dayjobbery

GenreCon: The Aftermath

PETERMBALL Madcap Adventures and Distracting Hijinx , ,

By the time you read this it will have been a little over a week since the inaugural AWM GenreCon ended. I’m going to specify this upfront, ’cause a portion of the content has been written before, during, and after the con, fitting into the little slices of time where I have sufficient brainpower to write. Some of these fragments made sense. Some of them did not. Such is the nature of running conventions.

Point the First: GENRECON ROCKED

I can scarcely believe I’m able to say this, since I spent so long fretting about the various ways that the conference could have gone wrong, but GenreCon proved to be a smashing success. Attendees were happy, guests were happy, my boss was really happy.

We got a massive response rate to the pitching program (and a really high proportion of pitchers got asked to submit partials), the program was packed out, and for once I was at a con where you couldn’t actually find people in the bar when panelling was taking place.

If you’re looking at my definition of success, based on a couple of years going to SF cons, that’s it right there. We spent weeks arguing about the program trying to achieve that no-one in the bar effect, and I’m really glad it was all worthwhile.

‘Course, me being me, I’m not entirely happy with the way things went. There are so many little things I wanted to go a little smoother, a bunch of tiny gaffs I wish I could go back and correct. This is as it should be, I think, ’cause if I got it right I wouldn’t be anywhere near as enthusiastic about next year.

And there is a next year. GenreCon 2013 will be held in Brisbane. It was all announced, official-like, at the end of the con. Watch this space for details.

Point the Second: TALENT MATTERS

GenreCon wasn’t my first bite of the cherry when it comes to running a con program, so I’m under no illusion that the event success was all down to me. Truth is, running a con is a lot of work and it just about kills the person in the convenor’s seat, but it seems to me that a lot of the success and failure of the event comes down to the Guests and Program Participants. If they’re friendly, generous with their time, and available to the attendees, then you’re pretty much made.

Our guests this year? So. Fricken’. AWESOME.

Our volunteer program panellists? See the above.

In some cases this wasn’t really a surprise. QWC has an established relationship with all the agents and publishers we programmed, plus we’ve worked with writers like Anna Campbell, Helene Young, PM Newton, and Simon Higgins in the past. They’re known quantities and they were invited specifically because we knew they would rock the damn Kasbah when they arrived (and they did). Similarly…well, we read Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. We had a lot of confidence that Sarah Wendell would knock it out of the park as a guest (and she did).

Some of the other names…well, let’s just say they were an educated guess. Joe Abercrombie is a big enough name that he’s a veteran of SF cons, but even with that in mind he proved to be the kind of charming and endearing con guest that makes it all worthwhile. We’d invited Canberra-based writer Dan O’Malley because his first book, The Rook, created huge waves when it was released earlier in the year (I believe the conversation actually went “does anyone know anything about him? No? Well, we’ll give him a go). It turns out he’s never been to a con before, but he’s utterly made for it – funny, enthusiastic, extraordinarily generous with his fellow writers. I kinda want Australian SF conferences to start inviting him along, ’cause he’s going to charm the hell out of fandom when he eventually comes into contact with that particular readership.

If you’re running a convention anywhere in the world, I can utterly recommend any of our GenreCon guests without hesitation. Our program participants too, who were awesome across the board.

Point the Third: TEAM QWC? TOTES AWESOME

I’m not really shy about the fact that I adore the people I work with. They are, to a person, smart, dedicated, passionate, and utterly awesome.

Even by those standards, I came to really adore them in the weeks leading up to GenreCon. For a really long time the con was the thing that lived in my head, and that kinda ran me into the red zone on stress levels.

All that changed about three weeks out from GenreCon.  Suddenly find that all these tasks that were doing my head in would be…done. Major catastrophes would hit and someone would be all “don’t worry, I can fix that,” and then they would. Often, they’d fix things so they were better than they’d been before.

Occasionally I talk to people in the arts and publishing who are amazed at how much QWC does with such a small team. Mostly, that’s possible, ’cause that small team is like a crack squad of ninja when it comes to getting stuff done.

