Back in 2003, I was standing on the lawn of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, chatting with pals Bill Shunn and Bob Howe at that year’s I-Con, when we spotted a camera crew in the distance. As usual, the spotlight was on the most colorful attendees, the folks dressed up as stormtroopers or wearing chain mail.

Understand that I’ve got nothing against cosplayers—I’ve worn the occasional costume myself.

See?

It’s just that reporters always seem to focus on the outrageously dressed, and not to celebrate or explore (which would be a nice change once in a while), but in order to give their stories a “hey, look at these weirdos” slant. So as the three of us chatted, we tsk-tsked this mindset and bemoaned the fact that cameras never got pointed at those less flamboyantly garbed.

We turned away and got back to catching up in the sunshine, when about 15 minutes later, we found that the crew had moved along and was now pointing its cameras … at us! (more…)

And now it can be told …

I’ll be one of the Guests of Honor at next year’s ConFusion, which will be held January 17-20, 2013 in Troy, Michigan. The GoH line-up for the 39th such gathering will be as follows:

Pro GoH: Charles Stross

Editor GoH: Scott Edelman

Special GoH: Mary Robinette Kowal

Fan GoH: James Nicoll

Additionally, a Science GoH will be announced shortly.

I look forward to seeing some of you there next year!

It’s hump day (though can it ever truly be considered hump day when you work seven days a week?), which means that Sunday in San Diego seems very far away. And yet I don’t want to leave you hanging as to the end of World Fantasy Con.

I didn’t have much of a Sunday morning. With the pre-banquet cocktail party beginning at noon, and me having both stayed up and slept late the night before, there was neither point nor time to have a full breakfast. So I grabbed some nibbles in the con suite (which I’ll say again, was well-stocked and well-run), sold a few more copies of What Will Come After out front of the dealers room to some attendees who’d let me know in advance that they’d wanted them, did some minimal schmoozing, and then headed back to my room to get suited up.

While hanging out at the bar, I was stunned to discover when the ballroom doors opened that the best table in the house, directly in front of the podium, hadn’t been reserved for a publisher, and was therefore free for unaffiliated attendees like me to grab. Which I did, resulting in a good angle for me to record the entire proceedings, which you can see below.

Also at my table were Karen and Charlie Newton, Mark Kelly, Terry Weyna, and a few others I was meeting for the first time, and whose names unfortunately didn’t stick. If one of those names happens to be yours, feel free to slap me around the next time you see me. (more…)

I woke Saturday morning at World Fantasy to a city in which I’d already eaten at every Man v. Food restaurant. What to do? Luckily, the locals had all raved about a place called Hash House a Go Go, which supposedly prepared amazing breakfasts—well, amazing everything—so that’s where I headed to start the day with Bill Shunn, Laura Chavoen, and Eileen Gunn.

But everything good comes with a price—and the price was that there was a 90-minute wait before we could be seated. Since it sounded like the food would be worth it, Bill and Laura were up for it. But Eileen had to be back by 12:30. So I returned her to the hotel (which apparently had a major problem I didn’t hear about until today) and got back to the restaurant with plenty of time still remaining to chat with Bill and Laura in the warm California sun while trying not to feel too guilty that my wife was back in the West Virginia snow.

I ordered the pancake of the day—banana coconut—which surprised me by coming with a few pecans, too. It also surprised by BEING THE SIZE OF A HUBCAP!

I assure you that I did NOT eat the entire thing. I was thinking of taking it back to the con suite, but pancakes do not travel well, and besides, we wanted to have a postprandial walk around the neighborhood, and so didn’t box up any leftovers. It was a good thing we took that walk, too, because it allowed Laura to see her first Bird of Paradise in the wild. (more…)

I started off my second day at the World Fantasy Convention with my second visit to a San Diego Man v. Food restaurant. Karen and Charlie Newton joined me at the Broken Yolk Cafe, where Adam Richman attempted the Iron Man Challenge.

What’s the Iron Man Challenge? Read it off the menu and weep.

There was no way I was going to attempt this (or any other) Man v. Food challenge, though I do sometimes order the meal in question just to see what it looks like in 3-D under my nose, and return with the uneaten portion and give it away in the con suite to a hungry fan. But since I didn’t think an omelet was likely to travel well, I went with the blueberry pancakes instead.

Back at the con, I found I very rarely ended up where I intended to go. I kept bumping into friends, getting swept up in their magnetic fields, and not making it to readings or panels I’d originally planned. I had a nice chat with Pat Murphy and Eileen Gunn about Joanna Russ and other things out in the warm San Diego sun, bumped into my old Marvel boss Len Wein, and more. I chose people over programming. The only official event I ended up at was Kathleen Ann Goonan’s 4:30 p.m. reading, which you can of course catch right here.

(more…)

I know I worried in my previous post that I’d used up all the serendipity I was allowed for 2011 last Saturday, but it seems I had a little more left Thursday morning, because as I waited for my 8:20 a.m. United flight out of Dulles, who should appear at the gate but Daryl Gregory. Unlike the old days when I could hang out in the aisle and have conversations with friends in different parts of the plane other than in my own seat, we couldn’t talk our way to San Diego, but it still made it feel as if the con had started on the East Coast rather than the West.

