Remembering World Fantasy Con

This weekend I've been seriously lamenting the fact that I was not in Toronto at the 2012 World Fantasy Convention. Last year I went to WFC in San Diego, and it was amazing. Life changing even. For a few different reasons, which I'll share.

It was the first time I've done something really crazy like fly across the country (I'm in Florida, so literally coast to coast) all by myself to go to an event I'd never attended before with people I'd never met. Not a single soul. Luckily, fellow blogger Liz Briggs told me her and her husband were going, and we made plans to meet up. But they weren't driving in until the first day of the con, which meant I had a whole evening and morning to try and make friends. Kind of terrifying since I'm not the bravest of people in situations like this. But I did meet people, and they were great, and it was awesome, and I survived, and I grew as a person. My wanderlust increased exponentially, and I wanted to go on more adventures to meet more awesome writer people.

The second thing that changed me was Neil Gaiman. Cliche, sure. True, yes. I've told this tale before, but when I went to WFC last year, I had just started reading Neil's stuff, so I felt like a very inadequate and undeserving fan. But I gawked and swooned at his awesomeness nonetheless. In my defense, it really can't be helped. And during one of his many talks over the weekend, he said something along the lines of "I love WFC because when I'm here, I'm with my people. You are my people." And I realized, YES! I'm with my fellow fantasy writers at the premier fantasy literary con in the world. And I want to do this forever. And I want to do other cons. And I want to try to be even a fraction as rad and badass as Neil, traveling the world and doing cool writerly stuff. I've always known I wanted to be a writer, and that I would write until I am old and can't write anymore. But I'd never really been immersed in the vision of how exactly that could unfold, and all the awesome adventures I could have. Neil showed me that.

The third thing was my novel Everdream. The inspiration for it hit a week or so after I got back home from WFC, while I was still swimming in the inspiration high of meeting so many amazing writers, both published and aspiring. I wanted a brilliant idea, something very different from anything anyone had written. And walking out to feed my horses one night, under a bright splash of stars, it hit me hard. And my writerly brain started cranking out the details, and the plot and the characters, and a few months later it was written. Being with other writers feeds our souls, and helps us stretch to new levels. I know I have WFC to thank for that novel.

So, while I'm uber jealous of everyone that got to go to WFC 2012, I'm super grateful for what I learned last year. I'll be hopping around to hear about all the amazing panels and readings and meetings and awesomeness. And since I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna make it to WFC 2013 in Brighton, England (unless I win the lottery), I'll probably have to aim for WFC 2014 in Washington, D.C. I should be able to swing that.

What are your fave cons? Any world changing experiences you'd like to share? I hope everybody has an amazing week!

My WFC Manifesto

Warning: this is going to be a really long post. Maybe my longest ever. Since this is my online journal, I want to be able to come back and read it myself when I forget all the shiny details. So, I won't blame you if you skim!

My World Fantasy Convention 2011 adventure began with 13 hours of travel. Two hours driving to the Jacksonville airport. Three hour layover in Denver, where it was 28 degrees and everyone stared at me in my flipflops. One coast to the other. But, finally (!!!) I arrived in San Diego at about 6 PM on Wednesday evening.

I checked in to my room, which was in a building at the far side of the resort. There was an incredibly creepy picture of a little girl in a Victorian dress right over my bed. I unpacked and went to have dinner by myself in one of the resort restaurants, complete with a well-deserved glass of Pinot Gris.

The next morning I changed rooms to the tower closest to the con center, since that's where the con suite and all the parties were. That way I wasn't stumbling in the dark back to my distant tower after all the parties (the infamy of which preceded them). After I settled in, I walked over to the bus station with the intention of going to the gaslamp district, but then I decided I didn't want to hassle with figuring out the bus routes and stuff. I went back to my room and had a massive small pity party regarding the fact that I didn't know anybody and had nothing to do, and decided to take a two hour nap. When in doubt, naps are the best remedy :)

The conference started at 3PM, so a little before then I went down to the con suite (officially known as the hospitality suite) and discovered they had free food. It ended up they served three meals a day, which saved me lots of money. I bucked up and started to talk to people, including a really cool chic named Kelley Caspari, who is a bronze sculptor with art on display at the art show in the con center. Then I headed off for my first panel!

