When Words Collide 2012 - Sunday





This feels so very, very long ago now! It's been a very busy week with several bloggable adventures, but I definitely want to cover Sunday of WWC, because it was just as great as Saturday.

 

The first panel of the day was on eBooks and included discussions on digital rights/piracy, whether or not there will be a demise of printed books, and how publishers are dealing with the changing climate and the rise of digital media. The panelists were a cross-section of all sorts of different publishing styles, and it was pretty interesting.

 

Next up was the EDGE book launch, which was really exciting for me, because the book I copyedited, Wildcatter by Dave Duncan was being launched with Mr. Duncan reading from the book. I snagged him at the end to get my ARC copy signed, but I don't think he was as excited to meet me as I was to meet him. :) There were other EDGE books being launched/read from, of the new ones I have Paradox Resolution by K. A. Bedford, and two anthologies - Danse Macabre and Tesseracts Sixteen - sitting on my shelf to be read.

We stayed for another live action slush - I just find them so fascinating! This panel was very no-nonsense and focused on getting through the submissions. There were some good comments, but I found that combination of people a little severe and I think if they'd read the submission I had in earlier in the weekend, they wouldn't have liked it much. :) Here's a blog post by someone who'd been in a slush reading on Saturday night, and how she felt about it...

At 1 pm we went to "How Science Fiction has Influenced Science and Technology", and it was a nice change of format. It was presented by Dr. Jason Donev, a physics instructor at the University of Calgary, so it was more of a lecture than a panel, and he had a slide show. Since I'm more of a visual learner, having that was really great for my attention span! He has a course for non-science majors which I'm going to try to take next winter - he's a good speaker, so I've added him to my wish list of profs to take classes from. (Yes, I have a list of profs who's classes are priorities. Does this make me an educational geek on top of all of the other types of geek I am? I don't know...but I do know I enjoy school! :)

Me at the presentation by Kevin J. Anderson
Photo courtesy of Christopher Chupik.

"Eleven Tips to Increase Your Writing Productivity" by Kevin J. Anderson was really interesting. He has many, many books published, and something like 50 of them are best-sellers. He's got a system where he dictates into a hand-held recorder and then has someone type up what he's written, which is handy. :) The tips were all common sense things, but it was interesting to hear them from someone for whom they clearly work - you can't argue with someone who's sold that many books! He also blogged a bit about the weekend here.

The publisher's panel had some interesting stories of how the various publishers had come to work in the industry. The publisher from a big publishing house had a lot of interesting things to say - here's a post that summarizes some of the advice she gave at another point during the weekend. It was nearing the end of a very long day, so it didn't hold my attention as much as it might otherwise. In hindsight I probably should have checked out the YA panel instead!

Lastly, we went to "The Canadian Voice in SF&F", which didn't turn out to be really what I expected. I was hoping for more discussion of specific authors to check out, whereas it was more of a theoretical discussion of concepts, which was sort of interesting, but not really what I was looking for. Although, extreme exhaustion was probably colouring my perception at that point. :)

So we took a break for dinner, and felt rejuvenated enough to come back and find out what on earth a 'dead dog party' is all about! Turns out that after a quiet start a post-con party is a lot of fun - everyone is pretty tired but not really wanting the weekend to end, and there's lots of socializing and leftover goodies from all of the other weekend parties. We met a whole gang of interesting people - including a sort-of-cousin from the same small town of Buchans in Newfoundland, who I'm sure has family who've married my family - and generally had a blast. We ended up staying until almost midnight, and really only left because I'd promised Trevor "we'll be home earlier then we were last night", which was 1 am, so we had to drag ourselves away from watching the Olympic Flame, and a massive hail and lightening storm from a hotel balcony with a bunch of people including Robert J. Sawyer and Kevin J. Anderson. How often can you say that happens in a lifetime?! (And by the way...what's up with J as a middle initial, I ask you?!)



 

Brittni and me at the 'dead dog party'.

I will definitely be going back to WWC next year - my only concern is that it's in a bigger hotel, and I like it small and cozy! Hopefully it doesn't get too much more crowded, and that the new hotel has chairs that don't make my bum numb. Also, it would be helpful if the con staff had shirts or badges or something that identified them as staff. Other then that, I have absolutely no complaints! Well, actually, I don't like having to choose between three different panels that are going on at once, but I suppose that's a first world problem I can live with!

When Words Collide 2012 - Saturday

Me at WWC. Photo courtesy of Brittni Carey.

It's hard to believe that at this time last week I was hanging out with a bunch of people in a hot and crowded hotel bathroom, on the edge of a very large jacuzzi filled with ice and booze.

(Please note: I did not start this post with a reference to waking up, or to the weather.)

