East Coast achieved
So I'm here, waiting for friends to come back from seeing a play in order to pick me up. I'm early, and we all expected me to be late. Like my arrival at Chicago--I had a perfect afternoon planned with interesting people, but the train in was so late due to an engine blow up at Grand Junction and an engine shuffle in Denver that I got hustled off one train, through one door and out another to get on the next train.
But such hassles are small, and maybe I can see them on the flip side of my trip.
Sirens was excellent, as always. Here's the sort of sunset I saw each morning from the window:
The first day, I walked into the hotel lobby, and there was a conversation about books!
A day or so later, same lobby, writers writing:
Much conversation about books, writing, the business (and down) side of publishing, indie publishing, process narration and modes of introducing data (I've been figuring some stuff out about that lately) and my sessions went well, especially the one on fan language, I think, where I made up some skit ideas for people to try. It's the sort of thing that can bomb horribly, or go okay, and the energy seemed to be okay.
Good thing, all this young talent. Weird thing, I was one of the oldest there, if not the oldest. So freaking weird, because unless I accidentally look in the mirror (and I try not to), I do NOT feet old inside. But people sure see me as old, because I get Old People Looks.
Some cool costumes from the Insurgents' Ball:
Two brown coat sisters from Firefly:
And a pirate:
I enjoyed all three guest of honor talks. Not surprising, as I really like the work of Kate Elliott and Rae Carson, but the speech that I found most fascinating was Yoon Ha Lee's. He is totally the opposite type of writer from me--he is audial, poetic, but not visual. I couldn't write a poem I would show anyone, I'm intensely visual, and I don't hear the sound of the text, except as read in voices, either the writer's or some actor. Mostly text (especially my own) functions as hypertext, evoking image, so the struggle is to see the actual words I wrote and make them better.
Moon's approach is so diametrically different from mine that I kept shooting sparks of ideas from his words, even though I have no experience in gaming. (He used gaming as a talk platform and related it to writing.)
Last day, a writing friend kindly and generously spent down time with me, drove me to the beautiful Denver train station, and most generous of all, brought me a dog because I was in serious dog withdrawal. This dog, like mine, is a rescue from a miserable situation.
Gambit and his human:
Gambit was very excited by the appearance of prairie dogs. They pop up from their tunnels and make these cricket noises, their tails jerking on each chirp. I wonder if those holes all over connect in an underground city. One let me approach s-l-o-w-l-y to surprisingly close:
Then zip! Down the hole he went!
And so, east . . . and tomorrow I hope to finish in Vermont, leaf peeping, and talking books and writing.
But such hassles are small, and maybe I can see them on the flip side of my trip.
Sirens was excellent, as always. Here's the sort of sunset I saw each morning from the window:
The first day, I walked into the hotel lobby, and there was a conversation about books!
A day or so later, same lobby, writers writing:
Much conversation about books, writing, the business (and down) side of publishing, indie publishing, process narration and modes of introducing data (I've been figuring some stuff out about that lately) and my sessions went well, especially the one on fan language, I think, where I made up some skit ideas for people to try. It's the sort of thing that can bomb horribly, or go okay, and the energy seemed to be okay.
Good thing, all this young talent. Weird thing, I was one of the oldest there, if not the oldest. So freaking weird, because unless I accidentally look in the mirror (and I try not to), I do NOT feet old inside. But people sure see me as old, because I get Old People Looks.
Some cool costumes from the Insurgents' Ball:
Two brown coat sisters from Firefly:
And a pirate:
I enjoyed all three guest of honor talks. Not surprising, as I really like the work of Kate Elliott and Rae Carson, but the speech that I found most fascinating was Yoon Ha Lee's. He is totally the opposite type of writer from me--he is audial, poetic, but not visual. I couldn't write a poem I would show anyone, I'm intensely visual, and I don't hear the sound of the text, except as read in voices, either the writer's or some actor. Mostly text (especially my own) functions as hypertext, evoking image, so the struggle is to see the actual words I wrote and make them better.
Moon's approach is so diametrically different from mine that I kept shooting sparks of ideas from his words, even though I have no experience in gaming. (He used gaming as a talk platform and related it to writing.)
Last day, a writing friend kindly and generously spent down time with me, drove me to the beautiful Denver train station, and most generous of all, brought me a dog because I was in serious dog withdrawal. This dog, like mine, is a rescue from a miserable situation.
Gambit and his human:
Gambit was very excited by the appearance of prairie dogs. They pop up from their tunnels and make these cricket noises, their tails jerking on each chirp. I wonder if those holes all over connect in an underground city. One let me approach s-l-o-w-l-y to surprisingly close:
Then zip! Down the hole he went!
And so, east . . . and tomorrow I hope to finish in Vermont, leaf peeping, and talking books and writing.