mmerriam | CONvergence Report With Bonus Misadventures Of The Reverend Selena, Aka Calamity Cat.

After dropping The Reverend Selena at her new boarding place, we made it to the convention on Thursday, around 3:30pm. The positive was that we did get an ADA room in the short (north) tower, which made getting around easier for the blind man on a lot of programming items. The negative was that, even by then, all of the refrigerators had been checked out (which was annoying, considering that someone at the hotel told me over the phone there were fridges in each room).

greykev drove back to his place to retrieve his fridge, but that cost us a good parking space. I was surprised at how packed the hotel was so early in the convention.

I attended the Poor Unpublished Author to Poor Published Author, panel with the two Guests of Honor, Pat Rothfuss and Kelly McCullough. It was a good panel, and both of the GoH were engaging, though I was unsure if I agreed with some of the things Pat Rothfuss said. I got a nice shout-out from Kelly and chatted with

dmbaird

Skipped opening ceremonies and had dinner with

careswen and

greykev, and then wondered around a bit, running into

ladysea and

anne_mommy, and I poked my head into the room where the "Teen Meet-Up Thursday" was happening with

ladysea and

mnfiddledragon daughter's on the panel. There was a series of loud squeals, and I'm unclear on what happened next, but I think I was picked up and carried into the room.

Made my way to the "When Should Writers Stop?" panel, which had some smart folks and was a good conversation on writing, and commercialism, and sustaining a series. By two-thirds of the way through the panel I was starting to tire, and there was a lot of party noise filtering into the room, so I got up, closed the doors, and called it a night, though I did run into several people on the way. Wrote a little, then went to bed.

Got up nice and early and went with

careswen to the "Keeping a Game/Movie Night Going." Another good panel, with good advice for a variety of groups,

careswen should have been on the panel, since she has kept a gaming group running for something like seven or eight years now. We went over to the Steampunk fashion show after, but it was already crowded and there was nowhere to sit. Neither of us wanted to stand, so we had lunch instead.

From there I had to a signing with

dmbaird and

joelarnold. I sold one book, but signed two, since Joel brought an anthology we both have a story in. Pat Rothfuss was packing up as we were setting up and gave each of us a free copy of his book.

I went from there to

dmbaird's reading and book release. It was good fun and I picked up a copy of Dana's new novel. Charged down to the "MinnSpec Meeting," where

hilarymoonmurph and I pitched the group to the audience and answered a few writng related questions.

Once done there, it was off to dinner at DQ with the whole crew. The burger was greasy and I had ill effects from it later. This is the second year in a row DQ has disappointed me, so no more DQ at con.

I was supposed to go to the "Storyteller's Slam" after that, but took a nap that went—well it went a bit long. Sent the rest of the group off to other things and stayed in the room to write. I caught the fireworks over the lake from the window, which was nice.

Saturday I slept in late, ate breakfast in the room, and then went up to my own reading in the literary lounge. I had a nice turn out and read some new stuff, including something so new that it's still in first draft. After discussion with

careswen, we determined the one thing I could do better next time is to read something with a little more action. The things I read were a little talky.

From there, on to "Disabilities in Science Fiction." This panel was energetic and talkative and the audience participation was rollicking. We did not manage to cover all the things we wanted to cover, and decided there would be more about this next year, but in another room, one more accessible. Because while Krushenko's is a wonderful space, and I'm thankful Eric puts it on every year, it was in a cabana room and not all that accessible for all the disabled fans who wanted to attend.

There were some down sides. I think too much time was spent on people talking about their personal struggles with disabilities, and while that was relevant to a point, we strayed away from the topic so much that one of the panelist didn't get to speak much or cover the things she wanted to talk about. In retrospect, as much as I didn't want to be the moderator, I should have taken control of the panel at the onset and appointed someone to help me with audience questions, since I can't see the whole room. I think if the panel had been guided by a firm hand, it could have been better. If we do more of these panels next year, I will not make that mistake again.

Something deeply cool were the ASL interpreters. I love that CONvergence offers this service. I'm going to press for large print or Braille programs next year, as I encountered at least six other blind fans over the weekend. I think if they offered it in advance and advertised it, it would get used.

I was going to attend another panel after that, but was tired (I noticed I was getting tired awfully easy, which is a sure sign that I'm horribly out of shape. I will correct this before next year) and slunk away to the room for lunch.

