Convention Report: World Fantasy Con 2015

World Fantasy Convention was held at least once previously in Saratoga Springs, in (if I recall correctly) 2007. I was there for a short period of time (mainly the mass signing) but was new to this sort of convention and limited in time, so I really didn't have much chance to really be part of the experience. This time, I purchased my membership early, and Kathleen enabled me to attend all four days of the convention (though for various reasons not nearly all of the hours therein).

I'm going to get the negatives (that I observed) out of the way first, and then talk about the positive aspects of the convention:

First, the Harrassment Policy: an early draft of the policy was, basically, "if anything's reported we'll call the police and let them sort it out", which is about as non-optimal as one can get. The second version was marginally better, as it did at least include the idea of the convention itself being able to deal with such issues and choose an appropriate response. But it lacked all sorts of pieces (like an actual, clear-cut chain of responsibility, investigation approach, etc.) and – whether intended or not – read more as a "we'd rather not have to address this issue" than an actual policy. While there were some comments made that this stemmed from having had legal advice on the matter, I really can't see that this is an acceptable approach. Dozens of other conventions have had reasonable, effective policies in place. There's no reason you couldn't just steal one of those, or ask someone else with experience IN one of those conventions to draft you one.

In particular, I would think one could simply take the ComicCon one, which was on VERY public display pretty much EVERYWHERE in the convention. ComicCon can obviously afford high-caliber lawyers, so that policy – found at http://www.newyorkcomiccon.com/About/Harassment-Policy/ -- should be sufficiently usable (especially here in New York State). Of course, it includes a number of pieces that require the Convention to do some more work – provide a simple method to report harassment, staff available to INSTANTLY respond, and so on. But hey, that's the price you pay for running a convention, in my view.

See, it's not just about legalities – though of course you should consider those – but also, and in many ways more importantly, about personal comfort at the convention. While safety's a potential legal concern, comfort – a feeling of safety and respect – isn't, but the convention should concern themselves with that, especially if they want to remain a long-term viable concern.

I will also note that this is a PERSONAL concern for me, as I took the Scalzi challenge. I trusted WFC to make a decent policy, and when they finally announced it, it was too late to obtain a refund or to reasonably change my commitment. I will INSIST that any future convention have a visible, AND ACCEPTABLE, harassment policy in place, or I WILL NOT ATTEND, despite monetary loss or disappointment. As I would *MUCH* rather attend any conventions I want, I really very strongly urge all conventions to implement one!

 

The second issue: ACCESSIBILITY. This, however, IS a legal issue, and I'm really kinda gobsmacked that I'm having to write this in 2015. When your GUEST OF HONOR(Chelsea Quinn Yarbro) is walking around on double canes, and some of your panelists (such as Mari Ness) are in wheelchairs, it shouldn't require an immense intellect to think that maybe, just maybe, you should get some RAMPS and such to make it easy for these people to get up on the stages you've scheduled them to be on. And by the ADA, I do believe you are legally required to provide said accessibility. Which makes this an honest-to-god potential legal issue. Really, no one should even have to be making these points any more; most venues are AWARE of this issue, and have materials on-hand to help you address it, and if you actually think AHEAD in preparing for accessibility, it's not going to cost you much if anything extra.

 

Okay, that's out of the way. On to the more positive!

 

The first positive event happened almost the moment I entered WFC on Thursday around noon; I walked in and looked into what turned out to be the Dealer's Room, and found myself standing right at the table of Larry Smith. For those unaware, Larry is one of the most well-known convention booksellers around, and had recently been in a serious accident; the news I'd seen had made me worried he might not be up and about for a long time.

Instead, Larry was there, reasonably healthy (albeit with a cane), and working. He then gave me additional good news – he'd sold out all the copies of _Polychrome_ I'd given him, long before the accident, and would happily take some more. I gave him more trade paperbacks plus one of the very large hardcovers with the wraparound Eggleton cover. I also trotted over and said hello to David Hartwell who was setting up his booth, as well as Maria, who is the owner/operator of Flights of Fantasy.

Registration was quick and easy – walked up, they looked me up, my stuff was there, and off I went. I spent the first hour or so wandering around, just familiarizing myself with the lay of the land, and then dropped in on the Opening Ceremonies, which introduced the Guests of Honor and other special guests of the convention (including Baen's David Drake). There I also got to say hello to Tom Doherty of Tor, and meet Chelsea Quinn Yarbro for the first time.

