Readercon—which has been my favorite convention for more than a quarter of a century—is right around the corner, running from July 9 through 12 in Burlington, Massachusetts. Here’s the programming where you’ll be able to find me.

Thursday, July 10, 9:00 p.m.
What Don’t We Read—and Why?
If all of the signals—the reviews, the blurbs, the cover, the author, the publisher—suggest you’d hate a particular book, is that sufficient reason to pass on it? Have you ever tried to read something you thought you’d despise and realized that you loved it? Do you give every book a certain number of pages to win you over, or feel obligated to finish any book you start? If a certain critic praises something, does that make you want to run the other way? We’ll discuss these and many other ways not to read a book.
with Stacey Friedberg, Natalie Luhrs, Sarah Smith (leader), and Patty Templeton.

Friday July 11, 4:00 p.m.
Reading
I’ll be reading my unpublished short story “The Pillow of Disappointment and What Was Found Beneath It.”

Friday July 11, 8:00 p.m.
Dealing with Discouragement
As writers, we learn very early on to handle rejection, but how do you handle it when a story you’re sure is good is rejected by 20 different publications? Or when your carefully crafted novel is shrugged off by five different agents? Or your self-published novella is bought by only 25 people, all of them friends and relatives? Or your fantasy novel disappears from public view after a couple of weeks? We’ll explore personal strategies to deal with disappointments, rejection, and other setbacks.
with Susan Bigelow, Michael J. Daley, Barbara Krasnoff (leader), and Shariann Lewitt.

And if you don’t catch me there, you can always find me hanging out in the halls or in the bar chatting non-stop. When I’m not in the audience watching the other programming, that is.

If you’d like to join me, it’s not too late. You can find more information here.

Hope to see you in two weeks!

As I was preparing to add my photos from Loncon3 to my Flickr albums, I realized I still hadn’t uploaded last month’s Readercon pics. And so …

… if you’d like to see me with David Kyle, who attended the first science fiction convention in 1936, as well as 42 other photos, you can check them out here.

And just in case you’re worried—no, you won’t be forced to look at food pics!

It’s been two weeks and a day since my dinner at Journeyman during Readercon, a meal which I should have shared with you sooner. Ah, Life … it does get in the way.

But since it would be unfair to the wonderful meal not to give you a few details even after this passage of time, read on.

After last year’s meal at Journeyman, I was eager to return.

And so, on Saturday night, I skipped out on the con, along with Cecilia Tan (above), David Shaw, Diane Martin, and others, for a meal that began at 8:00 p.m. and went on way past midnight. (And if I’d gotten to this sooner, I could have told you exactly when we left.) (more…)

I know, I know. Readercon’s more than a week behind me in the rear-view mirror, and I’m only just now getting around to posting my final video from the event. It violates Edelman’s Rule of Convention Reporting, which requires that all write-ups, photos, and videos be shared as contemporaneously as possible, to increase the schadenfreude of those who couldn’t make it.

But you’ll forgive me, won’t you? I’m hopeful this last bit of video will allow you to do so.

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to capture this 10:00 a.m. panel, since Saturday night’s dinner (which I promise I’ll tell you about next) didn’t have me getting to sleep until around 2:30 a.m. But I forced myself awake because, hey, Readercon only comes around once a year, and it would be shame to surrender a panel to fatigue. So here’s “Books That Deserve to Remain Unspoiled,” featuring Jonathan Crowe, Gavin Grant, Gayle Surrette, Kate Nepveu, and Graham Sleight. Their mandate was—

In a 2013 review of Joyce Carol Oates’s The Accursed, Stephen King stated, “While I consider the Internet-fueled concern with ‘spoilers’ rather infantile, the true secrets of well-made fiction deserve to be kept.” How does spoiler-acquired knowledge change our reading of fiction? Are some books more “deserving” of going unspoiled than others? If so, what criteria do we apply to determine those works?

And here’s the panel itself!

After an hour of schmoozing and signing more books (for the first time ever, an equal number of copies of my zombie and science fiction collections were sold this weekend; zombie usually win), I attended David Shaw and B. Diane Martin’s presentation on the science of ice cream, which included—samples! (more…)

I’d meant to tell you about Readercon Saturday on Sunday, the same way I shared about Readercon Thursday on Friday and Readercon Friday on Saturday, because I like to be as contemporaneous as possible in my con reporting. But Readercon was so packed with panels I wanted to see and people I wanted to chat with—far more than other cons—that I was unable to do so. And yesterday’s reentry into real life left no time either.

Today, on the other hand …

I began Saturday by attending, “When the Other Is You,” which featured panelists Chesya Burke, Samuel Delany, Sabrina Vourvoulias (leader), Peter Dubé, Mikki Kendall, and Vandana Singh. This was their mandate, per the official description.

Being part of an underrepresented group and trying to write our experience into our work can be tricky. We might have internalized some prejudice about ourselves, we might not have the craft to get our meaning across perfectly, and even if we depict our own experience totally accurately (as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie observed in her TED Talk “The Danger of a Single Story”), we do so while struggling against the expectation that our experience is or isn’t “representative” or “authentic.” How do we navigate the pitfalls and responsibilities of being perceived as spokespeople? What potentially pernicious dynamics allow us that dubious privilege in the first place? Which works make us cringe with their representations of us, and which make us sigh with relief and recognition?

And here, for those who couldn’t be there, is the panel itself. Well worth watching in full. (more…)

First thing I did yesterday was to post Thursday’s Readercon videos, because I’d hoped to encourage you to get here today, but don’t worry—I then got out of my hotel room and quickly dove into the thick of things.

