my Comicspace page, my Deviantart page, my Livejournal, and my blog at Geekalize. I have four groups here on Gather: Geek Travel, Magic the Gathering Players, Wildlife Identifications, and Panel Discussion (Comic Book Reviews).

For the gamers out there, I sell Magic: The Gathering cards on Cardshark. My seller ID is rsilva. You can find my inventory here.