I am a singer-songwriter guitarist. I've been doing this since I was twelve, and doing it competently since I was sixteen. I performed with San Diego Celtic folk band The Wild Oats (not to be confused with the Wild Oats band from the UK) during the 1990s and started performing solo in 1999. I play my original songs about sex, science and God, full of metaphors from math, physics, biology, the supernatural, comic books, Tibetan Buddhism, and role-playing games, at a monthly coffeehouse gig in San Diego, and at occasional science fiction conventions in various parts of California.
I will be the Music Guest of Honor at Lunacon in Rye Brook, NY on March 19-21, 2010. Eben Brooks will be there with me and we'll both be performing and speaking on panels.
FRIDAY MARCH 19
Fanfic That Dare Not Speak Its Name 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Literary classic + monsters = Bestseller? How did this formula, called crazy by any other name, suddenly become the Next Big Thing? While everyone marvels over what a brilliant idea this is, why does no one want to admit it's fanfiction? What does this trend say about readers, what is it trying to accomplish, and what are we going to see next?
Alma Alexander, Toni Lay, Allison Lonsdale, Jenifer Rosenberg [M], Pamela Scoville
Opening Ceremonies 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Come meet our Guests of Honor! If there were a ribbon, this is where we'd cut it.
Dominick Corrado, Tanya Huff, Allison Lonsdale, Theresa Mather, Stacey Helton McConnell [M], MrShirt
Women in Gaming 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Breaking the glass ceiling in the world of online computer, console, RPGs, and LARPING. Who says members of the female persuasion aren't talented at everything from first person shooters to rpgs and mmorpg? Statistics show gaming isn't just for boys in basements any longer. There are more girls gaming than just the ones dating the GM! Chances are, you just got owned by a girl!
Kathryn Baker [M], Nuance Bryant, Allison Lonsdale, Lisa Padol, Cathleen Townsend
Gaming and Sex 10:00 PM - 11:00 PM
The Phil & Dixie comics, adult topics in gaming books, how to introduce adult themes in your campaign, how to overcome sterotypes, and whatever else the audience draws the topics to.
Kathryn Baker, Kevin DiVico [M], Bruce Dykes, Neal Levin, Allison Lonsdale
Literary Gratification Friday 11:00 PM - 12:00 AM
Writing a steamy sex scene isn't just for erotica. Is it really necessary to provide the reader with a detailed description of the physical act itself? Of course, it's expected in erotica, but how is it handled by other genres? It's no longer even out of the ordinary to see things heating up in YA! Do you linger over every touch, or leave the details to the imagination of the reader? Or perhaps you can just avoid it all together and stick to a firm handshake...
Chris Evans, C.J. Henderson, Allison Lonsdale, Gail Z. Martin [M], Stella Price
SATURDAY MARCH 20
Staying Safe at Conventions 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Cons are meant to be safe spaces, where fen can connect with one another and geek out about their myriad interests without being judged for it. While we are a community drawn together by a common love of genre books and media, a convention is still a gathering of strangers and there are certain steps we can all take to make sure that Lunacon is fun and friendly while remaining safe.
Kathleen O'Shea David, Elizabeth Glover [M], Allison Lonsdale, Cathleen Townsend
GoH Concert 10:30 PM-11:30 PM
A one hour concert performed by our Music Guest of Honor, Allison Lonsdale and her musical partner, Eben Brooks.
Eben Brooks, Allison Lonsdale
SUNDAY MARCH 21
GoH Concert Sunday 12:00 PM-1:00 PM
A one hour concert performed by our Music Guest of Honor, Allison Lonsdale and her musical partner, Eben Brooks.
Eben Brooks, Allison Lonsdale
Closing Ceremonies 3:00 PM-4:00 PM
Our Guests of Honor have the last word.
Dominick Corrado, Stacey Helton McConnell [M], Tanya Huff, Allison Lonsdale, Theresa Mather, MrShirt
Live music
I perform with Eben Brooks at Lestat's Coffeehouse, 3343 Adams Avenue in Normal Heights, on the third Saturday of every month at 6 PM. No cover.
The song "Grandmother's Place", one of my most popular works, is about Coyote taking me down to Spider Grandmother's lodge to play my songs for a bunch of different divinities who are partying their asses off. The lyrics are here. You can download an mp3 of it here.
"LOL Together, right now...OMG"
Eben Brooks and I recently wrote a lolcat parody of the Beatles' "Come Together". (When I realized that "walrus gumboot" could become "lolrus bukkit", the rest was inevitable.)
Mark Englehart of Sun, Moon & Stars Productions shot footage of us performing it at Lestat's Coffeehouse on March 15, 2008. The video is now on YouTube, as well as embedded below for your ROFLtainment.
I write science fiction, fantasy, horror, and otherwise strange erotica. Sometimes it sells.
"The Symbol for Intensity" is in the anthology From Porn to Poetry, a "best of" collection for the webzine CleanSheets. Strangely, it's not SF, fantasy or horror. It's just weird.
"Tangaroa", an SF story in a world with ubiquitous nanotech, is in the anthology Best Transgender Erotica. Its post-nation-state future was inspired by Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age and Ian MacDonald's Terminal Cafe. It's such an interesting world that I have started another story and a novel in it.
"Fragment from the Diary of Arabella B.", a pulp Victorian romp (which originated as a character diary in a Castle Falkenstein campaign), is in the Scarlet Letters archives, which one needs a subscription to access.
"Little Predator" is in the anthology Blood Surrender, a collection of vampire erotica. 'Cause you know there's a national shortage of that.
I am currently struggling to finish more stories with the help of an eccentric writers' group called Weird Pudding. (At Clarion 2008, Cory Doctorow advised one of our members "not to put too much weird in the pudding". Our group largely ignores this advice.)
I am a massive tabletop role-playing geek, currently playing in the campaigns Metahuman Vector (superheroes) and The Foam of Perilous Seas (privateers plying the seas of myth and legend) in GURPS, La Machine Diabolique (fin-de-siecle Parisian steampunk engineers) in the Castle Falkenstein universe using the Over the Edge system, and running the campaign Ottobre Solitario (occultists in Lovecraftian 18th-century Venice) in the Over the Edge system. I was a playtester on GURPS: Steampunk and GURPS: Supers (4th edition) and one of my claims to fame is that my name is on the credits page of both books. Way down at the bottom. In teeny weeny eye-strain-o-vision. You'll need a magnifying glass.
