Wiscon Sunday and Monday

[naomikritzer]

Sunday I had a list of panels I wanted to attend -- a panel on book promotion, and a panel on weapons. The weapon demo panel was mostly people I know pretty well: Kelly McCullough is in my critique group, and Shari (S.N. Arly) is a friend I see pretty regularly. Shari studies a form of martial arts where most of the weapons were originally agricultural instruments used by Okinawan peasants, repurposed as weapons to defend themselves against the Samurai. I found the sword stuff interesting, but the Okinawan peasant self-defense stuff was absolutely fascinating.

Sunday evening was the Wyrdsmiths party. The Wyrdsmiths are my critique group, which I joined back in 1997. The current members are Lyda Morehouse, Kelly McCullough, Eleanor Arnason, Bill Henry, Rosalind Nelson, Sean Murphy, and Doug Hulick (though he recently rejoined after a long hiatus and was not at Wiscon); Harry LeBlanc is on hiatus while attending grad school and was at Wiscon. This year we decided to put together a chapbook of some of our stories; Bill heroically edited it (and a buddy of his did layout). We used artwork drawn by pants_of_doom for the cover art (if you've seen the chapbook but not the original art, do click on the link for the full-color version, which is stunning) (and Penny, I have contributor's copies for you -- I will get in touch by e-mail to get your postal address). Outside of Wiscon, we're selling these for $6 each -- anyone who wants to buy one can contact Kelly via a form at http://www.kellymccullough.com/mail-wyrd.html.

Our party went really well -- lots of people stopped by, took a chapbook and stayed to chat. Greg Ketter of Dreamhaven had a table where people could buy our books (you know, the ones we didn't publish ourselves) -- I'm not sure we'll do that next year, as I think the only person who bought a book was me (I bought a copy of Eleanor's Ring of Swords).

At one point I spotted someone wearing one of elisem's necklaces -- I went over to admire it, and confirmed that yes, in fact, it was the one I've been regularly visiting and admiring but not buying, "Sinners in the Hands of a Mildly Startled Buddha." (It has a lotus, and a spider.) The woman wearing it said that she'd bought it to celebrate her recent literary successes. I asked her about her books, and discovered that this woman with excellent taste was in fact Elizabeth Bear.

The LJ party was also that night and I tried to go, but wound up just peering in through the door at the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd and heading back to my own party. They should give anything LJ related a larger room next year; it's clearly the online community of choice for the Wiscon crowd.

We left both girls home with the grandparents, who tucked Molly in and successfully rocked Kiera to sleep, so we could stay at the party without too much guilt. We went home at around 1 a.m. You know, back in college I used to routinely stay up until 2 a.m. and "really, really late" meant 4. Or 5. Or sunrise -- I remember watching the sun come up through the kitchen window, freshman year, after spending the night hanging out with probably_lost. We sat in the kitchen all night. These days, at the very least, we would move somewhere with more comfortable chairs.

Anyway, Monday I had the Sign-Out starting in late morning, which was really nicely put together: they had a little sign for each author, and had a setup where you could tie your sign to a pair of helium balloons to make it easy for people to spot. They also had someone running around bringing the authors drinks and baked goods. (I also had Ed, who brought me a hot dog when it occurred to me that this event was running straight through lunch time.) Post sign-out, I went to the Mid-Career Writers Living Room, which was fascinating. We decided that we want a Writer Camp for mid-career writers but we're all too busy to organize one. Oh, and when I noted that I have no time to do self-promotion even to the point of updating my damn web page, someone suggested that I solicit a friend or fan to maintain it for me, via my LiveJournal. So if anyone wants to do that, well, let me know.

Ed and I hung out in the lobby for a little while with robgates and Leah Cutter, who very obligingly let the girls climb all over them, and then headed back up to the Cities. We ate dinner at Hardees, which had the virtue of an outdoor playground.

I have no doubt forgotten to mention a host of other people I chatted with over the weekend. There are all sorts of people, including some who live local to me, who I see mostly at cons, including allochthon, malachitefer, jenizie, rowan_redbeard, and magentamn and her partner Martin. I also finally connected the Lynn who came to my Minicon reading (and who I've met at Minicon before) with romsfuulynn (oh, and the UU is for Unitarian Universalist -- she was a little surprised to find out that I've been mentally pronouncing her LJ name as "roms foolin").

I also hung out several times with Staci, who was the high school best friend of the younger sister of my high school best friend (did you follow that?) and whom I reconnected with via a parenting board we both post at (where she posts as Maevele). Staci has a son about Molly's age, but I'm not sure her son and Molly ever actually met, since Molly spent so little time at the con. He's a gorgeous little boy with round cheeks and silky blond curls. He's also obsessively interested in golf -- I find this fascinating and amusing because it's such a wonderful example of how children really are their own people, and even if you go into parenting thinking that you will cultivate an interest in X or Y or Z, your kids may utterly throw you for a loop. Staci does not play golf; neither does her husband. Neither do any of their friends. Hayden saw golf one day on TV and wanted to know what it was; Staci gave him an offhand explanation, and since he was so intrigued, decided to humor him by buying him a set of toy golf clubs or something like that. Before she knew it, he was begging for trips to the golf course, setting up a putting green in their living room, and refusing to be friends with anyone who wasn't interested in golf. Did I mention that he was two years old when he discovered golf, and is four years old now? It gives me a whole new perspective on those horrifyingly young Olympic athletes; maybe it wasn't all their obsessive parents, after all, you know? Anyway, he's mellowed in the last six months or so, but this means that he actually does have a few other interests rather than it being ALL golf, all the time.

Comments

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming you know about Bear's LJ. Since she has two, and all.

(But I'm assuming this is like telling the Washington Post the identity of Deep Throat.)

[naomikritzer]

I know she has one but I couldn't remember her LJ name. Names. ::hangs head in shame.::