...WFC goes

[tmcg]

So, World Fantasy.

derrylm appeared before me at the mass signing, early on while it was still fairly chaotic. "Hey, you!" I said, truly delighted to see him. We exchanged maybe five words; maybe I asked where he was sitting, thinking that I would go find him later and chat for a bit, or maybe he volunteered that he wasn't signing because he wasn't doing programming; somehow it came up that he didn't think he was signing because he wasn't doing panels, and I told him that I wasn't either and hadn't thought so either but thanks to the lovely WFC people if you were a writer and had a convention membership there was a name placard for you out at the check-in table, and I told him to go check in because I bet there was one there for him. Last I saw of him he was striding back in with name placard in hand. Thereafter, of course, I ended up being so busy at my own spot that I never got over to his for that chat I hoped to have. I used to say that attending World Fantasy and Worldcon was a lot like attending your own wedding reception: All your favorite people are there, but you don't get to spend more than five minutes with eighty percent of them. I glimpsed eglady sitting one row over from me and meant to go say hi to her and never did that either, but stevendj and I ran into her in the consuite on Sunday morning and did get to hang out a bit; at least you do get second chances, sometimes.

As stevendj and I were leaving some panel or other on Friday, a woman passing us looked back to say a bright hello to Steven. Out in the hall, after a moment to process, I said, "Was that Diana?" It had been so long since I'd seen her at a convention; I've been going to fewer of them myself the past two years, and before that she'd stopped going completely for a while. I checked the membership list the next chance I got, and yes, found her name! Then she was kind enough to drop by my table at the signing, so we did have a few minutes to catch up. If I were giving out awards for Coolest Author Bio, I think hers would tie with David Gemmell's as Most Likely to Get Me to Read a Book Based on the Bio. (A related award would be Coolest Byline That Is Extra Super Cool By Virtue of Being the Writer's Real Name; Felicity Savage's byline would be the inaugural recipient.) When I first met Diana--in person at DeepSouthCon '98 (here we are with kurtisroth), after we'd been friendly in Greyware chat and on irc.sff.net for some time--she was a casino blackjack dealer; she went on to become a cop, and now works in forensics. I'm rooting really really hard for her agent to find a good place for her first novel; I have a feeling that she could make quite a splash.

The mass signing is sort of Brief Encounter Epitomized, actually (although melissajm called it "trick-or-treating for readers," which I like better). I got there just before they opened the room, and for some reason it seemed to have filled up back to front, so I grabbed a prime spot right at the front, cattycorner to janni and Sharon Shinn, and the table soon filled in with Esther Friesner, jjschwabach, and melissajm. We had a delightful time chatting with each other and the people who swung by. I really do love the WFC mass autographings; they're a wonderful social event, and sitting at a signing spot can be as handy as manning a dealers'-room table for getting to see a lot of people as folks circulate around. In the past, though, I've gone circulating as well as just sitting in my spot. This time I didn't, and missed a good opportunity to say hi to a lot of the people I regret not having gotten to enjoy those five-minuteses with; next time I'll make a point of it. But I had a satisfyingly long conversation with clarkesworld, and got to chat a bit more substantively with Yves Meynard and Bill Mingin and ianrandalstrock, and quite a bit more with Kim Greyson, the guest liaison for next year's WFC, whom David Coe had introduced me to earlier in the convention and who is a really lovely man I look forward to seeing a lot more of in Calgary. Because Lisa Tuttle was a GoH, I got to sign a whole lot of copies of the British edition of Skin of the Soul, which she edited and in which my first pro short-fiction sale appeared, back in 1990 (well, first published pro sale; I may have sold to Aboriginal Science Fiction first--I really can't remember and would have to dig up the contracts to find out for sure--but "For Fear of Little Men" didn't come out until '91), and a couple of copies of Blood Muse crossed the table from me to Esther (who edited) as well. I also had the pleasure of signing a few copies of Triad for people who had gotten Illumination and The Binder's Road signed at other conventions and read them and were now about to embark on the concluding book and wanted a whole signed set, and had one of those funny-sweet moments of appreciating the core of the convention experience, which is to connect with readers. I don't know why I'm still just a little bit startled, after all these years and all these cons, to find that people have actually read and loved the things I've written, but it's affirming in a way that goes way deeper than ego, and I treasure it. Then there was the young lady who was getting her World Fantasy T-shirt signed by every writer in the room (it was looking really cool by the time I got to add to it), and Geri not quite bringing herself to carry through on one of the more creative ideas I've ever heard of for a personalized signature. Mark and Geri were kind enough to hang out and wait for me (we were bar-bound thereafter) and bring my table a plate of yummy spanakopita and Unidentifiable but Tasty Stuff in a Blanket to put a base down under Jennifer's Halloween candy and Missy's most excellent cookies. (Yeah, I'm back on the low-carb diet today.)

