Category: convention

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convention

ConDFW schedule

Whoops, and it’s almost time to head up to Dallas for ConDFW! Here’s my schedule for the convention, please come say hello to me if you’ll be there. I should be easy to spot. Look for the red-headed dapper sir wearing a waistcoat (and at least one of the days, a top hat).

Time: Saturday, 11AM
Panel name: Androids at the Dinner Table: Gadgets, Social Media and Society
Location: PROGRAMMING 2 (Chinaberry)
Description: We see it more and more in this day and age: a group of friends at a restaurant, every one of them with their smart phone open and texting away. The age of the Internet is not upon us, it passed by about twenty years ago. What is acceptable in this day and age? Our panelists discuss this and other issues. Note: If your cellphone rings during this panel, you will be mocked mercilessly, and then debated about for a good twenty to thirty minutes.

Time: Saturday, 4pm
Panel name: One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor: Creating Maps
Location: PROGRAMMING 2 (Chinaberry)
Description: It is amazing how much easier you can visualize a world once you have built a map of it, or see a map on the first few pages of a book you picked up. But how do you build such a map so it doesn’t look like a five year old scribbled on a napkin with random crayons? Our resident scientists and creative artists help collaborate to build a map that inspires the imagination. Note: Maps may or may not allow you to simply walk into Mordor.

Time: Saturday, 5pm
Panel name: READING!
Location: READING (Trinity VIII)
Description: I will be sharing the room with K. Hutson and Selina Rosen. And I will bring some kind of sweet treat, because I am not above petty bribery.

Time: Sunday, 1pm
Panel name: The Science of Comedy: The White Face Clown vs The Red Face Clown
Location: MAIN PROGRAMMING (Addison Lecture Hall)
Description: In a book by Eric Idle, “The Road to Mars”, the idea of typecasts for humor is explored. There is the White Face Clown, generally thin and never gets pied in the face. Then there is the Red Face Clown, generally fat and jovial, who always gets pied in the face. Examples of this are Laurel and Hardy, or Penn and Teller. Is there any truth in this? Our humorists debate, and pies may be thrown.

Time: Sunday, 3pm
Panel name: Upwardly Mobile: Writing about Dirigibles and Other Flights of Fancy
Location: PROGRAMMING 3 (Trinity VII)
Description: One of the most common sights in both Steampunk and Cyberpunk is the dirigible. Otherwise known as zeppelins or blimps, the hydrogen or helium filled craft lazily float through the sky. It is one thing, however, to imagine it. It is entirely another to be able to write about it believably. For instance, which of the above named craft has NO internal supporting frame? (Blimps!) Our authors talk about the differences and other things to know about when writing about semi-rigid airships.

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convention steampunk trip report

Octopodicon

Octopodicon was my first every Steampunk convention, and I admit that I was kind of nervous. I absolutely love the steampunk aesthetic, but I am not a very fancy person myself. On of my life goals is to be a very dapper sir, but I prefer my dapperness to be a bit more… understated. Plus I’m utter crap with crafts, which doesn’t help. I went in feeling a bit intimidated, to be honest.

I don’t know what I expected–perhaps the steampunk fashion police to swoop down and judge me insufficiently punked out? Silly, in retrospect. Everyone was absolutely lovely and I never felt out of place. Rather, I was unquestioningly welcomed, and I appreciate that so very much.

Plus, I found the hats I’ve been needing all my life. YES HATS.  I now have everything I could want for all my dapper needs.

I had such a good time at this convention. The highlight of it for me was actually Saturday night. There were dance lessons, and I decided to go because I actually really like dancing even if I’m terrible at it. For a little while I thought I’d be the odd woman out, but then I ended up getting partnered with Sherry. I got to be the man because I had trousers and an awesome hat, and we waltzed and waltzed and waltzed. And then danced in a little competition and won it for Team Steampunk.

That was honestly one of the coolest moments of my life. Yes, it was just us against one other couple. But I won a dance competition. I won a freaking dance competition.

Man, I love dancing. I wish I could do it more often! But there was more dancing that day, since then there was all sorts of live performances and I danced to Darwin Prophet‘s music. [WARNING: Autoplaying music WHY DO YOU DO THIS]

Sunday was my working day; I did two panels and had a reading. I was excited that I got to do a panel with John Dee again–I got to be on a couple with him at FenCon. WE ARE AN EFFECTIVE TEAM. (You can tell because John also hates that movie.) The reading was small but went well–everyone who was there seemed to like what I read! So that was good. I also got to meet Patricia Ash of Gear Hearts Magazine–I’m hoping to write a little story for them soon.

So for a first Steampunk con, this was definitely a success. I’m looking forward to going to another soon!

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convention steampunk

[Octopodicon] Steampunk in Space

As promised for any Octopodicon person who might wander by, here’s links to what we talked about during Steampunk in Space.

