As anyone who's been following my blog for the past few days knows, I had a real blast at World Steam Expo. That was an absolutely terrific convention, which from my perspective was very well run. I met a lot of very nice, fun people there, and was extremely well-entertained in many different respects.

Some of this of course is simply due to my own state of mind and body. I have been feeling better these last few months than I have since April of 2009. So this is me in full form, able to enjoy late night parties, a little bit of alcohol, and pushing my sleep schedule around without disrupting myself significantly. Yes, I'm exhausted now, but it's a fun kind of post-event exhaustion, not the medical-grade exhaustion I've been living with for so long thanks to my excellent cancer adventures,.

But a great deal more of this had to do with the nature of the event. My experience of World Steam Expo was rather different from my usual convention experience, and I've been noodling on what and why. I'm curious to see if I can draw any useful lessons from this.

In no particular order…

Guest Relations

World Steam Expo had one of the best guest relations efforts I have ever encountered. I don't believe I've ever been treated so well by a convention, except when being a Guest of Honor.

At World Steam Expo, I was an author guest — I believe there were five of us, total. I was met at the airport and driven to the hotel. Some logistical snafus which were entirely my own fault were cleared up even before I arrived, thanks to the head of guest relations responding very quickly to help messages from me in transit. I was provided with a call list of guest relations staff and other con com staff, should I need anything, and the few times I did make requests, they were handled promptly and cheerfully. My room was ready with no hassle and no waiting. The con-com had worked with the hotel to keep all the pro guests in a few sections of the hotel, so it was very easy to interact with the other guests without trooping all over the place. At the end of the convention, I was driven back to the airport.

The Green Room was open literally every time I visited it, from fairly early in the morning until very late at night. Three meals a day were served in there for the pro guests. Access was very strictly controlled, which made it a relaxing space, especially for the more recognizable actors, musicians and performers who had fans actively seeking them out. The Green Room kept a well-stocked open bar, and a huge selection of juices and sodas. They had laid on a masseur for the weekend at the convention's expense, with whom pro guests could book 90 minute slots.

Really, we were insanely well-treated. And at considerable expense, with a budget that I frankly wouldn't expect from almost any SF convention. (I assume this had to do with the requirements and expectations of the musicians and performers who were there as pro guests.) This made World Steam Expo a high quality experience for me as an author pro guest.

Being a Side Show at Someone Else's Circus

For the most part, I attend SF/F conventions and genre-oriented writing conferences or retreats, as well as similar events such as the Locus Awards, or the Nebulas when they're not on the East Coast. Reasonably often I am an 'anchor' pro, as I was at Paradise Lost II a couple of weekends ago in San Antonio. This involves being fairly heavily programmed with panels (or lectures), as well as critique sessions. If I'm a toastmaster or a GoH, all the more so. Outside of formal programming, there are always a goodly number of hallway conversations and BarCon discussions about writing and craft and publishing. My time at those events really isn't my own, as I'm working. That's a kind of work I greatly enjoy, but it's still a significant commitment for me to go to most conventions as a pro.

World Steam Expo isn't a writing convention. It isn't even particularly book oriented. This is steampunk, which is more of a costuming and music and art and performance and maker movement than it is a literary movement. Gail Carriger and I and the other writers there were definitely supporting cast rather than the main event.

And that made this convention very, very different.

For one, by my usual standards, I was very lightly programmed. This meant I didn't have to go to bed early in order to leap out of bed early in order to make morning panels or critique sessions or business meetings. That in turn meant I could stay up late to enjoy the concerts and parties.

Likewise, as the days rolled on, I had time to visit the dealer room, attend panels and performances, have a massage or hit the hot tub. Basically, I did whatever I wanted. That's a very unusual convention experience for me.

So while World Steam Expo certainly delivered a great deal of value to me, I was in the interesting position of delivering value as a supporting cast member. Third camel from the left, so to speak. That was a terrific way to see this rich, complex blowout of a convention.