As for brief but memorable conversation-clumps-outside-the-dealers'-room and aimless-strolling and after-panel encounters: Lee Modesitt came over at one point to let me know that he'd named a character for me in a recent book, which delighted me in and of itself and because I really had been bemoaning, just a couple of days before, the fact that nobody had ever Tuckerized me. I chatted a bit with David Drake about copyediting, and also with Jim Frenkel; Jim said "Hi!" and I said "Hi!" and he said "You're not copyediting!" and I said "Not at this very moment!" (I've missed more than one WFC because of rush jobs), and I missed what he said next as I tried to remember which books of his I'd last worked on, and then I said "Is Daniel Abraham one of your authors?" and he said "Yes!" and I said "Man, that book rocked!" and then we stood there for a while just kind of going "so freaking good" and "so freaking good." (It really is. It's called An Autumn War, it's scheduled for July '08, and it's accessible whether or not you've read the previous books in the series. Lovely writing, interesting worldbuilding, terrific characterization.) Other too-brief but enjoyable chats were with Barbara Chepaitis, Barbara Campbell, Paul Barnett, Chuck Rothman (who mentioned that the Albacon Website had just announced Anne McCaffrey as this year's GoH); other drive-by greetings were exchanged with Joni Dashoff, Andy Duncan, Victoria McManus, Alexandra Honigsberg, and...well, a slew of fine folks, and I'd better stop now before the list gets any more dull and I bury myself any more deeply in the names I'm neglecting to mention.

I ran into Mark Rich and Martha Borchardt at The Evolution of a Drawing on Thursday night, and should really have followed them up to the Australia party so that we could talk more, but at least we did get to catch up a little bit, partly in the function room and partly out in the hall as people clustered to get a closer look at what the artists had drawn during the hour. (I was completely enchanted by the critter Shaun Tan created, and I want to upload the snapshot I took, but I'm not sure that permission to photograph extended to permission to post.) We did the ships-that-pass-in-the-hall thing for the rest of the con, but it really was good to see them. I first met Mark, along with Roger Dutcher (who's remained a staunch correspondent and a good friend ever since) and my not-a-twin Terry Garey and a bunch of other sf poets, at the Chicago Worldcon in '91. (Here we are! And for the heck of it, here I am with Roger in that same mugshotty Chicon hallway, and here we are at the 2000 Chicon. We've been talking for two or three years now about getting a trip together to Asia or Central America, and one of these days we're actually going to make it happen.) I'm a couple of years late for twentieth-anniversary-of-congoing reminiscences, but I think it's taken a couple of years to sink in that it's really been a couple of decades since that first Philcon I attended. I'd even forgotten I had so many years of convention photos up on the Web until Scott Edelman said something in passing this weekend and reminded me. (His WFC '07 photos are here. "We have to keep contributing to the pixel pollution!" he'd said to me, just as Steven and I were walking up to register for the con.) They go back to the 1989 Worldcon (where those same stone-washed jeans! and my vestigial perm and I posed with a stuffed Pierson's Puppeteer at the Louis Wu Birthday Party, and Graham Collins played flamingo croquet and adorably transformed into a kzin), so maybe the year after next I'll really wax nostalgic. I had my good digital camera with me almost the entire time at this con, and never once pulled it out; the only pictures I took were with my crappy camera phone, because I absolutely had to have a memento of that Shaun Tan critter.

On Thursday I ate at Wheatfield's with Mark Edwards, Geri Diorio, Steven, davidbcoe, and Renee Stern; it was a most excellent meal (the red-pepper-and-artichoke soup was awesome) and most excellent company, and neither David nor I broke anything (in fact, no furniture or eating utensils were broken by either of us during the entire convention! we're not upholding tradition very well). Friday's dinner was at Lime, a Caribbean restaurant down one of the side streets, with Steven, Renee, and Andrea Howe, a copyeditor from the Seattle area who was a delight to meet and spend time with. On Saturday, Steven and I ate at the hotel restaurant (Chez Sophie) with West and Jamie Flanagan; I've never before encountered a restaurant menu that had only one entree I'd be willing to eat, forget want to eat (I don't eat pork or lamb or veal or duck or venison and I don't want to eat pheasant or quail or pigeon), but the fluke I ordered was very nicely prepared and the company and conversation were great. And I'd hate to have missed the opportunity to try red and green tomato sorbet. (Whatever you think that would taste like, it did, only about five times stronger. Wow.) I'm not a breakfast person, and lunches I mostly skipped except for one day when we happened to be in the consuite just as they'd set out bread and cold cuts; melissajm's yummy M&M cookies kept me going on Saturday (thanks, Missy!). Oh, and the Freihoffer's chocolate-chip cookies that the con gave out, along with Saratoga sparkling "Open It Wisely or It Will Spray All Over" spring water, in addition to the traditional complimentary Pile o' Books and the outdoing-themselves nylon zipper carryalls they provided instead of canvas totes. (Next year, someone suggested, we'll be expecting a full set of Samsonite luggage. This year, on the elevator, someone else mused aloud on what airport security personnel were going to make of all these identical blue bags.)