After a little more drifting around in the convention setting the time for my panel came up: The Rogue, ably helmed by Ellen Kushner. After basic introductions, Ellen guided with a clear and firm hand, asking questions about rogues, their relationships to tricksters, what we felt made them attractive to read about, and so on. The panel certainly felt lively to me, and the other guests – James Alan Gardner, Alistair Kimble, and Cinda Williams Chima, contributed a lot of insights into the different views of the "rogue" character. I think my own Poplock-centric commentary was reasonably well-received, and certainly the audience seemed pretty engaged and active.

That taking me past 5pm, I found it was time to eat, so I sought out the Green Room – located about as far away as it could be and still be in the hotel connected to the Saratoga City Center.

The trip was worth it. Not only was it well organized and larger overall than many such rooms, but the food was, well, good. I've had experiences with convention food that ranged from "um… maybe I'll go out to eat" to "hey, that's pretty good", but I think this year's WFC beat 'em all. Each night had a different type of food – a sort of Turkish/Indian mix the first night, barbeque the second, and Italian the third – and each one was excellent and plentiful. The lunch menus, while less fancy, were still very good. Many kudos to all of the people responsible for seeing to it that all the many fans and authors did not starve, but instead fed well, during the convention!

I stayed a short time longer but was tired enough to go home.

I returned on Friday and went to the Art Show, where I finally got to meet Stephen Hickman; for those who don't know, he painted the covers for the original Grand Central Arena and for Paradigms Lost. He was exhibiting and, as usual, all his work was impressive. I was particularly impressed with his very large Siegfried and the Dragon painting (Fafnir himself was incredibly large and detailed).

I gave a reading on Friday; it was lightly attended, but not, as has happened before, an empty room, and I read the first chapter of Phoenix in Shadow followed by the first chapter of my mahou shoujo novel in progress, Princess Holy Aura, both of which seemed to go down well. Originally I'd planned to read the first chapter of Phoenix Ascendant, but one of the people present mentioned that they'd read the first book but not the second, so I didn't want to spoiler them – and boy, would the first chapter of Phoenix Ascendant spoil a hell of a lot of Phoenix in Shadow!

After the reading I finally met Mari Ness, who had provided a wonderful and encouraging review of Polychrome before publication, and so I presented her with a copy of her own upon finding out that the only copy she'd ever seen was the electronic first draft. She, along with Lawrence Watt-Evans and John C. Bunnell, had been the people primarily responsible for firming my resolve to actually carry out the Kickstarter.

I also encountered Thomas F. Monteleone, an author who has done quite a number of books but was most familiar to me for The Secret Sea, one of my favorite Verne pastiche/reimaginings; I was later able to locate my rather dog-eared copy and get him to autograph it. He also pointed me in the direction of some absolutely beautiful Nemo art in the Art Show – done by William O'Connor; somehow I'd missed it on the way through the first time, which I find inexplicable as it was in the first darn booth area.

Anyway, the next event was the mass signing at 8:30 (with author entry at 8pm). I discovered that the box of books that seemed pretty easy to lift got ridiculously heavy after I'd walked a hundred yards or so, but eventually made it to the hall, and once let in sat down and set up; I was joined at my table by Chuck Rothman, one of the con-runners and a long-time member of LASTSFA, the local SF fan organization responsible for supporting WFC as well as, more regularly, running Albacon.

Chuck and I also go back a lot farther than that, as he was a member of a writers' group I used to attend fairly regularly, and during that time he provided the most important single piece of writing advice I was ever given: "Never make it easy on your characters."

The signing went off beautifully, at least as far as I could tell. I signed more books at that signing (and the rest of the convention) than at any two or three others I've ever had. I sold a good number of the books I had on display and signed many more; as I've had signings where I signed nothing, this was a heck of a good thing. It was also superb timing as my family was effectively broke at the time, and the money I got at the convention allowed me to purchase some vital supplies.

 

ADDENDUM: I think the Mass Autograph Signing is one of the very, VERY best features of WFC. It allows one long period where a fan can get to find ALL the authors they're looking for, talk with them, get an autograph, and so on, rather than having to possibly check out three or four separate times on three separate days. Other conventions should look very seriously at doing things this way, rather than having to do the logistics of arranging dozens of separate signings.

 

As I was leaving for the convention on Saturday, I bumped into a box. This box was filled with the dark-blue hardcover version of Polychrome. Now, I've sold several of the trade paperback version, and even some of the huge, wraparound-dustjacket version ($50!) of Polychrome, but aside from those sent out for the Kickstarter rewards, not a single one of that version; that box had, in fact, never been opened since I ordered them, and only existed because I had ordered the most economic number for my price range and figured I'd need at least a few more than the Kickstarter demand. I was, apparently, wrong.

