IAFA roundup
These cons really all do have different vibes to them. WFC, of course, is all business. IAFA is listening to some papers and chilling out at the pool with drinks. Which I approve of.
And which is in fact all I did in my limited presence there. I did make it to one panel/three papers and part of the Guest Scholar luncheon and to an impromptu Poets Dinner (where, to repeat in a less mysterious fashion, the praises of the divinely charming csecooney were raised, because, why not?) Otherwise, the about 1/3 of the con I managed to attend (I was fatigued Thursday and sick Friday and out of it Saturday morning) was mostly spent at the pool (with or without drinks) or at the bar (with drinks). Oh and I popped into the bookstore where David Hartwell cruelly tortured me into taking some books home. (Seriously! Wouldn't have done it otherwise, she says, unconvincingly looking at shelves full of books.) I was feeling guilty about this until I learned that jaylake did pretty much the same thing, only, because he's Jay Lake, more productively.
Other bits in no particular order, with the immediate caveat that I'm going to be leaving out a LOT of people who should not be left out:
1. Most annoying/embarrassing moment of the con: So, a little after nine or so on Saturday, Rachel_swirsky suggested in her always practical way that maybe food would be a good idea. I checked my watch and realized that I was, in fact, hungry, and since no one would be picking me up for a full hour I should indeed join Rachel and the others for food because surely I could order bar food less than an hour….
….forgetting that it had taken the hotel bar/restaurant over two hours to serve and feed us and get our checks on Wednesday night. And we were hit with the same thing. They did, this time, provide menus quickly, but took a bit of time to return for food orders. When we did, I asked them to bring out the check. This was at about 9:25...
...and by 10 PM, the artist famous for creating fabulous wedding designs had gone through three drink orders trying to find something and my food (hummus!) and the check had still not arrived but my father had. I thought of asking him to join us while we waited for food, but, to be honest, I knew I was starting to fade, badly - the table was beginning to spin - and I needed to go to bed, and quickly. So I figured I would just pay and take off...
...also forgetting that these days I don't carry much cash and I'd already spent most of the cash I was carrying around. I think my single bills were just barely enough to cover most of the bill, but I'm not sure, and auugh. The others said they would try to cancel my order under the circumstances, but I felt awful (and, as said, sick). Hopefully I'll be able to make it up next year by buying everyone that was there drinks.
2. While we're on the subject of Rachel, I finally meet her, and do I mention my all time favorite story of hers, A Memory of Wind? No, no I do not. I did babble a bit about her Nebula-nominated novella, The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath The Queen's Window but utterly forgot the title so that didn't exactly go well either. Oh well.
I do not know why I do this EVERY TIME I meet writers: I completely blank on the titles of my favorite of their works. Completely. So, um, it wasn't personal...
...because I also did this to Marie Brennan (swan-tower). And in her case even though I knew she would be at the con, did I bring along my copy of her book? No, no I did not, because I didn't actually expect to be meeting her, much less having lunch with her. Head thunk. Moving on. (The only semi-exception to this rule was Connie Willis, who I actually managed to have a nice conversation about Agatha Christie and Denver and Vail with....but did I remember to bring my copy of To Say Nothing of the Dog? Again, no, no I did not but in my defense in this case I really didn't think I'd have the chance to speak with her at all.)
3. The impromptu Poets Dinner with Mike Allen, Geoffrey Landis, Mary Turzillo, Bruce Boston and Marge Simon went well. I was all excited about FINALLY gathering all of the speculative poets in Florida into one room at last...
...only to realize that I hadn't, since upstart_crow has now joined us by moving to Boca Raton. Oh well. (And, well, although I don't exactly put Jeff Vandermeer into the speculative poets category he wasn't there either.) At least I gathered all of the speculative poets of Central Florida into one room. Dinner was good.
Also, although she doesn't read this journal, welcome to Florida, upstart_crow!
4. Am I seriously the only person who didn't know Joe Haldeman lives in Gainesville? Because I didn't know.
5. More about this in another post, but I was inflicted again with competing impulses. One: I've been so isolated this calendar year that I found a hunger for talk, and to talk about everything (including coral growths in Palm Beach County, sorry about that to everyone that had to listen.). And I was inflicted with the "be funny be funny be funny people only like you when you're funny your only value is as an entertainer" (and since I have very little sense of humor about the coral growth issue in Palm Beach County this was difficult) creating a horrific internal dialogue, which coupled with a lovely sense of inadequacy around that many PhDs and successful writers led to babbling. Auugh. And this at the relaxed, by the pool with nice tropical drinks con. Sigh.