Friday night I spent a wonderful two-plus hours in the bar with Mark and Geri after the signing. I know Mark--a playwright, photographer, fiction writer, college instructor, and MFA student--from the sf/f writing workshop that Shawna McCarthy taught at the New School in New York back in '89. (Another reason to pencil in some trips down memory lane for 2009. It was the same workshop where I met Russell Handelman and Rob Stauffer and Bill Mingin and emrecom, and by extension how I met particlemannyc and Larry Cuocci and Luis Ortiz and Gay Terry and a whole bunch of other writers who continued to workshop on their own after their class with Shawna ended, and took in some of us who'd done the workshop after them. For me, that workshop had some of the qualities of a Clarion; it laid the foundation for some lifelong friendships and professional affiliations, and had a surprisingly ripply effect on my life and career for a class that met only once a week for the equivalent, as I recall, of one semester.) We snagged a table with a perfect location--at the center of the room and at just the right distance from the Great Balls of Fire! fireplace--and had a lovely but strangely private conversation. My experience of hanging out in the bar at most conventions, and especially WFC, has been more of the coral-reef variety: a couple of people sit down, a few people join them, a few more people join them, chairs are brought over, tables are nudged closer together. This bar wasn't really conducive to that, and the result was smaller and more discrete clumps of conversation, at least while I was there. But the area outside the dealers' room had tables and chairs aplenty, so there was a nice place for the kind of aggregation I'm more used to, and it was nice that the social reefs didn't form only in the bar. One person I know spent almost the entire con in that area and the adjoining lobby area of the hotel, rarely making it in to the function rooms for the scheduled programming because she was having a great time just hanging out where she was. That works too.

There were prime pitting (verb "to pit" = back formation from "conversation pit"; I want to attribute the coinage to Toni Weisskopf, but I'll have to rack some other people's brains before I commit) locations around the lobby/registration area as well, with coffee tables and sofas and comfy chairs, and after dinner on Friday stevendj and I joined a pit established by davidbcoe and lrcutter right outside the restaurant/bar, and met the personable and enthusiastic Michael Gallowglass and Robin; we got to talk to them some more after the pit adjourned in favor of the Tor party. Tor is actually the only party I got to all weekend, and I ended up spending only about three-quarters of an hour there, because Steven and I wanted to get down to a panel at ten. But I'd vowed to take in a whole lot of programming this year, and I did make good on that vow.

In fact, what I'd really vowed was to attend a lot of readings. I love readings and I never make it to enough of them at cons. On Thursday and Friday I didn't get to a single one, so on Saturday I started the day off right by attending Mattie Brahen's very entertaining reading of her Ultimate Halloween story, "Trick or Treat with Jesus," then just stayed comfortably ensconced right where I was for the next two hours and listened to Anne Bishop, Paul Park, and Gene Wolfe. I'm kicking myself now for missing Andy Duncan when I wandered off to stretch my legs and find a soda, but I went back for Ramsey Campbell and then a bit later for Laurel Winter, and it made for a lovely day--a bit like curling up with a wide-ranging, high-quality anthology, only read aloud by the writers themselves.

Kim Newman's interview was engaging and entertaining and gave me a yen to go back and reread The Night Mayor, which I originally read--along with David Skal's Antibodies and a whole lot of Daniel Pinkwater--at emrecom's urging back in the months after that New School workshop when we were all ferociously pushing books that we were passionate about at each other. I was worried that a lot of what Newman had to say would whoosh right past me, since he has a passion for horror films that I decidedly don't share, but that's the kind of assumption that I too often allow to dissuade me from attending programming that I might get a lot out of, and I'm glad that my desire to hear what the writer had to say won out. (He made a couple of pithy statements that beautifully summed up sentiments I do share, but I didn't jot them down because they seemed unforgettable at the time, and now, of course, I've forgotten them. Hopefully they're misplaced, not lost, and something will jog my memory at some point.) I also really enjoyed Lisa Tuttle's presentation on her family history, and I'm glad that she let the title--On Being Haunted--stand after she changed her mind about what she was going to talk about, because again I might have taken a pass on the assumption that the subject matter wouldn't interest me, and it was a terrifically engaging talk.

