Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Klingons don't say cheese

Saturday at Philcon, I wasn't scheduled to be on any panels, but there was a lot I wanted to do. We'd arranged to have a dog walker come by twice that day to look after Una so we didn't need to worry how late we stayed.

We left the house early enough to get ourselves some breakfast at the Reading Terminal Market, which is near the Marriott. Since it was busy, we ordered breakfast to go from a popular Amish place, then sat at tables and enjoyed our meal.

We got to the hotel at about 11 for what we hoped was a Jack McDevitt reading, but it turned out that we were mistaken and it wasn't going on at that time. We looked through the schedule and discovered one of our friends, who was also the convention president this year, was moderating a panel called "Rising Sun, Setting Sun" about the influence of eastern film and culture on Hollywood.

When we walked in, they were just getting set up. We chatted with the panelists as the room filled up. All of them seemed really knowledgeable and got into a great discussion. The audience wasn't terribly big, probably because it was early on a Saturday, but the other audience members, not just ourselves, seemed to enjoy it.

The Gryphon's next panel was in the same room, called "All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned from Gaming." He moved up to the head table and I retained my seat, using the opportunity to look through the schedule and plan out what else I wanted to do that day. I wrote out a detailed note for him, knowing that we both had things to go to immediately afterwards.

His panel went really well. There were a lot of interesting participants who talked about how they got into gaming and what they get out of it. One of the participants was a middle aged woman who sat there knitting a sweater while she talked. I thought that was just great.

I had enough time after the panel to give The Gryphon a hug and a kiss before heading to my next thing. It was "Creative Promoting 101," a panel on how authors can promote themselves and their work. The panel members were very knowledgeable with a lot of great ideas and even very helpful when I asked them how to promote a self-published book.

In fact, afterwards, I hung around for a little while and asked some more questions of them, as well as collecting business cards from them and flyers for workshops and such. Jonathan Maberry, in particular, an author and editor, was very helpful, as was an audience member who works for Barnes and Noble. I felt like I got many good, solid ideas.

Then, even though it was halfway over, I slipped into "Writing for an Online Audience," being held by J.R. Blackwell and her partners from 365 Tomorrows. The topic was online publishing in general and how to make it more exciting.

Near the end when they opened it up for questions, I bounced some ideas off them for ideas for Wild Violet. Afterwards, I hung out and talked to J. Loseth, who's also a voice actress. I promised to put her in touch with the Otakon programming people, since she's done work on anime productions.

I headed upstairs then for the presentation by David Mattingly, this year's key artistic guest. His speech was called "My Illustrious Career," since he is best known for his work with cover illustrations of SF novels. He also works with the movie industry and was scheduled to talk about that on Sunday.

When I entered, the lights were dim and he was showing examples of his work on a screen, pointing out details and discussing how they were made. It was fascinating, and I was lucky that there was enough light to jot down some notes for myself.

After that, in the same room, was the principle speech by David Weber, science fiction author and this year's key writing guest. A lot of people filtered in, including a group who stood in the doorway and sang a filk version of a Christmas carol. For those who don't know, filk music is songs based on science fiction and fantasy themes, typically parodies of existing songs but sometimes original.

David Weber stood in a corner in the front, smiling and watching them.

When he did his speech, he sat on a chair on the stage. He only devoted a small portion of his time to prepared comments, mainly on how important he felt fandom was to SF and to him, in particular. I thought this was a nice gesture. For the rest of the time, he opened the floor to questions. Many of them asked specific questions about his works, while others asked more general questions or even technical questions.

He announced at the end of the session that he would be doing signing at the back of the room. I knew I had to act fast, so I took out my business card and as soon as he was done, marched up and introduced myself. I told him that I'd interviewed the keynote speakers for the past two years for Wild Violet. He was interested in doing the interview but couldn't immediately think of a good time to do it, so I told him to either call my cell phone later or I'd drop by one of his panels on Sunday and we could figure it out then.

The fans, meanwhile, had lined up neatly by the table in the back. I was impressed by the orderly fashion they'd done it with little coaxing.

