Day Two & Three - Minicon 53
Apr. 2nd, 2018 08:02 amI had hoped to write all of these up shortly after they happened, but, as you see, I am composing everything post-final curtain, as it were. I did take notes, however, so hopefully I can recapture the gist of everything.
DAY TWO (Saturday):
I woke up to snow and ice. Being a morning person, I didn't bother to set an alarm because I knew that even though I'd stayed up late, there was no danger of oversleeping my 10 am kaffeeklatsch. Indeed, I was up by 7 am. I got partially dressed (in that I put on regular clothes, not CON clothes) and slipped my way across the parking lot of the hotel to the little strip mall directly across the street. There was a Caribou there as well as a Bruegger's bagels. I got my large mocha and had an egg bagel sandwich. The back of my badge said that my kaffeeklatsch would be held at "bar," but MiniCON has a "con bar" and the hotel also usually has a bar, so I wasn't entirely sure where things would be held. I figured that if we ended up at the hotel restaurant, it was still okay for me to have eaten something, because then I could talk and entertain people while THEY ate.
Turns out it was held at the "con bar," anyway. The con bar is basically just a party room, so labeled. My liaison, Tayna (who was amazing all weekend), made sure there was actual coffee from the con suite in the con bar for us early risers.
I don't ever think of 10 am as early, but I understand that it can be for many people, especially at a convention. So, I didn't expect a lot of people to turn up. I think my sign-up sheet only had a couple of people on it officially. But... the room filled up.
I was worried pre-con about the dreaded question "what are you writing now?" I flubbed it on Thursday night at the meet-and-greet. Someone, maybe even Rachel Swirsky, asked me that... and (despite coaching from![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
naomikritzer ) I choked and blurted out, "NOTHING." Then I fumble/flailed for a while mumbling the things I usually do about having been emotionally thrown off the horse by being dropped by Penguin, etc., etc., until I trailed off awkwardly and killed conversation for at least three whole seconds.
That flub reminded me to be READY at the kaffeeklatsch. In fact, one of the first questions was, "What are you working on now?" Naomi came up with an absolutely brilliant response, which was to turn the burden of that question back around. I said, "Honestly, not much since Penguin dropped me, so I'm looking for ideas. You guys are presumably fans of my work--or at least science fiction--what would YOU like to see me write!"
Tyler Tork suggested that I write the lesbian candy shop cozies that he made up for his mock-up web design page. I think my favorite title of his was ASSAULTED CARAMEL. Tayna suggested an alternate Renaissance Festival fic (since we met, MANY YEARS AGO, through Fest.) When Tyler was talking about his lesbian mysteries, I was reminded of another friends' suggestion which was a tabletop RPG gamer/gaming mystery, the first of which would be TWENTY-SIDED DIE (and someone else, maybe Robyn, added another called, CRITICAL MISS.)
I also discovered, much to my surprise, that a number of people in the room were anxiously awaiting the ending of UNJUST CAUSE a Wattpad experiment that I petered out on a few years back (mostly because I honestly thought no one was reading it.) They made me write in my notebook: "Finish UNJUST CAUSE or fans will kill you."
So, apparently, I need to work on that...if I want to live!
To say that was a success is almost an understatement, because, hat could have been awkward (and legitimately triggering, in terms of my depression issue around writing,) felt invigorating and up-lifting. THANK YOU, NAOMI, FOR YOUR BRILLIANT COACHING!!!
Then, I had some free time until my Guest of Honor Interview (with puppet!) at 1:00 pm. Did I have lunch? I must of had lunch. Did I end up eating with people I know or did I just have Tayna grab me a sandwich from the green room?? (To be fair, Tayna had made me a roast beef sandwich the first night, Friday, that was amazing. It had just the right amount of horseradish sauce on it.) I did have a number of meals with Rachel and her husband Mike. I have a number of recommendations from them, including a web comic that I've started and am really enjoying called "Superbutch," about a lesbian superhero from the 1940s.
