by CAPSLOCK
Over on Brent’s fan forum, the Role Playing Room is being re-started, complete with a contest where the winner will receive a signed copy of The Blinding Knife. Go HERE for the rules for entry. The deadline is September 28th, so don’t wait! (And thanks to RagfellNR for putting this all together!)
This coming Friday (or Saturday, if you’re in Australia), we will be having a live web chat for an hour, or maybe just a smidge more, at 3am GMT. For those of you on the West Coast of America, like I am, that’s 8pm PST on Friday, October 7th. But, good news, this really isn’t for those of you who are on the West Coast! This is for my Australian fans. I will be talking, live, into the video camera, while you guys submit your questions over IM.
Though I scheduled the webchat to be most convenient for my Australian fans, anyone is welcome to come. The internet address is: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/brent-weeks. You can also access it via the Ning Brent Weeks forum here: http://brentweeks.ning.com/. I envision, first, answering questions about the Night Angel Trilogy, then about The Lightbringer Trilogy, and then about the writing process or getting published.
We’ve never done this before, so we’re kind of pushing the frontiers, so please be patient if there are any technical difficulties. (We have checked it out beforehand, and it looks like everything will work, but being experimental means inviting trouble. 🙂 )
For those of you to whom 3am GMT is actually 3am, we will be doing a second chat, following the same format, 14 hours later for my UK fans at 5pm GMT, Saturday (again, everyone is welcome, I’m just doing my best to make this easy for my fans in other parts of the world).
(As a nod to my fans in South Africa who seem to keep asking, those times are: 5am, Saturday, October 8th and 7pm on Saturday, October 8th). Hope to see you there!
*UPDATE*
To participate in the chat, you can either submit your questions via the Ning chat system (which we’ll be monitoring) and just watch the video, or you can log-in to the UStream site from Ning with your Facebook or UStream account and chat in the UStream chatroom while watching the video.
… and the UK, too. (Just in smaller font.)
I am going to be attempting an experiment which I have every reason to believe will have catastrophic results. That’s right: I’m going to invite technology to run amok in my home. For Australians, before anyone else, I will be doing a video chat on Saturday, October 8th at 1pm (Sydney time). Originally, I had hoped to just do one video chat because I have a strong suspicion it will just be me talking to myself. Then I realized that my main fan bases are on three equidistant points around the globe. So if I do a video chat at a reasonable time for me, my fans in either the UK or Australia would be getting screwed (I mean, I’m cool and everything, but I wouldn’t stay up until 3am to hear me talk. So I don’t expect you to do so, either).
So my elegant solution? Risk embarrassment and loneliness twice. Australia, you get the first chat, and possibly the technical difficulties. Then, the next day, I will host another video chat for my brethren across the pond, even if some of your ilk do call people like me “gingers”. The UK chat will be at 6pm, Saturday, October 8th (UK time).
Of course, I won’t be checking your IP address to see where you’re coming from and all are welcome. The chats will be held at:
3AM on Saturday October 8th (Greenwich Mean Time)
and
5PM on Saturday, October 8th (Greenwich Mean Time)
The video chat will welcome you to send in your questions via a chat channel. My interviewer will then ask me the questions and we’ll do our best together to keep things organized and flowing. I expect each chat to last about an hour, but if the audience is reasonably small, I will do my best to answer all questions.
I’ll post the link on this page a few days before the chat, and you can always easily find it through my Ning pages here.
Both Orbit and I have been surprised and delighted by the number of comments I’ve been getting. Thank you. It’s important to me that I communicate with readers, and we noticed that the blog-style comment system was making that harder than it should have been. Sometimes people would accidentally comment on an old post where few others would see it, and I wouldn’t know whether I should respond to that comment under the old post where it might not be seen or under the newest post where it would be out of place. Soo…
Orbit has been kind enough to set up a forum for me HERE. Not only will you be able to ask me questions–or see if someone else has already asked your question–but you will also be able to chat about each of the book without worrying about spoiling surprises for others. The forum will start very basic and adapt to your needs, and I will read every post and be an active participant.
So within the next few days, the comments on this page will be disabled–but I want to stress that this is to facilitate communication, not to curtail it. Everything else will continue as before. And thanks for wanting to talk!