I headed then to the last must-see panel for me that day, "Five Clauses You Will Meet in Publishing: Who, What, When, Where and Why." This panel was about contracts and what writers should look for when signing one with a publisher. This was another knowledgeable panel with many of the same people from earlier in the day, including Josepha Sherman. I got a lot of useful information out of that and was really happy I attended.

Afterwards, I stuck around a little while to chat with some of the panel members before leaving to catch up with The Gryphon. We were both hungry, so we went downstairs to the sushi bar in the hotel lobby and got sushi. I was pleased it was good sushi, because I've had some mediocre sushi and this was the good stuff.

We took our time eating and then went upstairs and mingled with some of our friends who were anime panelists. They were showing some stuff in a viewing room. I informed the White Rabbit about the RSVP responses for the New Year's Party at his place. The Gryphon and I are helping him to organize it.

Then I went downstairs to attend something called "Other World Poets," which was supposed to be a poetry reading by two poets. But nobody showed, neither audience members nor poets. A bag sat on a seat in the front row, but no one claimed it. Finally, I decided to leave. I stopped in at the Green Room to let the con staff know about it. They told me the event was canceled because one of the poets couldn't make it.

While I was there, I told them what had happened Friday when there were only two people there. The woman I spoke to told me that we wouldn't have had to go through with the panel if we didn't want to, but I'm glad we did. I think it was the best panel I've ever been on.

I walked back up to the gaming room and hung out with The Gryphon after picking up a bunch of handouts in the lobby. One clued me in on a party a friend of ours was having, SysTris. So after chatting for awhile with some of his friends about things like personality tests and theater stories, I decided to check out the party.

This year SysTris actually had a suite, so it was a great place for a party. There were only a few people there initially, but she had some snacks laid out, and some drinks. As the night wore on, more people arrived. SysTris was wearing a lovely purple and black velvet dress.

I had a good time talking to various people. One guy was exactly my age and had a lot of similar experiences in college. Another guy in a Bauhaus T-shirt was younger but interesting, as well. And then there was the guy in the Darth Vader costume who was a big Dr. Demento fan and promised to find out if a montage I'd sent Dr. D — and which he'd asked my permission to play — had ever aired.

I just got an e-mail from him saying that according to his files, it never did. At least I still have the letter from Dr. D asking my permission to air it. That's enough for me!

I also talked for awhile with a woman I recognized from the audience to the "Five Clauses" panel. We had a lot in common, too. Turned out she'd worked as a curator intern for a place in Baltimore. She talked about the exciting things she'd learned through her research there.

The only black spot on the evening was when I ended up talking to a guy who kept getting stranger and stranger. It was right at a lull in the party when there were very few people around. We were sitting on chairs on the side of the room, and I kept looking for a graceful way to exit. Yes, I could have been rude, but I wasn't yet ready to leave the party, and I also couldn't be certain he wouldn't follow me.

I was also a bit fascinated because of some of the things he was saying. He spoke some language he claimed was his native language, and when I pressed him for where it was, he said he couldn't even explain where it was from. I got the impression it wasn't Earth. He also said that he'd been a leader in some sort of military that, upon closer inspection, also didn't appear to be from our earthly realm.

Finally, Bauhaus guy drifted over, and I stood up and started talking to him. Then I said, "Well, I think I ought to head out." Naturally, the guy in black decided to head out then, too, but I took my time talking to SysTris and just allowed him to leave.

I stuck around then for awhile later, talking to the people who were non-threatening and didn't leave until an hour or so later, after first calling The Gryphon to arrange a rendezvous point.

He was having an animated conversation in the gaming room when I arrived, and we hung out for a little longer before catching a cab home. As I remember now, the previous night, we actually took the subway and then a cab. But what matters most is that Una, who had been visited twice by the dog walker, was in a much calmer state than she would have been if we'd done what we did two years ago and merely stopped in ourselves once to check on her.

More from Philcon 2005:

December 12, 2005 - Mythical Apocalypse

December 14, 2005 - Great Conversations

December 19, 2005 - Philcon Fragments

Philcon 2004:

December 14, 2004 - Friendly Philcon Morning

Philcon 2003:

December 15, 2005 - Convention from Another Planet

Copyright 2005 by Alyce Wilson

Musings Index

What do you think? Share your thoughts
at Alyce's message board (left button):