My Amazing weekend in the Discworld!
Awesome weekend at the 2nd North American Discworld Convention (nadwcon): I arrived in Madison, Wisc (a 4 1/2 hour drive from Fairfield) on Thursday the 7th.... I met up with an old friend and we went to see Buck, which is a lovely documentary about the original Horse Whisperer (Robert Redford based his character in that movie on this man) and I recommend it to people who love horses (although there is a very sad part of the film). We met her husband for Thai food... it was a very fun evening.
The next morning I drove downtown and they let me check into the hotel at 10 am (check in time is supposed to be 3 pm) but it took a good hour to find a cart and get my car decanted to my room....
The Hotel was Madison Concourse which is right next to the State Capital (good news: no demonstrations happening when I arrived, bad news: the huge outdoor arts festival was setting up there and was packed with people all weekend).
At 1 pm Terry Pratchett came down for the Opening Ceremonies, unfortunately he wasn't miked with an attached small receiver, and he held the microphone far away so we couldn't hear him..
but I'd already run into him in the halls of the hotel (he was coming out of the restaurant from breakfast while I was headed in for lunch)... a little later Rob Wilkens (Terry's personal assistant who is adorable, and a VERY good reader) read a chapter of Sir Terry's next book, Snuff. And that night there was a huge cocktail party hosted by the Seamstress Guild in the Hospitality Room.
Saturday I had my 'autograph' session.... but Sir Terry is finding autographs very stressful these days, so he pre-signed bookplates to hand out, and he had a personal ('Terry was here') stamp to put on something we would bring in.... There was a lot to see and do at the convention: panels, craft sessions, a really good vendors room (I got a bunch of books to help complete the Discworld paperback collection), and an even greater Art Gallery set up! Saturday night was the big Masquerade (costume contest), which I didn't enter because I was worried my gown wouldn't be 'fresh' for two nights in a row.... But I'm kind of kicking myself for not showing it off in the contest....
Sunday I dressed up in my steampunk clothes, for no good reason (I had no character who wears steampunk in mind) and funnily enough everyone went nuts for my silly hat, and kept coming up with ideas of who I was dressed as (these people really know all the obscure characters in the books!).
The big event was the Good Omens panel, we were told there would be a 'special guest' and of course I assumed it would be Neil Gaiman, and it was!
livejournal seems to be screwing up this photo... you can view it directly here: http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b4/embers_log/conventions/Terry%20Pratchett/NGandTPandme.jpg
(notice my steampunk hat in the lower right hand corner of the photo! Proof I was there!)
Neil and Terry both pointed out that at the time they wrote Good Omens they were not yet 'Neil Gaiman' and/or 'Terry Pratchett'. Terry had published a few books which sold well enough to support him and his family, but taking off a few months to work on this co-authored silliness (more an exercise on making each other laugh) was actually a few months away from working on his other books, and he saw it as a risk....
Neil had already started Sandman and he was starting to build up reputation for graphic novels, but he had never written a novel of his own, and he was still working as a journalist to pay the bills.
In fact Neil was working as a journalist when he met Terry Pratchett: he was sent to interview him at a restaurant, and they totally hit it off. They would call each other up in the middle of the night (knowing the other would be up) and Neil takes credit for the book 'Mort' because he told Terry that DEATH was his best character and he needed to do a DEATH centric book (of course Terry points out that ideas are a dime a dozen, the work comes from actually writing the book! Unseenacademicals was the result of several people, who are probably patting themselves on the back, saying he should write a book about football). They hit it off well enough so that Terry started using Neil as a 'Betta reader' and when Neil started his first (untitled) novel he sent it off to Terry to read....
So Neil had written about 10,000 words and Terry read it, and immediately saw how Crawley's character needed to be reworked to contrast w/the unnamed angel character (because Neil had made them almost exactly alike). Terry really wanted to do the rewriting, and he asked Neil if he could buy off the idea from him or could he co-write the book with him....? And for Neil (who had never written a novel, didn't have an agent or a publisher for a 'real book', and was a little insecure about what all this would take) was thrilled to do what he considered to be a Master Class in novel writing!
