Meeting friends & hearing Batman [Mythic Journeys]
One of the weird things about actually getting from the MARTA station to the Atlanta Hyatt hotel was taking the escalators. All I can guess is that the Peachtree train station is about 3-4 stories below ground. You take one ordinary escalator just to get to a floor with elevators and more escalators. Then you take the mother of all up escalators to get to the Peachtree Mall level. Oh man, this thing soars up and up and up!
The Peachtree Mall itself is sort of cramped and dated. Except for the madding crowd which filled the food court this Friday, I never saw much traffic in it at all. Never could find many stores I wanted to shop in either, and at one point I really wanted to find a sweater or light jacket to buy because the conference rooms were so chilly. So before I checked in, I took advantage of the food court to grab a quick, inexpensive lunch.
Getting my spacious room was no problem, and the hotel people told me how to get to the 2 or 3 below ground levels in the hotel where the ballrooms and meeting rooms were for the conference. As I was down there picking up my registration packet and badge, I heard some familiar music. Turns out the dealers' room (which had awesome stuff, btw) was behind the registration desk. A musical couple had set up on the stage at one end of the dealers' room. The man was playing guitar and singing Celtic songs with a Canadian ("eh') accent. The woman was playing mandolin. She looked up and saw me, and smiled.
Well, it was Charles de Lint and his wife Mary Ann Harris. They're lovely people I met in 2001 when they came to Austin for SxSW and needed a place to stay, as all the hotels were full up. Our mutual friend Jayme Blaschke put a call out. I'd been in several anthologies with Charles and was curious to meet him, so I offered them my guest room. Turns out they're both wonderful people, and fun musicians to boot, and now Charles also sends me his famous Christmas chapbooks, so they've continued to be special friends. I'd emailed Charles & Mary Ann a few weeks earlier telling them I was coming to the conference. They were there because Terri Windling, one of the organizers, is their dear friend and knew CDL would be perfect for a conference on mythic fiction. I met Terri through them in 2003 and got to thank her for chosing one of my stories for THE YEAR'S BEST FANTASY & HORROR. And we learned we're both blonde women with a lot of Cherokee blood so we have that in common!
Mary Ann tries on a flowing, gorgeous, romantic jacket. We were going to show Charles this picture to prove she needed to buy it, but he came by around then and saw it himself and said "oh, buy that!".
So at the conference, this concert was an impromptu thing Charles & Mary Ann did to serenade the dealers. Mary Ann nudged Charles, and he got out a notebook and very sweetly launched into a song by Bob Schneider they'd prepared just for me! Charles started it something like this: "We'd like to dedicate this next song to a lovely and generous writer, Wendy Wheeler, who introduced us to his work when we were in Austin a few years back for a music conference. We actually went to the South by Southwest Awards ceremony and there was this guy there who took home virtually all the awards. It was 'winner: Bob Schneider' again and again. It got funny when the Hip-Hop group got up to accept their award, and they said 'we'd like to thank Bob Schneider for not putting out a Hip-Hop album this year.'" Then they proceeded to do I'M BATMAN, which is a surreal and talky song that's a little riske. People were laughing and clapping -- so it was a crowd pleaser.
Later when their set was over, they introduced me to some of their friends. They're very famous and know lots of folks, plus they'd been there since Wednesday for the pre-conference. (Because of them, I got to meet many folks I never would have otherwise.) Listening to the music was fantasy artist Charles Vess, who co-produces books with Charles de Lint. Vess was also the coordinator of the mythic art gallery show associated with the conference. (I heard it was amazing, but since it was off-site I never could tear myself away to see it.) Their friend Gregory Frost was there. Also Bill aka Toddy, a short Welshman in a white t-shirt and jeans with a theatrical-looking head of curly brown hair and beard. I was to see him later and learn more about his background, as you'll see in photos in the next post.
Charles & Mary Ann were also suprised and happy with the two gifts I'd brought them. One was a CD of the latest KGSR collection. KGSR is the awesome Austin radio channel that plays local music with a mixture of national and international artists. There's no other radio channel like it, and it's got fans among the music community everywhere. They record the acts that play live at their studios and compile them. The CDs sell out quick -- so I got one for me and one for the de Lints (later I went to buy one for Charles Vess for when he was to visit Austin for ArmadilloCon, but none were to be had.) The other CD was in the remainder bin at Waterloo Records for $2 called BASTARD LIFE OR CLARITY by TOFOG. They probably had 20-30 of these remaindered, a big surprise. Why a surprise? Well, TOFOG = Twenty Odd Feet of Grunts, which is the Australian band that actor Russell Crowe fronts. They have such a rabid following that anything they put out is snapped up right away. But this was a locally recorded album, from some of the many performances they did on various Austin stages (I think Russell Crowe has stated that, next to Australia, Austin is his favorite place to play). When the band has a performance here, there are guaranteed to be people who came from Europe and Australia just to hear them play! But this album obscured who the band was -- you have to figure out TOFOG means the band name. They do list it on their website, but obviously didn't promote it much. I keep thinking I should've bought a gross of these and resold them on eBay.
That day, Mary Ann was excited about the dealers and immediately hustled me off to see some of her favorite ones. A woman named Jenny Hubbard did carved clay balls, each one unique, that have this hypnotic, maze-like, looping pattern on them. (I bought two; one for me and one for a friend for a Christmas present.) Another woman had high-romantic, even fantastical coats and shawls and dresses. Mary Ann found one she liked (in that photo above) which she bought. And then a place called Duirwaigh ("Doorway") Publishing had prints by Terri Windling, Brian Froud, Amoreno, Kinuko Craft and others. Plus they had the first widely distributed versions of faery figures by Wendy Froud. I bought one of these too -- the Woodland Faery -- for a friend's birthday. (I planned to order one for myself online, but dang if they didn't sell out!) Plus there was music and books and jewelry and drums and all sorts of amazing things.