6. Apparently everybody thinks I'm considerably younger than I am. I need to turn into my apparent age rather than my real age. (Vaxers, is this TRUE or were people just being polite?)
7. IAFA is not a big business conference. Sure, people gossiped here and there about specific publishers or about immensely talented poets in the Chicago area (cough) but for once at these cons I actually spent more time chatting about coral studies and issues of marine biology funding than publishing. (Corals are important too.) But one theme did pop up: the pricing and publishing of ebooks, so I was delighted to find when I got back that Cat Valente had independently and with her usual brilliance leapt into the subject. I have not had time to read the comments, but, rock on.
8. I found myself mildly saddened that the con managed to locate itself in the most boring part of the Orlando area. (Near the airport, for the curious, although apparently the retention pond just outside managed to scare up at least one alligator for people to see and a few great blue herons stopped by. No cranes.) I know that some people were able to flee for brief periods, but, you know, Semoran Blvd just doesn't have many places to flee to except possibly if people had made it as far up to State Road 50 and the big science fiction store there, but, I gather nobody did. On a related note, Winter Park is the city with the art museums and New England look and Rollins College. I live in Winter Garden, with the excellent French bakery, bike trail, huge alligator infested lake, and brick and dirt roads and no colleges. (Of course, the French bakery informs me that they are expanding to a second location in Winter Park blurring that distinction.) But I am hoping that at some point people manage to see the theme parts and some of the rest of Florida - for instance, Blue Springs State Park (scroll down for images) or Homasassa Springs State Park or Merritt Island Bird Refuge.
9. Sunday was the big expedition to Universal that most of the con ended up skipping. Since I wasn't staying at the hotel, I arrived separately, hoping to be at the gates before 10 am when I figured the rest of the group would be arriving. And that almost worked….except that I also made the mistake of assuming that Guest Services at Universal would be faster than Guest Services at Islands, which, no. So by the time I meandered through the gates I realized I'd missed the group.
This meant, of course, that a cherry turnover was needed.
(My logic, it is excellent.)
After that I figured that since I was there already, I might as well head to Harry Potter and take another look around, and then maybe head over to Universal since I haven't been to that park in ages, only, once I reached Harry Potter, amazingly enough, I found akashiver! (Amazingly because the park, and especially the Harry Potter part of it, was jammed. CD texted me that I was insane for even trying this weekend and I must admit he had a point.) And equally amazingly, she didn't run in fear from me post my lunch babble. So we ended up wandering bits of the park together and chattering. I also may possibly have invested in an UTTERLY AWESOME TEDDY BEAR that is HUGGING A LITTLE DINOSAUR and GETTING READY TO EAT IT. (I am in love and no, I do NOT have too many teddy bears whatever unkind people might be implying.) And, because it's a theme park, fudge was also Clearly Required. How I escaped without the root beer float or cotton candy I do not know.
It was all great, even though the annoyingly familiar dizziness started to hit way too early and I had to leave before she did.
I definitely plan on returning to Harry Potter at some point once the crowds have died down to the point where I can just linger again in the various Hogwarts bits in silence, or near silence. It will come eventually, I am sure, at least in the off season. (What? Even Tower of Terror occasionally has no lines. IT CAN HAPPEN.)
10. The cats responded to my absence by spending much of last night checking to see if I was still on the bed in a very pointed and occasionally bloody manner, and the miniature roses responded by keeling over mostly dead. Gulp. I guess they didn't really root well, or I misplanted them, or both. I am very sad.
11. Because more than one person asked, the Oz reread at Tor.com is listed here, featuring 44 Oz books, the rest of the Baum series and the Wicked series by Gregory Maguire, who for some reason I want to call Geoffrey Maguire. The Narnia posts are here. The result of the rereads was to increase my enthusiasm for Oz (it has a robot and nobody has to die to get there) and decrease my enthusiasm for Narnia. I have more planned posts exploring (mostly) children's literature--I'm going to be trying to sneak in an adult L'Engle novel in the summer and, um, just hope that Tor.com doesn't really notice, unlikely though that sounds. The schedule, though, is a bit whacked thanks to several unrelated factors.
On that note, the plan for the rest of the day is to answer the excellent comments on the Wicked the Musical post, collapse, and then try to capture the productivity of Jay Lake. It is inspiring and very humbling.
