{"id":4428,"date":"2011-11-02T22:01:47","date_gmt":"2011-11-03T02:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=4428"},"modified":"2011-11-02T22:01:47","modified_gmt":"2011-11-03T02:01:47","slug":"2011-world-fantasy-convention-sunday-and-monday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2011\/11\/02\/2011-world-fantasy-convention-sunday-and-monday\/","title":{"rendered":"2011 World Fantasy Convention: Sunday and Monday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;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 <em>very<\/em> far away. And yet I don&#8217;t want to leave you hanging as to the end of World Fantasy Con.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;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&#8217;ll say again, was well-stocked and well-run), sold a few more copies of<a href=\"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/writing\/books\/what-will-come-after\/\"><em> What Will Come After<\/em><\/a> out front of the dealers room to some attendees who&#8217;d let me know in advance that they&#8217;d wanted them, did some minimal schmoozing, and then headed back to my room to get suited up.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AK5TyUWel4w\" width=\"560\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;t stick. If one of those names happens to be yours, feel free to slap me around the next time you see me.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>After lunch, I stripped off my suit, slipped into something more comfortable, and headed over to the hotel bar where I sat for a few hours with Jeffrey Ford, John Picacio, Sarah Pinborough, Shawna McCarthy, Gordon Van Gelder and others until I was pulled aside by Stephen Jones to brainstorm about his follow-up volume to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/writing\/short-fiction\/are-we-not-a-new-people\/\"><em>Zombie Apocalypse<\/em><\/a>. Ideas are percolating, which you will see the result of at the end of next year.<\/p>\n<p>After that, it was off for dinner at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kingsfishhouse.com\/locations_mission-valley.html\">King&#8217;s Fish House<\/a> with Ellen Datlow and  Shawna McCarthy (both of whom I&#8217;ve known for years) and <a href=\"http:\/\/xiameifeng.wordpress.com\/\">Amanda Clark<\/a> and<a href=\"http:\/\/www.corrylee.com\/\"> Corry L. Lee<\/a> (both of whom I&#8217;d just met). As for which member of that quartet repeatedly knocked over her wine, forcing me at one point to leap up at light speed &#8230; well &#8230; I&#8217;m doing the gentlemanly thing and remaining mum.<\/p>\n<p>Later, back at the dead dog party, I saw Nalo Hopkinson for the first time that weekend, and threw myself at her feet to beg forgiveness for having <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/2011\/11\/01\/2011-world-fantasy-convention-saturday\/\">bailed on dinner<\/a> the night before. Luckily, she as magnanimous. I met Charles Tan, chatted with Pat Murphy and Deborah Smith, and generally yucked it up until the room closed at midnight. That didn&#8217;t mean the party was over, though, for we all gathered outside the bar &#8230; which was also closed. But Mary Robinette Kowal and Jeremy Lassen brought along enough of the right sorts of beverages to make sure we were all happy.<\/p>\n<p>I stayed for an hour or so, in addition to chatting, breaking away to wander around a bit with Nina Kiriki Hoffman photographing the statuary that dotted the hotel complex. But I hadn&#8217;t yet packed, so I eventually had to stumble back to the hotel proper with Nina and a few others, and managed to stay awake long enough to stuff my suitcases.<\/p>\n<p>Monday morning, I woke with just enough time for another breakfast at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hashhouseagogo.com\/\">Hash House a Go Go<\/a> (I went for the griddled french toast dipped in banana cinnamon cream with pecan maple syrup this time), which I had at the counter alone until Derryl Murphy showed up with Michael Skeet, Lorna Toolis, and Annette Mocek, and I joined them at a table.  But far too soon I was forced to head off for the airport.<\/p>\n<p>Still, that wasn&#8217;t the end of the con. Because as I was going through TSA security, I found<a href=\"http:\/\/charibdys.wordpress.com\/\"> Rhiannon R. Rasmussen-Silverstein<\/a> ahead of me on line, and we talked until my plane boarded.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;ve left out a ton of brief meetings, because a complete recounting of a con is impossible when you know hundreds of people. Maybe someday I&#8217;ll set myself the challenge of  keeping track of EVERY person I speak to over a con weekend. (But probably not.)<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s enough out of me about World Fantasy Con!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;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&#8217;t want to leave you hanging as to the end of World Fantasy Con. I didn&#8217;t have much of a Sunday morning. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[58,10,11],"class_list":["post-4428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-conventions","tag-video","tag-world-fantasy-convention"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}