Working a Convention Cold

I think the last time I worked a convention cold was when I attended Orycon in the fall of 2000, before I was even a baby pro. I'd just moved to Oregon that spring, and hadn't yet made contact with the local writer community. I had a story in the convention workshop, along with Deborah Layne and Brenda Cooper, and we were pro'd by among other people Devon Monk and Wolf Read. All of whom are friends now, as are many other people I met that weekend. But going in, I didn't know anyone.

After that, every conference or convention or workshop I attended, whether early on as an aspiring/new writer, or later as a mentoring pro, I knew some people. Usually a lot more than "some". The chain of affinity that develops among any cohesive social group took hold of me.

Except for this time. Going into World Steam Expo, I knew exactly four people who were going to be there. Only one of them did I know even minimally well (@howardtayler), and until he found me in the hall, I didn't even realize he was going to be there. I also knew Evelyn Kreite, though I'd never met her in real life, and G.D. Falksen, whom I'd met exactly once in real life. And Gail, of course, though I know her only casually from the West Coast convention circuit.

My approach was to be friendly to everybody, and chat up anyone who would sit still. Going in, I more or less interviewed the guest relations volunteer who picked me up at the airport. (Hi, Dres!) Then I chatted up Tom Downey, head of guest relations, to the degree that he was free to talk to me amid pre-con madness. After I'd settled into my room, I went down to the lobby to people watch and talk to whoever was there. Met a very nice man named Joel, from Aegis, which led to me meeting Sal and a bunch of other Aegis folks. They gave me a place to take a break, fed me a few times, watched my belongings once or twice, and were generality crazy nice. (It turned out that was where Howard was hanging out as well.) Likewise, very early on I popped into the Green Room, where I met the League of S.T.E.A.M., who adopted me and dragged me around and introduced me to the members of Abney Park and a bunch of other musicians and performers and artists and photographers.

By being open to possibilities, I met a whole bunch of new people, some of whom bid fair to become good friends over time. Usually, I'm spending my free Con time with my old friends, meeting new people as they daisy chain into the world of writers, but that's a much more gradual process. World Steam Expo forced me to make new friends wholesale. And because of that, I got to do a whole lot of other things I would normally have missed out on, like being shot by the H.U.G. gun, or going backstage during the Abney Park concert to be part of the League of S.T.E.A.M.'s surprise on-stage raid on Captain Robert. Plus, there might be some cool new work shaking out of all this, just because. A writing project, at least, and maybe more.

What Does It All Mean?

Heck if I know what it all means. I'm not likely to change my convention-going habits. WriterLand is my home town, and you all are my friends. But I learned (or re-learned) some new ways to experience a convention. I made some terrifically fun new friends. And I should probably stretch my convention/conference habits when time and funds permit.

Also, I'd go back to World Steam Expo in a heartbeat if they invite me again in a future year. If you get a chance to attend, in any capacity, I can't recommend it strongly enough.

Tags: cancer, conventions, detroit, friends, health, portland, steampunk, travel

Your Tuesday moment of zen.



Flower in the garden at Viejo Rancho Lake, 2006. © 2006, 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

The current photo series is from my 'favorites' file, hence the dates jumping about



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: photos, zen

JERICHO

A few weeks ago, I condemned the TV series Jericho as insipid trash. Here's a quick recap: it's the touching story of a small Kansas town that is cut off from the outside world by an apparent nuclear holocaust.

It had all the hallmarks of the bad US drama*: 2 dimensional characters; "I love you dad" schmaltz in every episode; easy outs for hard decisions; love triangles where nobody gets hurt. In addition to these problems, there seemed to be numerous betrayals of the fascinating premise that made me watch the thing in the first place. Why was everybody still driving their cars everywhere when they should be running out of petrol already? Why was nobody really starving?

But I'm going to have to eat some of the words above, because, about halfway through the first season, a strange thing happened: some of the characters grew a third dimension. And then, two genuinely outstanding episodes -- 14 and 15 arrived together. Finally the gas and the food begin to run out. Finally, hard decisions with real consequences have to be taken. The post apocalyptic world is starting to kill some of the characters off in a way that makes you think, maybe, this isn't a cartoon after all, where everybody gets to go home before the credits roll.

