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DragonCon and On to Nottingham
September 10, 2009
Well, another DragonCon has come and gone—only 362 days until next year!
As usual, it was a wonderful mixture of panels, costumes, music, celebrity spotting, cool discussions and the discovery of new books and essentials such as steampunk corsets.
I’ve done a day-by-day video blog, so you can follow along with me—you can catch those videos here:
Day 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUNMQtmLoc0
Day 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWKxEHPcmbc
Day 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnFiZxyslu8
You’ll notice that I didn’t capture a lot of the amazing costumes for which DragonCon is appropriately famous. Well, there’s a reason for that, called eight panels. I was extremely happy to be on that many panels this year, but it left less time for photographing the wildlife. As I’ve already checked on Twitter and YouTube, others did a thorough and admirable job of that. Some of the stand-outs I spotted were a truly lifelike and terrifying Sauron, an amazing Bumblebee transformer, some passable Mal Reynolds look-alikes, the cast of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, whatever-it-was that won the costume contest, two really, really tall wookies, and the wompa from Hoth.
This year’s favorite t-shirt, “And then Buffy staked Edward. The End.” My daughter wore that to her high school on Tuesday.
Highlights…a shout-out to my good friend Chris Jaxson for the launch of his amazing Scimitar Moon. It’s got pirates and magic—what are you waiting for? (And, oh yeah, I wrote his cover blurb. And I meant every word of it.)
Enjoyed the Alt History (aka Steampunk and Pirate) track and heard the Star Wars track was also great. Was terribly grieved to have missed my chance to be on the Dark Fantasy (Memento Mori) and Skeptics tracks this year due to scheduling constraints, but hope to return next year. Had great fun on the Sci-Fi Lit, X and Writing tracks as well as the EFF (all things web) track. Heck, it’s DragonCon. All the tracks are fun.
Joined the broads at Broad Universe for two signature RFRs—that’s Rapid Fire Readings. As promoted, “10 Great Women Writers, 10 Fast Reads.” Organized by the incomparable Trisha J. Wooldridge, the panels included Sara M. Harvey, Ada Milenkovic Brown, Emilie P. Bush, Katherine Mankiller, Racheline Maltese, Jean Marie Ward, Katheryn Hinds, Sunder Cameron Addams, Tracy S. Morris and Trisha and me. We had fun squishing our readings first into 12 minutes for the RFR on Sunday (not terribly difficult) and then into four minutes for the RFR on Monday. Yikes! You’ll catch the introductions for both RFRs on my videos.
Some of the other friends, new and old, that I met up with included: James Maxey, Lou Anders, Jean Marie Ward, Jennifer St. Giles, Rita Herron, Gillian Summers, Raz Steel, the folks from Midnight Syndicate, The Southeastern Browncoats (a Firefly group), Ethan Gilsdorf, Teresa Patterson, Scott Sigler, Carole Nelson Douglas, Kat Richardson, Laura Anne Gilman, Heather Osborn, Robert Greenberger, Diana Peterfreund, CL Wilson, Anna DeStefano, the ladies of Yard Dog Press and some of the authors from Bump in the Night, John Ringo, Christiana Barber, DA Adams, Nancy Knight, Gary Raisor…if I’ve left anyone out, I apologize.
Kudos to the hardworking DragonCon track directors, con suite volunteers and green room organizers who kept everything rolling right along.
Now to FantasyCon in Nottingham, England Sept. 18 – 20, where I’m one of the Guests of Honour of the British Fantasy Society. I’m excited! I’ll be on two panels: The David Gemmell Legend: heroic fantasy goes from strength to strength -- Saturday at 5.30 pm-6.15 pm and Pulp Adventures and Dodgy Archaeology: digging in the dirt -- Sunday at 11.00 am-11.45 am. If you’re in the Nottingham area, please stop by! Also a Friday interview by Juliet McKenna, who’s been a guest on my podcast. I’ll be taking my video camera, so count on a new blog when I get back!
Watch for me at the Carolinas Renaissance Festival on Halloween weekend, and at Philcon in November.
Check out my Twitter/Squidoo contest: Are there songs that remind you of one of the characters from The Summoner, The Blood King or Dark Haven? Is there music that was your personal soundtrack as you read the books? Share your suggestions with me and the world by posting the artist/title along with who or what it reminds you of in the books (please respect copyright—no music links) and post it to www.Squidoo.com/Summoner, then tweet me at GailZMartin to let me know you’ve posted. My favorites among the posts will win an autographed, limited edition advance review copy of The Blood King!
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