Category Archives: Tracy Gronewold

by | July 28, 2014 · 10:35 pm

Editorial | Have You Seen This (X)man?

Yes, I actually own this book.

Yes, I actually own this book.

As many of my readers who regularly follow the blog know, I really love Marvel’s blue, furry X-man Beast.  I’ve written poems about him, and even my local comic book store regularly puts aside issues in which he appears for me to pick up.  Seriously, it doesn’t matter what the book is about, I will buy it if Beast is in it.  About a year ago I decided that I wanted to find a Beast statue, so I enlisted Andrew to help me look.  I had no idea what I was getting us both into.

The first place I looked for Beast was, naturally, New York Comic Con.  Conventions are often a great place to get hard to find collectible items.  Lots of times comic book store owners will bring comics and collectibles that have been sitting in their stores for a long time, and they are willing to strike a bargain to avoid taking them home again.  So I enthusiastically started at one end of the floor and headed toward the other.  I have to be honest; I didn’t scour NYCC for a Beast statue.  That was my first convention and I was pretty overwhelmed with the shiny things on both sides of me.  Besides, how hard could it possibly be to find a statue of one of Marvel’s more popular characters?  That was probably a poor choice of rhetorical questions. Continue reading →

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by | July 21, 2014 · 7:16 pm

Editorial | Tips for Geeking on a Budget

Whether it is due to situational circumstances (i.e. being a college student) or just a personal preference, everyone likes to save money.  Let’s be honest, being a geek can get expensive.  Whether it is cosplay, shelf porn, comic book collecting, or hardcore video gaming, most geeky hobbies can quickly end up costing serious cash.  With this in mind, here is a list of Therefore I Geek’s favorite ways to save money.

10.)Avid video gamers know the drill already:  Steam sales are the way to go!  Steam is a gaming and digital distribution platform developed by Valve Corporation that has a little over 3,000 titles available and has blowout sales several times per year.  Although it is common knowledge that Steam’s biggest sales are in summer (June/July) and at the holidays (December/January), with a couple of smaller sales in the autumn and sometimes near Halloween, the exact sale dates are not released very long in advance.  The best advice would be to save a little extra right before these times to be prepared to stock up for the intervening months.2014-steam-summer-sale-day-2

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by | July 14, 2014 · 10:44 pm

Editorial | Why Word Limits are Still Important

Once, when I was a teenager, I wrote a story for a contest online.  What made this story different from every other piece of prose I had written up to that point was that it had a 500 word limit.  After months of writing, rewriting, and editing, the story was 499 words long, and there was nothing in it that didn’t advance the plot.  There was no need to double up on adjectives, because each one described its noun perfectly.  Ambiguous ideas were scrapped because they would require too much explanation.  It was the best thing I had ever written.

Back when I first started writing novels, publishers insisted on a word/page limit of between 150 and 200 pages of Courier New font for young adult historical fiction.  The 200 page  (roughly 50,000 words) mark was the absolute maximum.  It seems these days that those limits are no longer being enforced by publishers—especially on authors that have been well received.  Unfortunately, this, combined with the phenomenon of increasing book lengths in the fantasy genre, has led even authors who have written some really fantastic stuff in the past to get sloppy. Continue reading →

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by | July 1, 2014 · 12:44 am

Editorial | Nexus Gaming Alliance: Behind the Convention Game Room

Heading to a convention, I glance at the program and there it is one of the last pages:  this convention has a gaming room off to the side of the main exhibit halls and panel rooms.  Recently I got a chance to talk to the masterminds behind some of those game rooms when Ken Beasley and Ben Hernandez sat down to tell me all about the workings of setting up a game room, and everything that goes on before and behind the scenes of a convention.

2011-NGA Blue Logo

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