fun

Convention News: We Have A Table! a.k.a. On To Mobicon!

It’s time to stop being an observer and wanderer, and time to enter the trenches!

With that said, my first time in those trenches will be at Mobicon, the Mobile Comic Con, in May!  I’ll be right there at Booth #63 alongside a fellow author friend, Will Raspberry, who will be getting his first book out at the con.  Fantastic!

More information will be forthcoming as our preparations crank up.  There will be books, posters, and more!  Stay tuned!

Monday Musings: Everyone Should Roleplay!

Do you know what’s fun and surprisingly insightful?  Roleplaying!  More specifically roleplaying games, but honestly my points about RPGs count for lots of other roleplaying venues.  Of course, some of you may be asking exactly what I’m talking about, so …

Roleplaying in general is when people take other personas or personalities.  In this case, I’m talking about roleplaying terms of entertainment, like in actual pen-and-paper roleplaying games.  But if you think about it, most people have done roleplaying since they were children.  What else would you call make-believe, after all?  That, really, is what makes roleplaying games as an adult such a good thing.

Primarily, it’s a chance for adults to keep their imaginations strong.  Imagination is the source of creativity and it helps us all enjoy books, movies, and other creative works better.  It’s fun, it helps us get more fun from other things, and it keeps our minds and our wits sharp.

There’s another thing that RPGs are good for: it enhances our ability to relate to others.  It may not be possible to literally walk a mile in another man’s (or woman’s) shoes, but you can at least you can try to put your mind into the personality of one.  RPGs not only let our imaginations loose, they also let us experience new things, work out emotions, and learn about other people and other kinds of personalities.  Roleplaying at its best is the finest form of interactive group storytelling, and that’s a mighty good thing.

Stay tuned, friends, for this week’s Writing Is A Bad Habit on Wednesday and our Starving Review on Friday!  Until then, good luck, good reading, and good writing!

Fun vs. Meaning: Does writing have to be deep?

I write action-adventure, sports, and superhero yarns.  Those genres certainly would seem to represent a stronghold of fun and a refugee from deeper meaning.  I can imagine in some people’s minds there’s an inverse relationship between fun books and educational books.  If something is supposed to be ‘insightful’ or ‘meaningful’ or ‘instructive’, it’s really not allowed to be ‘entertaining’ or ‘engrossing’ or ‘delightful’, is it?   I mean, we have laws for that, right?

I think most of us that write or most of us that truly enjoy reading would find objection to that notion.  The simple fact of the matter is that most any piece that is written from the author’s heart bears an imprint of some kind of deeper meaning.  Sure, it may not be the point of the piece and it may not even be intended, but that meaning is still there.

Sure, that meaning isn’t always the most though-provoking and it may not even be properly explored by the story, especially when such themes are unintentional.  It still does not mean we cannot learn something from everything we read, even the really bad books.  Even the process of writing a piece can be eye-opening to the author as they discover things about themselves they never knew before.

The next time you pick up a favorite popcorn novel, stop to think about what other meanings are behind the entertainment.  The next time you finish a short story or a chapter or a poem, contemplate what meaning you have left behind in it.  You never know what you may find.