Saturday of WWC got off with a bang. At least for Brittni and me...the first panel we went to was a live action slush, where we both submitted pages to be read. We got there early, so I was second in the pile, and she was third. We'd stayed up late polishing and crafting, and I'd taken the previous day's slush criticisms to heart, and made my sample as short and punchy as possible. No wasted words - just action and pathos. It was a series of three vignettes showing action on three different planets in my invented galaxy, and I'm quite attached to them, which is risky when entering a live action slush. The panel was anxious to move along quickly (and every second the reader was reading my writing felt like years, and my heart was pounding so hard I thought everyone in the room could hear it!), so they only got part-way through the second one, but I got good comments about the atmosphere and setting. However, one of the publishers said that there was just a bit too much action and not enough development, which I found very ironic!

Brittni's page was next up, and not a single person on the panel stopped the reader, and then the reader ran out of words to read. And then...the panel agreed that it was excellent and that they wanted to meet the writer after the session. Which is pretty much the reader con equivalent of winning a jackpot in Vegas...every aspiring author dreams of being plucked out of obscurity by some chance of catching a publisher's undivided attention. She went up to talk to them after, and Big Publishing House Editor wants to see the rest of her story...so now she has to finish it! This doesn't necessarily mean they'll publish it, but it gives her a leg up over the rest of the people in the slush pile. It's INCREDIBLY exciting. I think she was a bit in shock...and I was flailing a bit with excitement. We weren't really sure what to do next, so we just stayed where we were for the next panel in the same room.

It was on conflict and tension, and how to use it to move along plot and develop characters. After all the excitement of the slush panel though, it was a bit of a blur. I also slipped out at one point, when one of the authors talked about all of the nasty letters he got when, in a murder mystery series, he killed off a couple of pet dogs, and people got more worked up about that then the murders of people, and went to meet Kevin J. Anderson and get my copy of Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina signed. I also got it signed by Rebecca Moesta, since she has a story in it. That was fun - Anderson's Jedi trilogy were one of my early and defining Star Wars moments, and his writing/characters have had a HUGE influence on the extended universe. They weren't busy so I was able to chat for a minute while they signed, but my highly conscientious student brain felt like I was skipping class. :)

Next up was the Psychology of Criminals and Villains, which was a bit disappointing. For one, the room was so full we had to sit on the floor at the back, which was a nice change from sitting on uncomfortable chairs, but we couldn't see the people on the panel, so it felt a bit disconnected. Also, all of the great literary villains out there, and they mostly talked about current tv show criminals, which I'm not up on, so I didn't get much out of it, except to note that generally the most interesting bad guys are the ones who actually think what they're doing is right.

Murder and Mayhem Canadian Style was interesting...it was a lot of discussion on what makes a novel 'Canadian' - is it the setting, or the writer living in Canada? I think it's mostly something undefinable, but the topic seems to get a lot of mileage.

100 Years of Planetary Romance was a panel with Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta where they talked about the 'boy-meets-planet' trope of the genre. It was smaller and a bit more intimate than some of the others, which was fun.

I swear, in every class, at every con...there's that ONE person who doesn't seem to know where the line is between asking a question of the prof or panelist and getting on one's soap box. Drives me nuts...this next panel was on pitch and query - a pitch is where you verbally tell an editor or publisher about your work, and a query is a written submission summarizing your work (although I had to ask someone for that clarification later in the day, since that wasn't actually explained at the panel!). Mostly it was about the do's and don'ts of writing a query - basically, use your common sense, and check the publisher's submission guidelines. So near the end of this panel, 'know-it-all-grumpy-middle-aged-man' rambles on about something, gets up, literally chucks his business card at each member of the panel like he's throwing frisbees, and then goes and stands beside the door for the last five or ten minutes of the session. Weird, hey? Good way to get your card noticed - bad way to actually get a contact!

The last panel we went to on Saturday afternoon was Kevin J. Anderson's popcorn theory of success, which is basically to not pop one kernel at a time, but put a whole bunch out in the pot at once and eventually, odds are, something will start popping and the whole batch will take off. He talked about how he was writing something like six projects all at once back when his writing career first took off, and now he has 115 published novels, and 50 of those were best-sellers. Can't argue with those kind of numbers!

Finally we  had a break for supper, so we went to Boston Pizza with Trevor, and it was nice to have some downtime and sit on something other than an uncomfortable hotel chair! Then we headed back for the Aurora Award ceremony - Canadian science fiction awards. The chair of the conference won an award for the con, and the publisher I do some slush reading for had an author of a short story in one of his anthologies win an award. Robert J. Sawyer won the big one for his most recent novel, which was sort of a given, because that man WINS ALL THE AWARDS! :)

Then we went to a panel called 'Im A Writier', the title of which physically made me twitch when I first read it on the schedule. It took me a minute to realize that it was a deliberate typo. Whew... The topic was essentially how to get kids interested in reading and good grammar without scaring them off because of all of the 'rules'. There were a wide range of opinions and backgrounds on the panel, so it was really interesting.

The last panel of the night for us was Wilderness Survival for Writers, hosted by two sisters. They're both writers - one fiction and one non-fiction, and the one who writes non-fiction is also a very experienced outdoors-woman, including being a park ranger and mountain hiker and survivalist. Unfortunately it was after 9 pm by this point, after a very long and packed day, so I did drift in and out, but she had some fascinating stories.

