Bristolcon!

Well, I went to my very first UK science fiction convention, which was loads of fun, but a little disconcerting. After having been to a few US cons, I had started taking for granted knowing a few more people. I knew two of the people there, Joanne Hall (who was one of the main organizers) and Fran Jacobs, through an internet writing site, but that was it for me.

I should probably start by mentioning the Ghost of Honor, Colin Harvey, who passed away recently. A number of the Bristolcon attendies have put together a memorial anthology in his honor.

The first panel we attended was on Colonizing the Solar system, with Guy Haley, Michael Dollin, Aliette de Bodard, Ben Jeapes, and Dev Agarwal. All in all, the panelists came down pretty hard on the side of this idea being more science fiction than science fact, citing the astronomical cost and the lack of will, but it was still a very fun panel in terms of people's reasoning- particularly people's assessment of the material cost to the people on earth to keep even a few people up in space. Good moderation, very informed panelists.

We also attended the panels on collaboration, and Toilets in Space, the latter of which went lowbrow very quickly (quick summary: Nick Walters believes teleportation will solve all logistical problems, Michael Dollin has unpopular ideas about recycling, Kim Lakin-Smith reminds us being a girl may actually be less dangerous in these endeavors, and everyone agrees that we don't write sex or poo realistically, because that would make it hard to romanticize space).

We broke for a little while here because Joe Abercrombie was just a few blocks away signing his latest book and we wanted in on that.

We came back to Battle of the Books, which was one of my absolute favorite panels, and one I'd like to see adapted to every con I go to. Four panelists each picked a book (respectively Paul Graham Raven picked Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix, Nick Walters picked Brian Aldiss's Hot House, Janet Edwards picked Terry Pratchet's Wyrd Sisters, and the fourth woman (whose name was not on my program, sorry) picked Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere). Then the authors got time to summarize a bit of their book and tell you why it was the best one there. There were two elimination rounds, and Hot House took home the prize. It was all very genial though, and I think this is a great way to get people talking up books you might not have read. Both the husband and I agreed our pick probably would have been The Dispossessed, by LeGuin.

The Apocalypse panel was also great. Lots of talk about Zombies, but that's to be expected. I was particularly impressed by Tim Maughan, who is a particularly Bristol type of person, in the best possible way. We also took in the Steam Punk panel, the best part of which was Alex Dally MacFarlane and Nimue Brown sitting both literally and figuratively across the table from each other and going back and forth about representation, apology for empire, appropriation, and romanticizing the past. It was also fun to watch how many other panelists had no idea what steam punk was before they were told they had written it. We attended an artist's panel about medium and how digital people are comfortable going, which was lovely, and I think broadly applicable in that everybody has to find what they're most comfortable with.

The last panel we attended was on YA: What's the deal with it being dominated by girls now? This turned out to be an excellent panel, also dominated by girls (which is funny, because it ended up being mostly about boys' reading habits, whereas I've been to plenty of "strong female character" panels that were all or mostly dudes, or diversity panels that were entirely white. It's both fun and sad to see that works in reverse as well). Foz Meadows and Moira Young impressed me especially, though the audience participation was really key here. There was one gentleman who made the excellent point that perhaps an equal stigma to YA books being effeminate insofar as reading was girly and the characters were chicks, was the idea that what was being presented was explicitly labeled as for children at a time in boys' lives where it's very important to feel grown up. Personally, I don't think there's an overwhelming majority of girl stuff in YA, I think it's just parity being misconstrued as advantage, but that's me. It was a really good panel.

All in all it was a really lovely time, and I'm very glad I went. 

ArmadilloCon Roundup

Alright! ArmadilloCon was this weekend, and it was both a hoot and a holler. Now we begin a veritable orgy of name-dropping and promotion.

The writer's workshop, organized by Stina Leicht, was fun. There were some great writers' workshop presentations: Lou Anders Hugo Award Winning Editor of Pyr Books gave very thorough talk on Hollywood story structure, and the panel on publishing traditionally vs. electronically (also including Mr. Anders) was very thought provoking. There was also a hack-for-hire group game where one of the editors on the panel went through our three sentence story ideas and "improved" them with ideas like "this would be better if it had mexican wrestlers" and "this needs a redemptive arc, and a mecha robot made of bread", which was a nice exercise in writing to spec.