Books/Comics

  • Starclimber by Kenneth Oppel was recommended by a member of the class. Be warned, there’s a lot of flash on this site and it makes sounds.
  • Airship Enterprise

RPGs

  • Space 1889 – Which has been fully funded on Kickstarter
  • Mage: The Ascension – Drive Thru RPG link to the core tabletop book. MtA isn’t strictly a steampunk RPG, but one of the traditions (Sons of Ether) is very steamunk – Aether ships!
  • Spelljammer

Movies/TV

  • Cowboys and Engines – Richard Hatch movie, very steampunk west. And involves Malcolm McDowell with some fabulous facial hair.
  • A Trip to the Moon/Le Voyage dans la lune – the 1902 film
  • Firefly – This was brought up often as an example of a show with a very steampunk ethos, though not necessarily the aesthetic. Though it very much has the wild west angle covered.
  • Treasure Planet – Aesthetically steampunk?
  • War of the Worlds: Goliath – Arguably dieselpunk, animated movie, looks very cool
Categories
convention

The FenCon Schedule has arrived!

And boy is it a full one!

FenCon X – October 4-6

  • Friday  9:00-10:00 PM  Under Pressure: Conquering the Oceans of Earth and Beyond
  • Friday  10:00 -11:00 PM  The Geek Nation Goes Mainstream
  • Saturday  10:00 -11:00 AM   Antagonists: More Than Just Villains
  • Saturday  2:00-3:00 PM   Tao and Again
  • Saturday  6:00-7:00 PM   The Moon be Domed!
  • Sunday  10:00 -11:00 AM   Ask A Scientist
  • Sunday  11:00 -12:00 PM   Women in Science
  • Sunday  2:00-3:00 PM   How To Capture and Tame a Wild Asteroid
  • Sunday  3:00-4:00 PM   Cynicism vs Idealism in SF&F

That’s nine panels! Whew! No reading, which makes me a bit sad, but it looks like I’ll be plenty busy. And five of the panels are science track. Guess it’s time for me to show I earned my degree–and to work for any food I weasel out of the con suite (because I really don’t like eating out often any more). Thankfully I’ve got a week and a half until the con, so I can try to do a little research to brush up on the more space-oriented panels. (Oh my fellow science people, if you have any recommended reading for any of these, please let me know!)

This will be my first FenCon, so I’m even more excited because it’s a new con, and a whole new region of the country. Everyone I’ve interacted with on staff has been incredibly friendly and responsive, so I can’t wait to meet them in person!

And if you’ll be at FenCon, I hope to see you there. Drop me a line if you want to try to meet up. There are always the evenings.

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convention

And I did a reading like a big girl

Mile Hi Con this weekend was a tremendous amount of fun. This is the first time I’ve gotten to be on panels at that convention, which was exciting. On Saturday I got to participate in a panel where we basically got to bitch for an hour about horrible movie science.

(Spoiler: What I find most annoying is, mundanely enough, movies putting GEOLOGISTS in white lab coats.)

I got to have a good rant in that panel as well, when someone asked if movie makers should be held responsible to not put crap science in their movies. I have opinions about this, but it deserves its own entry. Hopefully later this week!

Saturday there was also a panel called the Stop the Apocalypse Now game show, which was hilarious. The panelists (Dan Dvorkin and CJ Henderson) plus an audience volunteer were each given a random item on a card (eg: golf clubs, an abandoned mine, an x-ray spectrometer) and then given one minute to figure out a story to tell about how they could stop a Syfy-worthy cheesy apocalypse scenario with that item. I used my x-ray spectrometer to mutate a gibbon into something the size of King Kong so it could kill giant condors. Because in the age old battle between monkeys and birds, monkeys WIN.

So yes. That was incredibly fun. I told the panel moderators that they should make a real game of it, or do PDFs that people could print up like Cards Against Humanity because it was hilarious. Best story of the panel was CJ Henderson using the Dead Sea Scrolls to defeat an army of evil Peeps that had been animated by the Necronomicon, rendering the Peeps kosher in the process.

Sunday I was on the NaNoWriMo support panel. Hopefully some good advice was dispensed. Mostly it just made me miss NaNo. Soon, my pretty… soon. Once I’m not in school any more, I’ll finally have time to hammer at writing like that again.

And then after… I HAD A READING. LIKE A REAL WRITER. OMG.

I shared the reading time with Carrie Vaughn, and because of her the room was packed. It was utterly terrifying. But Carrie was incredibly sweet and supportive and wonderful. She also let me go first, for which I will forever be grateful.

I read two short stories for the crowd – The Jade Tiger first since I realized it would be smart to tell everyone that hey, I have Steampunk novellas coming out next year! And since it’s all the same characters, hopefully people liked them and will want to read more. And actually, at the end of the reading when we opened up for questions, someone in the crowd actually did ask me a question! And it was about when the first novella would come out, and what it would be called. So exciting! (Answers: Murder on the Titania and in March if memory serves.)

Then I read Comes the Huntsman. That story is so difficult to read aloud for so many reasons. But I did it! And I didn’t actually cry, though I got choked up. Goddamnit it’s always section 10 than gets me, every time. I guess I sounded so shaken up that when it was done Carrie told me to have some chocolate. (I’d brought Halloween candy because I know it’s smart to bribe your audience.) Everyone was immensely kind.

I hope I get to do it again.

Categories
convention

Mile Hi Con Schedule

Mile Hi Con is this weekend! And I’m actually on a few panels, since I’m pretending to be a real writer at the moment.

Saturday: 
Science Travesties in Current Media – 1600, Grand Mesa B-C

Sunday: 
NaNoWriMo Support Group – 1300, Mesa Verde A
Reading – 1400, Mesa Verde C

I’m excited about all of this, but I’m just floored I get to do a reading. And holy shit, I’m sharing time with Carrie Vaughn.

Please, please, please come and say hello!