I'm not going to apologize to the makers of Jericho -- plenty of TV series work hard to build appreciation early on. But I will recommend my fellow NetFlix users give it a decent chance. Get past the halfway mark and you might just start to love it.

GAME OF THRONES

Episode 9 of series 2 was absolutely excellent and dealt exclusively with the Battle of the Blackwater.

Personally, I love battle scenes for their own sakes, the spectacle etc, But lots of people I know are bored by them.

This episode, however, should do a lot to convert the haters. It gets to the very heart of what makes war intrinsically interesting, i.e. the lives of real people, people we care for, are in the balance and we don't know, we can't know (unless we've read the books), who is going to make it out alive and how their fortunes will be changed. Every blow struck in this wonderful episode, seemed to have a direct bearing on important characters, the hated and the loved in equal measure. Great stuff.

HIT AND MISS

Sky Atlantic's series about a pre-op transexual hitman had a really promising opening episode. Chloe Sevigny was wonderful as the lead. The only false note for me was the training scene where her punching looked so unconvincing. No biggie. I look forward to episode 2 tonight.

What are you guys watching? Anything good?



*Especially damning in this, a golden age of American television

Tags: dvds, tv
Current Mood: chipper

Copyediting Process: Questioning What You Know — More on the copy editing process, from editor Gabrielle Harbowy. Also this: Editorial Ego.

Roman-era shipwrecks found in deep waters off Greece

Measuring the Universe — A nice video on how we measure things. (Via threeoutside.)

The Zombie Network: Beware 'Free Public WiFi' — Finally got around to looking this up.

Report: In 10 States, Guns Kill More People Than Cars Do — Because, yeah… never mind. I'm too tired to be snarky about this. (Via danjite.)

?otd: Isn't it nice to sleep where you live?

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5/29/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (Con time)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.0 (fitful, plus airplane napping)
Weight: 244.0 (!!)
Currently reading: Shattering the Ley by Benjamin Tate

bruckerrlb / Foter

GMO mosquitoes.

Growling cannibal attack.

The naughtiest Merchant of Venice.

Either the world is getting stranger, or Tuesday has decided to take over for the Monday we just had off, or I’m still fevered and seeing everything through a fog of decongestant and brain-cooking. All are equally likely.

Anyway, I just came off the flu from Hell and one of the most stressful times of year for me. Tune in tomorrow to find out why I hate birthdays!

Until then…be careful out there. Especially of the mosquitoes.

Mirrored from Ragged Feathers.

Tags: slight pause for station identification, wtf

Got home yesterday pm and collapsed. Talked to a lot of awesome people, as always. Babbled on a few panels, having thinky thoughts about their topics, as usual. Am in dire need of a few days rest and quiet. This is always the case after Wiscon.

People waiting for emails--GigaNotoSaurus responses or otherwise--things should start moving in a day or two.

We got in late last night from Balticon, which was most excellent. I sold a metric butt-ton of copies of the Precinct books -- not just the newly released Goblin Precinct, but also lotsa copies of Dragon Precinct and Unicorn Precinct. In particular, the Eternal Launch went phenomenally well, with lots of people showing up to look at all the spiffy new books from Dark Quest. Wrenn also had a great time doing tech and seeing people.

The launch party really was a highlight -- we had five-minute readings by the various authors, we had music by Jonah Knight and SJ Tucker, as well as some lovely harp music, and a ton of food that got consumed quite rapidly. (Seriously, it was like the con was populated by vultures....) Kudos to party organizer Danielle Ackley-McPhail and all the folks who brought food (including me and Wrenn....).

