These days I'm not sure how good my convention views are. I tend not to go to panels, and instead mostly hang with friends and shop. However, here is my take on Saturday at Conclave.
Early Saturday morning I picked up Karen and her daughter Caitie and we went up to Lansing to spend a day at ConClave, one of the local SF cons. We had a lovely drive with next to no traffic and gorgeous leaf colors to look at.
I had two panels, one at eleven, which was your basic How To Get Published. The other at four, SF vs. Urban Fantasy. The first panel was lightly attended (actually, the whole con seemed lightly attended this year), and there were something like seven authors on the panel, two of whom were self-published. Traditional and self- managed to co-exist peaceably, however, and the conversation was good and practicle. Tanya Huff, the GoH was on it and she turned out to be a fun and highly articulate person.
After that, Karen and I hooked up with Anne Harris and went to the hotel restauraunt for lunch. We had a good long chat, and it was a treat to have a meal where I wasn't having to rush off to anything afterwards, like picking up the kid.
Then I hit the dealer's room, and I didn't get far. There was a new little booth with a shelf of history books on it. I took a quick look, then I took a closer look. Then I bought, and bought, and bought. The total haul: a bio on Lucrezia Borgia, another on Elizabeth of Bohemia, a book of Bohemian folk tales, a book on the history and influence of Ladies in Waiting in Europe's courts, a book of the Arthurian epics that didn't make it into Malorey (including The Knight and the Parrot. I can't wait to get to that one), a book on the picts, gaels and scots, and a scholarly look at the history of the grail imagery in the Arthurian epic.
So, my winter reading's set.
Oh, we also saw the art show. Small. Some good stuff. Not a lot to seriously tempt.
The panel on SF vs. Urban Fantasy was a good, fairly serious discussion of the history and growing popularity of urban fantasy. Well attended, and pretty much the same panel as the previous one I was on.
After that, we did a little more dealer's room. I bought a couple of novels and decided I'd better not go any further. We attempted to collect Karen's daughter who'd been in the kids game room all day. She urged us to go to dinner without her as she did not want to leave her game. So, we did. The service in the hotel restauraunt which had been good at lunch was sssssllllllloooooowwwww, so although we sat down at around six, we didn't get out of there until almost seven-thirty. This time we did successfully collect Caitie, and so all to home and bed.
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