Balticon 47 Schedule

May 15th, 2013Posted by Veronica

Once again, I’ll be attending Balticon in Hunt Valley, MD, over Memorial Day weekend. Balticon is my favorite convention for its size, focus, and the opportunities to rub elbows and clink glasses with authors, publishers, producers, and voice artists in my field. If you’re attending, here’s my schedule: Friday, May 24 7 pm The Shrinking [...]

Expected Accomplishments

May 14th, 2013Posted by Veronica

Today, I turned in my list of yearly accomplishments for my dayjob, along with a set of goals and my ‘wish list’ for the upcoming academic year. Doing this kind of work always makes me wonder just what constitutes an ‘accomplishment’ in higher education; these days, survival from one semester to the next seems like [...]

Countdown to Balticon 47

May 7th, 2013Posted by Veronica

I’ve got a counter on the bottom right side of this page. It counts down the days, hours, minutes, and even seconds until something called Balticon. If you’ve not been to Balticon, then you might not get it. You might just think that it’s another convention in Baltimore, Maryland, where creatives congregate for a few [...]

Not Everyone Loves You

April 30th, 2013Posted by Veronica

It is a strange thing to know that at any given time, not everyone is going to like what you do or love you for the person you are. It is an even stranger thing to realize this and to know that you cannot do anything to change that person’s perspective or heartfelt beliefs. Luckily, [...]

The Meaning of “I Want to Work with You”

April 23rd, 2013Posted by Veronica

What do people mean when they want to work with others? I see this often on my Twitter feed or Facebook or on the correspondence from my email lists, and I’m never sure exactly what it means. As I am not afraid of appearing stupid in search of an answer, I’ll take this week’s post [...]

Spring Semester, Nearly Complete

April 16th, 2013Posted by Veronica

Spring semesters always seem to be more challenging than the Fall semester. I’m not sure why. For me, the classes in Spring are usually more difficult. Spring is usually when budgets start to get tight. It’s also when people start to scrutinize data from the fall and demand immediate results. Spring semester just seems to [...]

Your Degree is in Another Castle

April 13th, 2013Posted by Veronica

After a lot of thinking and consulting with faculty in my academic department, I’ve come to the conclusion that I cannot take the oral comprehensive exams for my Education Specialist degree in Science Education this summer. Instead, it’s going to be in my best interest to wait and do the exam at the same time [...]

Storyteller, FINISH!

April 9th, 2013Posted by Veronica

Finished. FINISHED! I FINISHED A STORY! All hail the ever-loving Magic Spreadsheet. Last night, while watching Louisville men’s team take the NCAA title, I typed the last sentence on the second full draft of Hollow. I never thought that I would make it through the second draft, but after 66,539 words, the proof is in [...]

Terrified – Click Send

April 2nd, 2013Posted by Veronica

I’m supposed to send an email today. The first five thousand words of the second draft of my novel, snipped and elegantly attached in electronic correspondence, should be sent to someone I’d asked about editing last Balticon. I don’t remember if it was over lunch at Chipotle (which was an experience in of itself) or [...]

Am I Enough? The Words of Scott Fried

March 26th, 2013Posted by Veronica

Scott Fried is a #brave #storyteller. Last night, thanks to one of my favorite students, I attended a… talk? presentation? seminar? class? event? I still can’t find the right word to describe it, because it was all of that and yet none of it. It was fascinating, visceral, emotional, enlightening, uplifting, heartbreaking, affirming… and probably [...]