After lunch we went to see

mnfiddledragon play with the band she recent joined, Bramblebush. I enjoyed them quite a bit. They do both traditional folk songs and write their own material. Their original stuff is strong in both lyrics and music.

From there the crew (

careswen,

akillianna,

glass_eye_01, and

greykev) assembled and we signed up for the SteamPunk LARP/Mystery/scavenger hunt. I made it through the first part, but when we moved to where the party rooms were, I had to drop out. The noise, heat, and confusion were simply more than I could bear. I sometimes forget that in loud noise situations I am even blinder than normal, since I cannot rely on my ears to help me know where I am in space and what is happening in the environment around me. I did meet up with them for dinner and tried to help with the clues as much as possible.

I will admit that I spent a part of the evening frustrated with myself. I wanted to take part, but the environment, with the noise and crowds, was too much for me to deal with, and I was sad and angry and unable to deal with being too fucking broken to participate. I know there's nothing for it, but it was frustrating. Instead, I hid out in the room and wrote, finishing another short story and keeping myself one week ahead in my Story-A-Week Challenge.

Sunday we packed up the room and loaded the car before

careswen and I caught part of the "Tieflings Are Not a Player Race" panel on the gaming track. There was a lot of animosity directed at 4th edition D&D, far more so than I thought there would be. Look, I don't like 4th Edition as much as I do 3.5, but it's not a total hose-up of a system.

Afterward I went up to the literary lounge and talked writing with a group of teenagers. They asked questions and were fun and curious about writing, and when my friend Roy Booth wandered into the room, I got him involved, since he does script, screen, and comic writing, which I do not. A couple of the teens were tired out from the long weekend, and I thought one of them might have been ready shiv me for my caramel coffee, but the one's that were engaged were deeply interested. We covered all the basics. In fact, it was a bit like doing a "Publishing 101" panel, but with a younger audience.

After that we ran away to pick up The Reverend, who had be checked out of the boarding facility before 4:00pm. We brought her home and she seemed fine and in good spirits. I shut her in the master suite of the house—where her food, water, and litter box are—in case she decided to have an attack of nerves and be sick. We will return to her story in a few paragraphs.

Back to the convention, where we caught

hatfield13's show in Harmonic Convergence before I had to zip across the hotel for "The Twin Cities School" panel. We talked about the history on SF/F writing in the cities (we had Ruth Berman, who is grand resource for this sort of stuff) talked about the fact that we had two major independent SF bookstore in town, had a whole mess of conventions and fan organizations, The Loft Literary Center, a handful of small publishers, and how active fandom in this town is. I had a good time.

Then back home. We ordered pizza on the way, being too tired to cook and all after con.

And all of our plans to eat and rest for the evening went astray.

As I was bringing in the luggage,

careswen called me upstairs. She had gone up to let The Reverend out of the bedroom and could hear the cat meowing frantically, but could not find her. After careful investigation we figured out where she was.

She was in the sub-floor under the master bathroom.

She had opened the cabinet (something she had ignored for the last three years), crawled around all the crap in the cabinet, found a hole I thought too small for her to squeeze through near the pipes, then apparently got under the cabinet, under the floor, and into the sub-floor where the plumbing between the two townhome units run. We could hear her, could even see her nose from time-to-time, but we could not reach in the pull her out because of the small size of the opening and the tangle of plumbing, and she could not get enough footing and could not twist around enough to escape on her own.

Eventually I had get out a saw and carefully cut away a section of the cabinet floor. Once I was done, we couldn't hear her anymore and were afraid she gone deeper into the sub-floor to escape the noise. We sat at the opening and talked softly to her, trying to coax her back. For a long time there was silence, and I was about ready to start ripping up floor, then she sneezed.

I've never been so happy to hear my cat sneeze.

We coaxed her back to the opening, where she did most of the work of escaping now that she had a larger opening. I simply had to help steady her as she worked her way out. Then we had her back, safe and sound.

And I burst into tears.

There is a bar across the cabinet doors now.

It was a good convention. Not great, but good, and the literary panel track at CONvergence is underrated, in my opinion. Plus, they brought in a whole host of personable, energetic Guests of Honor. There were more industry professionals this year as well, though mostly in the horror field. I regret that I didn't get to spend time with a lot of people I wanted to see and hang out with (which was my fault), and my disability hampered me more this year, it seemed, so I'm not sure I enjoyed this CONvergence as much as others in the past, but I still had a good time.