I know, I know... you don't care what I had for lunch. You just want to know: HOW DID IT GO WITH THE PUPPET????
The picture is a little dark, but you can see that I'm clearly enjoying myself. I don't remember if I posted a close-up of the muppet/puppet earlier, but here it is:
This puppet was custom built by local puppeteer Gordon Smude and performed by Laura Krentz.
How did it work? Well, I'm not entirely convinced it did, though I learned some lessons from the Opening Ceremonies. At Opening Ceremonies, it was tempting to try to interact with the puppet as though Laura could speak for her... but she really can't since *I'm* also Tate. So, at the interview I mostly (once I got the hang of it) tried to indicate when I was speaking as Lyda and when I was speaking as Tate. I have no idea if this was successful, especially since the temptation to say, "Right, Tate?" was always there.
The questions themselves were good and I made the Stemple/Yolens have to raise their "I'm uncomfortable" hands when I started talking about sex scenes, which was pretty hilarious. It was cool/weird to look out into the audience and see Jane Yolen with her hand up... until I recognized that Adam and David and Betsy were doing the same thing in the back row and I realized, "Oh, right, Adam has told me about this. I need to stop saying 'throbbing member" now. I have made everyone--except Adam's daughter--deeply uncomfortable in the Stemple/Yolen clan.)
So, I mean... it was fun? I also ended up tearing up a little bit over a question you wouldn't think would cause such a reaction. It was, "What was the best fan mail you've ever gotten?" I thought about it and the answer was all the trans folks who wrote to me back in the early days who were so moved to see Ariel there, as a representative of God, being trans. And I got all choked up thinking about how important representation really is.
The next panel was "Combining the Mystery/Detective Genre with Science Fiction," which was much lower energy, so it felt less good. Also, as these sorts of panels sometimes do, it ended up being a list of recommended titles. Some that I wrote down were: Rocket to the Morgue by Anthony Boucher, The Man in the Tree by Sage Walker, The Ark by Patrick S Tomlinson, and Dr. Stone, a manga, by Boichi (which someone that wasn't ME recommended.)
Then, it was Rachel and I together for "We Suck - Winning Through Losing," which was fun, because: Rachel. The two of us, I noticed, are positive-outlook sorts, so there weren't quite so many war stories about publishing (which I have a fair amount of!!) as advice to keep going after set-backs. The thing I remember the most from that panel was the question from the audience about risk-taking. I'm not sure what entirely was intended, but Rachel and I had a lovely discussion about how, yeah, it's always better to take a chance and fail than to reach for the lowest, safest hanging fruit--in terms of where you submit, in terms of how much of your soul you put into writing, and in terms of being willing to be scared that things aren't perfect but believing in your work anyway. I remember mentioning that I always think about how the Dark Side gets its energy from hate and fear and jealousy, and that's supposed to be a bad thing, but fear is the feeling you have when you're taking risks and if you never feel it, you're probably not growing as a writer.
The last panel of Sunday was "The Meaning of Captain America," which also went really well. Sometimes, on Marvel panels, there's a divide among the panelists between MCU/comic book. I was quite happy that all of the panelist were both, they'd seen all the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) and were all comic book readers, as well. Plus, Jei and I talked a lot about how fandom (particularly on Tumblr) sees Captain America, so it was high energy and well-rounded, IMHO.
I hung around in that room because my friend Tom ran up to his room to get me the Comixology version of Mark Gerunwauld's Captain America --or maybe it was someone else's take on Cap's pre-super solider life in the late-1930s... oh, yeah, actually the Grunwauld thing is a separate recommendation because, this was actually in She-Hulk because Jen Walters is taking on a case for Steve Rogers, in which he's been accused of murder. (She-Hulk Volume 3 -8, "The Good Old Days" [Part 1])
Plus, Rachel, Jane Yolen, Adam Stemple, and Ruth Berman were all on a panel about golems that I was interested in. Besides, I had plans to go out to sushi with Rachel afterwards, so I thought I might as well listen in. The panel was pretty good, though at 9 pm, it was kind of dense subject matter for my exhausted brain. I did manage to interrupt everything at one point because I thought Adam had offered a question to the audience (OOPS!)