Point the Fourth: HOLY FUCK I’M TIRED

Seriously, I’ve spent the week since the con walking around like a man whose gone ten rounds in a boxing match. I’ve got the kind of sleep debt that means the Sandman sends leg-breakers around to the house to strongly suggest that you really should pay that sleep back before something…untoward…happens, you know? Which is then followed by some meaningful staring, and the swinging of baseball bats that accidently shatter your favourite lamp.

‘Course, I’ve immediately followed up GenreCon by working four weekends in a row. This is the curse of not paying attention to the things that happen after the con when you’re asked to do stuff. On the other hand, I’m really looking forward to getting to the point where it hits two o’clock in the afternoon and I don’t feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.

I’m taking today off, ’cause I need it, but I have a feeling it’s barely going to make a dent in the sleep debt. I’m taking a week off in December. As in, a week that is not the week that I take off anyway, ’cause QWC shuts down over the holiday. My original plan was to go to Melbourne and do stuff. My revised plan is to flake out on the couch and sleep. Maybe write some stuff. Anything that reduces my contact with other human beings down to the mandatory minimum required to still be considered a part of the human race.

Point the Fifty: TOTALLY WORTH IT

We talked about tribes a lot at GenreCon. How to find them, how to recognise them, how important it is to get in touch with yours. We tried to help people with that as much as we could, giving our platform over to the various organisations that represent genre tribes in Australia.

Spec Fic was represented by volunteers from Conflux, next year’s NatCon. I’ve both been to Natcons, and to a certain extent I can look at them and say yes, these are my tribes.

But that’s a lie, really. My tribe has always been writers and passionate readers, regardless of their genre. There is nothing that makes me happier than looking out and knowing I had a hand in an event where writers have gathered to learn, develop, and advance their careers. I’m really excited to see how things develop from here, both in terms of the writers themselves and the way GenreCon runs in future years.

Thanks to everyone who came and participated and generally made the weekend a blast.

NaNoWriMo? We Laugh at NaNoWriMo…

PETERMBALL Works in Progress , , ,

For the second time since starting the new bloggery regime, I’m writing a post in real time. This time, at least, I did it on purpose.

As I write this I’m bunkered down in the QWC office with a team of twenty other writers, all of them ferociously typing away in an attempt to write 30,000 words in the space of two and a half days. We call this madness the Rabbit Hole – the third that the QWC has run – and this time around it’s being run in several locations around Australia.

This my second bite of the cherry for the Rabbit Hole. The first time around I was a newly hired employee of the QWC who signed up ’cause it seemed like a good way to generate some work. I showed up and worked exclusively on Fritz the Laptop, who routinely objected to such tasks as “playing music” and “running word” and generally “working for longer than two hours before restarting.”

This time around I’m working on Shifty Silas, the laptop I picked up after a fourteen-hour stretch in Rockhampton airport convinced me that Fritz was on his last legs. Silas is the first laptop I’ve acquired since having, like, an actual job, so he’s considerably less buggy than Fritz was. He can actually sustain wireless access without crashing, for starters. And I can type this, listen to music, and run Scrivner in the background without him throwing a hissy fit (in Fritz’s defense, his problems weren’t all his fault; I did leave him running Vista for four straight years, after all).

We kicked off proceedings about fifteen minutes ago. I was supposed to say something inspiring to rally the team, but I’m generally not good at that, so I shared my favourite piece of writing advice that I acquired while reading Dean Wesley Smith’s blog.

You don’t have to write the whole thing, you just have to write the next 250 words.

There are days when I remember that. There are days when I don’t.

Lately there’s far more of the latter than the former, but I’m guessing three days of chasing a 30,000 word goal is going to remind me of just how easy writing can be when you set aside the angst and work.

In the interests of setting some hard targets, these are my goals for the weekend:

  • Write two weeks of blog posts (weekends are my prime blogging times, and I’ll be at the Rabbit Hole this weekend and Continuum next weekend).
  • Write the first draft of a short, short story.
  • Knock over about 10,000 words on the Untitled Victorian Planetary Romance, Pt 1 draft.

