LaShawn’s ConFusion 2019 Schedule

As Monica Valentinelli announced on Twitter, yes, I’ll be attending ConFusion 2019 for the very first time! When I’m not wandering around in a daze taking everything in, you’ll find me on these panels:

Project Management Software In Publishing
Friday, 3:00pm Ontario

Taking a title from manuscript (or idea) to the finished product requires more than an editor who polishes and enhances the story. Distributing the correct information to various channels can become cumbersome when relying on classic spreadsheet styles. Project management tools are plentiful in the market from custom software to free online organizers. How can strategies in project management help create a smoother product?

Panelists: Pablo Defendini (M), Geralyn Lance, LaShawn M. Wanak, Chris Bell, Natalie Luhrs

Wakanda and The Political Power Of Alternate Presents
Saturday, 11:00am Ontario

While The Princess Bride and Black Panther both feature fictional countries, Black Panther uses its alternate history to challenge common narratives about colonialism, centering political commentary in its worldbuilding and plot. How can Science Fiction best use alternate history and alternate present to center and celebrate people whose real histories bear the scars of colonialism, genocide, and/or slavery? How can alternate histories that don’t center on these themes avoid making light of, or reinforcing the inevitability of, these atrocities?

Panelists: David Anthony Durham (M), LaShawn M. Wanak

Reading
Saturday, 3pm Rotunda

Don’t know what I’ll be reading yet, but it will be something good!

Panelists: Cherie Priest, Cassandra Morgan, LaShawn M. Wanak

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2018 Year in Review and Eligibility Works

2018 was a bizarre year for me.

In order to explain this year, I need to back up a bit to the year of 2016. There was a whole bunch of stuff going on that year that I couldn’t really talk about online. The only way I could cope with it was by writing. So I wrote. A whole lot.

One particularly bad day, I was checking the twitters when this thread from Rachael K Jones popped up on my feed. And then, she wrote this:

And if I woke up to find a @TboneJenkins story in every major pro zine tomorrow, I’d weep for fangirl joy

— Rachael K. Jones (@RachaelKJones) August 10, 2016

That tweet stayed with me through the craziness that followed: selling our house, buying a new one, day job insanity, the election of 45. And then 2017, where I continued my push to finish the novel and got back into publishing nonfiction. All the while, the dayjob got busier and busier, and I was coming home more and more exhausted, until in May 2018, I realized that that if I was going to write more, I needed to find another job. Either one that was less intense or less hours.

So I started looking. It took way longer than I thought, considering that I hadn’t really looked for a new job in ten years. But I’m happy to say starting in February 2019, I be starting a new admin position. Same place, still full-time, but I’ll get two afternoons off to write while keeping my benefits.

It’s a start.

Oddly enough, in 2018, as I searched for a job that will allow me to write more, I got a surprising amount of fiction and non-fiction written and published. In April, my short story “One for Sorrow, Two for Joy” was published by Fireside Magazine. In July, my novelette “Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Memphis Minnie Sing the Stumps Down Good” was published by FIYAH magazine (this was originally the novella I wrote in 2016 before I cut it down to a more readable length). I also wrote a third short story that will be coming out soon, but that hasn’t been officially announced yet, so shhhh! But both the two stories mentioned above are eligible for awards, so read, enjoy, share, etc.

I also wrote a bunch of non-fiction articles, including an exploration of Nisi Shawl’s Filter House on Tor.com, a review of Janelle Monáe’s album Dirty Computer in Apex Magazine, and…heh hehe, another article that remains secret for now, but will be published sometime this year. And all of that while writing cover letters and filling out job applications and updating my resume.

Of course, with all the above, my editing input on the final draft of Willow tanked. As of today, I’ve only managed to complete 68% of the final edits. Which, actually, isn’t so bad, considering that I worked on it on top of all the other things I worked on last year but still. I laughed out loud when I saw the deadline I had originally set for myself, which was March 2018. Yeah, that sooooooo didn’t happen.

But it’s now 2019. I got some time freed up. I don’t have any writing projects pending for the next couple of months. Well, one, but it’s a quick one. And, before 2019 ended, I fixed the last major chapter that needed serious fixing (chapter 27). So all the edits from this point on should technically go fast. I’m resetting the Willow Final Edit clock to March 2019. At 68%, I know I can do it. You can cheer me on at @tbonejenkins on Twitter. And then once I’m done, I can finally tackle the goals I had written for 2018.

Butt in chair, eyes on the prize. Let’s go.