Last hurrah at the Writers Place

End of an era
The owners have spoken. The Writers Place organization is moving, and the "stone castle" on Pennsylvania Avenue will be closed.

The KaCSFFS Holiday Party of Saturday, December 15, 2018 is the final scheduled event for the venue that's been our home since 2001.

The KaCSFFS Board is still looking for a new home for us, starting with the January 19, 2019 meeting. Stay tuned. But meanwhile, let's say goodbye to our longtime home with a great party!

Where: The Writers Place--ONE LAST TIME! 3607 Pennsylvania, Kansas City, MO 64111
When: Saturday, December 15, 2018
Time: Setup starts at 6:00 p.m.; Program at 7:00; Frivolities till 9:30.
Theme: Holiday Party and Seasonal Readings
Food: Fun-fueled Holiday finger food

The Readings
Our guest readers all are local writers, who've graciously agreed to share "something seasonally appropriate" with us. Please help us welcome Rob Howell, Karin Rita Gastreich, and Sean Demory.

Rob Howell

Rob Howell

Rob is a reformed medieval academic who draws upon those skills and resources for his stories and settings. He has also been an IT professional, a cook, and a soda jerk. As a child, his parents discovered about the only way to keep him quiet was to give him a book. Without books, either he or his parents probably would not have survived. Possibly both.

He decided to write professionally when he discovered he was too educated for most jobs, and not quite educated enough for a few. Fortunately, he had always written and this was his chance to follow in the footsteps of Forester, Tolkien, Weber, Drake, Parker, Chandler, and Francis. Rob is the author of the Shijuren series and other stories.

Karin Rita Gastreich

Karin Rita Gastreich

In her website bio, Karin writes of herself: "In November of 2007, a curious dream sparked the opening lines of what would become my first full-length fantasy novel, Eolyn. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had opened the door to yet another exciting world: the world of publishing.

"I balance my life as an ecologist and writer. I treasure all living things and weave many fantastic creatures into my stories. The worlds I create are a strange amalgamation of medieval Europe and colonial America, with misty forests, vast savannas, and steamy jungles. They are populated by brave heroines, noble heroes, and twisted villains.  They reflect the magic I’ve known all my life, of dance and music and play, as well as the hardship that I and many of the people I care for have encountered along the way.

"These stories come from the heart. I give them to you in hopes that you will make them your own."Eolyn is the first book in the Silver Web Trilogy. Find Karin's writing on Amazon and elsewhere.

Sean Demory
Sean is a frequent reader at KaCSFFS meetings, as well as repeat appearances at ConQuesT. His last appearance at a KaCSFFS meeting was in October, when he shared a supernatural tale inspired in part by his own childhood experiences.

He also is the power behind Pine Float Press, which has published a variety of books (including the anthology Palookaville, which held a release event last year at a KaCSFFS meeting).

IMAGES: Many thanks to The Writers Place for the photo of our longtime venue; we'll hate to lose you! The authors' photos for Rob Howell and Karin Rita Gastreich are courtesy of those authors, and used with their permission. The photo of Sean Demory is from the Johnson County Library website, though the original source-page has since been removed).

Haunting the Writers Place on Saturday!

Annual KaCSFFS Halloween Party and Meeting is October 20
Where: The Writers Place, 3607 Pennsylvania Ave., Kansas City, MO 64111
When: Saturday, October 20, 2018
Time: 6:00 p.m. - Setup; 7:00 - Readings begin
Food Theme: Seasonally appropriate food

Sean Demory has read for a KaCSFFS Halloween before.
Also shown: David Means, Allison Stein, Sherri Dean.

Come for the Readings . . .
Two distinguished local authors will bring some of their spookier works of short fiction to share with us.

KaXFEN may remember being riveted by the marvelous reading voice and fascinating fiction of Sean Demory, from last year. What's the plan for this year? "I'll potentially be reading something old, something new and something very new depending on time," he said.

Aaron Hollingsworth will read from
The Apothecary of Mantua:
A SupernaturalSequel to Romeo & Juliet.

Aaron Hollingsworth has been a KaXFAN, but this'll be his first time reading for a KaCSFFS meeting. He's chosen selections from The Apothecary of Mantua: A Supernatural Sequel to Romeo & Juliet.

Stay for the Party . . . 
KaCSFFS Halloween Parties are a tradition for the October meeting. Many of us love to wear costumes (what better opportunity, right?), but don't feel you must. If you'd rather come and enjoy the results of others' labors, there probably will be plenty of fun costumes to admire (admirers are always welcome!)

Glimpses from past Halloween Party Meetings: L-R Corey Barber, the Means Family, Susan Ives, and Carol Doms.

