4th Street Fantasy Convention

[mmerriam]

Friday, careswen and I were late getting to the convention and missed half of the first panel, From Cool Idea to Story, instead checking into the room and unpacking. We finished with that and hooked up with greykev in time to catch the Grinding Buttons and Pushing Axes for Fun and Profit panel. There was a lot of discussion about axe grinding in fiction, with particular attention paid to Phillip Pullman's later work in the "His Dark Materials" series, Ayn Rand in general, some C. S. Lewis, and a smattering of others. There was good conversation about button pushing, and how an author goes about deciding, whether consciously or not, which buttons to push.

Afterward we went to IHOP for dinner with greykev, cadithial, and his wife, C (WINOLJ to the best of my knowledge). I ate entirely too much, but the conversation and company was pleasant. Once we arrived back at the hotel, I was approached by a man from what appeared to be an evangelical revival that was taking place in another part of the hotel. They had seen my white cane denoting my blindness and wanted to "Pray for me and heal me" with laying on of the hands. Um, yeah. I was polite (even when he started describing the powerful results of healing prayer) and told him they could pray for me if they wished, but that I was late getting somewhere and needed to go on about my business.

Back at the convention, we attended A Very Shiny Evening of Readings and Celebration, elisem's private party within the convention celebrating the release of the book Glass Bead Games, a collection of fiction and poetry based on and inspired by her magnificent jewelry. All of the readings were wonderful, and I enjoyed the stories and poetry, especially matociquala's "Orm the Beautiful."

There was much good conversation after the event, with a variety of folks, and then a music circle. It was good to see timprov playing at the music circle this year. He does songs I enjoy and is a good singer. We hung around until about 1:00 am.

We were slow getting up on Saturday, but managed to attend The Chewy Bits, where vary smart writers and editors talked about how to construct the chewy bits, what to do with the chewy bits, and how to eventually pair down your work until it is almost nothing but chewy bits. They also talked about how not every story needs to be mostly chewy bits (or in some cases, have any at all) because sometime a reader doesn't want to deal with chewy, they just want to be entertained for a couple of hours. I ran into Dana Baird, who joined a large group of us for lunch.

Ah. Lunch. careswen, greykev, timprov, matastas, dlandon, Dana, a nice young man named Brian (ETA: who I just learned is seabream), a shy young woman who's name I had sadly forgotten (ETA: and who I have just learned is aliseadae ), and myself convened at Fat Lorenzo's for sandwiches, pizza, and talk. However (you knew there had to be a however), when my sandwich arrived, I happened to ask my wife what time it was, only to discover that I was suppose to be on the next panel in fifteen minutes! So careswen, greykev, Dana, and I piled back into the car, carrying our food in to go boxes, and made a mad dash back to the hotel.

By this time the panels were running late, do the slowness of the service in the hotel restaurant, and the panel was pushed back fifteen minutes, so I still arrived in time to not be late for Advice from New Writers, which turned out to be high energy and more than a little bit contentious. I don't remember exactly what was said, but I do remember mrissa getting off a good smack down on an audience member. We talked about how editors keep asking for "something fresh and different" and then doing a lot of publishing same old same old. We talked about magazines and such that need to join the future, or at least stop typing their rejection letters on a typewriter and maybe, you know, join the 20th century by buying a computer.

We talked about new models in publishing (which caused a later conversation between todfox and me about open license/source fiction worlds), and gryphynshadow made an impassioned plea to older writers to push the envelope more themselves. We talked about things in fiction that we don't want to see anymore, and what we want to see instead.

Afterward, I went up to the room to eat my now cold sandwich, and fell asleep for a few hours. careswen spoke to elisem about her lost earring, and elisem took the survivor and made it into a pendant right there in the dealer's room for careswen. We talked with laurel a bit while this was happening, which was all to the good. I keep meaning to get to know her and kaustin better, but we always seem to pass like ships in the night. Or fog. Or whatever metaphor you like.

We spent time in the consuite talking with Andre Guirard (who gave me his current WiP to read) and his wife, Rebecca Chesin. careswen discovered that Rebecca is a recent graduate of the grad school that careswen is attending, and so the world became a little smaller than before.

ETA: And we met and enjoyed talking with alecaustin, who was smart and fun! It's always good to meet new people.

Next, we ran back downstairs for the Food, Fashion, and Fornication panel. Frankly, I could have skipped this one, though a couple of good things came out of it, including the woman from England (ETA: who I just learned is oursin) who is an historian focusing on sex issues. They dragged her from the audience and placed her on the panel, which I thought was very wise indeed. Another thing I saw was a good trick used by elisem, who was the moderator, of going out into the audience with the wireless mic so everyone could hear the audience member's question.

Afterward there was a music circle.

Sunday we slept in a little and ate breakfast in the consuite with a bunch of people. We also spent time in the consuite talking to minnehaha K and dd_b, which was pleasant.

The only panel we went to on Sunday was Writer’s Lies, which was what lies do you have to tell yourself in order to do your best work? It was an interesting experience to hear all these major writers talk about telling themselves the same lies that I do. It was good and funny, and I never realized how much I had in common, at least process wise, with klages.

We missed the last panel because we stood in the hallway and talked with a large group of people, including markgritter, careswen, greykev, timprov, dlandon, mrissa, cadithial, C, and Dana. Though I enjoyed other aspects of the convention immensely, this was probably my favorite time of the whole convention, this time where I was with a a group of smart, interesting people engaged in smart, interesting conversation.

Shortly afterward, and just before closing ceremonies, careswen started to suffer a migraine, so we went home, slept in our own bed, and petted the cat. The Reverend Selena was very happy to see us.

All in all I had a really good time, even with the rough moments, and as I said to gryphynshadow in a comment:

I still had a very good time at the convention, I just needed to say what was bothering me to get it out of my system (without naming names, because I felt that would be just as rude, and uselessly expand the situation).

We now return to our regularly scheduled Live Journal content.