Still to come - the opening ceremonies
The Peachtree Mall itself is sort of cramped and dated. Except for the madding crowd which filled the food court this Friday, I never saw much traffic in it at all. Never could find many stores I wanted to shop in either, and at one point I really wanted to find a sweater or light jacket to buy because the conference rooms were so chilly. So before I checked in, I took advantage of the food court to grab a quick, inexpensive lunch.
Getting my spacious room was no problem, and the hotel people told me how to get to the 2 or 3 below ground levels in the hotel where the ballrooms and meeting rooms were for the conference. As I was down there picking up my registration packet and badge, I heard some familiar music. Turns out the dealers' room (which had awesome stuff, btw) was behind the registration desk. A musical couple had set up on the stage at one end of the dealers' room. The man was playing guitar and singing Celtic songs with a Canadian ("eh') accent. The woman was playing mandolin. She looked up and saw me, and smiled.
Well, it was Charles de Lint and his wife Mary Ann Harris. They're lovely people I met in 2001 when they came to Austin for SxSW and needed a place to stay, as all the hotels were full up. Our mutual friend Jayme Blaschke put a call out. I'd been in several anthologies with Charles and was curious to meet him, so I offered them my guest room. Turns out they're both wonderful people, and fun musicians to boot, and now Charles also sends me his famous Christmas chapbooks, so they've continued to be special friends. I'd emailed Charles & Mary Ann a few weeks earlier telling them I was coming to the conference. They were there because Terri Windling, one of the organizers, is their dear friend and knew CDL would be perfect for a conference on mythic fiction. I met Terri through them in 2003 and got to thank her for chosing one of my stories for THE YEAR'S BEST FANTASY & HORROR. And we learned we're both blonde women with a lot of Cherokee blood so we have that in common!
Mary Ann tries on a flowing, gorgeous, romantic jacket. We were going to show Charles this picture to prove she needed to buy it, but he came by around then and saw it himself and said "oh, buy that!".
So at the conference, this concert was an impromptu thing Charles & Mary Ann did to serenade the dealers. Mary Ann nudged Charles, and he got out a notebook and very sweetly launched into a song by Bob Schneider they'd prepared just for me! Charles started it something like this: "We'd like to dedicate this next song to a lovely and generous writer, Wendy Wheeler, who introduced us to his work when we were in Austin a few years back for a music conference. We actually went to the South by Southwest Awards ceremony and there was this guy there who took home virtually all the awards. It was 'winner: Bob Schneider' again and again. It got funny when the Hip-Hop group got up to accept their award, and they said 'we'd like to thank Bob Schneider for not putting out a Hip-Hop album this year.'" Then they proceeded to do I'M BATMAN, which is a surreal and talky song that's a little riske. People were laughing and clapping -- so it was a crowd pleaser.
Later when their set was over, they introduced me to some of their friends. They're very famous and know lots of folks, plus they'd been there since Wednesday for the pre-conference. (Because of them, I got to meet many folks I never would have otherwise.) Listening to the music was fantasy artist Charles Vess, who co-produces books with Charles de Lint. Vess was also the coordinator of the mythic art gallery show associated with the conference. (I heard it was amazing, but since it was off-site I never could tear myself away to see it.) Their friend Gregory Frost was there. Also Bill aka Toddy, a short Welshman in a white t-shirt and jeans with a theatrical-looking head of curly brown hair and beard. I was to see him later and learn more about his background, as you'll see in photos in the next post.
Charles & Mary Ann were also suprised and happy with the two gifts I'd brought them. One was a CD of the latest KGSR collection. KGSR is the awesome Austin radio channel that plays local music with a mixture of national and international artists. There's no other radio channel like it, and it's got fans among the music community everywhere. They record the acts that play live at their studios and compile them. The CDs sell out quick -- so I got one for me and one for the de Lints (later I went to buy one for Charles Vess for when he was to visit Austin for ArmadilloCon, but none were to be had.) The other CD was in the remainder bin at Waterloo Records for $2 called BASTARD LIFE OR CLARITY by TOFOG. They probably had 20-30 of these remaindered, a big surprise. Why a surprise? Well, TOFOG = Twenty Odd Feet of Grunts, which is the Australian band that actor Russell Crowe fronts. They have such a rabid following that anything they put out is snapped up right away. But this was a locally recorded album, from some of the many performances they did on various Austin stages (I think Russell Crowe has stated that, next to Australia, Austin is his favorite place to play). When the band has a performance here, there are guaranteed to be people who came from Europe and Australia just to hear them play! But this album obscured who the band was -- you have to figure out TOFOG means the band name. They do list it on their website, but obviously didn't promote it much. I keep thinking I should've bought a gross of these and resold them on eBay.
That day, Mary Ann was excited about the dealers and immediately hustled me off to see some of her favorite ones. A woman named Jenny Hubbard did carved clay balls, each one unique, that have this hypnotic, maze-like, looping pattern on them. (I bought two; one for me and one for a friend for a Christmas present.) Another woman had high-romantic, even fantastical coats and shawls and dresses. Mary Ann found one she liked (in that photo above) which she bought. And then a place called Duirwaigh ("Doorway") Publishing had prints by Terri Windling, Brian Froud, Amoreno, Kinuko Craft and others. Plus they had the first widely distributed versions of faery figures by Wendy Froud. I bought one of these too -- the Woodland Faery -- for a friend's birthday. (I planned to order one for myself online, but dang if they didn't sell out!) Plus there was music and books and jewelry and drums and all sorts of amazing things.
Still to come - the opening ceremonies