And bring food!
KaXFEN also love to eat. Whether it's trick-or-treat themed goodies, hearty autumn fare, or some kind of pumpkin marvelousness, please bring food to share!

The Halloween Party food table in 2014.

PHOTOS: The photos of Sean Demory at last year's Halloween meeting, those in the Haloween Costume montage, and the photo of the food table all were taken by Jan S. Gephardt, for the purpose of KaCSFFS publicity. If you'd like to use it, please attribute Jan, and provide a link back to this blog post. The photo of Aaron Hollingsworth is courtesy of Aaron's Facebook Author Page.

Add extra sparkle at KaCSFFS's Annual Holiday Party and Launch Event

What: Monthly KaCSFFS Meeting
When: Saturday, December 16, 2017

• 6:00 p.m. setup
• 6:30 brief announcements
• 7:00 Palookaville Anthology launch with readings

Where: The Writers Place, 3607 Pennsylvania Ave., Kansas City, MO 64111
Food Theme: Winter holiday food

Are you ready to shine?
We'll have the decorations up and the tables ready to fill, but the "sparkle" depends on you! Come prepared to mingle and munch with Kansas City's favorite fun fannish folk. Bring your favorite holiday munchies to share! Some people like to bring small presents or cards to share with other KaXFEN, but that's not required or expected.

As ever, please also bring favorite tabletop games or card games to share--playing times of 2 hours or less work best for meetings.

Special BONUS event! 
Palookaville Launch and Readings
This year's Holiday Party includes a special feature: Our local Pine Float Press provides some extra entertainment with live readings by three authors whose work is featured in their new anthology, Palookaville. What is Palookaville, you may ask?

Palookaville is a blue-collar supervillain antholology set in the shadows of the superheroic world. Second-string criminals, masked mooks and clued-in henchmen leave the stresses of the criminal world behind and live “normal lives” in the sleepy bedroom town of Powell Heights until the outside world muscles its way in. Fortunately, the citizens of Palookaville know all about muscle work.


“Palokaville is a wonderfully weird, occasionally violent, often funny, deeply twisted revisionist look at the super hero genre.”
–Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of Punisher: Naked Kills and Black Panther: Power.

Our Author Guests

A. E. Ash

We're pleased to welcome three authors who will present live readings for the Palookaville
Launch.

A.E. Ash is a writer, nerd, gamer, mooncalf but not a baker or candlestick maker (and nobody said anything about butcher). She writes speculative poetry and fiction because why not make good use of an over-active imagination? Ash lives in the Midwest with her super-rad husband and her lazy cats who do nothing at all to help her on the path to world domination. You can find her on Twitter at @dogmycatzindeed or on her blog. You can find more of her writing via her Amazon Author Page.

J. R. Boles

J.R. Boles is a speculative fiction author currently hanging her hat in the Heartland. When not writing, she and her husband spend their free time chasing after their fearless daughters and rescue pup. She is a graduate of the University of Missouri-Kansas City and American University Washington College of Law. She often hangs out on Twitter at @jrbolesauthor. You can see more of her writing via her Amazon Author Page.

Sean Demory is no stranger to KaCSFFS--he was one of our featured readers in October. He's an author of short fiction and the founder of Pine Float Press. His work has been included on the recommended reading list for Locus Magazine and has received honorable mention in the Best Horror of the Year, a fact that he’ll milk as long as possible. He is currently working on a range of projects that he’ll talk about at length given the least opportunity. Sean lives in Kansas City, Missouri and posts intermittently on Tumblr. His work also is available via Amazon.

KAXFEN who enjoyed Sean Demory's reading at the October meeting should be happy about his rapid return.

IMAGES: Many thanks to Jan S. Gephardt for the photo of the decorated holiday tree at the 2014 Holiday Party and the photo of Sean Demory at the October 2017 KaCSFFS meeting; to Lulu, and Pine Float Press, for the Palookaville cover art; to A. E. Ash's Amazon Author Page for her photo; and to J. R. Boles's Amazon Author Page for her photo.

Following up: 45 Recommended Authors, plus our October guest readers

The KaCSFFS Thanksgiving Feast at The Writers Place is now in the rear-view (it was taking place when this post went live), but there are some updates due, from recent meetings past.

Recommended Reading

Back in September, inspired by our program of a reading by Christine Taylor-Butler, we posted this notice:

"You wouldn't be a KaXFAN if you didn't love reading. Whose fiction gets your juices flowing or inspires your imagination? We'll have a place where you can share a list of your favorite books and authors, too. We'll publish the list in a future blog post. If you can't make the meeting--or even if you can--please feel free to post a comment that shares some of your reading favorites! KaCSFFS is all about sharing our love of reading."