I also went to two art-related programming items, which I rarely do, because I rarely do. In The Evolution of a Drawing, Donato Giancola, Shaun Tan, and Bob Eggleton turned blank sheets of sketching paper into art while answering audience questions; from the photo of a woman gazing to the side over her shoulder, Giancola made a lovely, delicate, shaded portrait, Eggleton made a dragon (he came in a bit late and didn't have a view of the photo, so I'm not actually sure whether he was responding to the source or just sketching, but either way it was, of course, a lovely dragon), and Tan drew the freaking most wonderful sort-of-rabbit-eared, huge-nosed, stripey-furred critter viewed in profile, looking mournfully and perhaps fearfully at something beyond the frame of the picture and clutching a little tiny four-footed eyeball critter to its breast with one arm. (I fell in love with that critter. I adore that critter. I want to know its story; I want to tell its story. If that impulse turns into actual narrative, I'm totally going to run with it, and then see if I can email it off to him or something, as a token of appreciation for the experience of watching him create it.) The other art-related item was the panel How a Book Cover Is Chosen, with Tom Kidd, John Picacio, Jacob Weisman, and Lou Anders and moderated by Irene Gallo, and they did a terrific job talking about their experiences as artists and book designers and their approaches to creating covers, and giving what seemed to my not-an-artist self to be very useful advice to artists looking to break in. I do feel obliged to say that my editors were fantastically receptive to my thoughts about cover art (which were submitted in a spirit of "you guys know how to package and sell books, so if this is useful to you, great, and if it isn't I will take no insult"), so I can personally testify that the author's input isn't always discounted...but very good points were made about letting the art department do its job, and it's also very cool that Tachyon works with its writers to develop cover concepts, and I enjoyed the story Lou told about an instance where the cover artist's thoughts about the book influenced the manuscript revision in positive ways.

As for panel discussions, When Fantasy Becomes Science Fiction and Science Fiction Becomes Fantasy was a standout, with Nancy Kress moderating grrm, Walter Jon Williams, Lee Modesitt, and joe_haldeman for a surprisingly packed room at ten o'clock on Saturday night. Martin's furniture metaphor, and the extreme stretching of it, will stick with me for some time; I also particularly appreciated the writers' use of their own work as examples, since I've read all of them extensively and despite the panelists' voiced concerns about plugging themselves the examples were useful to me and seemed perfectly relevant. The ten-o'clock panel the next morning was another standout, with Steven Erikson, Lucienne Diver, Sharyn November (a moderator to reckon with as well as a smart and entertaining panelist herself), Tom Doherty, and Paul Barnett talking about what's taboo in fantasy fiction. I also enjoyed the panel that Janine Young, Liz Gorinsky, David Coe, Charles Gannon, and Sarah Hoyt did on the ghosts in Shakespeare, and the panel The Fantasy Graphic Novel, which now that I think about it also falls partly into the art-related-programming category. In fact, I just looked over the pocket program to see if I was forgetting anything, and it turns out I only went to four panels, but it felt like more because they were jam-packed with stuff to think about.

We didn't stay for the banquet and awards ceremony. The nominees and winners are listed here.

And before I finish up this post, which managed to be tl;dr even though I didn't open with a lengthy description of travel to the convention, I have to credit Austin Dridge with sending me up the Taconic and around the east side of Albany. The directions were impeccable, we did indeed avoid a fair number of tolls, and the drive along the autumn-tree-lined parkway was beautiful. On the way back it was also fun, as the parkway is quite twisty and I managed to get in with a clump of other drivers who wanted to go really fast; I dropped stevendj off at Penn Station on the day of the New York City Marathon, when the city was more traffic-snarled than it usually is on a Sunday, but still made it home three minutes before the Patriots-Colts game started. Yay.

ETS (edit to substitute) the LJ names of people who had LJs unbeknownst to me when I posted or who've acquired LJs since WFC, and to increase this entry's AB (abbreviation count).

Comments

[ogre-san.livejournal.com]

Still sorry I wasn't able to go; sounds lovely.

I still remember that DSC with fondness. It's where I first made face to face contact with a lot of people: you, Kurt, Andy, Diana, David...

The story I got out of that trip to Birmingham was the final piece in my last collection, you know.

[terrymcgarry.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize that, about the story!