(incidentally, mine is as follows: An overworked female baker trying to make a new cupcake flavor accidentally creates a highly addictive flour-based narcotic that, in excess, has effects much like leprosy. Before the side-effects come to light, the baker buys herself deeply into debt with a mansion, a yacht, a gold-plated dog, and a trophy husband. When her baking is outlawed she has to bake gingerbread men for the mafia to pay off her creditors, all while being pursued by a vigilante celiac hit squad (note: food fight over industrial ovens a la Terminator 2). The baker escapes by diving through an industrial mixer that chops off some of her limbs (in the original version she ended up in a cupcake rehab house, already creating a recipe for her next drug, but the editor said redemptive arc and bread mecha). At her lowest point she constructs herself a biscotti mech armor suit/prosthetic shell in order to go on a revenge killing spree. She defeats the mafia boss and his thugs, but is greviously wounded. Standing over the ill gotten fortune she helped create, she decides to use the last of her time for good, and bakes the money, prosthetic recipes, and instructions for a foundation into a stripper-sized cake to get it past the police. The story ends with her trophy husband receiving a cake delivery. (My guess is this would be about 5000 words, and I really should write it))

For my group instructors I got J M McDermott and Matthew Bey, both of whom were full of trenchant comments. I'm hoping to get the story edited and out tonight.

I also got to hang out a bit with Nate Southard, Scott A Johnson, and Marshall Ryan Maresca, all of whom are very sweet gentlemen.

The toast was also darling, and you can see it on Lou Anders webpage. No one can accuse the toastmaster of not being literal enough.

Of the panels, my favorite hands down was the one on Class with Maresca, Will Shetterly, Scott Lynch, and the fabulous, fabulous Joe R. Landsdale, who talked at length about his own childhood in poor East Texas. It doesn't hurt that I could sit for hours and listen to Landsdale, but everybody brought some interesting points to the panel, with Lynch making the point that he tried to set his fantasy full of con artists in the middle ages and then realized that the middle ages lacked the social mobility and range of classes that would be necessary for confidence crimes.

Also exceptional was the world post fossil fuels panel, in which guest of honor Paolo Bacigalupi really got to shine. He was also good in Building Societies from the Ground Up.

The Erotic Writing panel was a barrel of laughs, and I got to use the phrase "cock-holster" in appropriate context in public conversation (the question being worst/best genital circumlocution). I really enjoyed the poetry panel, even if it was a touch slim on attendance (I was not expecting McDermott to be as awesome as he was there, but I especially enjoyed, of all things, his football poem). The late night ghost story panel was creepy in the best possible way. Scott A Johnson is the kind of person you want to be around a campfire with, far enough away from civilization that no one can hear you scream. The Pyr books presentation was unexpectedly delightful, and I really want to get a copy of Black Dog by K. V. Johansen. I also wish I had a book to sell to Pyr, so that Anders could bubble over with enthusiasm about it the way he did about every one of the titles he was promoting. It's really awesome to watch someone enjoy books that much.

The Elizabeth Moon/Wiscon discussion was... interesting. I'm somewhere between Lee Thomas and Scott Lynch's positions (basically, Wiscon as an organization totally has the right to disinvite a guest over a public statement they feel either does not conform to their core principles or threatens the financial stability of the con, and Elizabeth Moon has a right to say what she likes on her personal blog, and both do have to accept the consequences of it. Frankly I really like Wiscon's new mission statement, and I feel like there's a big difference between telling Moon she's no longer welcome at Wiscon (which they did not do) and expressing that they are no longer comfortable having her specifically as a guest of honor), and it was kind of heartbreaking to see how discouraged Thomas got with how many people were putting Wiscon totally at fault as the bad guy.

That's ending the post on kind of a down note, which really wasn't my experience of the con. I had a great time, the panels were interesting, the readings were cool, and the people were, without exception, lovely to speak to and open to talking. It was a great time and I encourage everybody to get out and mingle with the fandom.

Armadillocon

Woot. Got off work at 10 tonight, finishing up editorial comments on the stories for my critique group, then getting up bright and early to drive from San Antonio to North Austin for ArmadilloCon 33!

As such, unfortunately, no big blog post today. My heart weeps, as I know all of yours do, at such tragic tidings.

