Tag Archives: convention

Dragon*Con Penguin

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Too. Many. Dragon*Con. Schedule changes. Awake at 2:30AM prepping the Thursday pre-con edition of the Daily Dragon. Bleary-eyed and dazed and the convention hasn’t even started yet. It did not help that Comcast knocked out our Internet connection this morning.

People are deep into gas fuel panic. Huge queues at the pumps. Wish people would stay calm and not go running about trying to hoard gas.

   


Writing Stuff

Yay! The podcast of The Life and Times of Penguin is now up at Escape Pod. Go download and listen!

Must sleep now.

Writing Stuff

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Ann Crispin called last night asking me to reprise my “The Secret to Having your Short Fiction Published” guest lecture for her Beginner Writers workshop at Dragon*Con. So now my tentative D*C guest schedule looks like this:

  • Thursday noon – Ann Crispin’s Beginner Writers workshop, "The Secret to Having your Short Fiction Published."
  • Friday 9/2, 8:30PM – "Censorship: Who should decide what’s appropriate for kids or teens to read?"  With Kathleen David, Jo Sherman, and Todd McCaffrey.
  • Saturday 9/3, 1:00PM – "So, You Want to Write a Kid's Book."  With Kathleen David, Jo Sherman, Donita K. Paul, and Paul Alan Gratz.
  • Saturday 9/3, 8:30PM – "Fairy Tales: Not Made for Children."  With Dennis Keppel, Heidi Heiner, and Jo Sherman.
  • Sunday 9/4, 10:00AM – "Urban Fantasy and Faeries. " With Phil Brucato, Scott Haven, and Jo Sherman

Oof. Busy schedule. I may need to beg out of one of these so I can attend my DC2K writers group annual reunion dinner. ‘Cept I don’t know what day that’s been scheduled for yet.

I was looking over my notes from the talk I did last year for Ann, and I’d like to update the content, but I’m not sure what I should add. So here’s a shiny poll for all you writers out there:

Trying to hold off the obligatory panic attack at the notion of speaking in public, but I feel the sharp anxiety claws beginning to dig in. Gleep.

In other, non-panic-attack-inciting news, I had a very good sales day yesterday.
56-day SALE to the Thou Shalt Not anthology–my second to this project. Very pleased ’bout this as I wrote both flash stories expressly for it.
63-day SALE to the premiere issue of Fantasy Magazine, slated to debut at the World Fantasy Convention in November. It promises to be a beautiful production. Here’s a mock-up of the cover:

Fantasm Day (night) 1

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Fantasm has begun! We had a late start yesterday so didn’t get into Fantasm until after 8PM. Had time to get registered, say our initial hellos, and then find seats at the ballroom. I was scheduled to be a presenter at the Fannie Awards, so I checked in with poppyaseed, and then settled down to wait for my time to be escorted backstage. And waited. And waited. Of course, silly me, the award ceremony was on “convention time”! So we (Matthew, dude_the, and I) relaxed and gabbed with Melanie (Pony Girl) and Hugh.

Then the event began! The presenters had to reach the backstage by going around outside. I was slated to present an award with one of the Purgatory crew, Mistress Sapphire, and we were both not dressed for the outside. It’s cold out there! Shivering, we discussed what we were going to do onstage (which I now realize I totally messed up on–she suggested the presenter who ended up stage left should introduce herself first. Being a ninny (and terrified of public speaking), I blanked out and confused stage left with “left of Eugie”. Oops.) We presented the “Favorite Volunteer” award, and it was won by the lovely redwitch. I noticed when there that the stage was extremely slippery. I was very concerned for all the dancers who were performing ceremony numbers. Walking on the stage was a chancy undertaking. Dancing, yikes.

My stint done, I went back into the audience, eagerly awaiting the “Favorite Ms. Fantasm” award presentation. The presenters mispronounced my name at the “and the nominees are” part, and there was a bit of a mix-up at the “and the winner is” stage. But who cares? I won!


My acceptance speech was pretty lame. “Thank you, you’re all great!” My brain glazed over, and I could come up with nothing more amusing to say. Sigh. Probably the only “thank you” speech I’ll ever give at an award ceremony and I deer-in-the-headlighted.

Thank you, everyone who voted for me!