They both had landlines and mailed the disks, and manuscripts, back and forth via snail mail. They tried setting up a modem to modem connection, which was a disaster and a huge time waster.
They say it is hard now to know who wrote what (although all the bits with maggots was definitely Neil, who confessed that he loved maggots). Neil Gaiman would write "they had spooned" and Terry would add "and occasionally forked". They really were just trying to make each other laugh. When they did the final edits, they discovered that the book had started generating it's own dialogue because neither of them could remember having written parts of it!
When they finished writing the book they sent out manuscripts to several publishers and ended up with a live competitive auction for the publishing rights! Neil was thrilled, and Terry was terrified (under the bed holding the floor) as the money offered became ridiculous. They decided to go with Workman Books, not because they offered the most (they didn't) but because they were so excited about doing it and seemed so passionate about it (Terry then said 'we were dumb' and Neil confirmed 'stupid, stupid, stupid'). Workman Books had only done non-fiction (do it yourself books) and this would be their first fiction, and they had this idea that they would send Neil & Terry to do a book promotion in the US before the book was released in the US, and they (Workman Books) would release Good Omens in the US only after the New York Times book review came out....
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/07/books/the-four-bikers-of-the-apocalypse.html
seriously, read this thing! LOL
I'm almost tempted to just reprint it here... it is hilariously bad!
They had been getting great reviews from the Washington Post and papers across the country, but this one strange (extremely personal, comparing the book to his ex-wife and hated in-laws! LOL) BAD review comes out and Workman Books gets freaked out AND DROPS THE BOOK!
Good Omens went directly into remaindered in the US, it was 'sold' for $2, with the authors getting not one penny for the US 'sales' which went number one on the New York Times Best Sellers List!!!!! (Terry says that five exclamation points is the sign of an insane mind... but this was insane). BTW the moral is, never ever be any publishers first book of fiction, because Workman Books clearly didn't know what they were doing, and no other publishers would have done this. No other publisher of fiction would drop a book over one bad review.
The talk went on with a lot more information, and a lot more digressions, but I'm getting tired of typing (I never post anything this long) so I'll stop here.
That night, Sunday night, was the banquet and the organizers did something brilliant, instead of (like two years ago) putting all the special guests at a Head Table on a dais (where we could see but not hear them), they had a bunch of round tables with one special guest at each table. I was sitting with Bernard Pearson who is a sculptor and graphic artist who has been close friends with Terry for many decades and does all the design work for within the Discworld books (like the stamps in Going Postal). As soon as he sat down at our table he ordered 6 extra bottles of wine to be shared, and he was hilarious.
My costume (I was Miss Eulalie Butts, Headmistress of Quirm College for Young Ladies, which is what it says on my Toile skirt insert) was a huge hit, people told me I definitely should have worn it to the costume competition:
Monday I checked out how to make a MacFeagle sock puppet (and picked up a few of the left over makings to help me do that), and I took a class on making a shamble (Miss Tick taught Tiffany Aching to do this). I also attended talks by Stephen Player (who did the new covers for a lot of the books), Ian Mitchell (who is working on the new huge map of Ankh-Morpork to be published next year), and Rob Wilkins (Terry's PA who used to work for U2, he has a lot of stories which he is hesitant to tell!). I also got to meet Colin Smythe (Terry's long time agent).
Finally the closing ceremony happened at 3 pm, and since I was all packed and ready to go I took off directly after that. I went to my friends house and we went to see Tree of Life:
My quick review of Tree of Life: it is getting rave reviews from a lot of people who (I assume) must be impressed by self indulgent pretentious works by a director who thinks he has something important to say because he is too superficial to know how banal and trite he is. It is being said that this is Brad Pitt's best performance, and it is true he looks the role (ie not cute at all) but I got no emotional resonance there, it was like he was willing to just look the role without actually letting the audience in (I'm not a big Pitt fan, maybe you will find something in there that I missed, but IMO the only movie he was ever good in, that I saw, was 12 Monkeys).
