Tuscon 35 Report, Part II

[pameladlloyd]

Following the urban fantasy panel, I attended a reading by Emma Bull coffeeem. She read us a portion of an episode from Shadow Unit and spoke to us afterward about how Shadow Unit came to be.

At 7 p.m., we attended the Meet the Guests party, where the various winners of the short story and teen art contests were announced, our GOH, Diana Gabaldon, gave a very short speech, and I forgot to slip out in time to meet Karl in the lobby at 8:15. Fortunately, Karl found something to read and waited patiently for me, despite the fact that we were about to give our first joint reading at 8:30. As is typical at our small con, we didn't have a large audience, but we were honored to have our editor, David Lee Summers, there. It took us longer to read "Ship's Daughter" than we'd expected, so when it was finished I read a short poem, "Lady Luck's Wheel of Fortune," and we chatted with the audience until our hour was up.

At 9:30 I participated on a panel with the topic, "Where does science-fiction leave off and fantasy begin?" The other panelists were Catherine Wells, Adam Niswander, and Dennis McKiernan. We wandered all over the place (figuratively speaking) and never reached a better conclusion than, "I know it when I see it." Which comes across really strangely here, but somehow worked in the context of the panel discussion.

My panels completed, I hung around for the rest of the evening kibitzing from the audience in other panels and rediscovering old friends in the con suite.

Saturday was strangely quiet, with my only scheduled activity the autographing. Karl dutifully showed up for this and we sat near coffeeem, chatting in between folks asking for autographs. Karl and I were very gratified to be able to sell three copies of Space Pirates and to sign two more in addition to those. Never having participated in an autographing before, it was interesting to see that many people use this as an opportunity to approach the authors and talk to them, even if they don't have a book they want signed. As the hour ended, Karl and I spoke at some length with one of the con committee members, Rebecca, about her Ghost Girl Tours, which introduce participants to Tucson's haunted history. Later, sitting with Rebecca and several others in the hotel lobby, I learned that the hotel in which the con is held has a resident ghost: a man who had once been the hotel manager, who still walks the grounds making sure that all is well.

My final panel was on Sunday afternoon, on the topic, "Will religion always be with us?" This was, I learned, the second panel on this topic and a number of our audience members had attended the other, as well. The expected participants were David Brown, Will Shetterly, David Foster, and myself. By this point in the con, we were all exhausted and the crowd was beginning to thin, so it wasn't surprising that only David Brown and I were sitting at the panelists' table. A third seat was filled from the audience when I invited Frances Gross to join us (That's what you get for making intelligent comments from the audience, Frances. *g*) and the last seet was also filled from the audience by . . . David Foster. It was amusing to discover, as I wrote this up, that David Foster was on the panel, as I don't think any of us realized it at the time.

The panel went well, I think, veering into fiction and historical trivia, although I don't remember it clearly enough to give you a detailed description. Suffice it to say that I was very glad to have four panelists, as I don't think the hour would have been nearly as fun or interesting for the audience had there been only two of us. The most memorable moments of the panel, for me, were those that followed, when two members of the audience approached me and engaged me in discussion. One was a tall, thin, bearded man who remained mostly silent, while the other, a woman, did most of the talking. She, as I quickly learned, was an ardent and devout atheist. She was most disappointed that I wouldn't agree with her statements that religion was solely a source of evil in the world and kept repeating her assertions with greater and greater vehemence. I was quite grateful when lnhammer, come to fetch me on another matter, rescued me from her clutches. During this incident, I had thought that the man standing with her was her cohort, and he seems to have known her from some other context; later he approached me and apologized, telling me that he'd never seen her go quite so far off the deep end.

I finished the con in the con suite, chatting with the odd assortment of tired folk that populates every dead dog party. I even received the obligatory hand kiss, when I reached to shake hands with one of the con committee and thank him and his wife for all their hard work.

All in all, it was a good con. Somewhere tucked within the bits I haven't elaborated, I gave advice to a fledgling writer and received advice from more experienced writers, coming away with a sense of purpose. I've even figured out some changes I'd like to implement with regard to one of the short stories I've been working on recently. Oh, and I'm committed to attempting a longer work, although much pre-work remains. I have the main character, her elusive background (which actually came to me while I was in El Paso last month, attending a chemistry symposium with my dad), and a vague idea of where the book takes place. I still need a plot, but I feel confident that this will come.

Oh, and I came away with origami, folded by our resident origami artist, lnhammer.