The Con Report will be Fictionalized
November 6th, 2007
And now, the long-promised World Fantasy Convention Report!
Flight confusion did not result in my being abandoned at the airport in Albany, thankfully. The driver had sorted out the details and waited for me patiently. This worked out well for another, too, and the driver was able to offer the extra space in our car to Martin H. Greenberg who’d been on my flight but had arrived much later than he’d planned so his shuttle plans were all messed up.
So I rode to the convention with Martin H. Greenberg. (*squee*)
Thursday night was mostly me settling in, getting my bearings, and wandering around checking out the scene. I met up with Ken Scholes almost immediately, but he wasn’t hard to miss considering he spent the entire weekend floating well above the ground thanks to his fantastic 5-book deal with Tor. Also met/said hi to/talked with/etc. a LOT of people. I started a list and then realized the insanity of that. Here’s the membership list of WFC. I met a goodly number of these people. They are all great! It was especially great to see Stephen H. Segal of Weird Tales (and much MORE!) and Beth W of Shimmer (and LAConIV roomie) and to finally meet in-person my wonderful agent Mike Kabongo.
I was lucky enough to be rooming with Caroline Stevermer who aimed to stay up past ten every night of the con and DID SO!
I had coffee with Heidi Lampietti and her daughter on Friday evening which was delightful both for the company and the coffee and desserts–amazing does not begin to describe. In fact, Saratoga was a fantastic location, period. The shops and restaurants, coffee shops and book stores and even just the people walking along with their cute dogs made every journey away from the airy, easy-to-navigate convention center an adventure (in a good way). I found a couple of places I popped back to a few times for coffee or just for a bit of comparative quiet. The wifi was great all around and free… can we have all our conventions there?
On Friday, after Mary Robinette Kowal gave me some deadly-good grog (beware the grog) at Shimmer’s Pirate-issue launch party, I wandered down to the open-mic ghost story slam on Friday at midnight and read my short story, “Beata Beatrix,” at some point during the second hour (so after 1am). By the end of the event, it was almost 3am and all of us who stayed through to the very end were glassy-eyed and exhausted, but there wasn’t a bad story in the bunch. Many of them were damn good–and many of them had been written within hours of the event! Tons of fun. Great idea.
I took it easy for much of Saturday but caught Stephen and Heidi’s panel on Surrealism which was entertaining and not in the least surreal (though, as is true of all panels, it was occasionally absurd ;) That evening, a bunch of us went out to dinner, including Dan and Sarah Hoyt, Ekaterina Sedia and husband, and my agent, and it was fun and the food was great. And that night was the Tor party where I either met or sidled by in very close quarters a large number of people including Sarah Monette (we never quite managed to be introduced, I think, but we did stand and talk a bit as we and several others were all crushed together near a door), Elizabeth Bear, Heather Lindsley, the publisher of Solaris Books, and many others. And I do mean MANY OTHERS! A total madhouse though the cool kids all assured me it was rather lightly attended for a Tor party.
I hung out with Caroline after that and had a very good time talking with her then spent Sunday morning relaxing, running around to say final hello/goodbyes to everyone, getting checked out and ready for the shuttle, and all that fun stuff.
I’m leaving out big chunks of sitting and talking to people, just walking around and seeing who was there, going to readings (so many good readings), and enjoying Saratoga itself (or at least a large stretch of Broadway).
All the return shuttle and flight things went very smoothly, and I topped off the weekend with Chinese delivery. So all in all, a perfect weekend.
And, in the midst of all that, I did get a few thousand words in on my NaNo Novel… which is what I should get back to right now.