Still, Con, so that's awesome!

Conventional Experience

(Advance warning and disclaimer: this post contains a lot of names. I'm doing this not in a vein of riding the coat tails of people mentioned, but rather because they're all wonderful people, some of whom you might not have heard of, and they all deserve your attention.)

World Horror Convention was spectacularly fun. I apologize that it's taken me as long as it has to get around to the blogging of it.

The whole experience was very educational for me. My familiarity with horror as a genre is kind of unfortunately skewed- I own almost every annual issue of Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and my understanding of both genres is somewhat defined by the fact that I didn't really differentiate within those volumes which stories belonged in which categories. They were all just dark, weird, and lovely. It does, however, mean I have a sample of horror that misses a lot of the greats, as well as broad subsections of the genre that would have fallen outside of Ms. Datlow's general taste. I also wasn't paying so much attention at the time to the authors as I was to the story.

So a lot of World Horror Convention for me was discovering new writers, as well as attaching names to stories I hadn't realized were written by people I should have known. Joe R. Lansdale in particular falls into this latter category. I don't understand why this gentleman isn't the official spokesman for Texas. He's a world class martial artist who writes stories about beating people (and sometimes zombies) into blood-oatmeal in one of the most spectacularly fun, pulpy ways I've ever read. I also was able to have some wonderful conversations with authors like Wrath James White, Rio Youers, and Joel Sutherland, as well as publishers and editors like Jeff Burk and Rose O'Keefe of Eraserhead Press, Boyd Harris of Cutting Block Press (who it turns out had met and remembered my father), the whole adorable, sweet gang from Absolute X Press, and most especially, more than anybody else, author, editor, and general awesome fellow John Skipp, who has got to be the sweetest man working in mutilation ever. I also found out my TA from college, Scott A Johnson, has published 11 apparently excellent books since the last time I saw him. I got to meet fabulous animator Abby Goldsmith, cuddly writer Laura J. Hickman, writer and amazing illustrator Carlton Mellick III, writer R. B. Payne, Thomas Sipos of the Hollywood Investigator, and Denise Broussard. I got to watch Peter Straub, F. Paul Wilson, Cameron Pierce, and a very animated Sarah Langan give accounts, in a darkened room in front of a web camera, of their travails in the zombie apocalypse. And I removed a pen from someone's nasopharyngeal cavity with my teeth, which I think speaks well of how fun the parties were in general.

The panels I attended were universally fun, but my favorites were the panel on Violence and how to do it right, and the panel on Frightening Children for fun and profit. There was a lot of talk about e-books and Twilight (in terms both of people wondering if it could be a gateway horror product, and also bewailing the romantic degradation of a previously scary monster. "What's next?" they would ask, "Zombie Romance?" at which point someone would invariably raise their hand and mention the anthology Rigor Amortis, available in the dealer's room). I also managed to catch several wonderful readings, though my favorite, I have to confess, was the zombie golf comedy "Blood on the Green" by Joel Sutherland, forthcoming in Blood Lite III. Actually several of the panels touched on the close relationship between humor and horror, in terms of building tension and release, and how one can either diffuse or enhance the other. Jack Ketchum gave a hell of a speech in acceptance of the Grand Master of Horror award, and Nate Southard's opening remarks were heart wrenching. Joe Hill was full of hilarious anecdotes. I got a free signed copy of Black and Orange by Benjamin Kane Etheridge. I took extensive notes and now have a backlist of aproximately a gajillion books and stories I need to track down and read.

I didn't stay at the hotel (actually one of the main reasons I attended this conference specifically was that it was local to me) so I ended up getting about three and a half hours sleep a night (though part of that was that I also made a 150 mile round trip to attend a 9 AM job interview on the second day of the convention). In order to save money and not have to miss any panels or readings, I also stocked up on powerbars and munched them in between events, which saved me having to pay for hotel food or go off-site. Depending on your perspective and finances, this is either sound advice or utterly sad.

In terms of what this convention meant to me as a writer, most of what I got from it had to do with building my understanding of the genre and the craft, and building my confidence in what I could achieve from writing as a career. I didn't have much in the way of things to pitch or sell, but I had a great time, and I don't want to understate how wonderful it felt to be among a whole mess of people who loved a good scary story.