The oddest thing about arriving in San Diego is that except for a brief visit back in 1984, every trip I’ve taken there has been during Comic-Con, when the city has been packed with con attendees, some more obvious than others. World Fantasy is small, and so doesn’t have that affect on the place. Who were all these normies I was surrounded by? Give me back my cosplayers!

I picked up my rental car and headed over to the WFC, where I grabbed lunch in the con suite, which so far has seemed both well stocked and well run. Then a quick tour of the dealers room, a blur of schmoozing, and it was off to the opening ceremonies, which if you missed, you can watch below. (more…)

I’ll be heading off to Dulles in about 20 hours to fly to San Diego for World Fantasy Con, and I realize I haven’t yet told you where you’ll be able to find me. (Well, aside from all those Man v. Food restaurants, anyway.) So here’s my official schedule.

You’ll note I only have one panel. That’s because WFC has the highest ratio of writers, editors, artists, and critics of any convention, and so unless you’re one of the Guests of Honor, you only get one slot—you’re allowed to choose a panel or a reading, but not both.

Here’s what I’ve been assigned:

Metafiction
Saturday, October 29, 10:00 p.m., Pacific 2/3
Taking literature to the next level, metafiction exposes the fictional illusion and openly addresses the devices of fiction. It takes many forms: stories within stories, footnotes that continue the story, characters aware that they are characters, and authors commenting on and even entering their own stories. Going back at least as far at the Canterbury Tales, these devices are particularly popular of late. What do they add to the reading (and writing) experience? Is the trend just self-indulgence?
with Victoria Schwab, Steve Rasnic Tem, and Rick Wilber (moderator)

Unofficially, of course, you’ll find me many other places, such as listening to Nalo Hopkinson, Robert Shearman, Eileen Gunn and others read, and the panels on “How to Survive the Coming Zombie War” (how could I not?) and “Founders of Steampunk,” and the conversation between Neil Gaiman and Connie Willis …

… and then there’s the bar.

See you there!

Back when I told you what I bought at this year’s Small Press Expo in Bethesda, I mentioned that I’d attended three presentations. What I didn’t say was that I recorded the one that interested me the most, “The Secret History of Women in Comics.” Not just so I could share it with you, but so that my wife, Impish Irene Vartanoff, who wasn’t able to be in the audience that day but who could be considered a part of that history, would be able to witness it, too.

Sorry it’s taken me two weeks to get this up on YouTube, but, hey … I’ve been busy.

In any case, the panel, held Saturday, September 10, 2011 at SPX, was described as follows on the program: “The increased involvement of women in the comics field over the past several years has been a significant positive change in a historically male-dominated industry. However, just as it’s worth celebrating this progressive revolution, it is also worth noting that today’s women cartoonists are part of a lineage of pioneering women who have made many contributions to the field. Heidi MacDonald will discuss this history with Jessica Abel, Robyn Chapman, Alexa Dickman and Diane Noomin.”

And here it is!

I’ll be attending Capclave next month, a local science fiction convention held in Gaitherburg, Maryland. If you’ll be there, too, here’s where you’ll be able to find me. (Well, when I’m not hanging out in the bar or con suite, that is.)

Ideas into Story
Saturday, October 15, 1:00 PM
”Where do you get your ideas ?” is a question that writers always get asked. The real work is taking an idea and turning into a story. How does that happen?

Reading
Saturday, October 15, 6:30 PM
Got a few weeks to decide exactly what I’ll be reading … all I know is that it’ll be something I’ve never read at a Capclave before!

Self-Editing: From Rough Draft to Finished Work (m)
Sunday, October 16, 1:00 PM
How do writers look critically at their own work? What steps do they take to hone their drafts into polished stories?

Endings: Varieties of Wrapping Up (m)
Sunday, October 16, 3:00 PM
In the final pages, the resolution of the present story becomes clear (and so might the nature of the sequel). It’s not always done well—let’s talk about how and when it is done well, as well as the many other challenges of creating good endings.

See you there!

I didn’t get to attend the Small Press Expo last year because our trip to Melbourne for Worldcon trumped everything, so I was glad I had no SPX conflicts this time around. I only attended Saturday, but still managed to make it to three programming items—a Q&A with Roz Chast and Kate Beaton about working at the New Yorker, a panel on the Secret History of Women in Comics moderated by Heidi MacDonald and featuring Jessica Abel, Robyn Chapman, Alexa Dickman, and Diane Noomin, and a presentation by Chester Brown on his new graphic novel Paying For It. In between all that, I had drinks with John Sullivan and Jamie Gegerson, and of course made several circuits of the dealers room.

I managed to resist most impulse buys, but here are three things I found I couldn’t resist.

The first book that caught my eye was Frog & Owl: Regret is for the Weak, by Molly Lawless. There was something about the title that attracted me. Maybe it’s from too much reading of Frog and Toad are Friends to my son a couple of decades ago, but the idea of a dysfunctional relationship of a similar animal pair attracted me. So I picked it up and started to read.

The second strip in the book, titled “Love Is” (see below), made me laugh. And as I then told the artist, “OK, you made me laugh. Now I have to buy it.”

It was a good choice, because when I read the book on getting home last night, Lawless made me laugh a LOT. (more…)