The Inevitable Award Post

It’s Friday and the Clarion West Write-a-thon is about to start. So in its honor, here’s a flash piece that appeared in my collection, Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight. The piece is called “Up The Chimney” and it’s a brief riff on an old fairy tale. Enjoy.

Up The Chimney

I should have known better. There we were dozing by the fireside, old Tom and me, and there’s a stranger telling some story of funerals and cats. Old Tom, he leaps up, whiskers abristle. Shouting “Then I’m the King of Cats” and disappearing up the chimney!

I’ve always been a skinny lad, and quickwitted to boot, so I leaps over the embers, which were dying then anyhow, and scramble after Tom. It’s my chance to get to Fairyland, I figure, and old dad, he’d always said, grab opportunities as they presents themselves.

If I’d known then what I know now, I’d have kept sitting there and waved Tom on his journey. It’s Fairyland, sure enough, but it’s a cat’s notion of Fairyland. Maybe there’s one for all the creatures, horses and rats and huntin’ dogs. But their notion here of entertainment is chasing mice, the whole kit and court does it for hours on a time, and then they drink cream and eat sardines. I’d give my soul for an honest pint of beer.

The women, aye, they’re pretty enough, but they’ll claw you to death sure as eagles fly, and they stink, more to the point. They reek of musk and blood, and in the evenings they all sit around grooming each other and purring, an unsettling sound that unmans me whenever I hear it.
King of Cats be-damned. I’d search for some other Fairyland, but where might I end up? A fish’s land, where it’s never warm nor dry, or a beetle’s, perhaps. At least I have my fireside here, with old Tom cleaning my ears while I wait for some new story to set me free.

(It’s not too late to sign up for the 2012 Clarion West write-a-thon and get snippets in your mailbox throughout the next six weeks! Even a $1 donation will count.)

I was just at ArmadilloCon over the weekend, and had a fabulous time of it. There’s an account of that, with sundry photos, on my Google+ page.

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?