First up was the morning panel “Empathy, Identification, and Stories,” which featured Matthew Kressel, L. Timmel Duchamp (moderator), Julia Rios, Andrea Hairston, and Walt Williams.

Here’s what they set out to discuss.

At a panel at Arisia 2013, Andrea Hairston said, “I can only tell you a story if you’re a human who can hear a story and imagine what it’s like to be someone who isn’t you.” Tannanarive Due added that access to stories matters: some children, for instance, can easily find books about characters like themselves, while others have to read books from outside a position of identification. Culture creates structures of identification and empathy; or, to put it another way, ways of feeling from within and ways of feeling from without. How do stories create structures of feeling, and how can writers and readers both benefit from awareness of these structures?

And for those who couldn’t make it to Readercon, here’s the panel itself. (more…)

Another July, another Readercon!

Readercon is my favorite convention. I’ve been to every one since 1987. Well, save one, which I missed due to a conflict with San Diego Comic-Con, though some of you might remember than in order to prevent despair, I sent a stand-in. A stand-up stand-in. This year, thankfully, I was able to make it in the flesh.

As has been usual for the past decade, rather than fly to Boston and bus it to Burlington, I flew to Providence, where I spent the afternoon with Paul Di Filippo and Deb Newton, who drove me to the con. But the con really began at Dulles Airport, because Michael Dirda was on the same flight, and we were able to discuss Forever Amber, Henry Huggins, and Rick Brant’s Electronic Adventures without the need of a moderator or microphone.

In Providence, he and I and Paul and Deb were joined by John Clute and Liz Hand (seen with me below), also on the way to Readercon. So there was much fun (and lobster rolls!) before the con proper even began.

Once we arrived at the con, we took part in a massive group dinner which also included Peter Straub, Gary Wolfe, Kit Reed, plus the organizers of the meal, David Shaw and Diane Martin. And then at 8:00 p.m., the programming began … (more…)

Last week, I shared my tentative Readercon schedule. Since then, the committee’s finalized what’ll really be happening in Burlington, Massachusetts next month, so here’s my final agenda.

Being an Editor Who Writes
Friday July 12, 12:00 p.m.
Few people haven’t heard of the editor-as-failed-author stereotype. Being both an editor and an author means living with your own harshest critic—yourself. While some editors-to-writers avoid this pitfall by writing nonfiction, there are those who manage to straddle the line, and even find success as fiction writers. How do they manage to quiet the inner editor, and how do they know when to turn it back on?
with Michael Kandel, Sandra Kasturi, Barbara Krasnoff (moderator), Warren Lapine, and Ian Randal Strock

Kaffeeklatsch
Friday July 12, 2:00 p.m.

Reading
Friday July 12, 3:30 p.m.
I’ll read a new, as-yet-unpublished story, “And, Behold, It Was Very Good.”

The Shiny, Candy-like Zombie: Commoditizing the Undead
Saturday July 13, 1:00 p.m.
On Twitter, M. John Harrison wrote about the appeal of zombies: “You can hate them without feeling wrong. You can kill them like eating sweets. Then you’re hungry again & you can kill more. They’re fully dehumanised. There’s no off-season, no moral limitation. They’re the *enemy*. What’s not to love? They’re what we really want.” So do we like zombies because they’re the consumer-friendly, ambiguity-free face of implacable evil? Are they, in fact, the most perfectly commoditised monsters?
with Dale Bailey, Catt Kingsgrave, John Langan, and Sarah Langan (leader)

I hope to see you there!

It seems as if I’ve barely gotten back into the rhythm of my regular life after the one-two punch of the World Horror Convention and the Nebula Awards on consecutive weekends. But since it’s summer, there are two more cons around the corner to discombobulate and energize me—Readercon in Burlington, Massachusetts and Loncon 3, the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, in London.

The con committees have released their tentative schedules to the program participants, which obviously will be subject to change as the final tweaks are made. But just to tease you, here—as of today—is where you’ll be able to find me during these two events. (I’m leaving out my co-panelists for now, since that’s also subject to change.)

First up—Readercon.

The Shiny, Candy-like Zombie: Commoditizing the Undead
Friday, July 12, 3:00 p.m.
On Twitter, M. John Harrison wrote about the appeal of zombies: “You can hate them without feeling wrong. You can kill them like eating sweets. Then you’re hungry again & you can kill more. They’re fully dehumanised. There’s no off-season, no moral limitation. They’re the *enemy*. What’s not to love? They’re what we really want.” So do we like zombies because they’re the consumer-friendly, ambiguity-free face of implacable evil? Are they, in fact, the most perfectly commoditised monsters?

Reading
Sunday, July 14, 9:00 a.m.
I’ll read my new story, “And, Behold, It Was Very Good”

(more…)

When Carol Pinchefsky and Keith DeCandido recently appeared on Jim Freund’s WBAI radio show Hour of the Wolf, the topic at hand was Doctor Who. However, I—along with my durian—also became a topic for discussion.

The durian discussed—along with a jackfruit—made an appearance at Readercon in 2011. And for those who don’t know what either of those fabled fruits look like, behold! Here are the very fruits which I stored in my hotel room while waiting for the Friday night “Meet the Prose” party to begin.

If you’ve no experience with either durian or jackfruit and are wondering about their size, here for contrast is a photo of me with one of the durian I brought to a Balticon several years ago. (more…)