Best I get on with it, yes? I’ll catch you all on the other side.

In this post, I swear a lot for no apparent reason

PETERMBALL Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’m sitting here on a Sunday trying to remember what I was going to blog about. There was plan a while back – perhaps even a written one – but I’m afflicted with a curse that causes me to forget anything remotely plan-like the moment I sit down at a keyboard. Fortunately, I have a back-up plan: 4 Random Things where I place Fuckin’ in the centre of the entry title.

1. DENNIS FUCKIN’ LEHANE

One of my favourite book stores is Brisbane’s Pulp Fiction, a speciality-store focused exclusively on Fantasy, SF, and Mystery/Crime fiction. When I first started patronising the store I stuck to the fantasy/SF side of things, revelling in the ability to pick up fiction from small presses and mid-list authors I wouldn’t ordinarily be able to track down. All that changed about…jeez, I don’t know, but a while back…and these days I tend to pick up a few things from the crime side of things. I’m a fan of the hardboiled mystery, after all, and I’m developing a growing affection of the cosy murder mystery, and there a depths of awesome in those genres I’m still to find.

But last week I picked up a copy of Denis Lehane’s A Drink Before the War and…well, holy shit, I kinda dig this book. There are certain writers who have the ability to engender trust in a reader, simply be deploying an opening paragraph that makes you think, well, yeah, this writer gets it, and Lehane is one of those. There’s a control there, an ability to deploy language in a certain way, that I knew from the opening paragraph how much I’d enjoy what follows (and, lo, I enjoyed what followed exactly as much as I expected).

I went back on Friday and picked up the second book featuring the same characters. I inhaled the damn thing in one manic night of reading, staying up until the wee hours when I should have been getting some sleep prior to going to the dayjob.

2. LL FUCKIN’ HANNET

It’s always nice when friends who do good work are recognised for, well, being fuckin’ aces at the things that they do well. Case in point: this year’s Aurealis Awards were given out over the weekend and while I’d offer congratulations to all the winners, I was really happy to hear that the immensely talented LL Hannett had walked away with the gong for both Best Collection (for Bluegrass Symphony) and co-winner of Best Horror Story (for The Short Go: a Future in Eight Seconds).

Congratulations, also, to Thoraiya Dyer for picking up the Best Fantasy Story nod for Fruit of the Pipal Tree (yes, she totally deserves her own entry as Thoraiya fuckin’ Dyer, but I’m not yet sure we know each other well enough for such familiarity not to be seen as offensive).

3. RED FUCKIN’ DAWN

Last night’s Trashy Tuesday Movie. Watchable, enjoyable, and utterly terrible. #Wolverines

Next week I’m watching Doom. Actually, next week I’m watching the *extended directors cut* of Doom. Because someone, somewhere, though it was a film that needed to be longer and my flatmate is the kind of person who pays money for such things.

I’m already afraid.

4. AMANDA FUCKIN’ PALMER

‘Cause, really, if you’re going to make a list of people and things with the word fuckin’ inserted in the middle of their names, it’s a fairly natural fuckin’ progression.

Also because I wrote a post for QWC’s blog about her recent kickstarter, John Scalzi’s commentary on it, and what that means for writers. I wouldn’t ordinarily bounce people from this blog to that one, but one of the curses of working on three different blogs every week is that occasionally there’s a conversation on one that you really wish could involve readers from another. Also, the QWC blog is shiny and new, so I figure it can’t hurt to send anyone interested in that direction.

5. AND ONE FINAL NOTE, WITHOUT SWEARING, REGARDING CONTINUUM

If there’s anyone whose heading along to the Continuum Nat-Con in June that may be interested in half a hotel room, drop me a line. It turns out the room that I’ve got has two queen beds, and many of the usual suspects I’d split a room with either aren’t coming along or already live in Melbourne. I’m not opposed to having the room to myself and all, but if the opportunity is there to split costs…