At the panel, I met up with fellow blogger Liz Briggs and her husband. After the panel, I recognized Elena Solodow from her blog picture (plus we all had these handy nametag necklaces), and she introduced me to her roommate Stephanie Loree. At some point later I got to meet more blog friends - Carolina Valdez Miller and Matt MacNish. Pity party over!

After the opening ceremony, people from the San Diego Zoo brought over an assortment of super cool animals. My fave was the white-bellied pangolin. I didn't take this pic. The San Diego Zoo did. Those flower petal scale things? Covered in soft fur like a mole's. Rad.

At around 10 we headed to one of the bars, which had been dubbed the "official" conference bar. I was just wondering aloud whether Neil Gaiman was hiding in his room or was going to make appearance when he walked in. No, he didn't get swarmed. People stayed pretty cool. Although, at one point when I went to get more wine at the bar, I heard music and turned to see someone playing a ukulele and singing. While standing five feet from and looking directly into Neil Gaiman's eyes. He left shortly thereafter...

My last stop of the night was the Australian party. Earlier in the day candy-colored fliers had gone up about this party. I asked somebody, "What's the Australian party? Is it literally a party thrown by the Australians?" To which the reply was yes - Garth Nix and entourage. So, I went and of course made my way to the bar for a glass of wine. A nice gentleman poured me one, and I looked down at his nametag. Garth Nix was pouring my wine! Holy….wombat.

Friday morning panels started at 10 AM. Later in the afternoon, I went to a reading by Neil Gaiman. He's just so fantastic. I feel like I'm not a worthy fan, since I just read Neverwhere like a month ago, but it was so amazing I was instantly addicted. Besides, I've intended on reading his books for years. Does that count? Either way, I went, I listened, I swooned. He read for almost an hour. I caught a glimpse of super-agent Merrilee Heifetz who discovered Neil when he was really young... and of course began fantasizing about bumping into her and talking about my books, and her loving them and me, and I got quite carried away. Totally didn't happen, of course.

Later that night was the autograph session, and me and Elena and Stephanie stood in line for an hour or so to get Neil to sign our books. Some people were laying down on the carpet. We sat for a while because we had a lot of books and my feet were killing me. I brought one of my Sookie Stackhouse books for Charlaine Harris to sign later, and there were two people in line ahead of me. Poor Charlaine, she was totally overshadowed by Neil. Liz said Charlaine actually stood in line for Neil's signing like everybody else!

After that we hit the parties. The big parties of Friday night were publishers Tor and Nightshade. The Canadians also threw a party, with maple syrup and maple syrup flavored cocktails. And some other weird cocktails with rye. I met a couple agents, one completely by accident who asked if I wanted to query him after I'd been blabbing about movies and kids and God knows what else for 20 minutes. Apparently I passed the crazy-writer test (shocking!). The other I'd seen on a panel, and she invited me to query, too. Fingers crossed...

Saturday sprang on me rather frighteningly. It was my last day at the conference, and the time had flown by. My first panel was at noon, and one of the panelists was Tamora Pierce, whose books I read as a tween, and who was one of the first authors to distill in me a love of kick-ass sword-wielding heroines. She had the room in hysterics when she mentioned that there were "hydraulics" issues pertaining to zombie sex (yeah) and that if Edward Cullen was so ice-cold and marble-like all over, Bella wouldn't have been happy with certain parts of his anatomy. ROTFL.

Went to more Neil Gaiman stuff later, and more panels, took a nap, and hit the art show to support Kelley since it was her big night. After that was a fun panel about faeries with Holly Black as one of the panelists. Holly Black, whom I didn't recognize when she was standing outside the room, and thus began to babble with about women and mirrors. If that doesn't make sense, it's probably because you're a guy. After that panel, more parties! The final evening was dominated by the British, Edge publishing, and SFWA parties. At the British party I was made to try something called marmite with wicked enthusiasm. It looks like chocolate syrup. It does not taste at all like chocolate syrup. We all ended up getting shooed inside by hotel security, which I found incredibly amusing. Writers? Noise complaints?

Sunday morning I had to get up at 8, finish packing, and head to the airport. I got back to Jacksonville at 9:30PM Florida time, and had to drive the two hours home. And then couldn't fall asleep since I was on California time. So yeah, arriving at work Monday at 8AM was real fun.

