Back from World Fantasy

[naomikritzer]

Well, that was a thoroughly worthwhile con. I had a good time, met lots of interesting and intelligent people, got free books, and came home with new ideas. More details (including the requisite LJ links to all the cool people I met) below the cut. (Edited to add -- I should say, to SOME of the cool people I met, because I know, I just know I'm forgetting people.)



We drove down on Thursday, in time to get me to my programming item on Thursday evening. We all went down, because Kiera is still nursing. My parents live in Madison part time, so we stayed with them. At home, Kiera wants to nurse at bedtime and naptime, but down in Madison, she went to bed without protest every single afternoon and evening. Clearly, I need to go to more cons.

My programming item was the first of two panels on writing craft -- I was the moderator. The other panelists were L.E. Modesitt, Joe Haldeman, Holly Black aka blackholly, and Sarah Zettel. It was a fun, lively panel. We had a great audience: standing room only, they asked good questions, and they laughed at our jokes. It went well. Afterwards, John Savage (a guy I've known online since about 1997, but had never met in person) came up to say hi.

On Friday I wandered around the dealer's room, petting elisem's jewelry and admiring other shiny things. At WFC in 2002 I bought a necklace from Laurie Edison that's an opal set into a space nebula, and I stopped by her table to look at her pieces, which were as beautiful and distinctive as I remembered. I had lunch with blackholly, tltrent, bgliterary, and Theodor Black. It was a blast. That was a great lunch. In college I spent my senior year living in a college-sponsored Science Fiction interest house (yeah, really), and this lunch reminded me of living in that house, not because any of the people I was eating with reminded me of specific housemates, but because it was a lunch of so much fun geekiness, like reminiscing about our favorite fantasy books when we were kids (and which can be safely re-read because they're still good when you're an adult).

I hung out in the bar for a while in the afternoon and saw davidlevine, who I met at one of the Minnesota cons a year or two ago, via Lyda. It was good to hear what he was up to.

Friday dinner, I went out for Ethiopian food with Anne Harris. She's working on a YA novel, which makes me very happy, because she captured all the awkward angst of teenagerhood so well in Inventing Memory. We came back in time for the mass autographing, which ran from 8 to 10:30. I sat between truepenny and blackholly and chatted with both depending on who was signing at any given moment. Holly had someone come up to complain about how she had a character drink alcohol, and this meant he couldn't give the book to his twelve-year-old even though he'd really liked it and had no other complaints. You know, I have to say, there are things I do try to keep my kids from being exposed to, at the moment. George Bush, for instance. No, I'm kidding, but seriously, shielding your child from references to drinking has got to be harder than shielding your child from references to our Idiot in Chief. And my kids are five and two. At twelve, I was reading about Jondalar's throbbing manhood in Valley of Horses, so the concept of censoring the reading of a twelve-year-old just seems totally bizarre to me. It seems particularly bizarre in someone who would go to World Fantasy Con. He must feel so alienated for so much of the con. (Of course, he could be reading this right now. If you are, you know, feel free to chime in and explain why the alcohol consumption was so offensive. I haven't read the book in question, so who knows, maybe you're totally, totally right about this, but you know, if your kid is TWELVE, she's probably reading Flowers in the Attic while your back is turned, and I can't believe that there's anything in Holly's book that's half as shocking as any randomly selected chapter in pretty much anything by V.C. Andrews.)

Uh, anyway. No one complained about my books. One guy had a regular copy and a galley of every single one of my books, which made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. That was cool.

Saturday, I went around the dealer's room to sign the booksellers' copies of my books. I had a panel in the afternoon, on mining other cultures when writing fantasy. That was also a really fun panel, and also included Sarah Zettel. I spent a couple of hours in the bar that afternoon again, this time hanging out with a group that included pbray. Patricia told me about some of the multi-author signings she'd done as a romance author, including one that was organized as a fundraiser for a local literacy organization. It sounded really cool. I am really interested in organizing something similar in Minneapolis.

I ended up having dinner in the bar as well, with an artist and writer named Kat Beyer. Her website is here. She didn't have any of her artwork with her, except for a few sketches, and I couldn't check out her website until I got home tonight. I really like her work, it's both whimsical and beautiful. She should sell t-shirts. I think some of these pictures would look really awesome on t-shirts.

Today I wandered around the dealer's room one last time; Laurie Edison noticed that I was wearing the necklace I'd bought from her a few years ago, and we ended up chatting about depictions of women in fantasy art (she'd just been on a panel on the topic) and I found out something I should have known, which was that she was the artist who did the photo book on fat nudes I'd heard about ages ago from Terry Garey. I was really intrigued by that, because I did an art project in college that involved photographing a generous and un-selfconscious fat male friend. I still love that project, though my classmates totally did not get it, and some of their comments (we did group critiques) were an interesting illustration of fat-phobia (one of the men said something like, "I don't get it. It's just pictures of a fat guy. Why would I want to look at pictures of a fat guy?" As a writer, I usually try to take some responsibility for a reader who just doesn't get it -- it's my responsibility, as a writer, to hand you enough pieces that you DO get it. Since I was never a professional artist, however, I feel comfortable just saying that my former classmate was a clueless ass. Anyway, I looked through her two photo books and then had a long, interesting, fun chat with Laurie, who is really cool.)

