Because I’m feeling lazy and it’s been two weeks since I wrote about Day One, I’m going to go ahead and lump the rest of my experiences of World Fantasy Convention into one single post. Also, read Days Zero and One for context.

Day Two

I started the day by finishing a short story that I’d begun the day before. I sat in the lobby of the hotel letting the hubbub wash over me while I tried to write. Every once in a while I like to put myself in a place where I know I’m going to have a hard time concentrating and challenge myself to write a certain number of words. In some ways I find writing in loud, crowded places more productive than sitting at home. I don’t meander off to Facebook or Youtube when somebody might be looking over my shoulder trying to catch a glimpse at what I’m writing.

After writing I attended more panels including one on Ur Fantasies – a term I was heretofore unfamiliar with and have since discovered to be both an ancient Sumarian city and to mean the earliest/most primal form of something. Ur Fantasies include Beowolf and Gilgamesh and the Icelandic Sagas among others.

I attended a couple other panels, but the Ur panel is the one that most interested me, and then I went and had lunch in the hospitality suite, where the con provided free food all day long. I didn’t learn about this until the end of day one and it pleased me to no end because in preparation for this trip I budgeted for food and books and emergencies. Once I learned I could eat free the rest of the weekend, the money budget for food went to books. I ended up bringing 31 books home with me. Good thing I drove, huh?

Day two I also attended a reading by one of my all time favorite writers, Garth Nix, who read from the opening of the next Abhorsen Book as well as what I’m guessing will be a Middle Readers Book that had us all in stitches. I also attended readings from Mari Ness, John Chu, and Max Gladstone. I quite enjoyed the readings. Not only did I get a chance to hear never-before-read excerpts by some of my favorite writers they also allowed a chance for relaxation.

End of Day two was the mass signing during which authors sat at tables and everyone ran around frantically collecting autographs. I came away with signed copies of The Warded Man, A Natural History of Dragons, Newt’s Emerald, The Goblin Emperor, and others that I can’t recall and as I’m currently not at home I can’t get up and check my bookshelf. I also got my Molskine signed by A.M. Dellamonica and Scott Lynch.  I have one other Molskine that was signed by Tamora Pierce at ConBust. Maybe that’ll be my thing, getting my own notebooks signed by my favorite writers.

Day Three

On the third day I attended yet more panels and produced some fun doodles which I suppose shows the kind of state my mind had slipped into by that time:

I also started strategizing how I was going to fit 31 new books to my already over crowded bookshelves. I still haven’t quite solved this problem. If anyone has a bookshelf to drop me an email because with my expanding library of books on writing, books about medieval architecture and cooking, books on bow-making and blacksmithing and all the other books I use for my research I’m running out of room for the books I read for fun.

Despite how it might sound, there were a lot of interesting panels on day three including one on Fantasy set outside of the European Middle Ages, one on Fearie Courts (I’ve always been rather fascinated by this folklore. I recommend Tithe by Holly Black for anyone who’s intrigued but doesn’t feel like doing a ton of research) and one particularly thought-provoking panel on Violence in the Epic.

Violence isn’t something I’ve deliberately put into my writing, but my writing does tend to be very violent and I haven’t thought much about the violence that does appear and the effect it might have on the reader. As I continue my revisions I’m certainly going to look at the more graphically violent scenes that I’ve written and closely examine their necessity. This isn’t to say that the violence in my writing is willy-nilly, blood for the sake of blood violence. I try to write with a certain level of realism. If there’s fighting, there will be blood and there will be death, but my characters don’t walk away unchanged. That was something the panel stressed: the lasting effects of violence on the characters. They can’t all be sociopaths.

Day Four

I couldn’t stay. I had to get back home so I could work the next day. Next year I plan on staying through the end and going to the awards banquet. Next year, I also plan to book my hotel room early enough so I don’t end up in the overflow hotel for the overflow hotels so that I can socialize more instead of spending a significant chunk of time walking back and forth between the con and my hotel. But still, I had a great first time. I made some new friends, I found some people who are willing to Beta Read my novel, and I learned about some publications that I’m going to submit some of my shorter pieces and poetry to once I’ve gotten them cleaned up a bit. All-in-all a success trip outside my comfort zone.

Thank you for reading.