Obviously just my opinion.... Your milage will probably vary.
The next morning I drove downtown and they let me check into the hotel at 10 am (check in time is supposed to be 3 pm) but it took a good hour to find a cart and get my car decanted to my room....
The Hotel was Madison Concourse which is right next to the State Capital (good news: no demonstrations happening when I arrived, bad news: the huge outdoor arts festival was setting up there and was packed with people all weekend).
At 1 pm Terry Pratchett came down for the Opening Ceremonies, unfortunately he wasn't miked with an attached small receiver, and he held the microphone far away so we couldn't hear him..
but I'd already run into him in the halls of the hotel (he was coming out of the restaurant from breakfast while I was headed in for lunch)... a little later Rob Wilkens (Terry's personal assistant who is adorable, and a VERY good reader) read a chapter of Sir Terry's next book, Snuff. And that night there was a huge cocktail party hosted by the Seamstress Guild in the Hospitality Room.
Saturday I had my 'autograph' session.... but Sir Terry is finding autographs very stressful these days, so he pre-signed bookplates to hand out, and he had a personal ('Terry was here') stamp to put on something we would bring in.... There was a lot to see and do at the convention: panels, craft sessions, a really good vendors room (I got a bunch of books to help complete the Discworld paperback collection), and an even greater Art Gallery set up! Saturday night was the big Masquerade (costume contest), which I didn't enter because I was worried my gown wouldn't be 'fresh' for two nights in a row.... But I'm kind of kicking myself for not showing it off in the contest....
Sunday I dressed up in my steampunk clothes, for no good reason (I had no character who wears steampunk in mind) and funnily enough everyone went nuts for my silly hat, and kept coming up with ideas of who I was dressed as (these people really know all the obscure characters in the books!).
The big event was the Good Omens panel, we were told there would be a 'special guest' and of course I assumed it would be Neil Gaiman, and it was!
livejournal seems to be screwing up this photo... you can view it directly here: http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b4/embers_log/conventions/Terry%20Pratchett/NGandTPandme.jpg
(notice my steampunk hat in the lower right hand corner of the photo! Proof I was there!)
Neil and Terry both pointed out that at the time they wrote Good Omens they were not yet 'Neil Gaiman' and/or 'Terry Pratchett'. Terry had published a few books which sold well enough to support him and his family, but taking off a few months to work on this co-authored silliness (more an exercise on making each other laugh) was actually a few months away from working on his other books, and he saw it as a risk....
Neil had already started Sandman and he was starting to build up reputation for graphic novels, but he had never written a novel of his own, and he was still working as a journalist to pay the bills.
In fact Neil was working as a journalist when he met Terry Pratchett: he was sent to interview him at a restaurant, and they totally hit it off. They would call each other up in the middle of the night (knowing the other would be up) and Neil takes credit for the book 'Mort' because he told Terry that DEATH was his best character and he needed to do a DEATH centric book (of course Terry points out that ideas are a dime a dozen, the work comes from actually writing the book! Unseenacademicals was the result of several people, who are probably patting themselves on the back, saying he should write a book about football). They hit it off well enough so that Terry started using Neil as a 'Betta reader' and when Neil started his first (untitled) novel he sent it off to Terry to read....
So Neil had written about 10,000 words and Terry read it, and immediately saw how Crawley's character needed to be reworked to contrast w/the unnamed angel character (because Neil had made them almost exactly alike). Terry really wanted to do the rewriting, and he asked Neil if he could buy off the idea from him or could he co-write the book with him....? And for Neil (who had never written a novel, didn't have an agent or a publisher for a 'real book', and was a little insecure about what all this would take) was thrilled to do what he considered to be a Master Class in novel writing!
They both had landlines and mailed the disks, and manuscripts, back and forth via snail mail. They tried setting up a modem to modem connection, which was a disaster and a huge time waster.