And which is in fact all I did in my limited presence there. I did make it to one panel/three papers and part of the Guest Scholar luncheon and to an impromptu Poets Dinner (where, to repeat in a less mysterious fashion, the praises of the divinely charming csecooney were raised, because, why not?) Otherwise, the about 1/3 of the con I managed to attend (I was fatigued Thursday and sick Friday and out of it Saturday morning) was mostly spent at the pool (with or without drinks) or at the bar (with drinks). Oh and I popped into the bookstore where David Hartwell cruelly tortured me into taking some books home. (Seriously! Wouldn't have done it otherwise, she says, unconvincingly looking at shelves full of books.) I was feeling guilty about this until I learned that jaylake did pretty much the same thing, only, because he's Jay Lake, more productively.
Other bits in no particular order, with the immediate caveat that I'm going to be leaving out a LOT of people who should not be left out:
1. Most annoying/embarrassing moment of the con: So, a little after nine or so on Saturday, Rachel_swirsky suggested in her always practical way that maybe food would be a good idea. I checked my watch and realized that I was, in fact, hungry, and since no one would be picking me up for a full hour I should indeed join Rachel and the others for food because surely I could order bar food less than an hour….
….forgetting that it had taken the hotel bar/restaurant over two hours to serve and feed us and get our checks on Wednesday night. And we were hit with the same thing. They did, this time, provide menus quickly, but took a bit of time to return for food orders. When we did, I asked them to bring out the check. This was at about 9:25...
...and by 10 PM, the artist famous for creating fabulous wedding designs had gone through three drink orders trying to find something and my food (hummus!) and the check had still not arrived but my father had. I thought of asking him to join us while we waited for food, but, to be honest, I knew I was starting to fade, badly - the table was beginning to spin - and I needed to go to bed, and quickly. So I figured I would just pay and take off...
...also forgetting that these days I don't carry much cash and I'd already spent most of the cash I was carrying around. I think my single bills were just barely enough to cover most of the bill, but I'm not sure, and auugh. The others said they would try to cancel my order under the circumstances, but I felt awful (and, as said, sick). Hopefully I'll be able to make it up next year by buying everyone that was there drinks.
2. While we're on the subject of Rachel, I finally meet her, and do I mention my all time favorite story of hers, A Memory of Wind? No, no I do not. I did babble a bit about her Nebula-nominated novella, The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath The Queen's Window but utterly forgot the title so that didn't exactly go well either. Oh well.
I do not know why I do this EVERY TIME I meet writers: I completely blank on the titles of my favorite of their works. Completely. So, um, it wasn't personal...
...because I also did this to Marie Brennan (swan-tower). And in her case even though I knew she would be at the con, did I bring along my copy of her book? No, no I did not, because I didn't actually expect to be meeting her, much less having lunch with her. Head thunk. Moving on. (The only semi-exception to this rule was Connie Willis, who I actually managed to have a nice conversation about Agatha Christie and Denver and Vail with....but did I remember to bring my copy of To Say Nothing of the Dog? Again, no, no I did not but in my defense in this case I really didn't think I'd have the chance to speak with her at all.)
3. The impromptu Poets Dinner with Mike Allen, Geoffrey Landis, Mary Turzillo, Bruce Boston and Marge Simon went well. I was all excited about FINALLY gathering all of the speculative poets in Florida into one room at last...
...only to realize that I hadn't, since upstart_crow has now joined us by moving to Boca Raton. Oh well. (And, well, although I don't exactly put Jeff Vandermeer into the speculative poets category he wasn't there either.) At least I gathered all of the speculative poets of Central Florida into one room. Dinner was good.
Also, although she doesn't read this journal, welcome to Florida, upstart_crow!
4. Am I seriously the only person who didn't know Joe Haldeman lives in Gainesville? Because I didn't know.
5. More about this in another post, but I was inflicted again with competing impulses. One: I've been so isolated this calendar year that I found a hunger for talk, and to talk about everything (including coral growths in Palm Beach County, sorry about that to everyone that had to listen.). And I was inflicted with the "be funny be funny be funny people only like you when you're funny your only value is as an entertainer" (and since I have very little sense of humor about the coral growth issue in Palm Beach County this was difficult) creating a horrific internal dialogue, which coupled with a lovely sense of inadequacy around that many PhDs and successful writers led to babbling. Auugh. And this at the relaxed, by the pool with nice tropical drinks con. Sigh.