Then, as promised, a bunch of us went out to sushi at Raku, including Rachel and Mike. I was out until they started closing down the sushi bar at midnight. We had a lovely time eating sushi and chatting--mostly about politics, mostly, I think, because politics wasn't exactly verboten at con, but going into detail sort of was... at least by silent agreement. I don't think anyone would have STOPPED either of us GoHs if we wanted to go on a rant about this or that political thing, but I assumed nothing. I know at least one of my fellow panelists on the mystery panel was, at least before the election, a Trump supporter.
I actually drove home after that because Sunday was Shawn's birthday and I really wanted to wake up with her, so we could have some time together to open presents and have cake. The morning was somewhat interrupted by the fact that Mason forgot his sweater at his friend Andrew's house, and we could have left it until after Spring Break, but it was the ONE sweat shirt that Shawn had sewed iPad sized pockets into for the big trip to New York he left for today.
DAY THREE (Sunday)
I managed, despite the detour to Andrew's house in Phalen, to not only make it to my 10 am panel, but to also be caffeinated. Nina's was open! So, we hit there on our way to Andrew's (I made my family come along so that we could all chat.) So, after a quick change in my hotel room into con clothes (I traditionally wear a button-up shirt and vest), I was on my way.
"This Will End Well," was my chance to rant about the ending of Bleach. The moderator let me start, and I knew I could derail everything if I got too specific (even though we warned that since we were talking endings, the whole thing was a spoiler). So, while I mentioned events, I framed them in terms of 'why this sort of ending sucks for me, personally.' Which nicely let the panelists discuss 'ship endings' and 'plot-hole endings' and any number of related themes. It was a high-energy panel.
Then, I tried to go out to dim sum with a group of people, including my friend Anna. The dim sum place we tried to go to was JAM PACKED and I ended up having to bail because I had a panel at 1 pm. I waited with them from about 11:15 am until almost 12:30 pm. Almost an hour. I've VERY SAD that I had to bail, because I've actually NEVER had dim sum, and having stuck my nose in the front door, the place smelled AMAZING.
I ended up at the con hotel's Easter brunch, which was decent enough.
Anyway, the panel "Angels in Literature" was pretty good. It was my second panel with Steven Brust who has been somewhat of a rival of mine (he has no idea) since some time in the 1990s. Thing was, Brust was part of a writers' group in the Twin Cities that was very much the 'it' kids and I desperately wanted to surpass them. Like, in some kind of shounen anime... Because of this funky history (which is 100% IN MY OWN HEAD) I always worry about how panels are going to go with Steven Brust. And there have been some local kerfuffles that also made me a little leery...
He was delightful. I even came out of that panel with a story idea. We were talking about the circles of heaven and hell and someone, I think the moderator, Rick, started joking about how the lowest level of Hell had to be much better than the lowest level of Heaven, because, what, is that like "Heaven's Trailer Park" and that was such a delightful image in my head, I really wanted to write something about that. I mean, I have NOTHING else to stick on that yet, but what a great image!
The last panel of the con was a bit... dodgy. I was the only woman on it, and it was about Bladerunner and its sequel. The moderator was one of those guys who doesn't moderate so much as hogs the mike, and both he and Eric Heideman were super-fans in a way that I wasn't. There was also a couple of incidents at the start of the panel that put me off a bit. Sooooooo.... yeah, it was chilly when I tried to bring up some of the more un-feminist/borderline misogynistic parts of the sequel.
You can pretty much tell everything from this picture:
Description: (right) me, literally rolling my eyes, while Eric (left) sits beside me looking decidedly GRIM.
So, yeah.....
After closing ceremonies, I dashed home to be with my wife and son. I was home sometime around 5:30 pm. I had put some corned beef in the crock pot, since all the restaurants were closed. Shawn has decided since she spent most of her birthday packing Mason for his New York trip today, freaking out about all that, AND having to share the spotlight with BOTH April Fools (as always), me swanning off to Minicon, AND also Easter, that she wants a do-over birthday on April 15.
