Right now I'm dividing my free time between thinking about a  session that I'm working on with two other members of WLA's Intellectual Freedom Interest Group (IFIG) for the state conference in early May and preparing for panels at Norwescon, the regional science fiction convention in mid-April.

For WLA, I and my two fabulous IFIG colleagues will present "Material Challenge Aerobics." Basically, it's a session aimed and front-line library workers who are often the first staff members that a patron will interact with if he or she is upset about something on the library shelves. Our plan is to give participants tips and strategies about body language, vocal tone and responses that will make library works and patrons feel more comfortable in these types of situations.

So If you're at the WLA conference, come to our session. It's from 10:30-11:45 a.m. Friday, May 2 and we guarantee a mental workout before lunch. 

Geek alert! I got my schedule for Norwescon a couple of weeks ago and found out that I'll be interviewing one of the Guests of Honor the artist Robert Gould! He's work is pretty amazing and he's best known for his illustrations and cover designs for Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone saga. He won the World Fantasy Award for Best Artist in 1991 and is credited with starting a new style of fantasy illustration.

I'll also be critiquing three manuscripts for the Fairwoods Writers Workshop and participating on panels about eBooks, Steampunk, science fiction and fantasy for young readers, author's promoting their books, and rewriting and reworking stories.

If you're going to be at Norwescon, don't miss my interview at 3 p.m. Friday, April 18, and don't miss the PK Dick Awards, a great evening of words and chocolate, also on Friday.

I expect that I'll only have time to read a few of the nominees before April. There's at least one Northwestern writer in the group this year. I'll give you a hint, he's the one who wrote to book that is set in Seattle.  If you can figure out who, post in comments.

On the night of the awards, the nominees (see the list here) read from their work, and there's a huge table filled with deserts, including tons of chocolate. So load up on rich calories and listen to fabulous words. Yum!

Over the past two weeks, when I have a few spare moments, I've been playing with Mozilla's Webmaker at work trying to figure out how to load photos into its Meme Maker and its Make your own Comic templates.

Mozilla's Webmaker takes the idea of Maker Space and puts it on the web. Each online project offers a split screen with the html code of the left and the preview on the right. Sort of like using Dream Weaver. The html also has tips written in. Very cool concept.

I love the way the Webmaker sets these up because you need for these projects is high-speed internet access, very basic sense of html code, and for these two templates membership in an online photo sharing service, such as Instagram or Flickr, and have patience.

It seems like a great way to offer make what would seem complex code to the un-techy easy to do. I thought what a fun way to introduce html coding to teens and tweens.