In addition, I had a great time hanging out with various podcasting/audio drama folks, including getting to meet more of the voices behind HG World, including M. Sieiro Garcia, Laura Nicole, Bryan Lincoln, and Veronica Giguere, and getting to hang with them, as well as the HGW people I already knew -- Jay Smith (and his lovely wife Pam) and the Stokes/Rinas family -- was a treat and a half. I also had tremendous fun with fellow Dark Quest folks Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Mike McPhail, Christine Norris, Bernie Mojzes, James Daniel Ross (and his lovely wife Jennifer), KT Pinto, Patrick Thomas, C.J. Henderson, Jess Novasteras (and her nifty husband Jamie), and Elektra Hammond (and her nifty husband Michael), as well as any others I might have missed. Plus there was the World family, Zan, Renee & Day, Monica V., Myke, Ron & Robin, Ian & Joy, Mary S., the Kraus family, and others I know I've forgotten who should forgive a tired writer for not remembering.

And, most of all, we had a great time with our roommates, Neal Levin & Tina Randleman, who remain made of awesomesauce.

The panels were good, too, ranging from a rather ridiculous late-night panel on animals in SF/F (which the panelists, including me, were all wondering what we were doing on it), to the latest in a stellar series of Eye of Argon readings, to a great dynamic voice acting demo, to a really strong talk on editing anthologies. Plus I got to read from Leverage: The Zoo Job and do some networking.

The convention and the hotel did their best to spoil the weekend with assorted fuckups. The only ones that really affected me were 1) the room not being ready when Tina & Neal arrived, so they gave us a room that was ready, which was sufficiently far from the main part of the hotel as to almost be in the next county, and 2) programming putting the author signings by the dealer room, which makes sense on the face of it, but any autographings that occurred during hours when the dealer room was closed were disasters, because there was absolutely no foot traffic to that table if the dealer room was shut. Bad planning, guys.

Now I'm off to do the TNG Rewatch, as we kick off the fifth season, then it's Leverage, Leverage, Leverage......

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: "The Shape I'm In" by Levon Helm

First off, happy book day to my friend Lisa Shearin, whose book All Spell Breaks Loose [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] is out today. And last week marked the release of Mira Grant’s Blackout [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy].

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This year will be my first Worldcon, and the first time I’ve voted in the Hugos. I’ve been diligently downloading and devouring the Hugo Voters Packet, starting with the short stories, because … well, they’re short!

Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue, by John Scalzi. I wonder how I’d feel if a story I wrote for an April Fool’s Day joke made the Hugo ballot. On one hand, it’s delightfully random and unexpected. At the same time, I think I’d have this nagging sense of, “Wait, what about all the stuff I wrote that wasn’t a joke?”

As a joke, this was marvelous. Tor and Scalzi went all out, including cover art, and the story was an amusing read. It’s nice to see humor on the ballot. And there’s an actual story here amidst the jokes and the over-the-top fantasy tropes. I can honestly say that when I finished reading, I wanted to know what happened next.

You could tell Scalzi was having a good old time with this one. That said, some of the humor felt a little forced. While it’s a fun read and you should check it out, I don’t see this one taking home a rocketship.

Movement by Nancy Fulda. This is a first-person SF story set in the near future about a girl named Hannah with temporal autism. Hannah’s parents are trying to decide whether to pursue a new technology which could help her integrate into society, but becoming more “normal” isn’t always a good thing. This made me think of Elizabeth Moon’s award-winning novel The Speed of Dark, which I reviewed here. Like Moon, Fulda does a very good job of capturing her protagonist’s voice, showing us the world through Hannah’s eyes. As the father of an autistic child, it’s hard for me to be entirely objective about this story, but I really appreciated it, and I thought the ending worked well.

Also, even though Hannah doesn’t think it’s terribly effective, I totally want to invest in shoulder-mounted mosquito-killing laser technology!

The Homecoming by Mike Resnick. Resnick is one of the most prolific writers in our field, and “The Homecoming” has a lot going for it. It’s an emotional story of an estranged son (Philip) coming home to visit the father who wants nothing to do with him. His mother has Alzheimer’s, and has only a few lucid minutes each day. Philip left Earth years ago, after radically redesigning his body into an alien form, in order to explore another world. His father took it as a rejection of family and humanity.

