Balticon and new book eve

[pbray]

Back from Balticon. The long weekend and drive back drained all functioning brain cells, so expect a longer post on this later in the week. For now, here's a quick recap.

The Good: met old friends and made new ones. Most of the panels I was on were very good, and today's reading from TFB was all I could hope for. I was intrigued to meet several students from Seton Hill University's Master of Arts in Writing Popular Fiction program. Maria Snyder, this year's Compton Crook winner, is currently in that program.

The Bad: programming was disorganized, to put it charitably. Among other issues--the pocket program only listed program titles, not descriptions, so both panelists and con attendees were left guessing as to the purpose of some of the panels. For the most part they'd also failed to identify moderators, which left panelists scrambling to choose a moderator as they were sitting down.

The Odd: there were actually two cons going on. The Neil Gaiman con, with a large contingent of his fans only interested in going to his events, and then the con for the rest of us. Preregistration was over 2,000 with many more registering at the con, yet when I was in the public spaces it had the feel of a much smaller con.


In other news, The First Betrayal goes on sale tomorrow. Which completely explains why BN.COM just sent me an email saying that my preorder would be delayed since the publisher had changed the publication date. I called the Ingram's stock line to confirm that the books were in the warehouses, and they are, so BN.COM appears to be experiencing the electronic version of a brain fart. It wouldn't be the first time. I always preorder copies of my titles from the online bookstores, just to check to make sure they are in the channel and shipping, and about half the time I run into a problem with at least one preorder being arbitrarily cancelled, outright lost, or receiving strange status messages.

Anyway, that's all the news that fits to print. More later this weekend, after I recover!

Comments

[larryhammer]

there were actually two cons going on.

Heh. I've seen this effect before.

---L.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Balticon keeps inviting me, and I keep turning them down because it's the same weekend as Wiscon. I sometimes think that I should throw caution to the winds some year and go, but I haven't exactly heard raves.

FWIW, they explained in the invitation that they were running way behind schedule, which kind of hinted that we could be looking at Torcon on a smaller scale.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

On the flipside, I've been passing up Wiscon, but am now giving thought to going there next year instead.

I had a great time at Balticon in 2003 and in 2004. Those cons were well organized and had interesting programming. And the downtown Baltimore location with the inner harbor area only a few blocks away was a real plus. So I was looking forward to going this year. Then back in January I started hearing rumblings that the con was having difficulties--the combination of Neil Gaiman's celebrity status and the move to the new hotel with its limited programming space was proving problematic.

And then, for whatever reason, the programming committee completely fell apart. I applaud those who stepped in at the last moment to slap together a program, but clearly it wasn't up to the standards of prior years.

[lindabg.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the heads up about First Betrayal. I'll give B&N a call today. I'm really looking forward to reading it, after that tantalizing glimpse you gave us at WFC. My husband says I shouldn't gush at writers I know, it makes me sound like a teenager, but I do love Devlin and I can't wait to get to know your new characters...

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Gushing is always appreciated, honest!

[libwitch.livejournal.com]

We have a bunch of your books in our backrroom, waiting to go on display =-)

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Cool! *Does the happy dance*

[(Anonymous)]

receiving strange status messages

I bet none of yours beats the ones I found on my account page on Amazon.co.uk.

One they had dispatched was going to arrive on 30th December 1970.and another based on a TV show was going to be published in 1939!!!

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Hmm... perhaps they've subcontracted their fulfillment service to Doctor Who and the TARDIS?

[klingonguy.livejournal.com]

It was a pleasure being on a panel with you (even if you did call me "Larry" twice). I'm looking forward to competetive acts of wanton destruction at future cons.

And congrats on The First Betrayal.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Apologies for the slip of the tongue. I promise to do better next time.

Enjoyed the panels very much--always good to find kindred souls who understand the joys of blowing shit up :-)

[jaguarpaddler.livejournal.com]

As one of the Seton Hill students attending the con, I can easily say that we were just as intrigued by you.

It was unfortunate that the con was so disorganized, we found ourselves unable to attend many of the panels and workshops that we would've liked to. Then after we arrived we discovered that there was a writing workshop. But it seemed as if the organizers intended the workshop to be 'friends only' which is why it wasn't well publicized.

But it was a pleasure attending your panel. It was extremely informative and a nice change of pace from the Klingon Feasts and semi-nude warrior princesses.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the kind words and taking time to comment. I wish I'd had time to chat with you--I would have loved to take part in a writing workshop, or perhaps a panel in the round where interested parties could talk shop. Unfortunately SF cons don't seem to be well structured for this, though I keep suggesting these ideas to program committees. What efforts they do have are generally very restricted, as you found out.

Perhaps next time we'll just have to create our own unofficial programming item, and seize a time and a place to get together. It's worth considering, though I only get to a few cons a year, so this would require advance planning, something I'm not always good at...

[wilhelmina-d.livejournal.com]

This thread is fascinating 'cause I didn't know any of the behind the scenes stuff. However, I have to say that (not knowing anyone) I found out about and attended the writing workshop. There were almost a dozen of us that showed up on time and therefore got to really participate - several others trickled in late and added some great stuff to what we were already discussing but didn't get any of their writing discussed because we didn't have time.

I only got the schedule a day or two before the con, with someone having mentioned the writers and poetry workshops to me in an email when I'd inquired about the poetry contest (which was closed long before I inquired, but the website sure didn't reflect that!).

[pbray.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you were able to attend. What were your impressions? Was it valuable to you and something you'd like to do again in the future? I'm giving some thought to proposing running a workshop at a future con, so would be interested in hearing what you thought worked well, and what could be improved.

[wilhelmina-d.livejournal.com]

Of the con itself or the writers workshop? The con I really enjoyed - I won't go into detail here because I think you mean the workshop. If you want to know more about my impressions of the con I have several posts in my journal. :)

The workshop was interesting in that it was very collaborative - we all put out the idea or theme or basic story of one thing we were working on. Then we took turns discussing each idea. I got a lot of neat ideas and questions to answer about my story.

However, I also would like to have learned a little more about the craft of writing - strucure, outlining a novel, practicing writing stories, etc. One of the neat things we did in the poetry workshop was we actually wrote poetry. The mods had these great writing prompts - collages, different colored rocks, etc. It wasn't like we wrote epic poetry or anything, but I had several quick and (I hope!) cute pieces come out of that.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

I hopped over to your LJ to check out your Balticon posts :-)

My question was really related to the writing workshop-- thanks for the feedback. I'd love to see a con where there was a writers' programming track that addressed a wide range of craft topics as you suggested. Not sure if the issue here is constraints on programming space versus the percentage of attendees who would be interested, or not enough volunteers to run the panels, or perhaps a little of both.

Romance writers really excel in this area, and while they don't have SF type cons (except, perhaps, for the Romantic Times convention), they do have conferences focused on the craft of writing, ranging from the basics to advanced topics for multi-published authors. Be nice if we could import a little of this into the SF&F community.

Worth giving this some more thought.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed it. I know I appreciated Maria and Tamara's frankness. It worked out well that we each had a range of different experiences, since I think it's important that people realize that there are many different paths to becoming (and staying) a published author.

I'd love to autograph a copy for you, but I won't be at any cons until Albacon in October and World Fantasy in November. It's the pesky day job that keeps me short of vacation days, and limits my con attendance.

If you send your snail mail address to patriciabray AT sff DOT net, I can send you an autographed bookplate, if that would help.