Then we went to the banquet, where we found out from the Toastmaster that apparently David Hartwell assassinated JFK. At least, that's what I took away from the speech. And a bunch of people won awards, and then Ed and I picked up the girls and drove for about five and a half hours (including the dinner break) back to Minneapolis.

Whew.

I apologize to the people I no doubt forgot, or forgot the LJ names of. (The hazard of the LJ shout-out post is that you will inevitably leave out someone.) At one point I was jotting down LJ names of people, but there's just something awkward about peering intently at someone's badge and then scribbling things down in a notebook, even at a convention full of writers. I do know I met peacockharpy and crevette and jpsorrow, and somehow managed not to ever run into porphyrin even though I know she was at the con. I also met quite a few people who do not (so far as I know) have Livejournals, including Ashleigh Whitchurch and her partner Aimee, and Raechel from Eggplant Productions (who I knew ages ago when I posted regularly to the Speculations Rumor Mill), and Aynjel (another rumormill friend from long ago).

Anyway. Fun con. GREAT con. I haven't been to World Fantasy since 2002 when it was in Minneapolis, because of the difficulties of traveling with small children. I expect (or at least hope) that by this time next year, Kiera will be weaned, so I am thinking that I will go to Austin. What's the weather like in Texas in November, anyway?

Comments

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

I read Holly Black's latest book, Valiant (it's the only one of her books I've read), and I really didn't think it was objectionable for a teenaged audience at all. I just looked up my review, and I said it was appropriate for an older teenaged audience, mainly because of the addiction stuff. But it would be fine for a 12 year old, I just tend to be conservative in my age recommendations for YA stuff because some folks who read RT are on the uptight side. When I was around that age, I adored VC Andrews--which is, IMO, much worse because of all the yay!incest! going on. I didn't get into Jondalar's throbbing manhood until a few years later.

[naomikritzer]

Yeah, all the yay!incest! stuff in V.C. Andrews was more or less what I was thinking about, though the arsenic-laced donuts, deaths of young children, psychopathic grandmother, and sloppy ballet-related research were also all disturbing to me when I read those books.

(And I can absolutely understand being conservative with age recommendations for book reviews in RT.)

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

I'm always sort of staggered when I look back at what I was reading between the ages of 12 and 15--V.C. Andrews and Jean Auel in particular--when my mother wouldn't let me read her romance novels because she deemed them too racy. And yet 20 year old Jondalar deflowering 14 year old girls? Totally okay. (In my mother's defense, she didn't actually read any of the books in questions, and Jean Auel *did* appear on the book report list for my 9th grade science class.)

I don't get too may YA books in my section for RT, but I'm always happy when I do. I wish I got more. And less epic fantasy. I am really starting to hate elves.

[naomikritzer]

My mother attempted to restrict my reading only once; while at the library, I picked out a children's picture book at 4 or 5 that was about divorce. Since my parents weren't divorcing and my mother didn't want me worrying about it, she didn't let me check it out. I became incredibly curious about this book and requested it every week for months. I think at that point my mother realized that censorship was a tactic that would backfire.

The thing about the Jean Auel book is that the first one doesn't have any of the graphic soft-porn sex in it. There's rape, but none of that "sharing of pleasures" stuff. I think the adult who recommended "Clan of the Cave Bear" to me either hadn't read or didn't think about the sequels. Though she was an honest-to-God sex therapist, so who knows?

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

The romance novels were the only thing my mother didn't want me reading--and I used to sneak them when she was out of the house, so obviously it didn't work for me, either.

The jock-y guys in my GATE class in 9th grade really, really, really liked the rape scenes in Clan of the Cave Bear. I can't read that book these days because when I do, all I can see is a group of football players sniggering over those scenes and then making hand gestures at us girls.

[naomikritzer]

Oh yuck. Yuck. Yuck.

Makes me glad that the raciest thing I read for class was The Scarlet Letter.

[tltrent.livejournal.com]

Heh. You know, you should give people a "throbbing manhood" alert. I was eating lunch as I read, and nearly spewed grape everywhere at that ref. :) I got to it when I was 15, and I remember that my best friend's mother wouldn't let her read it, so I read it to her. So much for not corrupting the young. ;)

I do hope you come to World Fantasy next year; it was definitely a blast. Well...except for the rejection part.

And, btw, the "Mining" panel was great. I think I enjoyed it the most of any panel I attended.