So rather than let the box stay unopened and unused for another six months or year or more, I grabbed it and took it with me, and put half the copies up on the "Book Exchange" table. They disappeared within a few minutes. Ultimately, aside from a few copies that Larry took for other conventions, all of them were given away in what couldn't have been a total of more than half an hour. Hopefully those who took them will enjoy them!

I also encountered Stephen R. Donaldson and had a brief opportunity to fanboy him and get his autograph on a first-edition copy of White Gold Wielder. In specific I told him how much I had appreciated two moments of awesome in the Second Chronicles, ones that bookended the trilogy: Covenant's response to Lord Foul's gloating as he drags Covenant back to the Land, and Covenant's final victory-in-death over Foul. (now that it's done, I have to read the final Chronicles and hope that they manage to live up to the first two)

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's panel ("An Hour With Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Amanuensis to le Comte de Saint-Germain") was absolutely wonderful. "Quinn", as she is apparently called by many of her friends, has a marvelously dry and witty delivery, and Suzy McKee Charnas and she played off each other very well, talking not just about her best-known charming vampire but about many other works ranging from YA to mysteries to Westerns! I had only known of about half of them; she's been astoundingly prolific, and active for almost 40 years (her first novel was published in 1976).

Her character M. le Comte de Saint-Germain was, in fact, one of the major inspirations for Verne Domingo (although I didn't really quite realize that until after the fact). Because of this, in addition to getting her autograph on one of her books for my friend Dana, who's a very long-time fan, I gave her a copy of Paradigms Lost.

At that point I was also intercepted by a fan who had purchased (from Larry) the giant hardcover version of Polychrome, at least partly because of Bob Eggleton's magnificent cover, and I of course autographed it for him. I remain surprised when someone buys one of those. They are beautiful, no doubt about it, but to see someone willing to pay so much to own one of my books… it's startling.

From there, I went to Old Weird, New Weird, or Just Plain Weird, partly because I knew Mr. Monteleone would be there, but also because weird fiction has always been an interest of mine. There was quite a lively discussion that ebbed and flowed about what "weird fiction" really was, and how one might discriminate it from other branches. I don't think that a complete consensus was reached, and that's probably a good thing; if you can completely categorize a genre to the point that no one argues, it's either a static genre, or one too narrow to be of long-term interest.

The major event of Saturday was a dinner headed by Baen's Jim Minz, with a number of guests including David Drake, Esther Friesner, Chuck Gannon, and Sandra Tayler. Sandra ended up sitting next to us and Kathy and I got to talk with her a fair amount; while it's Howard's name on Schlock Mercenary, Sandra does a lot of editing and proofing work and, Kathy and I suspect, probably has supplied more than that at times. Kathy and I certainly exchange a lot of ideas and I wouldn't be surprised if this were true for other husband-wife writing teams. Sandra also has done writing of her own – most prominently for our family a couple of children's books.

En route to the dinner, Kathy and I had also encountered someone else that I had met at more than one convention: Ruth Burroughs. What I hadn't known was that Ruth used to be a classmate of Kathy's at Saint Rose, many years back, and Ruth hadn't realized I was married to Kathy. So on Sunday when I came back, Kathy came along to hang out for a few hours, and Ruth and Kathy got to catch up on old times, while I made a last pass around the convention, said hi-and-bye, and so on.

I couldn't list all the people I met at the convention – to a great extent because I am abysmal with names, especially when I'm encountering a lot at once, so I remember the faces, voices, and conversations but not the names. This is even true of people I've seen at other conventions unless I spend a lot of time talking to them in OTHER settings (especially online, where I get to keep seeing their name connected with their words and faces; this is the reason I know, for example, Melissa Mead – Hi, Melissa!). I admit this makes me somewhat embarrassed to go to conventions in general as many people will greet me (by my hard-to-forget unique name) and I'll have to squint quickly at their badge even while responding, just to try to slowly build up the connection. So to those I met, who I know, but whose names refuse to come certainly to mind, I apologize for not mentioning you; perhaps what I need to do at future conventions is take a picture of each person so that I can keep refreshing my mind with "THIS face goes with THAT name".

 

Overall, this was a very fun convention. I hope that any future WFCs will address the issues I mention above, and certainly look forward to any similar conventions!