I can't say I'm surprised, though. Certain cons turn out to have a really special synergy, and a particular resonance in memory, and that was one of them for me. I had such a blast with you guys, and formed such lovely longtime friendships. That was even the convention where I got to judge a masquerade! It was with Buck and Juanita Coulson, and we may have taken the longest time of any judges ever. And then there was getting to meet and hang out with Michael Bishop (whose work I had just fallen head-over-heels in love with), getting autographing pointers from Wilson Tucker...so much of that con was just so memorable for me. And it's where I met you! And David! And saw David take his first-ever bite of grits! Good times, good times. :) :)

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

Thanks for letting me hang out at your signing table! That really was an amazing experience. "Tech Support" is thrilled that the cookies went over so well. (He's the one who actually makes 'em.) And that taboo panel WAS great. (Although it has me concerned, because it looks like each of my currently available books breaks a taboo. Uh-oh.) It was great seeing you!

[terrymcgarry.livejournal.com]

I have a feeling that the material in your books falls into the handle-it-appropriately category, so I hope you don't worry too much. It was great seeing you too, and I'm glad you came to sit with us! Tech Support's efforts were icing on the cake. Thanks again, to both of you. :)

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

Tech Support says Hi, BTW. I forget-did you see the balloons?

Well, you read the Taboo part of "Grant's Book," and the thing with Malak is that he eats people. He thinks of them as prey, though, and I don't go into a lot of gory detail.

[terrymcgarry.livejournal.com]

I have read that part, and I'm definitely not worried about Grant's book or Malak. I was there right before the balloons and then got back just at the tail end of it! And I wave enthusiastically and say hi back. :) :)

[anisosynchronic.livejournal.com]

I'm envious, I'm envious, I'm envious....

I kept meaning to join and then it was Too Late. The fact that it was also colllisding with work also had something to do with the situaiton--the Testing or Technical Readiness Reviews for a new release at workd, was Thursday afternoon, and acceptance testing started Friday, and the schedule is -rightt....

[anisosynchronic.livejournal.com]

Aargh, typoes time (the type and font for replying are TEENSY!]... that's a tight, not right, schedule, and Review, not Reviews, etc.

[terrymcgarry.livejournal.com]

I keep forgetting to play around with the settings. I'll do that today. On my desktop monitor the font doesn't display all that small, so I want to log in from my notebook, where everything's relatively teeny-tiny, to see if I can get the text in the comment fields to be a more readable size without making the text in the journal too huge. I'm not sure how independently customizable they are. But I will investigate!

[terrymcgarry.livejournal.com]

I would have loved to see you there...but I'm so glad that you're working that I'm not as disappointed as I might be. It's irritating to be stuck at work, but it's really good to have work. I hope it all went well!

Awesome report. Thanks!

[lt260.livejournal.com]

Sometimes things just click and a con becomes an event that one will always remember. I suppose it could happen for other reasons, but the ones I recall most fondly involve shenanigans with fellow fen. Typically, those deeds are spontaneous and creative, never to be repeated (it just wouldn’t be the same). Humans are definitely herd animals, and there is nothing quite like being in a joyful crowd where everything seems to fall into place, almost without effort. The positive glow that one can acquire from these moments of high energy and glee simply do not happen often enough.

Thank *you*!

[terrymcgarry.livejournal.com]

Moments of high energy and glee indeed. Frequently the shenanigans are what I remember most fondly too. Get a bunch of very smart, very fun-loving people together, and entertaining stuff is almost sure to follow. :)

[derrylm.livejournal.com]

I did sit and sign, and some books even came by, not just t-shirts and programs. So thank you. And dammit, I'm sorry we didn't see each other for the rest of the con.

D

[terrymcgarry.livejournal.com]

I'm still laughing at how eyeblink-brief that moment was! And yet it was great to see you, seriously. Thanks for stopping by my spot so that I could get that hit of you. *g* I'm really glad to hear that you had a good signing!

Also, hey, I did not know you had a journal here. Cool!

[derrylm.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't have an LJ. I do my thang at blogspot, but have an account here so I can comment with friends non-anonymously.

Sounds like you had a good con. I'll be writing my own events up RSN.

You coming to Calgary next year?

D

[terrymcgarry.livejournal.com]

I investigated and saw that your journal's just an LJ presence, but I was happy to see it nonetheless, and friended. :) I'll check out your real blog ASAP, and look forward to reading about the rest of your con experience.

I do plan to go to Calgary!

[hand2hand.livejournal.com]

wheee! sounds like the perfect con experience.

[terrymcgarry.livejournal.com]

:) :) It was almost entirely free of the frictions and stresses that sometimes leave me grumbling and growling when I get home from cons. There were two minor grumbly-growlies, and I can only remember one of them now! So, ninety-nine percent fun and enjoyment. *g*