In summary - loved it. I'm not good at introducing myself to strangers, so I was really nervous about flying across the country where I would know no one. But I ended up meeting lots of blog friends and making other friends, and I think that was the best part. Just being inundated in writing with other writers all weekend. It rocked. Next year WFC is in Toronto! And after that Brighton, England! I doubt I'll be able to travel that far, but a girl can dream, right?

World Fantasy Convention, Here I Come!

Hi, blog friends! Life continues to be a whirlwind of craziness. I keep telling myself that after my trip to WFC in San Diego, everything will settle down. But, that's a total fabrication to keep me from screaming... though I am totally excited the holidays are coming up. I've decided to forgo my usual Monday Meme to share a random list of things I've been doing lately:

1) I saw Three Musketeers on Saturday and Real Steel today. They were both pretty awesome. Three Musketeers had a pretty rad airship battle. Yep, I said airship. You know you wanna see it.

2) My son's fourth grade play is on Thursday. He's going to be a pirate. For Halloween, he's going to be a knight. So, there's been a lot of discussions of the wardrobes of both pirates and knights. And weapons, naturally.

3) I posted the first page of Countless in the Miss Snark's First Victim October Secret Agent contest. It pretty much got eviscerated. When I participate in public critiques, I like to give honest feedback, but always make sure to find something positive about someone's excerpt. Not all people have that same philosophy. The especially annoying thing is that everyone was saying I had too much of the antagonist's backstory on the first page, when the whole reason I added any backstory at all to the first page was because an agent I met at a conference critiqued it and told me I needed some backstory. So, this kind of makes me feel like poking my eyes out. Okay, venting done. Backbone thicker. Moving on.

4) My colt got castrated earlier in the week. Yeah. So, that was interesting.

5) Planning for my big trip. Weather forecast - check. Reserve shuttle from airport - check. Edit and print up pages of Countless and new novel (tentatively called Noir) - check. Buy a couple new outfits just for the heck of it - check. Bring books for Charlaine Harris and Neil Gaiman to autograph - check.

I'm going to be in California in three days! Holy cow! I'm freaking out a little. Mostly in a good way. A heads up - next Monday I will skip my meme as well since I will have just flown back from Cali late Sunday night and have a big meeting at work on Monday, plus taking my son trick-or-treating Monday night. I'll probably post links to my November issue of Raven Moon on Tuesday. I've got a cool author interview and a book review in addition to the usual fun stuff.

So, wish me luck. Did I mention I'm going to be flying all the way across the country all alone? And I won't know anyone when I get there? Okay, I'm babbling now. Talk to you guys next week!

TGIF and writing news and other stuff...

Happy Friday writer friends! I've had a rough week fighting off a nasty cold, so I am hugely grateful for the weekend.  I hope your weeks have been better!

In writing news, I sent off five queries at year end and have gotten four responses - three rejections and a partial request.  Boo rejections, yay partial!  We'll see how it goes.

Also, I got some unexpected exciting news.  My local writers association is having a spring conference, and they actually have a pretty sweet lineup.  Chuck Sambuchino of the awesome Guide to Literary Agents blog is doing some workshops, and a couple agents are coming from New York.  From reputable agencies I recognize!  I have to say I'm kind of surprised that my city, which is medium-sized at best, has such cool folks coming. 

And the really cool part is that you can get a 25 page manuscript critique from one of the agents, so I signed up.  Totally stoked!  I am really excited about getting an expert opinion, and know I'll get some great feedback on ways to improve my writing.  I promise to share all the juicy details of my evisceration. 

I mentioned a while back that I'm going to World Fantasy Convention this fall, so these two are probably going to more than eat up my budget.  But I'm curious as to what conferences and conventions my blogging friends are thinking about going to this year.  What are the most popular ones?  Or what cool local stuff do you have going on?  Do share!

P.S. Have a kick ass weekend :~)

Sunny California Anyone?

To what do I refer?  World Fantasy Convention 2011!!!

October 27 - 30 in San Diego.  Guest writer, Neil Gaiman (Stardust, Coraline, lots of others).  In attendance, Charlaine Harris, author of the books that the HBO series True Blood is based off of.  And lots of other authors, publishers, agents, etc.  And also - me! 

Check it out here!

Only 850 tickets available!  They haven't updated their attendance list for over a month, but it was already about a quarter full then.  Hope to see some blogging friends there!

P.S. - this concludes my blogging activities until the weekend as I am currently working 11 hours straight each day at work to meet a deadline.  TTFN!