For me it was a pretty productive con – I connected with a few people that I definitely wanted to meet or see, I got a chance to hang out with some favorite peeps, I got a little writing done, and I did some career/work stuff that I wanted to get done. And I got the photo of Howard Waldrop with my brother and Gene Ha’s Project Superman.
Beforehand I did some stuff – I made a list of what I wanted to get accomplished, wrote to a couple people who I wanted to make sure to spend time with, and I went through the con program to identify some of the panels/features that I really didn’t want to miss. I also blocked in plenty of time for hanging at the bar, which I consider a crucial part of any con. I didn’t plan out every waking minute, to be sure, but I did make sure I knew what I wanted to do. I volunteered for programming and set up an individual reading as well as being part of the Broad Universe Rapidfire Reading.
This is, I think, the sort of thing you need to do if you’re going to cons and justifying the expenditure as work/career related rather than fun. Otherwise you end up sitting in your hotel room thinking that you should be doing something or being somewhere but not quite sure what.
Absolutely, cons are about friendships, that’s one of the more enjoyable aspects. But some you know a lot of folks at and others you have to push yourself a bit. I tend to retreat when around people I don’t know, but I’ve found that if I push myself out of my comfort zone some, I end up having a much better time.
If I’d been more diligent, I would have done the following:
Found the con organizers and thanked them. The con was well run and trouble free, and the panels were a nice mix.
Organized some sort of Broad Universe coffee or lunch meet-up, as well as something with the Codex peeps.
Gone through the dealers room and introduced myself, making sure book dealers had the card for my collection. I know no one had my book for sale, which was a little dampening, but I don’t know the best way to prevent that. Do folks write to dealers ahead of time in order to make sure they know where to get the books?
How do y’all prep for conventions? Or do you even bother about this sort of thing?
Cat, I have, in the past, contacted the dealers ahead of time to make sure they know I’m coming. I’m not sure how much that helps, but at least it reminds them I (and my books) exist. I also occasionally, especially to Armadillocon, go armed with Seattle Chocolates. Again, to make myself memorable.
Sounds like you did a great job of making the trip worthwhile, though!
Hi, Cat! I actually wrote a small product on just this topic: Conventions for the Aspiring Game Professional. If you’re interested, drop me a line at jess@jesshartley.com and I’ll send you a copy of the .pdf. It’s available at DriveThruRPG for a couple of bucks, but I don’t mind sending you a promotional copy for free, cuz… well, you rock! 🙂
Cons for Pros grew out of a series of blog posts I did a few years ago, offering advice on how to prep for GenCon if you were looking at it from a “trying to get my foot in the door of the industry” rather than “OMG GAMES!” perspective. I fleshed it out, polished it up and added feedback that I gleaned from those who responded to the blog posts, and it turned into Cons for Pros. 🙂
I haven’t been to many cons. I tend to see what I kind of connections I can make at book fairs (like the LA Times Book Fair and the West Hollywood Book Fair) because they’re free and close. Though I confess I make fewer connections and tend to sit and just take notes for future stories.
But I did make it to one day at a World SciFi Con in Anaheim a few years ago ($50 for Sunday – and the loan of a car for the day – whooohooo!). And I tend to be a hider as well. I was with a friend, but she had her own agenda, so I did go online and go through what was available and what I wanted to see. Got some great storytelling notes from the Buffy panel. Met people through my friend. I’m just not a good mixer unless I have to.
I do that with the book fairs, too. I once got to hear some great scifi discussion between Robert Silverberg, Kevin J. Anderson and Joe Hill for free at a book fair. Took lots of notes. Didn’t meet any new people though. This year our writers group has a booth at the WeHo book fair and I know I’ll speak with a lot of people, but the connections will probably be with others in the writers group. So, we’ll see. That reminds me, though, I need to go take a look at the Weho website and see if they have all the panels up yet so I can see what I want to go take in.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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Urban Fantasy #1: Laurell K. Hamilton
Did Hamilton know what a guilty pleasure her series would become? Also, what a terrible, terrible cover. Seriously.As a hardcore F&SF addict, I love the fact that nowadays I can go into the grocery store, look at the rack that used to hold nothing but Regency and Harlequin romances, and see covers with vampires and were-wolves and djinn and selkies and goddess knows what else. It makes me happy. I’ve spent a lot of time reading urban fantasy and paranormal romance over the past couple of years, and I wanted to provide a reading map of sorts for fellow genre lovers. So I’ll be posting about my favorites (and some not-so-favorites) over the next couple of months.
You can argue about where it all started (or even what it is) but I’d rather take the tack of looking at the authors that shaped the genre. Let’s begin, accordingly, with Laurell K. Hamilton, who started so much with her heroine, Anita Blake. Necromancer and private investigator, Blake kicks ass and takes names, at least early on in the series, which begins with Guilty Pleasures. (did Hamilton know the direction she’d go in from the first? The title seems to hint in that direction.) In the early books, Anita is tough as nails and prone to smartassery. She’s got two love interests: Richard the werewolf and Jean-Claude the vampire and, unlike a lot of romances, you don’t know what will end up happening. It’s great stuff.
Certainly Hamilton wasn’t the first person to write about vampires. The writer who had moved them into popularity was Anne Rice with her vampire series, which began a couple of decades earlier with Interview with the Vampire. On one level a sexy, intriguing story, the series also spoke to an anxiety floating around in the American zeitgeist at that point: sex and blood had become problematic with the arrival of AIDs. Its popularity rose as did media mentions of the disease.
