The Okal Rel Universe in evolution and in the world.

 
Here's me (in the yellow shirt over black top, near the centre) Friday Oct 23, 2009 at the very nice welcome event held for me in the cafe area of Quesnel CNC Phase I building. I started as Associate Regional Director of CNC in Quesnel on Oct 13, which is why I've been a bit out of touch. Still working on getting two-way e-mail going in "the hovel" - the trailer where I'm living while Angela finishes up high school in Prince George. Surrounding me in the picture are staff and faculty who turned out for the snacks and wine, including my new boss Regional Director Bestsy Ives (blue sweater with floral panels on the front, to my right in the picture).

Labels: CNC, Lynda Williams, Quesnel

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Met new Edge-ite Tina Hunter at Con-Version 25 in Calgary. She's the one with dark hair on the left in this picture of my panel in the "Lit/books/reading" stream entitled "Women who don't kick butt. Can they still win hearts and minds?" Tina has published short fiction with Edge. Sandra Fitzpatrick is the participant on the right. The book she has in front of her is a copy of the first edition of Opus 2 (the 2nd Okal Rel anthology) which she undertook to get signed by the Calgary contributors (including herself). Now it is my job to get the B.C. contributors to sign it and send it on to collector Peter Halasz. I suggested this panel topic based on my experience with Sam O'Pearl, the "girl next door" type of Demish princess who enters the Okal Rel Saga in Part 6: Avim's Oath. Although a princess (meaning she is more than 50% Sevolite), Sam is small potatoes in the Demish hierarchy. And although she is a bit of a tom-boy adventurer in the context of the parochial neighborhood where she grew up, she is way out of her league in that regard on Gelion. But she's fun, resilient and most of all a feeling, breathing character with plenty of life challenges to work through.

Labels: Con-Version 25, Edge, Lynda Williams, Sandra Fitzpatrick, Tina Hunter

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Had a good visit with family and friends at the Prince George Exhibition earlier this month, where anthology author Elizabeth Woods and I manned the P.G. Library's author table. Not particularly an SF crowd passing through but we had a good time hanging out. Great popcorn. And discovered super-cold ice cream chips.

PS Just back from Conversion 25 in Calgary today, but David Lott's file transfer batch job is hanging on the home network and I'm away again starting tomorrow, so pictures from Con-version will have to wait until the weekend. :-( Met some new Edge people (new to me at least), bought a sword, did two panels, and took pictures to help me remember and share.

Labels: Elizabeth Woods, Lynda Williams

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Started working on a facebook page yesterday. Want to consolidate the 'gathering' function online. Come sign up! The URL is http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lynda-Williams/69101973948. David Lott is helping with technical problems. You can reach him at david@okalrel.org

Labels: David Lott, facebook, Lynda Williams

posted by Lynda at 07:28   0 comments permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments links to this post

 
Here's a shot of me at the EDGE booth, at VCON 33 in Vancouver this past weekend. I'm holding up one of 50 special pre-publication copies of Horth in Killing Reach by Craig H. Bowlsby, created just for VCON. The title is the first full novella by another author than myself to come out under my editorship in the Okal Rel Legacy line (see http://www.absolute-x-press.com/catalog/ for more about the legacy line). It will be available in perfect binding soon, through regular distribution channels as well as online in digital form from http://www.absolute-x-press.com.

Labels: Craig Bowlsby, Horth Nersal, Lynda Williams, VCON

posted by Lynda at 17:29   0 comments permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments links to this post

 
Pleased to have a half-page spread in the program for Conversion 24. It wasn't a large turn out this year but we had good people-times at the bar and it was awesome to see the growing display of ORU books at the Edge table in the dealer's room. It was fun to have Tegan and Mel there, too. They even dressed up for the ORU event and joined us in the bar - for Shirly Temples in their case. Justyn Perry had out the first Absolute XPress catalog which includes two of the ORU anthologies, thus far, and three of my novellas. Making progress with Craig Bowlsby's novella and the third anthology. See David's choices of all the pictures we took on my Con's Attended Page for ConVersion 24.

Labels: Absolute XPress, Con-Version 24, David Lott, Justyn Perry, Lynda Williams, Mel, Tegan

posted by Lynda at 11:58   0 comments permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments links to this post

 

I got a little long winded at the 15 minute presentation and got through only the first half of what I had prepared to present at my actual talk, during the July 1-3 intr-disciplinary.net conference. I wasn't the only one challenged by the short time frame (which I thoroughly approved of!) but felt a bit chagrined because the first half of the paper is "all about me". That is, it explores how my life experience brought me to the conclusion identity is central to the two big Good Things I care about: the integrity to be ethical and the ability to 'soul touch' others. After that I explain how Amel represents a thought experiment in identity-resilience and why an approach to problem solving I call 'naked virtuality' might be useful in fields other than authorship. But people can read all about it if they want the rest of it. Arriving at identity as core to the Good Life was important. I've got more pictures from the cyber3 conference, Vision of Humanity in Cyberspace celebrating the very interesting people I met there and places I saw. When David gets back, he'll do me an event page for it.