Seems fair to me.
DAY TWO (Saturday):
I woke up to snow and ice. Being a morning person, I didn't bother to set an alarm because I knew that even though I'd stayed up late, there was no danger of oversleeping my 10 am kaffeeklatsch. Indeed, I was up by 7 am. I got partially dressed (in that I put on regular clothes, not CON clothes) and slipped my way across the parking lot of the hotel to the little strip mall directly across the street. There was a Caribou there as well as a Bruegger's bagels. I got my large mocha and had an egg bagel sandwich. The back of my badge said that my kaffeeklatsch would be held at "bar," but MiniCON has a "con bar" and the hotel also usually has a bar, so I wasn't entirely sure where things would be held. I figured that if we ended up at the hotel restaurant, it was still okay for me to have eaten something, because then I could talk and entertain people while THEY ate.
Turns out it was held at the "con bar," anyway. The con bar is basically just a party room, so labeled. My liaison, Tayna (who was amazing all weekend), made sure there was actual coffee from the con suite in the con bar for us early risers.
I don't ever think of 10 am as early, but I understand that it can be for many people, especially at a convention. So, I didn't expect a lot of people to turn up. I think my sign-up sheet only had a couple of people on it officially. But... the room filled up.
I was worried pre-con about the dreaded question "what are you writing now?" I flubbed it on Thursday night at the meet-and-greet. Someone, maybe even Rachel Swirsky, asked me that... and (despite coaching from
naomikritzer ) I choked and blurted out, "NOTHING." Then I fumble/flailed for a while mumbling the things I usually do about having been emotionally thrown off the horse by being dropped by Penguin, etc., etc., until I trailed off awkwardly and killed conversation for at least three whole seconds.That flub reminded me to be READY at the kaffeeklatsch. In fact, one of the first questions was, "What are you working on now?" Naomi came up with an absolutely brilliant response, which was to turn the burden of that question back around. I said, "Honestly, not much since Penguin dropped me, so I'm looking for ideas. You guys are presumably fans of my work--or at least science fiction--what would YOU like to see me write!"
Tyler Tork suggested that I write the lesbian candy shop cozies that he made up for his mock-up web design page. I think my favorite title of his was ASSAULTED CARAMEL. Tayna suggested an alternate Renaissance Festival fic (since we met, MANY YEARS AGO, through Fest.) When Tyler was talking about his lesbian mysteries, I was reminded of another friends' suggestion which was a tabletop RPG gamer/gaming mystery, the first of which would be TWENTY-SIDED DIE (and someone else, maybe Robyn, added another called, CRITICAL MISS.)
I also discovered, much to my surprise, that a number of people in the room were anxiously awaiting the ending of UNJUST CAUSE a Wattpad experiment that I petered out on a few years back (mostly because I honestly thought no one was reading it.) They made me write in my notebook: "Finish UNJUST CAUSE or fans will kill you."
So, apparently, I need to work on that...if I want to live!
To say that was a success is almost an understatement, because, hat could have been awkward (and legitimately triggering, in terms of my depression issue around writing,) felt invigorating and up-lifting. THANK YOU, NAOMI, FOR YOUR BRILLIANT COACHING!!!
Then, I had some free time until my Guest of Honor Interview (with puppet!) at 1:00 pm. Did I have lunch? I must of had lunch. Did I end up eating with people I know or did I just have Tayna grab me a sandwich from the green room?? (To be fair, Tayna had made me a roast beef sandwich the first night, Friday, that was amazing. It had just the right amount of horseradish sauce on it.) I did have a number of meals with Rachel and her husband Mike. I have a number of recommendations from them, including a web comic that I've started and am really enjoying called "Superbutch," about a lesbian superhero from the 1940s.
I know, I know... you don't care what I had for lunch. You just want to know: HOW DID IT GO WITH THE PUPPET????