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A Christmas Carol, Christmas shopping, *cough cough sneeze*

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Went to see A Christmas Carol at the Shakespeare Tavern on Saturday. It was, by far, the best production–play, movie, whatever–of that Charles Dickens classic that I have ever experienced. I’ve been feeling pretty saturated on the CC front for several years now, and I was actually not all that enthusiastic about Saturday’s theater outing as I was beginning to come down with some phlegmy cold symptoms, but we had the tickets so out I went. They started with several, lovely madrigalish carols and I was laughing out loud within the first five minutes of the first scene, a state of mirth I generally maintained for the whole play. Not that there weren’t poignant bits; but, like with all productions at the Shakespeare Tavern, the director knows that humor is the best stage device there is. I’m still blown away by their amazing sense of pacing. Never a dull moment. It got us properly into the festive, holiday spirit. I highly recommend the Tavern’s Christmas Carol to any and all in the Atlanta area. Go see it before the run ends!

Did a lot of prezzie shopping over the weekend. Continue reading →

Eugie, meet Mr. Semitruck, aka Dragon*Con

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Dragon*Con happened. Haven’t fully recovered from it yet. May not for many more days. Oof. My brain feels tenderized. I have bruises that I cannot fully account for, and blisters that I can. Our bedroom looks like the costume fairy exploded in it. Our living room is only marginally better, and only because we had to pick things up off the floor or Hobkin would have been more than happy to investigate them for us. And there are some post-con issues that I’m having to deal with that are not making me happy.

But from what I can pick out of the actual convention blur, it was great! Highlights, or rather those bits I can remember enough to be coherent on:

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Busybusybusybusybusybusy

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So busy I can’t believe I’m taking the time to make this LJ entry. Gearing up big-time for Dragon*Con. Had a very aggravating thing happen last night. Heard from one of my staff that she wasn’t working D*C this year. Talk about last minute notice! I didn’t think I could fill her spot by convention time, so I was frantically rethinking my painstakingly synchronized desk schedule.

But, as fortune had it, I got a note from the volunteer coordinator today. Due to staff cuts in other departments (sorry, tk0667), there was a staffer adrift who expressed an interest in working for me and he stepped into the gaping need. Welcome tanglered!

Got the majority of Thursday’s pre-con hardcopy Daily Dragon issue laid out. It can’t be finalized until I get the deluge of schedule changes received and entered, but I’m pretty happy to have gotten this far ahead of the game. Also updated the online template and created a brand new one for the hardcopy. Hoping to streamline the publication process this year. Otherwise, I will need a holiday to recover from my holiday.

Also made some updates to the behind-the-scenes parts of the website to get it prepped for convention action, and so I can hand it over to arkhamrefugee in something other than an embarrassing, chaotic mess.

Matthew and I have both been working dude_the like a dog. But Matthew’s getting more of his time than I am, which makes me glower. Except I’m ahead of my hubby in the convention readiness arena, so I guess I can only glower so much.

They are still sending us boxes of swag. We got Sky Captain posters and cards. Glah. My dining room is layered in cardboard boxes AGAIN, dammit.

Lastly, my immune system appears to have rallied (or de-rallied, as the case may be) and halted my MCTD flare-up in it’s initial stages before it could put me down and out for the count. *knocks on wood*



Writing Stuff:

Writing? What writing? Who has time to write?

Um, I did get a personal rejection from Andy Cox of Interzone, but at least it had a heartening invite to send more: “please continue to send us your stuff, which we very much look forward to reading.”

Last Dragon*Con director’s meeting, Happy Birthday Matthew!

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It’s Matthew’s birthday today! Happy Birthday to my hubby. I made him a chocolate cream pie (his favorite), and there’s a nice pile of prezzies waiting for him to ooo and ahhh over. I used some of the promo posters to wrap them . . .

The last Dragon*Con director’s meeting was yesterday. Much fun, and the convention fed us again. I grabbed a whole yellow bell pepper, an apple, and a banana from the buffet table to bring home to mollify Hobkin with. Got a chance to gab and/or wave at dire_epiphany, astralfire, fingerman, and tk0667. Also managed to unload about nine of the countless boxes of promo posters, and a box of The Grudge hats. Woohoo! I will get my dining room back . . . eventually.

Hmm. Matthew just came wandering out. Appears he’s insomniac, the poor thing. Going to go keep him company until he falls back asleep.


Writing Stuff:

My (tentative) schedule as a guest for Dragon*Con:
“Marketing Short Fiction” Fri. 11AM (Ann Crispin’s Workshop)
“So You Want to Write a Kid’s Book” Fri. 4PM (YA Lit. Track)
“The Roots of Science Fiction and Fantasy” Sat. 2:30 (YA Lit. Track)
“Is it Horror?” Sat. 8:30PM (Writers Track)

I also asked the director of the Writers Track if I could glomp onto the “Transylvania Twist” panel at 7PM on Saturday. That one’s about vampire fiction, and I figure it’d be a good panel for me because well, I write vampire fiction and I’ve got a vampire chapbook to hawk. Plus it’s right before my other Writers Track panel so I could just sit in the same room. Convenient.