jpskewedthrone | Albacon--Days 2 and 3

Well, the con is over. So here's my report:

Saturday was great. I had my first panel ever, and I was the moderator. The topic was essentially "How to break in" where we discussed the various paths you can take: short stories, novels, contests, etc. The other panelists were mostly short stories, with two having moved to e-novels. I was the only one with the straigth *ahem* novel approach. It was a good panel because once we'd introduced ourselves and we'd told everyone how we'd broken in I opened it up to those in the audience, figuring that they'd have questions. And they did. We talked about agents, about sending stuff out, etc. Lots of good stuff got said and then the next panel kicked us out.

The rest of the day I went to other panels, bid on art, talked to the dealers in the room. Met Larry Smith and talked about my book and if he'd be at Boskone. I'll get in touch with him before I go to remind him to bring some copies of my books.

That night was the banquet, which was OK. I don't think I'd go to it again, but mainly because I don't think the expense was worth it. The food was great, no problems there. The appetizer was artichoke hearts stuffed with sausage and covered in cheese. That was great. The chicken wasn't rubbery, but the best part of the main dish were the potatoes. But nothing tasted bad at all, so a great meal. And I sat at Keith deCandido's table and that was lively. Lots of tie-in novelization things got discussed, along with a slew of other media gossip.

Then I hit all the con parties. Nothing much exciting to say there. The usual: beer glasses breaking, food, lurid stories of past cons, etc.

Sunday was packed with stuff. I had 3 panels to moderate, wrote notes for those and got through them. The first was with Terry Brooks. I'd been to a panel the previous day where I felt he had things to say and never got the chance, so I made sure he got to speak as much as he wanted on this one and the panel went well. Everyone on the panel got to speak and I think I asked a few good questions. This panel was called "I Wish I'd Written That" so we discussed how this helps writers get started but after a point you no longer want to emulate someone else because you've found your own voice. A good panel. Not as lively as the first one because it was rstricted to panelist comments for a longer period of time before I integrated the audience into it.

The third panel was the slowest: "Character, Plot, and Event Drive SF Stories". This was slow because we established that character was king in the final version of the novel or short story within 10 minutes, which left another 40 to fill up. But we talked about other drives like the "shiny idea" drive and it was explained to me exactly what an "event" driven story was (I felt that there were only 2 types of drives: character and plot; I was shot down forcefully, even though I still think this; I don't think I've ever written anything else).

The last panel was about religion in SF. The panelists felt that the talk should be about how to create a religion for your story, but it ended up being a discussion of how religion has been used in already published works. Great audience participation, and much livelier than any of the other panels, but I think the original intent got buried. We did get some interesting questions worked into it, such as: "What is the definition of a religion?" with me arguing that McCaffery's dragon/hatchings represented a religion for that society and another panelist arguing that that wasn't religion at all. This lead to religion must be a belief in a higher being, which lead to an argument about does that higher being have to be invisible and unproveable. Then we talked about differences between SF religion and fantasy religion. This degenerated into a discussion almost exclusively about SF religion, with the idea that SF is harder because the tendency is to say that the "religion" is really an alien being or just a different society with higher tech. Lots of other things got discussed as well, and nothing was resolved (of course). Overall, I feel that this was the most interesting panel because it raised questions that didn't get answered. I hope the participants (both on the panel and in the audience) felt that it was as good as I thought.

But the best part of the whole thing was meeting Terry Brooks on the panel . . . and promoing my book. I wrapped my cover art around on of Terry Brooks's books, simply because it was the right width. This fact came out because I of course announced that my book wasn't out yet, but people still wanted to see the novel after the panel ended . . . and the ruse was discovered! Thankfully, Terry Brooks's wasn't offende. He laughed quite a bit, thought my cover was great, and signed the book for me. We talked briefly after the panel, but he had to get to the signing so that was that. It was nice to meet him. He was great as GOH.

So the con was a success I believe. Many bookmarks were picked up. I got my book title out there and hopefully it will be passed around and will be recognizable when it comes out. I also met lots of people, most of whom I expect to meet again at Boskone.

But in the meantime, I need to prep for World Fantasy.