dear penthouse...
This weekend I was at a writing conference in Anchorage! Very nice hotel, and I did learn some things even though the conference...could have been run slightly more professionally. (You have an hour and ten minutes before dinner. Now would be the time to see if your youtube video actually plays sound. etc.)
Also the workshop I paid extra for on Friday turned out to be...exactly the same thing as the keynote address! And that speaker's first panel! Both which were included in the original price. Sooooooo.
BUT. The real shining moment/saving grace of the conference was a guy called Robert Masello, who writes historical paranormal fiction novels NOW, but got his start writing the letters for Penthouse. (Yes! All of those are fake! He and another woman would be given a theme each day--like "twins" or "kitchen appliances"--and then they'd trade and write the answers to the best ones. Apparently the real letters Penthouse got were "too sick." He said an inordinate number of them came from one town in New Jersey, which he will never visit, and a weird chunk of them involved setting people on fire. *HANDS*)
The best story he told went like this:
So he was at Comicon ("Who else was there?" he asked the room of mostly old white people, who stared back at him blankly while I choked on a whine of distress) this year, and he was chatting with this British couple who'd also showed up to the Random House panel early. And he's like, "I'm old hat at this, I can talk us in," so he does.
And Random House has this big promotional thing where they're projecting the book covers of their best authors on the wall, and the lady, Erica, says, "So are you a publisher? Or are you one of the authors?" And Robert says, "I'm an author. Actually, as it so happens, that's my book on the wall."
And they go, "Oh well done," and clink glasses and Erica's husband claps him on the back as his cover fades into Fifty Shades of Grey.
"Oh!" Erica exclaims, "And that's MY book!"
And that's the story of how Robert Masello snuck E.L. James into Comicon.
Also the workshop I paid extra for on Friday turned out to be...exactly the same thing as the keynote address! And that speaker's first panel! Both which were included in the original price. Sooooooo.
BUT. The real shining moment/saving grace of the conference was a guy called Robert Masello, who writes historical paranormal fiction novels NOW, but got his start writing the letters for Penthouse. (Yes! All of those are fake! He and another woman would be given a theme each day--like "twins" or "kitchen appliances"--and then they'd trade and write the answers to the best ones. Apparently the real letters Penthouse got were "too sick." He said an inordinate number of them came from one town in New Jersey, which he will never visit, and a weird chunk of them involved setting people on fire. *HANDS*)
The best story he told went like this:
So he was at Comicon ("Who else was there?" he asked the room of mostly old white people, who stared back at him blankly while I choked on a whine of distress) this year, and he was chatting with this British couple who'd also showed up to the Random House panel early. And he's like, "I'm old hat at this, I can talk us in," so he does.
And Random House has this big promotional thing where they're projecting the book covers of their best authors on the wall, and the lady, Erica, says, "So are you a publisher? Or are you one of the authors?" And Robert says, "I'm an author. Actually, as it so happens, that's my book on the wall."
And they go, "Oh well done," and clink glasses and Erica's husband claps him on the back as his cover fades into Fifty Shades of Grey.
"Oh!" Erica exclaims, "And that's MY book!"
And that's the story of how Robert Masello snuck E.L. James into Comicon.