They say it is hard now to know who wrote what (although all the bits with maggots was definitely Neil, who confessed that he loved maggots). Neil Gaiman would write "they had spooned" and Terry would add "and occasionally forked". They really were just trying to make each other laugh. When they did the final edits, they discovered that the book had started generating it's own dialogue because neither of them could remember having written parts of it!
When they finished writing the book they sent out manuscripts to several publishers and ended up with a live competitive auction for the publishing rights! Neil was thrilled, and Terry was terrified (under the bed holding the floor) as the money offered became ridiculous. They decided to go with Workman Books, not because they offered the most (they didn't) but because they were so excited about doing it and seemed so passionate about it (Terry then said 'we were dumb' and Neil confirmed 'stupid, stupid, stupid'). Workman Books had only done non-fiction (do it yourself books) and this would be their first fiction, and they had this idea that they would send Neil & Terry to do a book promotion in the US before the book was released in the US, and they (Workman Books) would release Good Omens in the US only after the New York Times book review came out....
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/07/books/the-four-bikers-of-the-apocalypse.html
seriously, read this thing! LOL
I'm almost tempted to just reprint it here... it is hilariously bad!
They had been getting great reviews from the Washington Post and papers across the country, but this one strange (extremely personal, comparing the book to his ex-wife and hated in-laws! LOL) BAD review comes out and Workman Books gets freaked out AND DROPS THE BOOK!
Good Omens went directly into remaindered in the US, it was 'sold' for $2, with the authors getting not one penny for the US 'sales' which went number one on the New York Times Best Sellers List!!!!! (Terry says that five exclamation points is the sign of an insane mind... but this was insane). BTW the moral is, never ever be any publishers first book of fiction, because Workman Books clearly didn't know what they were doing, and no other publishers would have done this. No other publisher of fiction would drop a book over one bad review.
The talk went on with a lot more information, and a lot more digressions, but I'm getting tired of typing (I never post anything this long) so I'll stop here.
That night, Sunday night, was the banquet and the organizers did something brilliant, instead of (like two years ago) putting all the special guests at a Head Table on a dais (where we could see but not hear them), they had a bunch of round tables with one special guest at each table. I was sitting with Bernard Pearson who is a sculptor and graphic artist who has been close friends with Terry for many decades and does all the design work for within the Discworld books (like the stamps in Going Postal). As soon as he sat down at our table he ordered 6 extra bottles of wine to be shared, and he was hilarious.
My costume (I was Miss Eulalie Butts, Headmistress of Quirm College for Young Ladies, which is what it says on my Toile skirt insert) was a huge hit, people told me I definitely should have worn it to the costume competition:
Monday I checked out how to make a MacFeagle sock puppet (and picked up a few of the left over makings to help me do that), and I took a class on making a shamble (Miss Tick taught Tiffany Aching to do this). I also attended talks by Stephen Player (who did the new covers for a lot of the books), Ian Mitchell (who is working on the new huge map of Ankh-Morpork to be published next year), and Rob Wilkins (Terry's PA who used to work for U2, he has a lot of stories which he is hesitant to tell!). I also got to meet Colin Smythe (Terry's long time agent).
Finally the closing ceremony happened at 3 pm, and since I was all packed and ready to go I took off directly after that. I went to my friends house and we went to see Tree of Life:
My quick review of Tree of Life: it is getting rave reviews from a lot of people who (I assume) must be impressed by self indulgent pretentious works by a director who thinks he has something important to say because he is too superficial to know how banal and trite he is. It is being said that this is Brad Pitt's best performance, and it is true he looks the role (ie not cute at all) but I got no emotional resonance there, it was like he was willing to just look the role without actually letting the audience in (I'm not a big Pitt fan, maybe you will find something in there that I missed, but IMO the only movie he was ever good in, that I saw, was 12 Monkeys).
Obviously just my opinion.... Your milage will probably vary.