Then it was party time. We were only going to go for a little bit, but I think it was 1 am before we finally got home... :)





Anything worth doing is worth doing again. Support alternate history.
Photo courtesy of Brittni Carey.

First we went to the EDGE Publishing party, since that's where we have the most connections. They had a suite on the top floor of the hotel, and it was packed. We went in to the bathroom for the 'bar' and ended up staying in there for ages, talking to all kinds of interesting people. I had a panicked moment when I realized I'd lost all of my business cards, but thankfully they were just sitting on the chair where I'd been earlier...whew! After a while there we went to the Calgary Steampunk Assemblage party down the hall, where they offered us absinthe. I was quite disappointed that I was driving and had to decline, because chasing the green fairy is one of those things that great literary characters should do. :) Brittni tried it though, but couldn't finish one serving because it was so strongly flavoured. We hung out for a while and admired the costumes and art, and talked to more interesting people, and then wandered back to EDGE, just to say goodbye and then go.

And then we were there for another couple of hours after that before we finally left, after making sure to leave our mark by writing on the post-it notes on the walls. There were three topical prompts and lots of space for writing - it was a really fun party game for a group of word people.

hehe...what a party! :)

I had such a blast...I'm usually quite a bit of an introvert, but either I'm growing out of that, or else people who love books as much as I do are much easier to talk to than co-workers or clients at a law firm, because I loved every minute of chatting and meeting new people. Interesting.... :) Sunday was just as much fun...

Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo 2012 - Friday

One of my favourite things about living in Calgary is the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo. This is the third year I've been, and definitely my most epic yet! I don't know how they're going to top the guest list for next year, but I can't wait to find out! :)

I went down early on Friday, to be there for 11 am. Thanks to being over-prepared, I was downtown way earlier then needed, so I had time to pop by Trevor's office and meet him for a Timmies, which was a nice treat. Since I quit my job to go back to school, I've been trying really hard to reign in my Timmies addiction! I wore my new Gryffindor shirt from Think Geek, which I love. It's got long sleeves, and it's super silky, with a big Gryffindor crest on the front.

The people-watching at the Stampede grounds was excellent. I was waiting for my 'boss', Brian Hades from Edge Publishing, to help him set up his booth in the exhibit hall, and watching the other vendors arrive was very entertaining. There's a certain vibe of panic and expectancy in the air, four hours prior to the doors opening for the biggest geek-fest in western Canada, and the second-largest in the country (only Toronto's is bigger). People who only see each other on the con circuit are reunited, the security guards are bemused at the chaos, and lone vendors struggle to get their gear on carts and their vehicles out out of the loading dock so others can pull in. You can definitely tell the con veterans from the n00bs!

We unloaded boxes and boxes of books, and took them to the Edge location to get set up. Sadly, I forgot to take a photo once it was all organized and looking like a bookstore, before it got crowded with people, but here's one I found:

EDGE Publishing booth, courtesy of Billie Milholland's Facebook page

The first panel I wanted to see was at 4, so after setting up I had a bit of time to wander, and while I was wandering,  I ran across Katie Cook's booth. Katie Cook is a licensed Star Wars artist, and does super-cute little watercolour sketches. She'll do a special request sketch for $5, so I asked for a grey Jedi Kitten. Isn't he cute?!

Jedi Kitten by Katie Cook

The first panel I took in was Denise Crosby and Gates McFadden, who were Tasha Yar and Dr. Beverly Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. By the time I started watching tv, TNG had been over for years, but re-runs were almost always available on the Space channel, so I watched a lot of them. Voyager will always be my favourite Star Trek, but TNG had some great moments. Crosby and McFadden work together at a theatre company now, although they didn't have any scenes together when they were on TNG - funny, hey?

Denise Crosby and Gates McFadden

By the time that panel was over, Trevor had made it over from work, and was in line for the next panel I wanted to get into. David Prowse was the man inside the Darth Vader costume in the original three Star Wars movies. He's this cute little old man with a British accent, and he's adorable. He was supposed to come last year but couldn't - he had to have surgery on his knee, and this year he's still using a cane. I learned some interesting Star Wars trivia (I used to be nearly unbeatable at Star Wars Trivial Pursuit, until the new trilogy and extended universe abominations) and totally forgot to take any photos!

It was 6 pm by the time that panel was over, so I snagged a hot dog and a Coke and we went to browse the exhibit hall, which was the largest I've ever seen outside of Stampede. Typically the Friday night/first night of a con is the least busy, but it was already a zoo. After a crazy long day, I was already overloaded, and there were a couple of points when I just stopped trying to figure out where to go and let Trevor just steer me in the right direction! We did manage to wander up and down every aisle, although I avoided buying anything or taking any pictures of costumes, because it was just too busy to pull over without causing a pile-up. We left before it closed at 8, so we could get to bed at a decent time and get an early start on Saturday, which turned out to be a very good plan...