The picture is a little dark, but you can see that I'm clearly enjoying myself. I don't remember if I posted a close-up of the muppet/puppet earlier, but here it is:
This puppet was custom built by local puppeteer Gordon Smude and performed by Laura Krentz.
How did it work? Well, I'm not entirely convinced it did, though I learned some lessons from the Opening Ceremonies. At Opening Ceremonies, it was tempting to try to interact with the puppet as though Laura could speak for her... but she really can't since *I'm* also Tate. So, at the interview I mostly (once I got the hang of it) tried to indicate when I was speaking as Lyda and when I was speaking as Tate. I have no idea if this was successful, especially since the temptation to say, "Right, Tate?" was always there.
The questions themselves were good and I made the Stemple/Yolens have to raise their "I'm uncomfortable" hands when I started talking about sex scenes, which was pretty hilarious. It was cool/weird to look out into the audience and see Jane Yolen with her hand up... until I recognized that Adam and David and Betsy were doing the same thing in the back row and I realized, "Oh, right, Adam has told me about this. I need to stop saying 'throbbing member" now. I have made everyone--except Adam's daughter--deeply uncomfortable in the Stemple/Yolen clan.)
So, I mean... it was fun? I also ended up tearing up a little bit over a question you wouldn't think would cause such a reaction. It was, "What was the best fan mail you've ever gotten?" I thought about it and the answer was all the trans folks who wrote to me back in the early days who were so moved to see Ariel there, as a representative of God, being trans. And I got all choked up thinking about how important representation really is.
The next panel was "Combining the Mystery/Detective Genre with Science Fiction," which was much lower energy, so it felt less good. Also, as these sorts of panels sometimes do, it ended up being a list of recommended titles. Some that I wrote down were: Rocket to the Morgue by Anthony Boucher, The Man in the Tree by Sage Walker, The Ark by Patrick S Tomlinson, and Dr. Stone, a manga, by Boichi (which someone that wasn't ME recommended.)
Then, it was Rachel and I together for "We Suck - Winning Through Losing," which was fun, because: Rachel. The two of us, I noticed, are positive-outlook sorts, so there weren't quite so many war stories about publishing (which I have a fair amount of!!) as advice to keep going after set-backs. The thing I remember the most from that panel was the question from the audience about risk-taking. I'm not sure what entirely was intended, but Rachel and I had a lovely discussion about how, yeah, it's always better to take a chance and fail than to reach for the lowest, safest hanging fruit--in terms of where you submit, in terms of how much of your soul you put into writing, and in terms of being willing to be scared that things aren't perfect but believing in your work anyway. I remember mentioning that I always think about how the Dark Side gets its energy from hate and fear and jealousy, and that's supposed to be a bad thing, but fear is the feeling you have when you're taking risks and if you never feel it, you're probably not growing as a writer.
The last panel of Sunday was "The Meaning of Captain America," which also went really well. Sometimes, on Marvel panels, there's a divide among the panelists between MCU/comic book. I was quite happy that all of the panelist were both, they'd seen all the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) and were all comic book readers, as well. Plus, Jei and I talked a lot about how fandom (particularly on Tumblr) sees Captain America, so it was high energy and well-rounded, IMHO.
I hung around in that room because my friend Tom ran up to his room to get me the Comixology version of Mark Gerunwauld's Captain America --or maybe it was someone else's take on Cap's pre-super solider life in the late-1930s... oh, yeah, actually the Grunwauld thing is a separate recommendation because, this was actually in She-Hulk because Jen Walters is taking on a case for Steve Rogers, in which he's been accused of murder. (She-Hulk Volume 3 -8, "The Good Old Days" [Part 1])
Plus, Rachel, Jane Yolen, Adam Stemple, and Ruth Berman were all on a panel about golems that I was interested in. Besides, I had plans to go out to sushi with Rachel afterwards, so I thought I might as well listen in. The panel was pretty good, though at 9 pm, it was kind of dense subject matter for my exhausted brain. I did manage to interrupt everything at one point because I thought Adam had offered a question to the audience (OOPS!)
