FenCon V
We're home from FenCon, where we had a wonderful time! Chris has attended before, but work issues have interfered with my schedule and this was my first time at the con. It was well-run, with great hotel space, and lots of really neat people.
We arrived fairly early on Friday, settled in, and started roaming around. Chatted with several people and grabbed food before I started my Friday evening schedule. At 5pm I was a panelist discussing How to Hook Others on SFF - basically, what books, movies, TV shows, etc can you recommend to non-SFF fans to introduce them to the genre. Kristi Hutson Price and I were the panelists, and since we had a small but very enthusiastic (and knowledgeable) audience, we quickly abandoned the formal panel structure and went to a big roundtable discussion that included everyone in the room. I think everyone enjoyed themselves. I know I did.
Then at 6pm it was time for the panel on volunteering at cons. Panelists were myself, Mary Miller and Dawn M. (I'm blanking on her last name). Again, we had a great discussion with the audience about the ins and outs of working on conventions.
Opening ceremonies were at 7pm, and I sat next to Mary Miller who was using her Zune to totally hook me on Echo's Children - I had not heard them before, and Mary knows I am a huge Lois McMaster Bujold fan (who, by the way, is FenCon VI's GoH - WHEEE! - I am SO there - especially since Joe Lansdale is Toastmaster), so she was queuing up "Quaddie Ballet", "How it is Applied" and other wonderful songs. By 7:40, however, my stomach started digesting itself, so I had to sneak out to grab dinner, returning in time to hear Three Weird Sisters in concert. I love their stuff, but had never heard them in person. They were great!
The rest of Friday (and the first part of Saturday) was spent at filk stuff - first attending a panel and then sitting in one of the circles. FenCon has a substantial musical component and the level of talent was quite high - in addition to Musical GoH Three Weird Sisters, others in attendance were Bill Sutton, the Brobdignagian Bards, Ghost of a Rose (first time I'd heard them - awesome stuff!), Joseph Abbott, Margaret Middleton, Casey Sledge, and I know I'm forgetting people. I received nice compliments on some of my lyrics - including a request Saturday to do Paksennarion, which I had performed Friday, and lots of giggles on Urban Legend (Thanks to Brooke for writing such a great original song - it's up for a Pegasus this year BTW - and thanks to Joseph Abbott for performing the original shortly before it was my turn in the circle - it was the perfect set up). But after the weekend, I am still convinced I would prefer to find other people to perform my stuff - I've got two or three songs that I'm really proud of, but they are way outside my vocal ability, so no one has heard them. And I butchered two of my new songs as a result of nerves and poor vocals. I tried to find a voice teacher in this area and totally failed. Grump.
Saturday, I had no official duties at the con, so I took advantage of the opportunity to attend the Lyric Writing workshop taught by Bill and Brenda Sutton. The workshop was split into two parts, with the first hour Saturday and the second hour Sunday, a format that I thought worked really well. We brainstormed stuff Saturday, went away and cogitated and scribbled, and came back Sunday to compare notes and tweak. Their process worked very well for me, and I had a break thru on my pirate song, which meant I spent large chunks of Saturday afternoon and evening writing (It turned into a "pizza song" - gack - the first I've written - ten verses and a chorus that has slight variations each time - what was I thinking?). I did squeeze in an interview of the Three Weird Sisters for the Escape from Cubicle 17 podcast, as well as attending parts of some of the concerts and, of course, more time in the filk circle.
Saturday night I was in the chaos circle, and when two of us stepped up at the same time, I deferred (especially since Mary Crowell was one of the musical GoHs and can actually sing!) She did a hysterical song, and tried to stop in the middle when she realized how long it was, but we told her she wasn't allowed to go to bed until we found out how the story ended. At that point the momentum had shifted and the song I was going to do wasn't really all that appropriate. I was thinking of queuing up a different song, one which better fit where we were going, but which is difficult for me to carry off because of the tune involved. I was dithering when the circle turned to me to step up. I knew I couldn't carry off the song I had in front of me since I hadn't run through the tune in my head a couple of times, so I went back and did Technobabbletertiaryplasmagroundencoder, which I CAN carry off with little prep. Except I got to the last two lines of the last verse, and realized I was sitting next to Bill Sutton whose pet peeve (as revealed in the lyric writing workshop) is rhyming "life" and "strife" . . . and guess what the last two lines did? I cracked up, finished quickly, and then Bill laughed and pointed out a great way to rewrite the rhyme!
Sunday I was scheduled for a reading, but since it was at 10:30am, no one showed up. I used the time to scribble more lyrics and as a result, I had a completed rough draft of my pirate song by the Sunday installment of the Lyric Writing workshop. Then it was time to dash off to sit on the panel discussing Real World Influences on SFF. Amy Sisson moderated, and she did a fantastic job guiding us through a very interesting discussion.