We got several pages of recommendations from our members (though no comments on the blog post--y'all are falling down on the job!). You'll find a lot of so-called Golden Age SF in this list, but also an eclectic mix of others. Remember, this list is not exhaustive, so we apologize if we left off your favorites: you should have left a comment! (You can do that now, in the place below this post!) Also, not to seem as if we're playing favorites, the recommendations are listed in alphabetical order by the author's last name. 

Poul Anderson: The Flandry stories; Three Hearts and Three Lions. 

Ilona Andrews: The Magic series.

Isaac Asimov: The Foundation Trilogy; The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, I, Robot, plus "the rest of the robots and many more."

Robert Aspirin: The Myth Series.

Robin Wayne Bailey: The Saga of Frost Series, Shadowdance, "and many, many others."

David Brin: The Uplift Series.

Lois McMaster Bujold: "Especially the Vorkosigan Saga and the Chalion Series."

Emma Bull: War for the Oaks. 

Edgar Rice Borroughs:  The Barsoom (John Carter/Mars) stories, and Tarzan.

Jim Butcher: The Dresden Files.

Octavia Butler: "Oh, my God, everything!"

Rob Chilson: Black as Blood, Men Like Rats, "and others."

Arthur C. Clarke: Rendezvous with Rama, 2001: A Space Odyssey, "and many others."

Glen Cook: The Garrett, P. I. Series 

James S.A. Corey: The Expanse novels.

E. Everett Evans: Man of Many Minds. 

Alan Dean Foster: The Tar-Ayim Krang, and the rest of the Flinx series and associated stories

Neil Gaiman: Stardust, American Gods, The Graveyard Book, "and many others."

Zenna Henderson: The Books of The People, especially Pilgrimage, and No Different Flesh. 

Robert A. Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land, the Heinlein Juveniles, "and many more."

Robert E. Howard: The Conan stories.

N. K. Jemisin: The Broken Earth Series. 

Gini Koch: The Alien Series, especially Alien Nation, Alien Education, Alien Tango, and Alien in the House. 

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness and other Hainish novels, the Earthsea books, and many others.

Madeleine L'Engle: The Wrinkle in Time books. 

Anne McCaffrey: The Dragonriders of Pern Series.

George R.R. Martin: Of course A Game of Thrones, but also Wild Cards, "and earlier works."

Holly Messinger: The Curse of Jacob Tracy.

Elizabeth Moon: The Serrano series the Paksenarrion books, and Vatta's War series.

Andre Norton: The Last Planet, The Zero Stone, Breed to Come, the Witch World Series, Beast Master, and "most everything else." 

Naomi Novik: Uprooted, and the Temeraire novels.

Nnedi Okorafor, The Binti series, Akata series, and "pretty much everything she writes."

Spencer Quinn: The humor-suspense Chet and Bernie mysteries "not normally marketed as fantasy, but when they're narrated by a dog . . . "
J. K. Rowling: The Harry Potter Series, "especially as read by Jim Dale on audiobooks."

John Scalzi: Old Man's War, Redshirts, "and many others."

Lawrence M. Schoen: The Buffalito books, and Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard.

James H. Schmitz: The Witches of Karres, and the Telzey Amberdon stories. 

Clifford D. Simak: Time Is the Simplest Thing, Way Station, and The Werewolf Principle. 

Wm. Mark Simmons: the Half/Life Chronicles Series, the Dreamland Chronicles. 

E.E. "Doc" Smith: The Lensmen Series, Spacehounds of IPC, The Galaxy Primes, the Skylark Series, the Subspace duo.

George O. Smith: Pattern for Conquest.

Christine Taylor-Butler: The Lost Tribes Series.

J. R. R. Tolkein: The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings.

A. E. van Vogt: Slan, The World of Null-A.

David Weber: The Honor Harrington Series, Out of the Dark, Path of the Fury (and its expanded version), The Hell's Gate Series, and the War God's Own.

As we've said--if you don't see a favorite on this list, please comment below!

Revised Readers

Before our October meeting, we announced that our program would feature short fiction or excerpts by three authors--but as it turned out, one of them had to cancel at the last minute, and another agreed to step in. Our final lineup consisted of Sean Demory, Sherri Dean, and Allison Stein.

The fiction was delightful, although the space was a bit tight--our venue had made an "oops" and booked another event during our time slot (we've since worked that out!). But we all managed to be cozy in the Library (what better spot for a reading, after all?).