To me, it felt like a metaphor for a father unable to accept his son’s sexuality. I could be reading into it, but this is how the story resonated for me — the father mourning his lost grandchildren, hating the life his son has chosen, while the mother takes on the role of peacemaker, bringing them together despite her infirmity.

While the SFnal elements were wonderful, the ending felt too quick and easy, and didn’t really work for me. It didn’t feel true.

The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu. This is, in my mind, a good example of that sense of truth I’m talking about. Jack’s mother was a mail-order bride from China. When he’s young, she makes origami animals and infuses them with life: a paper tiger purrs and prances, the tinfoil shark swims, and so on. It’s amazing and beautiful. But as Jack grows older, he rejects his Chinese heritage, wanting to fit in with his “American” peers. In doing so, he rejects his mother as well. Only after she’s gone does he learn the rest of her story.

There is no neat ending here, but there is … understanding. Movement. Regret and loss, but with a thread of connection through the story’s magical element.

One of the things I admire about this one is that it’s not overstated. Jack has little understanding or compassion for a mother who sold herself in a catalog, but there’s a line later on where he’s prepping resumes and says, “I schemed about how to lie to the corporate recruiters most effectively so that they’d offer to buy me.” It’s just one line, and Jack doesn’t see the connection, but the reader does. One line is all it takes.

This story has already won the Nebula award, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it take the Hugo as well. Yeah, it’s really good.

The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees by E. Lily Yu. Let me put it this way: this is a story that made wasp nests beautiful and magical in a mere two paragraphs. It’s a story of clashing civilizations, in which the wasps colonize the less powerful bees, a situation with many real-world parallels. The wasps take tribute from the bees, but offer them “the honor of watching us elevate [you] to moral and technological heights you could never imagine.”

This kind of story could become preachy, but it never does. It is what it is, unapologetic and disturbing. Yu takes advantage of the shorter insect lifespan to show the evolution of a new line of bees: anarchists who set out to create a new future.

Like Liu’s story, the ending isn’t neat or happy, but it feels right. There’s a sense of movement that feels circular even as it moves forward. There’s a lot going on in this one, and I may have to reread it to catch things I missed my first time through.

#

Discussion is welcome, and since the stories are all online, you don’t even have to be registered for Worldcon to read them.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Tags: e. lily yu, hugos, john scalzi, ken liu, mike resnick, nancy fulda, review

Today I managed to leave my building swipe card at home for the first time since I’ve worked in my new job. And I managed to miss the early train whilst fumbling to look for it and trying to call C to come back get me (he didn’t). When I got to work I went to reception and got J, who starts at 7am, to come down and get me. And she did – I felt somewhat like a Kindy kid getting fetched to go home and she was so nice about it, I nearly cried.

It’s fair to say I was a bit down today. Sometimes the stuff, it gets to you. If you let it, it can really shake your foundations. But today what I learned is, you are truly blessed and your world is rich if you have people to make you laugh when things look down and when you have friends and colleagues to remind you why it is that you do what you do. And what it’s all for. And my day was filled to overflowing with kind words and actions and a lotta laughing. A new friend at work gave me a new saying which is so inappropriate I could never type it here.

I am so lucky to have a new job find me that is filled with people who make me laugh, who share my passion and philosophy and who get me. I know how rare this is. I am so lucky for the family who support me and to have ever met C who loves me and cares for me and makes me laugh through my tears. And I am so lucky for the friends I’ve made along this publishing journey and the writers I have had the great privilege to watch at close range do what it is that they do. These people make my heart brim and overflow with joy and happiness. And if you have that, what else can you hope for?

And the most important thing – all the chocolate in the house is mine.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Tags: life

I ought to apologise for so many posts today, but I'd have to apologise more if people weren't given the wherewithal to avoid me at this year's NatCon. It's very important to me to make sure that this opportunity is given to everyone. Not everyone can take advantage of it - note that some souls have to suffer the ignominy of sharing panels with me. If you turn up to support them, I will completely understand.

( To avoid the Official Guide to Avoiding Gillian, avoid clicking here. )