Then it was time to hit the road and return home.
We arrived fairly early on Friday, settled in, and started roaming around. Chatted with several people and grabbed food before I started my Friday evening schedule. At 5pm I was a panelist discussing How to Hook Others on SFF - basically, what books, movies, TV shows, etc can you recommend to non-SFF fans to introduce them to the genre. Kristi Hutson Price and I were the panelists, and since we had a small but very enthusiastic (and knowledgeable) audience, we quickly abandoned the formal panel structure and went to a big roundtable discussion that included everyone in the room. I think everyone enjoyed themselves. I know I did.
Then at 6pm it was time for the panel on volunteering at cons. Panelists were myself, Mary Miller and Dawn M. (I'm blanking on her last name). Again, we had a great discussion with the audience about the ins and outs of working on conventions.
Opening ceremonies were at 7pm, and I sat next to Mary Miller who was using her Zune to totally hook me on Echo's Children - I had not heard them before, and Mary knows I am a huge Lois McMaster Bujold fan (who, by the way, is FenCon VI's GoH - WHEEE! - I am SO there - especially since Joe Lansdale is Toastmaster), so she was queuing up "Quaddie Ballet", "How it is Applied" and other wonderful songs. By 7:40, however, my stomach started digesting itself, so I had to sneak out to grab dinner, returning in time to hear Three Weird Sisters in concert. I love their stuff, but had never heard them in person. They were great!
The rest of Friday (and the first part of Saturday) was spent at filk stuff - first attending a panel and then sitting in one of the circles. FenCon has a substantial musical component and the level of talent was quite high - in addition to Musical GoH Three Weird Sisters, others in attendance were Bill Sutton, the Brobdignagian Bards, Ghost of a Rose (first time I'd heard them - awesome stuff!), Joseph Abbott, Margaret Middleton, Casey Sledge, and I know I'm forgetting people. I received nice compliments on some of my lyrics - including a request Saturday to do Paksennarion, which I had performed Friday, and lots of giggles on Urban Legend (Thanks to Brooke for writing such a great original song - it's up for a Pegasus this year BTW - and thanks to Joseph Abbott for performing the original shortly before it was my turn in the circle - it was the perfect set up). But after the weekend, I am still convinced I would prefer to find other people to perform my stuff - I've got two or three songs that I'm really proud of, but they are way outside my vocal ability, so no one has heard them. And I butchered two of my new songs as a result of nerves and poor vocals. I tried to find a voice teacher in this area and totally failed. Grump.
Saturday, I had no official duties at the con, so I took advantage of the opportunity to attend the Lyric Writing workshop taught by Bill and Brenda Sutton. The workshop was split into two parts, with the first hour Saturday and the second hour Sunday, a format that I thought worked really well. We brainstormed stuff Saturday, went away and cogitated and scribbled, and came back Sunday to compare notes and tweak. Their process worked very well for me, and I had a break thru on my pirate song, which meant I spent large chunks of Saturday afternoon and evening writing (It turned into a "pizza song" - gack - the first I've written - ten verses and a chorus that has slight variations each time - what was I thinking?). I did squeeze in an interview of the Three Weird Sisters for the Escape from Cubicle 17 podcast, as well as attending parts of some of the concerts and, of course, more time in the filk circle.
Saturday night I was in the chaos circle, and when two of us stepped up at the same time, I deferred (especially since Mary Crowell was one of the musical GoHs and can actually sing!) She did a hysterical song, and tried to stop in the middle when she realized how long it was, but we told her she wasn't allowed to go to bed until we found out how the story ended. At that point the momentum had shifted and the song I was going to do wasn't really all that appropriate. I was thinking of queuing up a different song, one which better fit where we were going, but which is difficult for me to carry off because of the tune involved. I was dithering when the circle turned to me to step up. I knew I couldn't carry off the song I had in front of me since I hadn't run through the tune in my head a couple of times, so I went back and did Technobabbletertiaryplasmagroundencoder, which I CAN carry off with little prep. Except I got to the last two lines of the last verse, and realized I was sitting next to Bill Sutton whose pet peeve (as revealed in the lyric writing workshop) is rhyming "life" and "strife" . . . and guess what the last two lines did? I cracked up, finished quickly, and then Bill laughed and pointed out a great way to rewrite the rhyme!
Sunday I was scheduled for a reading, but since it was at 10:30am, no one showed up. I used the time to scribble more lyrics and as a result, I had a completed rough draft of my pirate song by the Sunday installment of the Lyric Writing workshop. Then it was time to dash off to sit on the panel discussing Real World Influences on SFF. Amy Sisson moderated, and she did a fantastic job guiding us through a very interesting discussion.
Then it was time to hit the road and return home.