Local author Sean Demory read an intriguing chapter from a current work-in-progress, to set the mood for the evening. Standing: KaCSFFS Director David Means. In the background: Allison Stein and Sherri Dean.

Sherri Dean read an as-yet-unpublished story (pages custom-edged with appropriate Halloween-themed designs) that managed to be both gruesome and humorous at the same time.

Allison Stein rounded out the evening with a seasonally-appropriate story, Field Test #421, from the Yard Dog Press anthology Flush Fiction Vol. II: Twenty Years of Letting it Go! edited by Selina Rosen; cover art by Sherri Dean.

IMAGES: Many thanks to Goodreads, for the Asimov Foundation cover image; to Barnes & Noble Booksellers for the Corey Leviathan Wakes cover art; and to Amazon for the Schoen Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard cover art. The photos of our October readers were all taken with permission, by Jan S. Gephardt, for use in KaCSFFS communications such as this. If you wish to use one, we request a credit and a link back to this page. Thanks!

Scary stories, snacks and KaCSFFS Halloween Party

What: Monthly KaCSFFS Meeting
When: Saturday, October 21, 2017, 7:00 p.m. (6:00 set-up)
Where: The Writers Place, 3607 Pennsylvania Ave., Kansas City, MO 64111
Food Theme: Scary Snacks for Halloween 

New featured program: Scary stories!
Our own Earline "Cricket" Beebe (also president of our local Horror Book Club) has arranged for local authors Sean Demory, Jack Campbell, Jr., and Sherri Dean to read some of their scary stories for us!

L-R: Sean Demory, Jack Campbell, Jr., and Sherri Dean, our authors giving readings of their scary short fiction.

Costumes (optional) for fun
At the start of the month we urged any and all readers who would be in the Kansas City area to consider wearing a costume and/or bringing a scary snack to the Annual Halloween and Monthly KaCSFFS Meeting. We hope you've been thinking and planning!

Here are some of the costumes worn to the 2014 KaCSFFS Halloween Party and Monthly Meeting.

Costumes make for colorful, interesting photos--but the main thing is please come! That's why costumes are optional: not everyone likes dressing up. If you don't, don't worry about being the odd one out. There are always members present who don't dress up, for a variety of reasons. We want everyone to come!

"Scary" snacks and decorated gourds

Find recipes for (L-R) Fruit Monsters, Screaming Donuts, and Oreo Spiders at sources listed at the bottom of the post.

Food is always welcome at any KaCSFFS meeting, but seasonally appropriate goodies for Halloween, while themed for the season or scary-looking, also must be safe to eat! For the sake of those among us with food allergies or dietary restrictions, please list ingredients of home-made goodies or bring package information if you bought them. Please also remember that some of us are diabetic, so soft-pedal the sugar! Thanks!

We also encourage all who wish to bring them to share their decorated pumpkins or gourds with the group. We'd love to gather enough imaginative gourd/pumpkins to do a group photo. Please also give us your thoughts on whether this should become a contest category!

Halloween: not just for traditional Jack-o-Lanterns anymore! How creative can YOU get?

Tabletop games are welcome!
We always try to encourage members bringing their favorite tabletop games to play. Ideal playing time is about 30-90 minutes. Board games or card games are equally welcome--especially if you have something seasonally appropriate!

Bylaws note:
The edited "Is-this-one-good?" draft of the new KaCSFFS Bylaws should be available to all dues-paid members via the KAXFEN list by the time we have our Halloween meeting/party. Remember, we're trying to have it finalized in time for a formal vote at the December meeting, but we are conducting our discussion online, NOT spending time on it at meetings. Please read this draft over and add your comments in a written format so your Board can consider your thoughts!

IMAGES: Many thanks to Jan S. Gephardt's Artdog Adventures for the photo of Sean Demory (the original source-page on the Johnson County Library website has since been removed!), Jack Campbell, Jr.'s website for his author photo, and Sherri Dean's NobleFusion profile for her author photo. The photo of the 2014 costume lineup is by Jan S. Gephardt, taken for KaCSFFS publicity purposes. If you post it elsewhere online, please include an attribution and a link back to this page as your source. Our "scary treats" montage is made up of Fruit Monsters from Listotic's post, "15 Super-Easy Halloween Treats to Make" plus Oreo spiders and screaming donuts from It'sAlwaysAutumn's post "20 Halloween Treats to Make with Your Kids." Check them out: Both include many more ideas, with recipes. Many thanks also to, L-R, Tiffany Jones Interiors, Lowe's, and Lowe's, (note: the Lowe's information includes how-to guidelines!)for the funky gourd-and-pumpkins lineup!