But Hamilton came along and created a very specific vampire mix. She added Anita Blake, a tough but reader-identifiable character who was a smart-ass, had love-life problems, and tried to solve mysteries. Honestly, how could the series not be a hit? Blake first appeared in 1993, while four years later the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer would teach vampire lore to a new generation of readers who would soon discover Anita and her rapidly increasing ilk.
Somewhere along the line, though, the Anita Blake series…turned. Was that Hamilton discovered that sex sells or that with success she was freer to write the sort of thing she wanted to? Soft core porn began to get sifted in with a heavy hand, and none of it was vanilla. I don’t mind that, though. It’s fascinating to get a well thought out take on what sex with supernatural beings would be like. There are, unfortunately, some moments where it overshadows everything else. I’m thinking of Micah in particular, and if she stuck to the pattern of that book, I’d be about done. Luckily, she doesn’t. I like the fact that Anita has multiple lovers, that she’s in control, and that she changes her attitudes over time. But the books have become a guilty pleasure – although still, let’s admit, pleasurable when she maintains the balance between sex and storyline, and I’m certainly still buying them and, on occasion, re-reading them too.
Hamilton’s other series, the Merry Gentry books, which begins with A Kiss of Shadows, follows the same pattern. It’s a fascinating world, but sometimes we don’t get to see it because we’ve spent so much time in the bedroom. The overarching story line is that of a Faerie princess who must get pregnant. In case you don’t understand the implications, here’s a hint: Fairies do not reproduce through mitosis, but rather through lots of hot sex.
Again, a fascinating world, with a rich mythology and a premise that paves the way for plenty of nifty little jokes and eyeball kicks. Sometimes we don’t see as much of it as we’d like because we’re watching Merry get merry between the sheets, but it’s well-written and steamy sex that sometimes transcends space and time and/or summons ancient elemental forces. I found the most recent one I read, Divine Misdemeanors, which featured a serial killer of demi-fay who was using the tiny bodies of the victims to stage elaborate tableaus, nicely creepy and memorable.
So tell me what you think. Is Hamilton a guilty pleasure for you too or are you on some other terms with her books?
And for those interested in the books, here’s the lists, in chronological order:
My life is filled with scraps of paper, all of them written upon.As you may or may not know, I’ve got a short story collection coming out this fall, Near+Far. It’s all SF, and we’re using the Ace Double format for it: one side features all near-future stories; flip it over to find the far future ones.
I’ve been plugging away at a g’normous spreadsheet: compiling reviewers and book bloggers and interviewers and all that sort of stuff. Whew. So what am I doing to ramp up to publicize the book?
Finding reviewers interested in speculative fiction, particularly short stories.
Organizing a six week blog tour leading up to the book launch.
Organizing interviews and guest posts.
Writing a “How you can help” sheet to send to people who might help publicize the book.
Making give-away items using some of the interior art. They will be supercool!
Setting up podcasts for some of the stories.
Planning book-related events for September and October, including readings in Indiana and Maryland.
Working on some electronic stuff that is still Top Sekrit. 🙂
And then there’s getting the book together, too…It’s like a little circus, all contained on a single spreadsheet.
If you’re a blogger or reviewer interested in participating in any of that, please let me know!
3 Responses
Cat, I have, in the past, contacted the dealers ahead of time to make sure they know I’m coming. I’m not sure how much that helps, but at least it reminds them I (and my books) exist. I also occasionally, especially to Armadillocon, go armed with Seattle Chocolates. Again, to make myself memorable.
Sounds like you did a great job of making the trip worthwhile, though!
Hi, Cat! I actually wrote a small product on just this topic: Conventions for the Aspiring Game Professional. If you’re interested, drop me a line at jess@jesshartley.com and I’ll send you a copy of the .pdf. It’s available at DriveThruRPG for a couple of bucks, but I don’t mind sending you a promotional copy for free, cuz… well, you rock! 🙂
Cons for Pros grew out of a series of blog posts I did a few years ago, offering advice on how to prep for GenCon if you were looking at it from a “trying to get my foot in the door of the industry” rather than “OMG GAMES!” perspective. I fleshed it out, polished it up and added feedback that I gleaned from those who responded to the blog posts, and it turned into Cons for Pros. 🙂
I haven’t been to many cons. I tend to see what I kind of connections I can make at book fairs (like the LA Times Book Fair and the West Hollywood Book Fair) because they’re free and close. Though I confess I make fewer connections and tend to sit and just take notes for future stories.
But I did make it to one day at a World SciFi Con in Anaheim a few years ago ($50 for Sunday – and the loan of a car for the day – whooohooo!). And I tend to be a hider as well. I was with a friend, but she had her own agenda, so I did go online and go through what was available and what I wanted to see. Got some great storytelling notes from the Buffy panel. Met people through my friend. I’m just not a good mixer unless I have to.
I do that with the book fairs, too. I once got to hear some great scifi discussion between Robert Silverberg, Kevin J. Anderson and Joe Hill for free at a book fair. Took lots of notes. Didn’t meet any new people though. This year our writers group has a booth at the WeHo book fair and I know I’ll speak with a lot of people, but the connections will probably be with others in the writers group. So, we’ll see. That reminds me, though, I need to go take a look at the Weho website and see if they have all the panels up yet so I can see what I want to go take in.