Shared Worlds, Day Two

(Me showing Shared Worlds students Miranda Severance and Jackie Gitlin some pages from the comics adaptation of my story "The Situation")Guest blogging has begun to kick in, and you'll continue to see it during the week.Meanwhile, I've been teaching at Shared Worlds as well as doing things behind the scenes as assistant director, here at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. We've got 39 students, and I have to say, they're all extremely dedicated, creative, and smart. It's only the second day and they've been keeping us on our toes. They're in the world-building phase and I hear tell of floating islands on the backs of behemoths and steampunk druids and much more besides.Soon we'll transition into the writing, partially through a found object exercise. Tomorrow, Kathe Koja gets here, with Nathan Ballingrud following on Thursday. Scott Eagle leads artist workshops over the weekend and next week Holly Black, Will Hindmarch, Michael Bishop, Marly Youmans, and others will all make appearances. These kids have it good, let me tell you.They'll also get free books donated by publishers like Small Beer Press, Tor, Pyr, and many more.Thursday night I read at Hub City Bookstore with Kathe and Nathan. I'm going to do something a little different and use some blown-up images from Eric Orchard's amazing comics version of "The Situation" to substitute for some of the narrative. In effect subbing in images for some of the paragraphs. If it all goes catastrophically wrong they'll soon forget it ever happened since I have two great readers following me.NOTE: Jeremy Jones is blogging about Shared Worlds-related topics on Booklifenow this week and next.