Draft Paper Below

DRAFT copy of Character as Virtual Reality Experiment in Identity by Lynda Williams (PDF)

Labels: academic paper, Amel, Appearances, Identity, interdisciplinary.net, Lynda Williams

posted by Lynda at 07:49   0 comments permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments links to this post

 
Here's a shot of me in the dining room at Mansfield College, Oxford, where I gave a paper on Amel as a virtual reality experiment in identity for interdisciplinary.net conference Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace and Science Fiction. Don't I look dignified! I look pretty goofey in other shots. There's a thumb nail sketch of my life in there somewhere. I thought the room looked a lot like I imagined the Breakfast Room in Green Hearth, except the Breakfast Room has just the one big table and would be smaller than any dining hall expected to feed a whole college of students. On the whole, Mansfield College itself was a pocket university and a step back in time which had the air of being whisked into the twenty-first century unprepared. It was nice.

Labels: interdisciplinary.net, Lynda Williams, Mansfield College

posted by Lynda at 07:31   0 comments permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments links to this post

 

Much thanks to teacher Rita McInnis-Ryan, David Lott, student Nicole and other volunteers who helped connect students at D.P. Todd Secondary School with the Okal Rel Universe Thursday, April 24, 2008. David Lott helped me set up, modeled the Ann T-Shirt and put up a page for the April 24 2008 Visit to DP Todd. We had a reading by Nicole (center in picture) and some mock duels as well as slide shows, questions and a book giveaway to students interested in doing art, skits, dress up or otherwise strutting their own interpretations of the ORU for the launch of Book #3, Pretenders, in September at the Prince George Public Library.

Labels: Appearances, David Lott, Lynda Williams, Rita McInnis

posted by Lynda at 12:07   0 comments permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments links to this post

 
I am interviewed by Marie Bilodeau on this week's On the EDGE. There'll be more coming in the podcast realm from the ORU, so sign up to the EDGE podcast using your favorite podcast aggregator. In this interview I talk about the origins of Okal Rel in my disgust at the cold war mentality, the character Horth Nersal, and the theme of opportunism vs. integrity in Righteous Anger.

Labels: Horth Nersal, Justyn Perry, Lynda Williams, okal rel, Righteous Anger

posted by Lynda at 14:23   0 comments permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments links to this post

 

Finally starting to play with my Mac a little. It's always a healthy sign for me when I want to play so I decided to celebrate by sharing the result. :-) Here's what I was able to make of a quick-and-ugly photobooth shot on my Mac, at work, using iPhoto effects. Not up to Justyn's powers of Photoshop mastery, of course, but this one isn't going in the EDGE catalog. :-)

Labels: Lynda Williams

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Delighted to be keynote speaker at Quantum Leaps in Terrace, B.C., Nov 29. I'll be talking about how studying science and technology can lead young women into creative places, like writing science fiction, with lots of meaningful work and exciting stops along the way.

Labels: Appearances, Lynda Williams

posted by Lynda at 17:43   0 comments permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments links to this post

 

Many thanks to video maven Stephen St. Laurent for taping the Righteous Anger book launch at the P.G. Public Library and making this video clip for me afterwards. The clip includes a cameo picture of Craig Bowlsby, fencing advisor for Righteous Anger, and footage of the fencing demo put on by Phil Clark and his comrades.

Labels: Book Launch, Craig Bowlsby, Lynda Williams, okal rel, Phil Clark, Righteous Anger, Stephen St. Laurent, Swords

posted by Lynda at 11:38   0 comments permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments links to this post

 

Big "Thank You" to Janice Shoults of Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing for tidying up the entry for me in the Wikipedia. It had got out of date and collected a "looks like an ad" warning. :-(

Labels: Lynda Williams, Wikipedia

posted by Lynda at 10:47   0 comments permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments links to this post

 

Particularly pleased to be the Federation of BC Writers' featured author with my Prince George book launch coming up for Righteous Anger, and by the rather impressive list of collaborators on ORU projects I was able to cite for the feature. Special thanks to those whose names appear!

Labels: Federation of BC Writers, Lynda Williams, Righteous Anger

posted by Lynda at 11:23   0 comments permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments links to this post