Then, as promised, a bunch of us went out to sushi at Raku, including Rachel and Mike. I was out until they started closing down the sushi bar at midnight. We had a lovely time eating sushi and chatting--mostly about politics, mostly, I think, because politics wasn't exactly verboten at con, but going into detail sort of was... at least by silent agreement. I don't think anyone would have STOPPED either of us GoHs if we wanted to go on a rant about this or that political thing, but I assumed nothing. I know at least one of my fellow panelists on the mystery panel was, at least before the election, a Trump supporter.
I actually drove home after that because Sunday was Shawn's birthday and I really wanted to wake up with her, so we could have some time together to open presents and have cake. The morning was somewhat interrupted by the fact that Mason forgot his sweater at his friend Andrew's house, and we could have left it until after Spring Break, but it was the ONE sweat shirt that Shawn had sewed iPad sized pockets into for the big trip to New York he left for today.
DAY THREE (Sunday)
I managed, despite the detour to Andrew's house in Phalen, to not only make it to my 10 am panel, but to also be caffeinated. Nina's was open! So, we hit there on our way to Andrew's (I made my family come along so that we could all chat.) So, after a quick change in my hotel room into con clothes (I traditionally wear a button-up shirt and vest), I was on my way.
"This Will End Well," was my chance to rant about the ending of Bleach. The moderator let me start, and I knew I could derail everything if I got too specific (even though we warned that since we were talking endings, the whole thing was a spoiler). So, while I mentioned events, I framed them in terms of 'why this sort of ending sucks for me, personally.' Which nicely let the panelists discuss 'ship endings' and 'plot-hole endings' and any number of related themes. It was a high-energy panel.
Then, I tried to go out to dim sum with a group of people, including my friend Anna. The dim sum place we tried to go to was JAM PACKED and I ended up having to bail because I had a panel at 1 pm. I waited with them from about 11:15 am until almost 12:30 pm. Almost an hour. I've VERY SAD that I had to bail, because I've actually NEVER had dim sum, and having stuck my nose in the front door, the place smelled AMAZING.
I ended up at the con hotel's Easter brunch, which was decent enough.
Anyway, the panel "Angels in Literature" was pretty good. It was my second panel with Steven Brust who has been somewhat of a rival of mine (he has no idea) since some time in the 1990s. Thing was, Brust was part of a writers' group in the Twin Cities that was very much the 'it' kids and I desperately wanted to surpass them. Like, in some kind of shounen anime... Because of this funky history (which is 100% IN MY OWN HEAD) I always worry about how panels are going to go with Steven Brust. And there have been some local kerfuffles that also made me a little leery...
He was delightful. I even came out of that panel with a story idea. We were talking about the circles of heaven and hell and someone, I think the moderator, Rick, started joking about how the lowest level of Hell had to be much better than the lowest level of Heaven, because, what, is that like "Heaven's Trailer Park" and that was such a delightful image in my head, I really wanted to write something about that. I mean, I have NOTHING else to stick on that yet, but what a great image!
The last panel of the con was a bit... dodgy. I was the only woman on it, and it was about Bladerunner and its sequel. The moderator was one of those guys who doesn't moderate so much as hogs the mike, and both he and Eric Heideman were super-fans in a way that I wasn't. There was also a couple of incidents at the start of the panel that put me off a bit. Sooooooo.... yeah, it was chilly when I tried to bring up some of the more un-feminist/borderline misogynistic parts of the sequel.
You can pretty much tell everything from this picture:
Description: (right) me, literally rolling my eyes, while Eric (left) sits beside me looking decidedly GRIM.
So, yeah.....
After closing ceremonies, I dashed home to be with my wife and son. I was home sometime around 5:30 pm. I had put some corned beef in the crock pot, since all the restaurants were closed. Shawn has decided since she spent most of her birthday packing Mason for his New York trip today, freaking out about all that, AND having to share the spotlight with BOTH April Fools (as always), me swanning off to Minicon, AND also Easter, that she wants a do-over birthday on April 15.
Seems fair to me.