6. Apparently everybody thinks I'm considerably younger than I am. I need to turn into my apparent age rather than my real age. (Vaxers, is this TRUE or were people just being polite?)
7. IAFA is not a big business conference. Sure, people gossiped here and there about specific publishers or about immensely talented poets in the Chicago area (cough) but for once at these cons I actually spent more time chatting about coral studies and issues of marine biology funding than publishing. (Corals are important too.) But one theme did pop up: the pricing and publishing of ebooks, so I was delighted to find when I got back that Cat Valente had independently and with her usual brilliance leapt into the subject. I have not had time to read the comments, but, rock on.
8. I found myself mildly saddened that the con managed to locate itself in the most boring part of the Orlando area. (Near the airport, for the curious, although apparently the retention pond just outside managed to scare up at least one alligator for people to see and a few great blue herons stopped by. No cranes.) I know that some people were able to flee for brief periods, but, you know, Semoran Blvd just doesn't have many places to flee to except possibly if people had made it as far up to State Road 50 and the big science fiction store there, but, I gather nobody did. On a related note, Winter Park is the city with the art museums and New England look and Rollins College. I live in Winter Garden, with the excellent French bakery, bike trail, huge alligator infested lake, and brick and dirt roads and no colleges. (Of course, the French bakery informs me that they are expanding to a second location in Winter Park blurring that distinction.) But I am hoping that at some point people manage to see the theme parts and some of the rest of Florida - for instance, Blue Springs State Park (scroll down for images) or Homasassa Springs State Park or Merritt Island Bird Refuge.
9. Sunday was the big expedition to Universal that most of the con ended up skipping. Since I wasn't staying at the hotel, I arrived separately, hoping to be at the gates before 10 am when I figured the rest of the group would be arriving. And that almost worked….except that I also made the mistake of assuming that Guest Services at Universal would be faster than Guest Services at Islands, which, no. So by the time I meandered through the gates I realized I'd missed the group.
This meant, of course, that a cherry turnover was needed.
(My logic, it is excellent.)
After that I figured that since I was there already, I might as well head to Harry Potter and take another look around, and then maybe head over to Universal since I haven't been to that park in ages, only, once I reached Harry Potter, amazingly enough, I found akashiver! (Amazingly because the park, and especially the Harry Potter part of it, was jammed. CD texted me that I was insane for even trying this weekend and I must admit he had a point.) And equally amazingly, she didn't run in fear from me post my lunch babble. So we ended up wandering bits of the park together and chattering. I also may possibly have invested in an UTTERLY AWESOME TEDDY BEAR that is HUGGING A LITTLE DINOSAUR and GETTING READY TO EAT IT. (I am in love and no, I do NOT have too many teddy bears whatever unkind people might be implying.) And, because it's a theme park, fudge was also Clearly Required. How I escaped without the root beer float or cotton candy I do not know.
It was all great, even though the annoyingly familiar dizziness started to hit way too early and I had to leave before she did.
I definitely plan on returning to Harry Potter at some point once the crowds have died down to the point where I can just linger again in the various Hogwarts bits in silence, or near silence. It will come eventually, I am sure, at least in the off season. (What? Even Tower of Terror occasionally has no lines. IT CAN HAPPEN.)
10. The cats responded to my absence by spending much of last night checking to see if I was still on the bed in a very pointed and occasionally bloody manner, and the miniature roses responded by keeling over mostly dead. Gulp. I guess they didn't really root well, or I misplanted them, or both. I am very sad.
11. Because more than one person asked, the Oz reread at Tor.com is listed here, featuring 44 Oz books, the rest of the Baum series and the Wicked series by Gregory Maguire, who for some reason I want to call Geoffrey Maguire. The Narnia posts are here. The result of the rereads was to increase my enthusiasm for Oz (it has a robot and nobody has to die to get there) and decrease my enthusiasm for Narnia. I have more planned posts exploring (mostly) children's literature--I'm going to be trying to sneak in an adult L'Engle novel in the summer and, um, just hope that Tor.com doesn't really notice, unlikely though that sounds. The schedule, though, is a bit whacked thanks to several unrelated factors.
On that note, the plan for the rest of the day is to answer the excellent comments on the Wicked the Musical post, collapse, and then try to capture the productivity of Jay Lake. It is inspiring and very humbling.